Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

So the team that is in charge of the OS which is licensed to Hardware vendors in the world is the same team that's in charge to create competing Hardware?

I'd say that creates a huge conflict of interest.

That's one of the big reasons why Nokia Series60 didn't take off as a licensed OS: Whatever Samsung or LG or Lenovo wanted to build on that platform to differentiate, they had to involve Nokia during the development (who then developed the needed OS-feature in parallel to the Nokia product that will make use of it).

Google is either very secure that their grip on all these HW-vendors is strong enough forcing them to stay, or they are no longer part of Google's long-term strategy for Android.

View on HN

The first priority for Android is competing against iPhone. Any self-dealing to get Pixel to have more of the Android pie would be far down the list, and probably counter-productive. It was already possible under the previous structure anyway.

Correct, and it's clear that this isn't an outdated strategy from Google, just in the current cycle we saw Circle to Search launch on both Galaxy and Pixel, and most of the new AI stuff that differentiates Pixel is now coming to Galaxy as well. This might be a headscratcher if you think Google is trying to make Pixel the dominant Android phone, but that's not it. Google wants Android to be the dominant phone OS, and despite it being massively popular globally, in the US the numbers are dire, with 50-60% overall going to Apple, and as high as 80-90% of young people choosing iPhone. I love Pixel, but it accounts for approximately 5% of the market in the US, with Samsung at 22%. Those stats about young people nearly universally picking iPhone is a bad sign for Android and a bad sign for competition in the phone market as a whole.

>as high as 80-90% of young people choosing iPhone

It's not really choosing, it's more like being handed over form parents or being force to due to iMessage network effect with teens in the US. Which teens wants to choose to be left out of group conversations?

As an adult you can give fewer fucks about normie conformism, bubble colors and people being petty over it, but as a teen it would be a death sentence for your social life. Hence why the regulatory bodies are starting to twist Apple's arm over it.

> as a teen it would be a death sentence

No wonder teens these days have extremely high rates of anxiety & depression.

Honestly it's weird how this is a thing in the US. In what I believe is most of the world, people just use WhatsApp, no sms, no iMessage.

Same is true for any demography as well. Maybe add some Instagram for the younger groups.

Younger groups mostly message on Snapchat not Instagram. Instagram is still mostly for pictures and "influencing".

Well at least where I grew up Snapchat never really caught on. Instagram kinda held its place.

It's almost like everyone who comes in to say "people all just use Whatsapp" are going from anecdotal evidence, while the reality is Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Telegram, iMessage, SMS and Tiktok all have a share of that messaging pie-- these people just live in message app bubbles.

I sure hope you're right!

That's the situation NOW, but it can certainly change in the future. Work with Google as a hardware vendor, grow the Android market with them, and eventually they don't need you and cut you out. It happens.

An american company is never going to be able to produce phones as cheaply as a korean or a chinese company.

Let me assure you, Apple is capable to produce a cheaper device than any other smartphone vendor in the world today.

In concert with Foxconn and others.

Further, much of android could be forked.

It took off for Sony and Ericsson.

What took off?

(Sony) Ericsson used UIQ, a pen-based OS built on top of the core of Symbian foundation.

Nokia developed Series60, a key-based OS built on top of a Symbian core.

They were not compatible operating systems, and most of all Ericsson didn't license it from Nokia.

As Nokia alumni I disagree.

They weren't compatible at UI widgets level, but were at the underlying layers.

It is like telling Samsung, Huawei or Xiomi aren't Android, because they use another GUI framework on top of AOSP.

And as many Android developers are painfully aware, that isn't the only customisations to AOSP standard behaviours.

Let's not fetch too far, this becomes a strawman argument.

They weren't compatible operating systems because applications compiled for one of them were unable to be executed on the other without heavy modifications.

At "underlying layers" the OS of a Tesla is compatible with that of a Nintendo Switch, and yet no one would say they have a compatible OS.

> It is like telling Samsung, Huawei or Xiomi aren't Android, because they use another GUI framework on top of AOSP.

No it's not, because they all use the same GUI framework as AOSP, hence they can run the same precompiled application.

Maybe you are mixing up your Sony Ericsson phones? There were loads of key based S60 phones too from them, not just UIQ.

Name one please.

Since you are asking for one.

