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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

The integration point for Google's stuff is the cloud, not physical devices. I expect this to gradually become a key differentiating factor. Apple is riding the coattails of an old paradigm, and, like Microsoft before them, they're too invested in the money they're making in the old paradigm to make the sacrifices necessary to properly address the new one.

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The integration point for Google's stuff is the cloud, not physical devices

That may be part of the problem with loyalty to Android. If everything is in the cloud, there is nothing tying me to a Google device. When I got my Android phone, I put in my Google account and got all of my contacts from Gmail and Google Voice, etc., but that is nothing new, as I had the same thing on Windows Mobile, and I could get the same thing on iPhone. When you get an iPhone, on the other hand, you have to create an iTunes account, and all the apps you buy, and all the backups for your phone happen there. It makes it easy to get another iPhone, or iPad, or iPod Touch, but it is harder to switch to Android or another platform.

"That may be part of the problem with loyalty to Android. If everything is in the cloud, there is nothing tying me to a Google device."

...Which is exactly why I'd like to get a Google device. And to the loyalty point: you don't HAVE to keep all of your users if you're getting more by the boatload. If the lack of lock-in draws more users than your competitor's lock-in keeps from leaving, hooray!

The whole concept of lock-in is misguided. If people are loyal because, even though they DON'T LIKE your product, it's too hard to switch, that means that a lot of your users are out there griping about you. Plus it can't feel good to know that you have to tie your customers down to keep them.

At some point, the dislike reaches a critical mass and people start leaving in droves. That's what's happening to BlackBerry now. And it's going to be hard to undo the harm to their reputation that years of frustrated users have done. Whereas if people could have left more easily, they would have seen the problem sooner.

Or to put this in HN terms: lack of lockin = "fail faster."

It's been pointed out before but it bears repeating: the stakes in this game are totally different for Google. Google doesn't need to dominate in this market, it just needs to keep it open enough that the client is commoditized. If clients are commoditized and communicate via open standards Google wins on the strength of its superior systems engineering. History suggests that Apple will fare poorly in a commoditized market.

I suspect Google is actually a lot more worried about Facebook right now than Apple though.

While I generally agree with your statement, I think that you may be jumping the gun a tad in terms of the market. The "coattails of the old paradigm" are going to be very important so long as a good network connection isn't guaranteed at all times.

Amazing strides have been made to improve connectivity, but we're not there yet. So long as we're not there, you will continue to see the old paradigm.

Certainly timing is crucial in these things. Sun might have actually been a little too far ahead of its time in the 90's, for example.

Ultimately though we should be thinking of local storage as cache and not anything more privileged.

>they're too invested in the money they're making in the old paradigm to make the sacrifices necessary to properly address the new one.

Let's see what they do with MobileMe in the next couple of years before pronouncing them "dead from momentum".

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