Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform
tightwind.net
tightwind.net
In his argument Google doesn't really want awesome pay apps, they want awesome ad-supported apps that use AdMob.
Interesting idea, and possibly true. I have so far considered the crappy Market to be a result of Google's internal algorithmic-search-is-better-than-human-editing approach, and their lateness to the game, and their subpar graphics performance for developers, and the comparatively poor UI culture at Google.
Given all these complaints, it's amazing there's a market at all!
If his take is true, then the worst thing the Android team did last year was screw up the patent situation on iAds. Mobile ads truly suck right now, the same sort of UI re-think that Google did in the late 1990s for web ads needs to be done on the mobile platform. So far, I think Apple is leading this charge.
Maybe this used to be the case. Speaking as a user of and developer for both iOS and Android devices, I think this argument is a little outdated. It just doesn't bear out in practice. I think this has become a mantra that iOS developers and users tell themselves because they think, wrongly, that Android poses a threat to them. It does not. Not to them.
Anyway, it's usually easier to get an app released for Android, by far, than to release the equivalent app for iOS. Everything from the development language to the approval process conspires to make this so. (If you think you can get an Objective C app to market quicker than an equivalent programmer can get a Java app to market, you're either a genius or you're in for a rude awakening. Add App Store woes on top of that. Arbitrary bannings. And the like. These things matter. They cost you time and energy. And they're much more prevalent on iOS than Android.)
What about the user being able to find, purchase, and download apps? It's painless on Android, and it's painless on iOS.
Number of apps? There you may have a point. Android doesn't have the number of apps that iPhone has - merely tens of thousands rather than a hundred or two. And counting.
Fragmentation. Eh. There's less of this than you might think. Developing for Android is very similar to developing for a PC. You're never 100% sure about the hardware you're running on, and yet, most PC applications manage to run just fine. This is what hardware abstraction is all about. Android does an excellent job of it, and most of the time, you program without worrying about the hardware.
So while I think the author has some interesting observations about Google's larger strategy, the "Android app store is broken" argument doesn't really hold water anymore, at least not for me. If anything, Android apps are a breath of fresh air.
That said, I was actually thinking of a different point, and one that is still a significant pain point for developers (really on both platforms) -- app discovery. It's bad on both platforms, but it's definitely worse on Android.
This is in part because of Google's ethos and choices -- search many a word on the Android market, you'll find what you were looking for, and six copies of the same name item from China which ask for dubious permissions -- and in part, just the nature of the app-sales-on-a-small-mobile-screen beast right now.
Apple has this same problem, as evidenced by the many, many graphs showing the sales hockeystick once you hit 'top ten' status, but my guess is that there is a little more love shared around with different developers than with Google.
Why do I think that? I think that because "Robo Defense" has been a top game on Android since I bought my first G1. Every day, every week, every month.
Rather than someone at Google judiciously marketing and bringing out new app and game developer product on the 'top' section of the store, they are totaling up all sales ever, and giving those people top slots. This is what I mean by the algorithm making things worse, in this case, particularly for app discovery.
Even a simple 'tops this month' with an editor-chosen list on the first day of the month would make a big difference in reach for developers.
In the end, I guess I disagree with you -- I think the Android app store is broken, as is the Apple app store. It's just that Google's is a little bit worse, and doesn't seem to have a credible plan to change the game yet. We'll see!
Advertising is a form of payment not an end in itself. People still pay Google they just do it in attention which Google than turns into money by selling that attention to someone else.
So to say Google isn't a platform company because they're really trying to control the ad market with their platform is like calling Microsoft a money company because they're trying to control the OS to sell Office.
Also I don't think Google's best interest is in pushing the market away from "paid for software". If you're giving something away for free it helps you to have someone trying to sell it because you can get away with more. Google Docs is missing a ton of Office features but people rarely mention them because...it's free. So it's in their best interest to keep paid options around. If everyone was free they'd have to really compete.
