The dirty little secret about Google Android | Hacker News Reader

The dirty little secret about Google Android

zdnet.com

80 pointsmilesf79 comments

(disclaimer: I realise HN is full of people who really like their Android so I hope not to get downvoted just to give a different opinion.)

I think the problem with Android, which is behind what the author (a bit confusingly) presents as evidence, is its licence agreement. The iPhone did not improve the freedom for the user, but Apple had managed to distinguish between manufacturer and provider.

Basically the iPhone (and all the others that would have followed: WebOS, WP7, etc...) had put the manufacturer back in a position of strength: "Do you want to have a 'modern' mobile on your network? Then don't mess with it".

Once the Android came out though, and it got embraced by Motorola, HTC and Sony, the situation change completely. By far and large there is nothing unique to any Android phone. All manufacturers can access the same CPU, the same screens (actually here Samsung has a slight advantage), etc... This past year has shown the result: a fast dynamic hypercompetitive market.

Just like for the PC before, companies were left with only one real way to compete: price. And it's this that has suddenly put the providers back in the driving seat. Verizon can request specific changes (like not-erasable apps) and they either accept them, or they lose the massive subsidies.

I don't think Google did this with any bad intention. Indeed, and kind of ironically, it seems to me that the Nexus One was the second step of Google's strategy and was a complete failure _because of it_. Google found itself with no power over the mobile providers: as the article say Verizon waited for a similar speced phone to come out and quickly moved to sell that one instead.

Android is in a way so good, that now the mobile phone providers don't need to beg the manufacturers to come to them: they know they will always be able to have custom made Android phones, and Android phones are so good that they can survive without an iPhone or a Pre.

In the end I think Google tried to avoid having a new Windows (one OS with a massive market share). But they didn't realised that rather than giving the power to nobody (everyone competing) they gave it to the guys with the money: the providers.

I don't know enough about mobile to say if everything is false here. But this article's internal logic doesn't hold together.

As a commenter "batpox" on that site notes, "Using the same logic, the dirty secret about Linux and Windows is that they let Acer, Dell, HP, etc. determine what hardware our OS runs on."

I think the article is trying to claim (in a roundabout, implicit way) that good phones are the ones which are so well-marketed, and so tightly controlled, that it gives the manufacturer leverage over the network carrier. In this article, other forms of leverage (like manufacturer alliances) are disparaged based on innuendo and hearsay.

In other words: the iPhone is the only good phone. Google is evil.

No first hand experience with Android, so I can't confirm any of its claims, but I think you're misreading the article. The problem isn't the different hardware, the problem is that the open OS allows the carriers to modify the OS (not the hardware) as they see fit. An analogy would be if you bought a Dell computer and it came loaded with "Dell Windows", which was basically just like Windows except that it had a lot of useless Dell apps that were a pain to remove. And as a result, the original Operating System is degraded and the compatibility is compromised.

Actually, most PC manufacturers have their own Windows image, with the same bloatware that you can find on some phones. Some of it is really customized settings interface (very common for WiFi configuration for example) which I supposed might be necessary sometimes, but otherwise you still find a lot of unnecessary trials and horrible background images.

Do most PC manufactures ship a different UI skin on Windows?

There was a period where they did. Where one of the reasons people buy a certain brand of PC (like Packard-Bell) was that it came with a unique UI experience.

But then that got to be seen as a negative, the market reacted, and those custom skins disappeared. I don't want Sony's Rachael interface so I don't buy an X10, and if enough people feel that way Sony will either improve it or dump it. That's how a normal market works.

The carriers aren't changing the OS. The handset makers are on behalf of the carriers. The handset makers have their own motivations and restraints limiting just what they'll do on behalf of a carrier. So if Verizon tells Samsung to install a bunch of junk on the phone for them, there is going to be a limit before Samsung says "Nah." And of course reviews will note it, sales will suffer on that carrier, etc.

This is quite unlike with Microsoft Windows where it really was the OEMs changing their install image, essentially unbounded. Well aside from simple market effects like "Don't buy an {X} because it's full of crapware."

Yeah, and that's the problem. The moment Samsung says no to Verizon, Verizon will simply stop the deal and ask HTC. And the same is true for Apple or closed OS too: most normal people still don't know pros and cons of the specific OSes. The Android looks close enough to the iOS that I don't think many will care. So if Apple starts being a bit too picky, the provider will just snob them.

That's actually what happened to Nokia in the European market: They refused to brand their phones the way the carriers wanted and the carriers simply stopped selling subsidized Nokia devices.

Shit! Are you serious? And me thinking that was limited to the USA. :(

Do you have any link about that?

