Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey
wired.com
wired.com
"Not cool enough."
The phone is brilliant, but the market went elsewhere with it's carrier locked subsidised junk models. That's just a market reality, like it or not. Google tried to "do the right thing" and the market went somewhere else. Making all these points about what they could've done instead which basically amounted to "become a direct competitor with Apple on the retail level" are not realistic considering everything we know about Google and it's views and practices on direct end user support.
If the market wants to shoot itself in the foot by choosing shitty products, that's their cross to bear. It's not reasonable to place the blame on one of the few companies that provided an out and had it thrown squarely back in their face. The only problem I fear is that due to the failure of the Nexus One they won't invest in a Nexus Two and the Android ecosystem will become a swirling morass of telco crippled product, thus ending differentiation between it and the competing iOS ecosystem.
The article does however make an interesting point, HP might do better with webOS, they are accustomed to end user hand holding and playing the retail / marketing game. If they can push a truly open ecosystem and manage to be successful in units moved as well, they may well end up being what Android might have been if the market had let it go in the direction Google had clearly wanted it to go from inception.
1 - the phone came with waaaay substandard service - no live customer service, barely service via email
2 - no chance for the wide consumer market to play with the phone or interact with the phone with online sales only
3 - mixed reviews from the professional tech review community
So while I agree google made an attempt it felt to me much more like a half assed try in the context of this thread
Point 3 is news to me, every review I read on the N1 prior to purchasing one was a "this beats the snot out of the iPhone" level heaping of glowing praise, and now having had one myself for two months I see why; it's completely true. It's the Ubuntu story in a phone form factor all over again; having the clearly superior product does not mean that you end up with significant market share or business success.
All these issues of late, this pact, Facebook privacy, Apple Locks on products, hinge on the premise of an uncaring public as long it gets its fix of the day.
So many times you hear a commentator use the line "the regular user doesn't care". I saw many comments along that line on HN. And you can say this, because it is true, the public does not care.
consumers flocked to a locked relationship with ATT to get the iphone, few left facebook over its privacy issues, consumers will flock to get superior preferential access to the net via Droid's on Verizon wireless.
And yes, the average end users just don't care, they don't understand, they don't think, they don't even want to, as entrepreneurs we already know this through our own experiences most likely, letalone needing to see it demonstrated writ large in this particular instance. Not having all the enabling features for the modern "consumer experience" equals poor market results, no matter the quality of the underlying product.
"Google really does have a TERRIBLE sales process. Firstly I meant to order a car dock with the first order. If you email them at all (including on your "order status") no one reads it -- based upon what category you choose they send you a stock response with zero way of escalating. So when I emailed saying "Could I add a dock to this order so I only get one shipping and one customs charge?" I instantly got the stock 'Nah go screw yourself' response claiming that their fulfillment is so super quick that it's impossible to make a change."
After hearing that, I think I'd rather get a nearly identical HTC phone from a local store where I can some recourse if something goes wrong.
Would they have done better if they had focused on consumer experience a lot more? Almost definitely, but I think that's as far from their culture as it is for Microsoft to understand why an iPad is not just a PC in a new form factor. They just don't "get it" to use the common turn of phrase, I think maybe I didn't convey that so well because I'm sympathetic to the position and in the habit of dismissing the other components of the consumer experience myself.
They shouldn't have to.
Note, however, that I am not arguing against specialization. I'll be first in line to encourage people not to care too much about details in one area in order to focus on another, but if they don't care about anything, I take exception.
They don't though, that's not news, we all get it, we all live in the same marketplace, and we all get used to that eventually and just deal with it. Participating in it doesn't mean we have to think it's a great thing, I think it says bad things about humanity as a whole personally.
I am not quite sure at what points these types of knowledge are equivalent.
I think it would be great if google created a "genius bar". I'd call it the "let me just google that for you" bar.
Basically, you go to the bar and ask the bartender a question. He types the question into google and then reads you the answer. He might even refer you to the genius bar in the unlikely even that a quick google search doesn't solve your problem.
Well, you really have to understand that what is "clearly superior" to you is not "clearly superior" to your typical "clueless end user".