- Apple is a platform company because they charge people money for their platform
- That defines a standard of "A platform company is a company that creates a platform and trades it for something of value [in Apple's case money]"
- Google creates a platform [Android]
- The only difference is Google's "something of value" is attention. They then trade that attention for money in the case of Ads
So Google does compete with iOS. The only difference is they're deriving value differently (one directly from payment the other from Ads).
But if someone buys an iPhone they aren't seeing the Ads Google's trying to deliver through Android and if someone buys an Android phone Apple isn't getting that person's money. So they're most certainly in competition
(On your last point to say Google doesn't care what OS the user is running doesn't track for me. Apple has demonstrated their intention to dominate the iPhone "App Ad" market and muscle others out of it if they can)
[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
It's a weird sort of monopoly though, their users can go elsewhere, but their users are not their customers. Their customers are advertisers, and they are basically forced to use Google.
In any case, what you wrote seems to confirm that Google is advertising company rather than general internet service company or web search company.
Edit: in any case, Google, while having smaller revenue and market cap than Apple, seems to be able to put squeeze on the competitor exactly because it can leverage having large share of (advertising) market against Apple's medium share of (consumer electronics) market.
If Google didn't build Android, the giants who control the platform could charge extortionate fees to let Google play.
Same reason that Google buys spectrum, builds a browser, creates a TV set-top box, trades electricity wholesale, and builds municipal Wi-Fi and fiber networks.
Google must do these things or other corporate behemoths will control their destiny.
What's clearly in Google's interest is for people to discover mobile content through Google search.
Of course they want to increase eyeball traffic and ad impressions. It is also very clear to me that Android will be the most widely used mobile OS at the bottom end of the price structure, and therefor in the direct-revenue-per-subscriber numbers. So it makes sense that the apps that will do best there will be ad supported.
The experience of the Angry Birds developers bear this out already.
"Google builds services like Google Maps, Gmail and Docs and gives them away for free"...
...because they entered a market where maps, email, and "docs" were free. Google didn't blaze a trail of free services, but they were bound to continue it.
Nonetheless, they've managed to get lots of businesses to subscribe to the pay services though.
"This is important for Google because while Google isn’t licensing Android"
Aside from the fact that while the core Android image -- which is GPLd btw -- is free, Google's premium applications are not. Note that many low end devices don't have Google's applications. Google is also trying to monetize their leading edge advantage with the Nexus One originally, and now the Nexus S.
"And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob. "
Yeah, so does Apple. How do you like them Apples? Apple is very heavily invested and involved in the advertising and the media sales market. Any illusion that Apple is a pure player just trying to honestly sell an electronic device and that's the conclusion of the transaction should be demolished the moment you hook it up to iTunes. The original purchase is merely the first of many monetizations of the customer.
"Google is building Android not so they can make great mobile devices"
Oh well if you say so.
"For example, Android’s market may not be terrible in comparison to Apple’s App Store for paid applications just because Google hasn’t yet finished it; rather, discouraging paid applications on the Android platform is in Google’s interest. "
Conspiracy theory. Google is simply really bad at some things. See Google Checkout -- which was actually a major contributor to the Market's problems -- and Google's retail efforts with the Nexus One. The Android Market is not great, but neither is it particularly terrible, and it has been rapidly improving.
"This would squeeze out space for Apple in the mass market, forcing them into the high-end of the market, where people are willing to pay higher prices for a better device and experience."
This is my favorite bit. Apple is a mass consumer electronics company, with products at every price point, usually representing the value option. This sort of casual allusion that it is the premium option is utter bunk, and instantly reveals the bias of the speaker. If Android succeeds, via competition, in putting price pressure on smartphones, you can be certain that Apple will be pushing down to the lower options just as quickly. Anyone who thinks otherwise has absolutely no business sense.
Android is really a story about Linux. When people miss the Linux part of the equation -- and the decisions that are bound by it -- they instantly lose focus on some of the givens of the platform.
For general purpose computing devices, I don't see it. Apple doesn't sell a monitor for less than $999. A MacBook costs a minimum of $999 (a better spec-ed Asus is $300 less). MacBook Pros are very expensive. The only tower they sell is the MacPro, starting at $2499. Even the Mini is high priced, although crammed into a nettop form factor. Plus, they hardly ever discount, so you end up paying retail for the whole product lifetime.