> An analogy would be if you bought a Dell computer and it came loaded with "Dell Windows", which was basically just like Windows except that it had a lot of useless Dell apps that were a pain to remove.

But... that is what happens today.

And at least you usually can remove that stuff easily. Or go to another, less-shady manufacturer. With the iPhone no amount of effort and expense will help, since they also control the entire competitive landscape. I'm not saying that's worse or better (if you like an Apple-managed platform, fine) but that doesn't mean that more open strategies have failed. Unless you can show that in practice, there are no good Android phones available.

Actually my understanding is that with Android you can't remove the crap apps that are pre-installed.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/07/android-j...

It depends on how the carrier includes those applications on the phone. If they include the apps in the actual ROM image, a la Gmail/Browser/etc, then they cannot be uninstalled because they're part of the core ROM. If they include the apps installed in the user's data partition, just like any user-installed application would be, then it's uninstallable by the user.

Neither methods preclude the carrier from using the other method, and in many cases, carriers will use both. eg, Sprint has their unremovable NASCAR app as part of the ROM, yet also includes an uninstallable demo of Need for Speed on the user partition.

You can remove them... if you have root (or in case of newer Motorola phones, can flash custom firmware).

That's why having the ability to replace firmware is important - you do not depend on manufacturer support for newer versions AND they can not force their crap on you.

Right and doesn't roooting your phone void the warranty? If so, I have to root my HTC Evo, voiding its warranty to get rid of a NASCAR app I will never in my life use.

That's the point though. Apple doesn't include NASCAR or Need for Speed, so it doesn't matter that they control the phone more. There's no need to go through and delete stuff when you get the phone, you just get it and start using it.

Oh come on, I would love to delete weather, stocks, and a YouTube from my iPhone...so even still, not perfect.

> But... that is what happens today.

Not quite. At least with Dell, you can still upgrade Windows via Microsoft Update at will. No waiting around 3 months while Dell integrates MS's updates into Dell Windows, then pushes those updates via Dell Windows Update. But that's what is happening in the Android market.

I vaguely recall something about Microsoft including a clause in the Windows OEM license outlining what ways OEMs could and couldn't modify Windows, with ultimate objective being to ensure both uniformity of the Desktop and user experience, and control of it.

Seems Google forgot that part. Going to be difficult to add it after the fact.

Although it's less common now, in the Windows 3.1 days it was very common for the hardware manufacturers of the day to include their own "custom" shell that replaced the Windows Program Manager shell

The so called advantage for the iPhone was they dictated "style" to the carriers. Google didn't force the carriers to follow their style guidelines.

Neither the iPhone or the Android(Droid etc.) are true open phones as shipped by the carriers.

IMO I think "The dirty little secret about Google Android" is that it's not actually as open as people assume it is.

Yes, Android is more open than iOS but that's not really saying much.

The comparison I tend to make is ("< is less open"):

  iOS < Android < MeeGo/Moblin/Maemo

In a similar way to:

  Windows < OS X < Linux

For example, while OS X is based on an open platform (FreeBSD) it's got a whole pile of proprietary stuff on top which AFAIK is pretty much how Android operates also (in terms of core applications etc). Not only that but my understanding is that the Android kernel is so different from when it was forked that it is also no straight-forward task to port features (e.g. drivers) from it back to the mainline kernel. And AIUI Google has shown no great desire to anyway.

In comparison with Maemo (which I've had more familiarity with than Moblin/MeeGo but assume there's similarities) where Nokia (over time, admittedly) worked with upstream projects and companies to get a lot more of the system into existing open projects.

By way of example, "getting root" amounted to checking a box, installing a terminal and executing a shell command. All with warranty intact.

Getting root on a Nexus One requires voiding your hardware warranty.

Without root access you don't even get complete read-only access to your phone's filesystem. That's not open. Even with my proprietary PalmOS Treo 650 I could at least read every single file off the device if I wanted (well, there were some "no copy" settings for some apps but I'm not sure if the non-official tools obeyed them anyway). Particularly in this aspect Android is a huge step backwards.

Of course, the problem with MeeGo/Maemo/Moblin is that outside of the N900 you can't buy a phone with it--so its openness is somewhat of a moot point.

Okay, rant over for now. :)

> Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said, “iPhone is the first phone where we separated the carrier from the hardware. They worry about the network, while we worry about the phone.”

Wow, did he really say that? Here in Europe, many people buy their phones separately from their SIM cards, myself included.

That turned out to be the case in many parts of east and south east asia as well in my experience.

I guess this was only intended for the American consumer.

Yeah the US and Canadian phone carriers are stuck in the stone age and want to stay there.

