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Comment by specialp | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I don't understand at all why people think that Google wanted to be in this business. They were forced to. ISPs were starting to lag behind on bandwidth that was important to them, and also started to discriminate on traffic. It is not a failure at all in any way because they never intended on completely taking over. They'd much rather be in their business.

The same is true with Android, as they were under threat of locked out of a smartphone boom by Apple. They have stuck with it because it has become more popular than they could have ever imagined. I also think this is their reason behind making Kubernetes. I think they want to commoditize the cloud more to avoid dominance from Amazon.

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> The same is true with Android, as they were under threat of locked out of a smartphone boom by Apple.

Nice theory, except that Google bought Android Inc. in 2005, years before the iPhone was announced.

The evolution of the smartphone market was obvious even in 2001/2002, if you saw a Handspring Treo 180 and used one on a GPRS/EDGE network. I had one. When I saw the first info about Android, it seemed to me like a logical technological advancement in the same field. At the time in 2004/2005, the iPhone OS was a total unknown, maybe a tiny bit of info had leaked from Apple about their secret project, WinCE/Windows Mobile was a joke, palmos was a dead end.

I disagree. The iPhone was significant leap: a captive, multi touch screen (not resistive), a full desktop OS (hidden from users, but not a scaled down embedded OS like everyone else), finger, not stylus focused, touch, not button focused.

Yet at the launch I wasn't impressed ("doesn't solve a problem I have"; clearly I lack vision as it took until iPhone 4 for me to see the light).

The first android designs were more like Blackberry's than an iPhone[1]. The designs ended up being publicized during the Oracle trial. You can clearly see that they were no where near what Apple was doing with the iPhone. After Apple released the iPhone Google decided to not even release that version and decided to re-do the phone[2]. They believed that a touch screen can't completely replace physical buttons[3]. I'm always surprised how reluctant people are to give credit to Apple for completely changing the smartphone industry.

1. https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-orig... 2. https://www.pcworld.com/article/254539/original_android_prot... 3. https://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974843/google-in-2007-a-...

I have yet to find a single person that doesn't believe that Apple revolutionized the smartphone industry with the iPhone.

Are you new around here? There’s a vocal set of diehard contrarians that insist LG was the true pioneer and Apple just has better marketing, the iPhone wasn’t a better product.

It’s the most successful consumer electronics product in history, but some still are in denial.

7 years with an account, and a few before just lurking. This is the first time I hear that, so they must not be many, or not very vocal.

Android was initially intended to be a defense against Microsoft, not Apple.

> Yeah I don't understand at all why people think that Google wanted to be in this business.

People still think Google Glass was a failed product. Many just have no idea how businesses, particularly non-traditional ones like Google with an appetite for change and a pocketbook to buy what it wants, are run.

That doens’t change that from a consumers viewpoint, they were a failure though?

i mean, if a person misunderstands the goals of any project, they are likely to see its outcome as a failure. that doesn't really say anything about the project, though.

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