I literally stopped by three brick and mortar T-Mobile stores back in May (my family's contract with Sprint was ending) to simply try a Nexus One out and not a single store had one anywhere in site. There were no promotional banners, there were no phones on display, and even when I asked the employees I got one response of "We don't have any in stock" and one response of "We don't show that phone".
All in all a terrible experience, and when confronted with 3 other family members who aren't very tech savvy, a phone they couldn't hold in their hand turned out to be an impossible sell.
Total cost over 12 month period will almost definitely be less than 1k unless I go completely overboard on voip calls, to boot the voip calls are far cheaper than normal mobile operator calls, and work fine over 3g with the sipdroid client.
Blame the market all you want, but if Google aren't even going to inform the majority, that ain't the markets fault.
On the carrier front though, retail stores that were actually marketing to end users, I guess this is as good an illustration of my point as any;
The full-price Nexus One was hundreds of dollars more than a subsidized phone from your carrier. And since you usually pay the same per month whether you take their subsidy or not, it was not a smart financial decision to buy a Nexus One for the overwhelming majority of customers.
Most people don't even think about the fact that they're locked into a contract for 2+ years (in the US), they just think about how the other phones are cheaper. But even for the people who consider the costs of being locked in, they can see that not being locked in provides little advantage.
If the entire market wasn't locked in to their contract, and could trivially take their phone number with them, they would have maximum provider mobility and the competition would get steep. If only a few people do this, it won't actually improve service or make the companies willing to adjust prices to keep these specific customers.
I'm not sure how the market came to this in North America and other select places, but I can see how it's going to be very hard for it to change.
>We both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wire-line world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly,
The mobile wireless marketplace has basically no competition, except when you compare it to the wired market, where there really is no meaningful competition.
If Google sets out to do the right thing by consumers despite potentially sabotaging their own market success in the larger picture (people still read google ads on android devices, no matter how carrier crippled the experience is, Apple lose the ability to lock google ads out of the mobile space, Google wins) consumers not only reject the product but emphatically embrace the carrier crippled alternatives to the point where Google succeeds at it's objectives largely because of it's relationship with the carriers, why not tell the end users to get lost and deal with the status quo and start playing ball with the carriers?
Google is just a business, and they may make a case for how they'd like things to go, but at the end of the day if the market pushes them in another direction and they have no desire to adjust their DNA to the fundamental level required in order to pivot on this particular issue, and it ends up that with the direction the market is pushing they win anyway, just in a different way than they would have hoped, why not just go with that flow?
When Google released the Nexus One, I remember thinking they're competing with the carriers whom they depend on adopting Android. No way will ATT/VZN let this in their stores.
Google tried to have it both ways.
To everyday users they are all 'droids'. It doesn't matter if it's the nexus one or a galaxy s phone. Every regular user I have ever talked to about their android phone calls it a 'droid'. Even the original G1. Good for verizon I guess...
They could have just asked Nokia. This is what Nokia has been trying to do in the US for a decade now.
At least for me and few of my friends N1 would've been god-send given that you could use SIM from the carrier your employer chose to use and thus use it as a work-and-freetime phone and you could've received new versions of the platform on time.
That has always irritated me in its US-centric view of things. They should have kept pushing that phone in Europe, in stores, where it would sit right next to even more expensive iPhone models.
Wired suggested that Google could have done more to get around this so that the Nexus 1 was available to everyone, but they didn't.
Carrier locked, subsidized junk models are the norm, not the exception. Google tried to take that in a direction similar to what Apple did with the iPhone but without the same effort behind that. To say that the market shifted away from that ignores the way cell phones have always been sold in the US.
The phone is brilliant but the market would have to get used to seeing google as a hardware supplier rather than an online service provider, so they'll have to establish their brand in that line of business. This takes time.
To expect instant acceptance in such a dramatic departure of your core business is totally unrealistic.
We have two network providers and you have a free choice to get your phone, cable and wireless from whichever one of them operates in your town.
Sure we don't get 3G on our kindles and we got the iPhone a year after uzbekistan and we pay twice as much as you do for the data - but that's our choice as Canadian consumers.
they do compete ruthlessly, you should see the golf games when their chief execs get together at their price fixing meetings.
For a $2 per book fee.