I actually agree with you when it comes to smartphones, as the iPhone 3G at $99 is a value option, but for computers, they do not typically offer value options.
Or perhaps you are talking about the subsidised price with a contact, which would be pretty disingenuous.
First you said that Google just continued with free services. This is incorrect: Navigation was not free and they severely crippled the paid navigation market.
Quality e-mail was not free. A quality office suite was not free. And it still isn't, because Google has failed so far to provide an alternative to MS Office, but they're trying alright!
I do applaud initiatives of transparency such as publishing takedown requests, but income sources are a very powerful influence in a company. Decisions that benefit ads income surely get a priority boost or better funding. I'm not saying that Google is evil or good - this is simplistic and stupid - but a corporation is a corporation.
I don't use Apple products, and I don't care much what Apple does, but at least they're not hypocrites and admit that they want your money. On the other hand Google is all "free" and "open" according to their corporate talk. Speaking of Apple, they ARE a premium brand. You're probably wealthy enough not to care that you pay 2000EUR on a laptop, but most people can't afford to do that.
Finally, Android is a story about the Linux kernel with a Java user space on top. Lots of products have Linux kernels, I don't see why it's such a big deal.
I'm holding my nose as I type this, but for the vast majority of non-power users, OpenOffice is more than adequate.
My parents use OO though.
Google Navigation is on Android, a paid add-on that providers add to products that you pay for. There is nothing free about it.
Quality e-mail was not free. A quality office suite was not free. And it still isn't, because Google has failed so far to provide an alternative to MS Office, but they're trying alright!
No one paid for consumer email -- it was long a free, ad-supported market via options like Hotmail. Adding weasel words like "quality" to disclaim some exception doesn't make that any less true. OpenOffice is entirely free, and is a huge superset of the limited features Google offers.
But even then, the "free" Google office functionality is very limited. Businesses pay for business plans.
Speaking of Apple, they ARE a premium brand.
Most of the buyers of Apple are buying iPods and iMacs and iTVs and iPads, all fantastic values. The people buying Apple laptops are usually developers targeting the first set of buyers.
GM sells the Corvette CR1. They still aren't a premium maker.
E-mail was free, but you got a crap service and ads to boot, it was worth it to get a paid account. Now, for most people GMail would be fine, Google commoditized the e-mail market. They are trying the same thing with the Office market, but they are not succeeding because it's much harder to beat MS Office at its own game, as OO has found.
The bottom line is that when Google enters a market you can bet that they'll make the product free (and beta of course) and then compete with the help of their web ads monopoly. I don't think that's what is best for the tech market and neither it is good for us small entrepreneurs. The last thing I want to do is put ads into my apps, but what choice will I have if Google drives the market to free-with-ads as it has done in certain cases?
P.S: I'm pretty sure that you can use Google Maps for navigation, I have seen at least two people do it with Nokia keyboard phones. You could create a route and it showed where you are on that route.
I think it would also be fair to call Apple a premium brand in certain niches and a value brand in others. Although as you've noticed the premium-ness from iPhone/Macbook tends to rub onto the other products in people minds and when it comes to quality.
This helps explain Google’s motivation for Android. Google could, of course, just extend their search advertising to mobile phones, Adsense for mobile devices and build mobile versions of their web applications so anyone can use them. That might make for a fine business, but it’d also be a rather weak position to be in compared to where Google is now. Phone makers could change the default search engine on their phones to something other than Google; mobile devices might change how people find information—they might switch away entirely from using a search engine, and in that case, Google would be dead in the water; or, worse, perhaps mobile devices could move people away from using advertising-supported web applications, and toward primarily using paid-for applications; in that case, Google would really be screwed.
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The thing is, Bing is already the default search on many phones, including Android/Droid phones on Verizon, who is ostensibly Google's partner.
I think some entrepreneurial mind can write articles on changing the default search engine on different phones, since I believe most of the people who doesn't know how to do it, will search how to change default search Samsung Fascinate