Yeah, and my understanding is that sadly he was right too. As are you that in Europe things are very different: the author acknowledges that too. Basically my understanding is that Europe is so far from the USA that the iPhone did a first step (but wasn't quite there yet) and the Nexus One did the second one.

> he was right

No, he wasn't. Maybe he was if you qualify that with "in the US", but the US is not the center of the world.

While I completely agree with you (I am European) I think Apple is pretty US centric (as is Google). When Jobs said that the iPhone was only available in the USA, and most of its audience was probably american too.

So yeah, I think he was talking about the USA. He either didn't know about the rest of the world, or he didn't care about it.

Fair enough: from a marketing point of view what he said sure sounds a lot better than "this is the first phone in the US that's not ...".

This article has some incorrect facts.

"Members such as HTC have gone off and added lots of their own software and customizations to their Android devices without contributing any code back to the Alliance"

That's not true. HTC added sense UI on top of android. They are 100% allowed to do that. Android is licenced under the GPL, and HTC came along forked it, and added their own stuff to it, then released the source code (http://developer.htc.com/). The alliance is free to take whatever HTC does and merge it into the android core if they are so inclined.

I'm not buying that carriers and are gaining 100% control of the software. They are legally bound to release the source code. That would have never happened before the open software alliance and android, ergo, the OHA is not "in shambles", and is working as intended.

Carriers are free to charge for whatever services they want to provide. The market should take care of most of that. If sprint wants to charge $30 for tethering, but T-mobile will let you do it for free, then it's advantage T-mobile.

Android is licenced under Apache v2 (not GPL) http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/android_faq.html

I stand corrected. The net effect is the same however.

No, it isn't. Apache License has no virality. HTC Sense is not open-source (and is not even hinted at anywhere on the website you linked to claiming had the source).

>That's not true. HTC added sense UI on top of android. They are 100% allowed to do that.

Not only are they allowed, they would never have all worked cooperatively to forward Android if they couldn't. However it's in all of their common interest to keep the foundation constant, which is exactly why they've done that.

It's interesting that if you look at the "proof" that the handset alliance is in shambles, you'll find that it actually claims that Google is too forceful with changes, not allowing partners to act too laggardly. Something this troll author twists this into them being a "poor shepherd".

>Carriers are free to charge for whatever services they want to provide. The market should take care of most of that.

It's interesting that Apple, who couples you to AT&T in the US if you want an iPhone ("freedom!"), has a long history of blocking apps that endanger the revenue stream of their carrier partners. Google Voice, for instance. The author of this terrible, inconsistent, poorly supported piece has no consistency and their argument is absurd.

iOS could be accused of bloatware as well. The fact that you're not allowed to remove the built-in apps is mystifying to me. I don't use Stocks because I don't own any stocks. The Contacts app is mostly redundant with that section of the Phone app. And I've never bought anything off the iTunes store from my phone. Why shouldn't I be able to free up the screen and disk space? Only a small handful of apps (e.g. Settings) need be protected in this way, the rest could just be offered free on the App Store for anyone who changed their mind.

I'm surprised iTunes on Windows doesn't get brought up more in this regard. Quicktime alone was considered intrusive bloatware even before they required it to use iTunes, then required iTunes to use an iPod/iPhone, and started installing other Apple apps and app updaters semi-randomly.

Sure, my guess is that Apple hasn't done so simply because they haven't got the time/resources/patience. It's not like Apple is making _any_ money from something like Stock!

But if you remove it from the phone then those people who are using it are going to get pissed. So in order for the improvement to be seamless to the user, it needs first to move Stock to the App store, then to remove Stocks (and other apps) from the OS, and then finally redownload the application... all in one system update. Not hard for someone with the money of Apple, but hardly worth the trouble (for now, I imagine once the pace of development slows down things may change).

Edit: minor grammatical changes

If you would read a bit closer, my suggestion was simply that users be allowed to delete those apps if they so desire.

Ok. And what happens if they then want them again? Stuff from the store can be re-downloaded. Hence why I either Apple will change them into store app (in the way I described, for example), or they won't remove them.

I am not saying I agree with them... just a polite guess from their history.

(Edit: grammar and the last paragraph)

IMO Pushing contract-less smartphones into the market was a good move, but the market didn't seem to go for it in the US.

If Google really wanted to "capture" the market, they should come out with a no-contract sub $200 unlocked smartphone, and let the market decide if that is a better price point. $529 is too expensive for US consumers, when "free" phones are available.

To me, one of the problems with unsubsidized phones is that the lower price from the carrier is not obvious. Or at least, I'd always be wondering if I might be paying the same price as someone with a subsidized phone.