Does this sound at all like a well-thought-out, reasonable, or mature course of action to suggest that Google could have taken? I don't think so. What exactly does ``a fair plan'' mean? $0.50 less for unlimited texting? $10 less for wireless broadband?
FTA: ``That’s fancy language for: Verizon and the nation’s telecoms have yet again won, Google officially became a net neutrality surrender monkey, and you — as an American — have lost.''
Sounds to me like Wired is taking a shot at riding a wave of childish rage (and trying to get fat along the way).
If I were running Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc, I probably would be pro net neutrality, as a lot of the consumers of wireless data will care about it and it will be a valuable feature, but I wouldn't be in a hurry to compete only on price and coverage either. If the people writing about this topic could only see past their loathing of the providers to be fair about it, and exclude off-topic rants about the providers trying to actually make a profit, they might further the discussion a lot better.
Google's vision of a market in which handsets are independent from carriers is absolutely poisonous to the industry's business model. Even though the iPhone is very successful I don't think verizon or sprint are interested at all in a world where they are just a "dumb pipe", they won't allow it.
Google lost this war because of their commitment to openness.
And while Google "gave" it to them, they've all dumped incredible amounts of engineering hours into Android and their derivatives -- any illusion that they just ran a Ubuntu install on their Galaxy S and that was it is utterly asinine around parts like this.
Seriously, the "giving it away" bit is dumb, and while it sells on the non-technical sites, it is an embarrassment on HN.
I was simply try to the make the point that by pushing an open source OS (as in manufacturers could alter the OS to include anything the carriers insisted) Google blindsided itself. They expected to create something that would change the handset/carrier/customer relationship, instead they just enabled the next generation of the same thing. The Nexus One is evidence of this.
At least, the actions of Apple (and Jobs) is limited directly to developers and consumers who choose to use (or develop for) their products.
Verizon and Google? This affects all of us.
Edit: But to answer your question: Let's support the little guy and go webOS!
1. "Google and Verizon announced Monday, as part of their bilateral net neutrality trade agreement they want Congress to ratify, that open wireless rules were unneccessary.
“We both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wire-line world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly,” the joint statement said. “In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless-broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the [Net Neutrality] wire-line principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement.”
That’s fancy language for: Verizon and the nation’s telecoms have yet again won, Google officially became a net neutrality surrender monkey, and you — as an American — have lost."
The proposal[1] specifically notes that the wireless exemption is time-limited-- it is noted that "at this time" these rules would not apply. The proposal includes an annual review of this position, and the transparency requirement attempts to ensure that this review could be conducted fairly and with good information.
2. "Google could have fought. It had plenty of tools at its disposal. It could have made phones that worked on all of those networks, and then sued those companies if they didn’t allow users to get fair plans."
Really? And destroyed any hope of Android ending up on those carriers in the future? Does anyone really think this is a sane proposition? (Does anyone believe that Google wouldn't be painted as a litigious bully by the very same critics throwing around such absurd language as "carrier-humping surrender monkeys"?)
3. "The FTC would have had a reason to pry into unfair business practices. Google could have eschewed online-only selling and partnered with the many independently owned mobile phone shops around the country, so that potential customers could play with the device before plunking down $500."
The reasons for the Nexus One's failures are complex, but I certainly think that one of them was that many consumers don't want to pay $500 for a device, and are more than happy to sign multi-year contracts in order to get a subsidy on a smartphone.
4. "Google easily could have attached conditions to all Google-powered Android phones, banning carrier software that can’t be removed just as easily as any other app. (Try getting rid of Sprint’s Nascar app on the EVO — if you don’t have root, it can’t be done.). These conditions also could have banned the blocking of Android 2.2’s built-in ability to be a Wi-Fi hot spot, which both Sprint and Verizon have crippled."
I know the "open" crowd isn't a fan of these management policies-- I'm not either-- but it seems hypocritical to assert that certain kinds of customizations shouldn't be allowed on open-source software. The author essentially wants Google to be the arbiter of what "openness" means, and moreover, to apply an unequal standard to customers versus carriers.
Boo-hoo, right? Verizon certainly can deal with getting the short end of that stick. But the way they would most likely do that is to drop Android altogether. At which point no one gets to customize it at all.
