Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

Because the OS doesn’t matter nearly as much as the apps running on that OS, and Google only allows licensed OEMs to preload Google apps onto their devices (for a fee). Also, how strange would it be for Microsoft to pay Google billions of dollars for them to use their App Store? That would not only be them conceding that they couldn’t win on mobile, but that would also reduce them to yet another Android Phone manufacturer that has to spend tens of millions of dollars on low margin devices that won’t sell.

Also, Windows Phone was an amazing OS in its own right but failed largely because they couldn’t solve apps. It is impossibly hard to compete against Apple or Samsung in this space, especially when the OEMs didn’t want to play ball.

(Samsung, HTC and LG made a few Windows phones that they didn’t invest a lot of time on. They were most likely an expensive relationship maintenance activity to retain a partnership with MS. I believe this happened because MS imposed really strict guidelines for their OS experience right out the gate that didn’t really benefit anyone but Microsoft (OEMs make money on preinstalled apps, for example; that wasn’t allowed.) It was much easier for them to just pump more money on making great Android devices than trying to make Windows Phone great again)

Is Android inextricably coupled with the Google App store? For thought experiment's sake: could Microsoft fork Android and then host their own app store that supports the same apps that a dev would submit to Google's App store, thus making it possible for devs to get their android apps listed in both stores merely by submitting the app twice?

(Serious question. I know nothing about app stores and/or mobile operating systems)

I think this is roughly how Amazon's FireOS fork works.

Yes it's possible. It's exactly what Amazon is (was?) trying to pull off.

It's not just the app store. It's Google Play Services. Google provides some services that Android developers rely on (like notifications). There is a non-zero amount of work to decouple apps from Google Play Services and use the equivalent Amazon services.

Not really. While MS could create their own store and distribute their own distribution of Android based on the Open Source builds, they won’t get access to Play Services which is a big part of the Android experience. MS tried to rectify this by partnering with Cyanogen who had deep experience in customizing Android. That fell through, however. There is also a project that is trying to reverse engineer Play Services itself into an Open Source model, but it isn’t as good and updates take longer.

> That would not only be them conceding that they couldn’t win on mobile, but that would also reduce them to yet another Android Phone manufacturer that has to spend tens of millions of dollars on low margin devices that won’t sell.

There is a third way, assuming the Android license allows for it:

Microsoft concedes they can't replace the OS layer

Microsoft forks Android

Microsoft focuses on the next battle that could be won: making Cortana/whatever the default digital assistant in their build.

For fun, let's then assume Google tries to block this.

Microsoft sues Google for "bundling" and uses their own case where they were forced to unbundle the web browser as precedent.

(I say this as someone who likes his iPhone but hates Siri.)

Unlike Windows in the 90s, Android isn't a monopoly. (iOS has a decent marketshare.) So Google is free to be as anti-competitive as they want to be.

Tell that to the EU.

That ruling applies to Search, where Google does have monopoly

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/20/eu-commis...

Not entirely true.

Android market share is !85% (worldwide, it is less in the US). When Microsoft was going through the monopoly cases their market share was ~90-93%. Not actually that far off the same metric.

The thing is that Google is being very careful to not commit the same mistakes there. Though I'd say they're pretty close (and the EU seems to agree, generally, warning them a few times over similar behaviors)

iOS marketshare is a funny thing - it makes ~$30 billion a year in revenue - 3 times that of the Android marketplace - but has less than 1/5th of the users.

They're free, like Amazon, to fork Android & make Cortana the default assistant. What's this got to do with bundling an Google?

MS never gave access, hence never allowed forks of Windows to happen.

How much more can Google do than give away the entire OS for free? They have ZERO commitments by monopoly law to usurp their default apps in their distribution of Android

They're free, like Amazon, to fork Android & make Cortana the default assistant. What's this got to do with bundling an Google?

They don't have to do that. They can make deals with OEMs to make Cortana the default.

Well, they could pull it off to make alternatives to Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play Services, and all the other things. Then they could position themselves as an alternative to the Google Android Platform Agreement or whatever it was called.

I think I agree with you anyway, but if Amazon was MS and FireOS was the only platform with Office, especially Outlook, it would tilt the balance a bit.

People would just stop using Office then. Google has seriously eroded Microsoft’s dominance here — I’ve worked at a few major companies who have switched and Google is a far more cloud-native solution. It’s honestly more intuitive to the workers that we’re hiring.

Microsoft’s Office leverage is gone. If they try to use it as a hammer in defense of their platform, their market share will drop. Their only option now is to try to increase the platform buy-in again.

How powerful and easy to pick up is Google App Script compared to VBA?

Given your experience, do you see GAS overtaking VBA, and if so, in which fields? (Finance?) What industries were the companies you helped switch over working in?

I ask because I'm while I'm roughly intermediate with VBA, I'm not sure if I should continue pursuing VBA or invest in something that might be more valuable in the future.

> How powerful and easy to pick up is Google App Script compared to VBA?

Isn't it just JavaScript + a library?

GAS is super easy to get (it’s JavaScript), but until you can execute scripts client-side, it won’t ever really take off.

It also has the same problem that VBA has in that the code resides local to the object consuming it (spreadsheet, doc, etc), so you can’t version control it like you would for a normal application).

VBA even has the advantage of being able to load .NET libraries, which is huge given that you can let the .NET VM do the heavy lifting and use VBA to lay results out onto your sheet or Word doc.

It already has. I have multiple Fortune 500 clients who hired some offshore teams to rebuild their core VBA/Excel workbooks in GAS. Google provides ample support when you pay this much.

In the early days Sheets wasn’t as good; but I would say it is better than Excel if you’re willing to spend a few million to port your complex macros.

Slides still blows though.

Edit: Industry largely is irrelevant; most big companies have custom software running their main production line (be that software, telecom or manufacturing). MS Office / Google Apps have a sweet spot in back-office functions. Google Apps allows a lot more automation (and most of the kids coming out of school know basic programming these days). No; it’s not as good as custom version-controlled software, but it’s a hell of a lot better than e-mailing .xlsx files back and forth. You can more or less treat a Google sheet as a lambda function, which is pretty neat.

Definitely not true. While many companies have active G Suite subscriptions, they still pay for Office 365 because Word, Excel and Access (yes, Access) don’t have any real competition.

Word and Excel are gargantuan pieces of software. VBA aside (which is used very very heavily, and Google’s Scripting Framework doesn’t compare given that everything is executed on their servers), there are some really niche features deep inside of Word that people at big companies use daily.

Also, Sheets is slow as hell compared to Excel, even on small time spreadsheets. Not going to work on the trading floor.

Then there is the whole “kind of sort of works offline” bit that really diminishes the value of using Google Docs. Docs basically doesn’t work on low bandwidth connections, which is a daily reality for a lot of business people that travel. That’s the main reason why I prefer Office; it is a lot easier to work on talks and blog posts offline with it.

In the corporate world, this is seen as a feature. I’m not kidding you — the fact that documents can’t be viewed offline easily is touted as a feature since if a laptop is stolen, the valuable data won’t be there (supposedly).

Office and productivity software is far from a killer mobile app. Mobile devices are mainly used for real-time communication or consuming content, much less at creating significant amount of content, where MSOffice shines on the desktop.

Would they? If your work uses Office 365, and you're currently on Android but you hear that Microsoft is coming out with a forked Android platform that while devoid of Google apps does have Outlook, and the rest of the suite... would you really not be even slightly tempted?

Excel is probably the most used piece of business software in the world. Most companies are run on it.

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