That being said, I did buy an iPhone before it was subsidized.

The real problem is a non-subsidized phone costs you more on most carriers than the subsidized version. Even if bringing your own phone gets you out of having to have a contract, you don't save anything in the process. You pay the same monthly fee as someone that got a "free" phone. So why give that up? It's a tough sell.

The nice thing about non-subsidized phone is that you can use it with any SIM, including prepaid options.

I don't know how the situation is in the US, but in Europe it's quite common and in big parts of the world it's your only option.

For example: When travelling in Thailand I can get a SIM at every 7 / 11 for about 5 bucks with 100 baht credit. This is more then I usually need for the few weeks there and it's extremely convenient when you want to call around the country without being hit by absurd roaming fees.

Having lock-downs of any kind on a phone to me is a killer criteria for not buying it. Subsidized or not.

On T-Mobile you actually pay $20 less per month on every single individual plan if you're not in contract.

T-Mobile really seems to have turned their act around. I was with them for a long time but went to AT&T for the 3Gs (at the time being able to tether at a decent speed was worth it).

Now, I don't know. I'm on Verizon and Verizon's coverage was surprisingly good in places I've never had GSM coverage. I'm not sure if I could go back. I wish I could, though - I'd love to give them my support for things like that.

Samsung Captivate here. Took 30 seconds to root it and another 10 seconds to remove the AT&T bloatware with Titanium Backup.

...but should you have to root it to remove the bloat? On the Evo with Froyo, there isn't yet a root method available. Should those folks be out of luck?

I think the point of the article was that Android was created to allow the average consumer more control and choice over their device. While "enthusiasts" like us will always unlock features we want, I don't think you should have to hack into your device to gain this kind of control over it. If I spend 200-600 bucks on a smartphone, I want control over what software is installed on it.

So how does tethering on the iPhone under AT&T work out. Surely you just click a checkbox, correct?

Rooting most Android phones and jailbreaking an iPhone are about the same level of technical difficulty as far as a consumer is concerned.

Indeed. The post I responded to opined that you shouldn't have to root to unlock functionality of your phone, and this was relative to Android devices. Yet to tether your iphone you have to either root, or pay an extra $20 a month to AT&T on a non-"unlimited" data plan: Your device is limiting you on behalf of your carrier.

Hmmm... I have an HTC Desire and it doesnt seem crippled or bloated with money greedy apps.

Praise my N1

Though it is still pre-loaded with the Amazon MP3 store.

We want it all ways. Take off everything we don't want, but don't dare to sell to us anything less than all of the packages we do want.

No... You can put all sorts of shit on there, but give me an easy way to install my own ROM, and don't put on impossible to uninstall apps.

What the hell is going on here? 24 upvotes? Either the HN community has turned completely stupid, or marketers are flooding the site and no admins are deleting their crap.

Such a declaration is worrying because I come here and generally trust the upvoted things, and as such, I've incentive to toss your declaration out as the biass and the spin. So, as though you were talking to someone who doesn't know enough about the smartphones to make an informed decison (me), please explain your position.

I am more surprised that you have been upvoted this much. Sure you may disagree but this is the point of a voting system like HN: it's a collective opinion.

Some people will like it, some people won't. You don't get to call everyone stupid or astroturfer just because they disagree with you!

The quality always goes down at the weekend.

Seems awfully unfair to blame Google for what other members of the Open Handset Alliance are doing with Google's GPL code.

You either have open code and deal with people forking it, or you have closed code. It's tough have it both ways.

That's why I'm mostly fine with iOS being proprietary to Apple. Anyone reselling it would just make it worse by changing it.

Unless they made it better.

Recent history says that's unlikey

Google's code is not GPL. A lot of the problems associated with Android are because it is not GPL and the manufacturers do not have to open up their changes to Android. However, if it was GPL a lot of handset makers would not have adopted Android for exactly that reason. Pick your poison.

Having worked for an OHA company, I can confirm that the alliance was really a 1-way deal. Google got the hordes of subcontractors needed to get the platform going, and in return the companies got to say they were allied with Google and not much else. OHA companies were never in the loop on major design/development issues with Rubin and his team.

I can't fault some of the member companies for trying to recapture some of the effort now, HTC being the biggest one of them.

What's strange is the most of the article is begging Google to act like a benevolent dictator and tell the carriers and hardware manufacturers to take a hike if they disagree, then he quotes an article in which someone claims that Google is telling their OHA partners that it's their way or the highway and yet spins this as somehow even worse.

Verizon's open 700Mhz network hasn't materialized yet because they're busy rolling out LTE on it. It will be very interesting to see what the manufacturers do when they don't need carrier approval.