I am continually mystified by the legions of Google critics who expect that, because they are huge, they can do whatever they want-- completely ignoring the fact that they are huge because they often don't do what they want to. Android is a success precisely because it balances openness with pragmatism. At times I disagree on the balance that Google has chosen, but I don't for a minute believe that Google can simply ignore reality and force carriers to accept a model of the internet that they fundamentally disagree with.
We can argue about the merits of particular Google decisions (like, say, the wireless exemption in the current policy proposal), but I don't think we get anywhere by mis-characterizing them and using the kind of polarizing, childish language like "carrier humping surrender monkeys".
[1]: http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.google.com/goog...
the networks require different antennas. no phone can work on all of them and be competitive.
google got verizon to agree to neutrality on the wire and can continue to fight for fair treatment on wireless. i call this progress.
I have to agree, Google is getting flak here although they are the only company that stood for net neutrality. They are being pragmatic here and everyone is ignoring the good points in this agreement. Also being ignored the fact that this is non-binding agreement that is designed to speed the debate.
Google just succeeded in getting Verizon to agree to net neutrality on the wired internet in exchange for removing any possibility of net neutrality on the wireless internet (which Google claims is the future of internet).
[citation needed] This is explicitly not true according to the text of the agreement. The agreement says that it is too early to determine whether net-neutrality provisions are necessary for wireless networks, because it's a newer market and there is much more competition.
The market fundamentally is under heavy regulation; wireless can't work without heavy-handed regulation of who can use what spectrum. We can't just stop at that kind of draconian regulation (which is necessary) and say that a little thing like non-discriminatory access to your absolute monopoly is too much.
Furthermore bandwidth is limited. The proposal is not what Google wants, it is what they were able to get Verizon to agree to. I read that clause as very much of an, "We agree to disagree, and agree that our areas of agreement are worth pursuing anyways."
Google is at least getting a discussion going.
Also, they know who you are, Mr. ergo98.
Just as Verizon tells them how they want to do things. As does Microsoft, and Apple, and every other big tech company.
You grossly overstate Google's significance.
The point here is that Google is just another huge, evil(1) company among others like it, and that all its recent talk about openness is just PR-bullshit.
(1) Whatever your definition may be.
Everything Google does goes over the internet. Youtube in particular needs high bandwidth and seems like the kind of thing that would be throttled to protect cable TV. Yet everyone in the media is obsessed with the Android link and claiming Google no longer cares about net neutrality as a result of Android. But not actually explaining why this makes any sense.
Is it just because Verizon is pushing Android hardest out of the US carriers? Seems a bit weak.
Sure, they have had to pull some apps (although both ATT and Apple deny it was due to the carrier).
As the article states
"ban cool apps for no real reason (Google Voice on the iPhone for one), cripple apps to protect business models (Skype on the iPhone) and outright ban data-heavy apps from third parties (Slingbox for the iPhone), all the while promoting their own app (MLB’s iPhone app)."
Looks like compromise to me, all in its best interest of course.
Apple changed all carriers, since they are less locked down. On Android, you can get apps from the google marketplace, not just the carrier store. Ringtones can be had easily.
In time perhaps we will view the failings of the FCC as the failure of MMS, I hope not.
"In an unusual provision for a technology company, Google will create two classes of shares with different voting rights, a move that aims to guarantee that founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will maintain decision-making authority"
A clause like that doesn't affect the type of lawsuits I am talking about.
"Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."
I guess the exceptionally weak phrase "even if we forgo some short term gains" included in a non-legal document isn't really much protection.
They've been granted some defensive patents, but publicly pledged not to use them except to defend themselves and Open Source software.
They're on track to make their fist billion in revenue at the same point as Microsoft did in its existence.
Red Hat turned it down outright. Think of how much that would've benefitted Red Hat. That was well more than half of their revenue at the time. They stuck to their principles at the expense of that type of massive profit. It paid off.
from a post on Google’s official blog in 2007: “The nation’s spectrum airwaves are not the birthright of any one company. They are a unique and valuable public resource that belong to all Americans. The FCC’s auction rules are designed to allow U.S. consumers — for the first time — to use their handsets with any network they desire, and and use the lawful software applications of their choice.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/08/why-google-became-a-c...
I guess my only option is to buy a few shares of GOOG.
