Comment by technoslut | Hacker News Reader

Comment by technoslut | Hacker News Reader

This article is seriously flawed.

>All Google ever hoped to do was provide a shell-shocked smartphone industry with the tools to build a credible alternative to the iPhone that didn’t come with Apple’s tight-fisted control.

This is wrong. The initial reason of why Android was even purchased was to prevent Microsoft from becoming dominant in mobile. Whatever argument that is made afterwards was historical revisionism.

>but its success has ensured that the world will have access to a modern mobile operating system governed by different principles than Apple’s.

How can Krazit possibly know this? Android seemed to be a bigger reason why WebOS and WP7 wasn't successful and, for a two year stretch, Android was primarily capitalizing off declining marketshare numbers from competitors and not Apple . It may have even killed off development of MeeGo.

>...and when Apple started making noise about barring AdMob from the iPhone, the federal government raised an eyebrow.

Apple doesn't have to completely remove Google search completely from iOS to hurt Google. All they have to do is remove them as the default option.

It's a bit absurd to imply that the only reason Google is in this to make sure that one company won't control the future when this what Apple, Google and MS all want. Google wouldn't have spent $12.5 billion on MMI if they weren't expecting to make that money back and then some.

It's a bit absurd to imply that the only reason Google is in this to make sure that one company won't control the future

Seems like your thesis is that it's exactly the reason Google is in this. They just got the company wrong.

I think this is a trap of trying to read moral content into factual data. Saying that Google wasn't trying to become a dominant platform isn't the same thing as saying they are saints for it. But I think it's broadly correct: Google has always viewed its future as being the central arbitrage point for online communication. Apple and MS mark success by unit shipments, and the strategies for protecting those kinds of positions differ.

> Apple and MS mark success by unit shipments, and the strategies for protecting those kinds of positions differ.

Apple and MS mark success by the benjamins on their balance sheets, just like HTC, Samsung, and RIM. If any of them could dip a Blackberry 6700 in Elmer's glue, roll it around in a bin of diamonds, and reliably sell it to some Saudi prince for $50 billion once per quarter, they would; but it turns out that selling normal phones to normal people stacks cheddar more reliably.

No, that's oversimplified. Yes, all public corporations seek profit by definition. But to claim that there isn't a significant cultural determiner for the ways they do that is silly. ExxonMobil and ADM don't sell packaged consumer products and probably never will. IBM does a ton of IT contract business, where Nestle and Apple do none.

And, specific to this point: Google doesn't chase unit sales, they've made their business in advertising, chasing eyeballs and traffic. Apple sells hardware, and broadly wants to sell more hardware.

Google sure loves to comment on the number of activations occurring on a daily basis. This ties into both eyeballs and hardware sales of Android partners.

The initial reason of why Android was even purchased was to prevent Microsoft from becoming dominant in mobile.

This is very interesting. Can you provide a source on it?

I think the thesis should be seen more broadly than stated in the article: Android was meant to make smartphones a commodity, giving millions of people access the mobile web.

Android was purchased well over a year before the iPhone was unveiled. And remember that the iPhone was seen more as an expensive iPod, not necessarily a challenger for the most prevalent software platform in the world, for a very long time after its release. So it really is a stretch to portray Android's early history in terms of competition with the iPhone.

Microsoft was the threat. Google was expanding into desktop software like Desktop Search, Google Earth, and Picasa by the mid-00's and MS was playing hardball. Google filed a lawsuit against them in 07' over being handicapped in desktop search performance. And Microsoft was already investing billions in web search, so the threat of deeper integration of search into the world's most popular OS was a major long-term threat.

You're all forgetting about Blackberry and Palm.

Page and Brin purchased Rubin & Co.'s Android to compete against Blackberry and Palm as well. The earliest Android models borrowed heavily from the BB and Palm interface as well as Windows.

It wasn't until iPhone came out that Google realized Apple created a game-changer and decided to pursue that direction.

Here's what the original Android prototype looked like: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2011/11/607064...

Looks very similiar to the other Windows/BB/Palm phones at that time. To Rubin's credit, his former company Danger created a great interface with the HipTopOS (aka T-Mobile's Sidekick) that used the trackwheel pretty well.

There were multiple Android prototypes as the OS was designed to run on different form factors from touch-less candy bars to devices like the HTC Dream that had a full touch screen.

Here's another prototype: http://www.osnews.com/img/25264/android-phone-touchscreen.jp... http://www.osnews.com/img/25264/android-phone-history.jpg showing the latter configuration.

The fact that the myth of Android being a Blackberry clone until the iPhone came out is a text book example of something being repeated so many times that people just think it's true. Of course there was a prototype that looked like the Blackberry but it was just one prototype. There were obviously others.

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