I want to buy an Android phone, because I detest the iPhone's iTunes requirement, but I have two issues with Android:

1. It doesn't look the same everywhere. Companies are modding the interface, and in my opinion, that is wrong. I should know what to expect, UI-wise, from an Android phone without even looking at the box.

2. Updates depend on the company who makes the phone. In my opinion, when an update to Android becomes available, everyone should have access to it.

Slightly overstated but I think the author has correctly identified a trend and it's one that we would do well to resist.

While there are kernels of truth, this is a garbage article that has no place on a site like HN. The author is pandering to the iPhone fanbase where it will certainly see traction. Do a "news" search of it in the next 6 hours and you'll find it linked on every Mac and Apple site, and will almost certainly see linkage on Daring Fireball.

It's garbage. Utter claptrap garbage.

The author (a strong iPhone proponent, as an aside) is holding the iPhone as a model of openness (open from carrier control at least) which is absolutely perverse. The iPhone is very tightly controlled by Apple (they just finished patenting how they'll brick your rooted device), and Apple's control has a strong input from the carriers, where in the US your choice is limited to one.

Why can't you use facetime on 3G? Why can't you tether for free? Why can't you use Google Voice without essentially using a roundabout? and on, and on, and on.

I also get a hint of "open for me but not for thee" here: we're supposed to believe the Android's openness (which began as an asset) is now a liability because carriers shouldn't be allowed to modify it.

So who is to be the judge of who gets to modify Android? Google? Jason Hiner?

He also mischaracterizes a lot of the modifications that have happened to Android: sure, the uninstallable NASCAR app on the EVO was decidedly crapware, but to simply lump the Sense interface in with it is a deliberate mischaracterization. (Especially after many reviewers noted that they believed Sense improved on stock on Android-- an opinion I don't share, but a debate worth having).

So my question is thus: does Jason Hiner think Google should rescind its open-source license for most of Android? Does he think that such a move would honestly be more "open" than it is now?

Because it certainly appears that he does.

I think that the point is that you want open for the user but closed for the mobile providers.

Apple is closer than Android for sure, but it's also off-limits from the providers (well, mostly: they can still veto some apps). Android is open, but since before reaching the user it goes through the providers, the users get a much closed system.

This strikes me as a pretty contradictory position: why users but not mobile providers? The Apache license doesn't make that distinction, and as such, I fail to see why Google should.

They don't need to write it like that in the licence for it to be so in practice. A big help for example would have been to say that nobody can remove any rights that he has himself experience. So if it started open, it has to stay open. Mobile providers can modify it all they want but they can't actually control it then.

Sure, you can get root privileges and do it anyway, but they've tried to make it very hard and they'll probably continue. For geeks maybe that's not a problem, for the average person it is.

They don't need to close the source, just figure out some way to indicate to buyers that if they buy an Android phone, they're guaranteed to have a certain experience.

This seems like a much more balanced, nuance view of the scenario-- note that it is vastly different from "Android is closed because its open" tone present in the article-- or the insistence by some (see comment below) that providers not have access to the Android source.

EDIT: Some clarification and grammatical fixes.

Google does require certain things in order for it to get the Google branding. Currently this seems to be limited to including the core Google applications, but if google deems the rise of handset-specific frontends to be an issue perhaps they could expand the license requirements?

I, for one, don't see the proliferation of Motoblur/SamsungSense/HTC-Whatever to be a negative thing. It is an additional factor that consumers can use to differentiate between phones. One reason I own a DroidX is the great hardware, but another reason is I think the moto skin adds a lot in certain areas (it's calendar widget, for example).

In other words: let the market decide.

I'm sad to see that the market has apparently decided against Google's own offering. The prospects of a Google-controlled, Android reference phone available to all consumers on all networks was just plain nifty.

Having said that, I have several family members with HTC, "Sensified" Droid Incredibles, and it doesn't seem to be that bad. (Then again, there is no NASCAR app either...)

EDIT: Daring Fireball just linked this ridiculous story (with a big old selective quote), right on schedule. Now that Gruber has led the way, expect it to appear on many other iPhone/Apple sites over the coming hours.

So predictable.

"...will almost certainly see linkage on Daring Fireball."

Yup: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/08/23/google-carriers

Gruber then asks: "What high ideals, though? Actions, or merely words?", as if to suggest that he isn't aware of Google's open-sourcing of Android, which at least to me seem to sum up the "high ideals" Hiner mentions.

Insanity Wolf says :

Buy straight jacket / wear it

translation

You bought your carrier branded phone because it was subsidised / suck it

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