Everyone complains about Apple's closed iPhone ecosystem, then pesters the government to condone jailbreaking and unlocking, which go against the iPhone's terms of service.
Comcast is caught throttling bittorent, and instead of switching providers to satellite or Verizon or anything, everything goes to the government and demands regulation on net neutrality.
Since when did it become the american standard to complain to the government when you don't agree with the terms of service instead of just doing it the old fashioned way and speaking with your money? If high speed internet is so important to you and Comcast is the only carrier in your area, then you are at their mercy - they paid money to expand their service to your region and service you - you don't get to demand that they service you in the most favorable way.
Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it to, and appealing to legislation just seems wrong.
P.S. If you disagree with me and believe that legislation limiting the contacts that can be signed between two parties is necessary, please reply and explain why instead of downvoting an alternate point of view. This isn't reddit.
It's perfectly legimate to downvote people who post without thinking. If you want criticisms of anarcho-capitalism, go find them on Wikipedia. The article was not about the problems you have with human behavior.
This is usually due to a local monopoly having been granted by local government. I think contracts between corporations and government that have the result of reducing competition in the marketplace should be legislated against.
Take a look at the competition that exists between ISPs in places like Europe or Australia to see how it could be. Capitalism works best when competition exists. Obviously it's in the best interest of corporations to attempt to reduce competition in their industry. That doesn't mean they should be free to do so.
Why this has to be addressed at a federal level is unbeknown to me.
Or just not legislated into existence in the first place, would have been a good start. But now we need more legislation to undo the damage of the monopoly granting legislation.
So it's not so simple as blaming it on just government or just corporations. It is the collusion of large corporations and government eliminating competition that is the real problem.
I live in Philadelphia, where the tallest building in the city is the Comcast Center. It's going to be years, if not a decade before I can get FiOS here. The reason Comcast is the only carrier in my area is a result of taking government out of the equation. The big telecom companies don't give back to the government that gives them the tax breaks and concessions that allowed them to become big companies in the first place. At every opportunity they get, they seek to undercut the very country that makes their existence possible.
Take Comcast for example. In Pennsylvania, we have special zoning for dilapidated parts of cities and towns that are designed to encourage renewal - Keystone Opportunity Zones. Google 'em for more detail, but essentially, businesses in a KOZ don't have to pay state or local taxes.
When Comcast announced it was building their HQ in center city Philly (which, despite the piss smell, is hardly dilapidated) they lobbied HARD to get the zoning changed on their plot of land to a KOZ so that they wouldn't have to pay state or local taxes. Sure, they're bringing in jobs, and those people are taking trains into the city and driving cars into the city, and roads and train tracks totally just maintain themselves.
I don't give 'government' a free pass, but I absolutely lean toward government - an entity that arose to further civilization, believe it or not - over corporation, which is entirely selfish. Both can do good and bad, both can be abused.
. . . . . . . My own experience and why I'm pro net-neutrality:
For the first few months that I lived in the city, Hulu was a stuttering mess. We have cable internet, which wasn't as fast as the FiOS we had in the suburbs (which was both faster and cheaper), but was by no means so slow that Hulu should have to buffer. YouTube worked fine. Downloads were fine, but Hulu? Couldn't get through a half hour show without three or four pauses to buffer.
It took a number of complaints to Comcast, and maybe it had something to do with me whinging on my twitter account with the 8000 followers, but after a number of phone calls, Hulu suddenly worked fine.
I can't stand watching cable television, our entertainment center is a Dell Zino HD hooked up to a wall mounted LCD, and we watch Hulu and Netflix almost exclusively. Do you think Comcast are sitting on their thumbs while Hulu eats their lunch? It's not like I can get anything else decent in the city.
If they can get away with crap like that, they will. That is why outside regulation needs to step in.
More specifically, "pestering" the government for an exemption to a horrible law that they created. I absolutely want less government involvement in matters like that; we can start by repealing the DMCA.
You're being downvoted because you evidently haven't spent five minutes thinking through your position.
The fact is, the minute that Comcast's cable leaves my property line, it's a government matter. If they don't want government interference, then they can figure out a way to provide service without using public land, public monopolies, and public tax breaks.
Let your words stand by themselves.