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Comment by superasn | Hacker News Reader

Google mantra of do no evil is at the heart of this success again. I really admire that they've kept it open source and not followed their competitors in creating ridiculous policies such as taking a cut of e-book sales, policing for adult content, banning all apps that interact directly with the hardware or try to do things outside of their limited API, etc.

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I really hate that motto since it's so good at blinding otherwise intelligent people. It has nothing to do with anything. Google's polices aren't "good" and Apple's aren't "evil". They're both engaging in trade offs. Apple can make sure every user has a nicer experience at the cost of some freedoms. Android offers more freedoms at the cost of some people having ridiculous battery life, trojans stealing people's credit card numbers every so often, etc. Google has taken the exact same trade off that MS took back in their day.

Actually, Apple certainly doesn't follow the do no evil thing much like Google does. If you have any instances of Google doing such malicious things like Apple is doing, I'd love to be informed (also will help remove my misgivings):

http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2011/12/09/apple-w3c

Apple isn't doing any "malicious" things if you're talking about "lock down", app store and so on (the lawsuits are a separate issue).

And Google has done it's share of things; claiming to be for net neutrality but not really being when they saw a way to profit, claiming to pull out of China on "moral grounds" but not actually doing so until they got hacked, the lock-in-raise-price strategy of their for-pay platform, etc. The motto is meaningless, it's only there to sucker people and it's pretty embarrassing that it works.

They haven't kept it open source, strictly speaking (ref. Honeycomb). Their naivety has left them dangerously exposed on patents, the recent CarrierIQ debacle is an example of the dangers of Android's openness, and any worthwhile app in the Android Market is hacked and re-submitted as a free app before you can blink an eye. Google's not making money from Android, and neither are developers*. That's not even starting on the security vulnerabilities, or the fact that Google's business model is based on a premise of invasive personal data-slurpage to sell more ads.

Granted, that's a generalization. But it makes the point.

Why so negative looking? All releases except for Honeycomb have been opensourced allowing for a number of custom roms used on millions of devices (cyanogen, miui) which is more than can be said for other platforms. The openness of Android apps allow for applications and innovation not possible on the iphone or other devices (custom lock screens, homescreens, NASA's phonesats). The CarrierIQ debacle involved all major phone developers including Apple (prior to iOS5), BB, Nokia as well.

Granted, that's a generalization. But it makes the point.

Honeycomb is completely open source now. They released it with ICS.

I will agree with you on the patents, but as far as the security is concerned that's just security through obscurity, which isn't any better.

As far as making money is concerned I don't see the reason why? Android has a good market-share, a good marketplace, and it even allows for in-app purchases. What's stopping them from making money here?

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