Sony Ericsson Satio

"In terms of software, Satio uses the Symbian OS 9.4 operating system, which is created collaboratively under the stewardship of the Symbian Foundation as "Symbian^1".[4] It is Sony Ericsson's first non-UIQ Symbian device, after UIQ's development closed down earlier that year. It uses the PlayNow service, Sony Ericsson's mobile content platform, and is part of the company's new Entertainment Unlimited service.[5] In terms of connectivity, it is Wi-Fi-enabled and has a GPS chip for navigation and location-based services. It also supports full Flash for video playback.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Ericsson_Satio

Good find, all praise to you.

They made a total of 2 devices with Symbian^1 (+1 refresh) before ultimately moving on to Android.

Symbian^1 was the attempt to harmonize the Symbian flavors into one open platform in order to compete, after Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and other contributed all IP into the Symbian Foundation.

Nokia called it "S60 5th Edition", for others it was "Symbian^1", and the first "common" Symbian OS.

So yes, I wasn't precise enough in the later comments, and you're correct.

Conflict of interest is a human invention, and not a law of the universe. There is no "conflict" unless you see it as one.

You can play chess against yourself. AlphaGo can, because it wasn't brainwashed about this notion. ChatGPT can debate against itself. You can too, if you don't see it as a conflict. Humans might find it hard, only because they were brainwashed from a child that they need to pick sides. Your neural net is capable of operating on both sides simultaneously if you let it.

The market is big enough for Google to create hardware AND other companies to create hardware.

> Conflict of interest is a human invention, and not a law of the universe.

Lucky for us, we're discussing this in the context of humans building stuff for other humans to buy in a human society with human governments and markets, not in some metaphysical 'but what does meaning means' context.

> The market is big enough for Google to create hardware AND other companies to create hardware.

You obviously didn't read the comment you're replying to. No one is challenging that.

Having the same TEAM in charge of the OS and in-house hardware is an entirely different story.

It's a conflict of interest because the person Samsung is talking to to have a feature implemented into the OS baseline may be the same person in charge of defining the competitive featureset for the next Google hardware.

Now this person knows that the product he and his team is designing will compete with a yet-to-be-announced Samsung-product with a new feature.

So his interest to support a licensee being successful with his product is in conflict with his interest to create a more successful competing product.

And even if he isn't, for SAMSUNG just the potential of this situation to happen can be enough to NOT cooperate with this team and scale back communications with the Android team as a whole.

>It's a conflict of interest because the person Samsung is talking to to have a feature implemented into the OS baseline may be the same person in charge of defining the competitive featureset for the next Google hardware.

The person can run two threads in their brain, one that deals with Samsung and one that deals with the internal product.

> Now this person knows that the product he and his team is designing will compete with a yet-to-be-announced Samsung-product with a new feature.

So? You're talking about the person, which is just the host hardware. There can be multiple threads running on that hardware at the same time in containers.

> So his interest to support a licensee being successful with his product is in conflict with his interest to create a more successful competing product.

They can both be successful at the same time. He can operate with an interest to optimize for an overall better world rather than interest to win over and kill Samsung. He can build a successful product AND help Samsung build a successful product at the same time.

>The person can run two threads in their brain, one that deals with Samsung and one that deals with the internal product.

There's a reason we don't make a police chief investigate their own misconduct.

"It's a perfectly OK thing to do. The person is just the host hardware. There can be multiple threads running on that hardware at the same time. They can run two threads in their brain, one that deals with investigating the case and a seperate one that might or might not did it".

"He didn't just declare himself innocent of misconduct and embezzelment out of self-interest. The independent investigating "thread" must have arrived to an impartial decision".

"In any case, it's not blatant misconduct, you only see it as such. There's no notion of misconduct in nature, it's a made up thing we invented".

If there's accusation of misconduct, there's a bug in the system so you isolate it and investigate it from the outside.

There's no investigation happening here, just two happy parties trying to create great products that can both be successful and be even happier. Lawyers can stay out of this happiness, inventing and injecting "conflicts" that never existed in the first place.

> If there's accusation of misconduct, there's a bug in the system so you isolate it and investigate it from the outside.

Why should the investigation be from the outside?

Yep.

And in any case who (and by whom) is going to be assigned from outside to investigate any misconduct in this Google-other Android vendors case? Any misconduct of prioritizing their phones other third party hw in Android wouldn't be a crime, just a bad deal for the third party vendors.

You haven't answered my question.

Maybe confused? I'm not the person you quoted and replied to (that was dheera).

I'm the person disagreeing with dheera in this thread, and I expanded upon what you asked, adding (to further refute dheera) that there wouldn't be any investigation from the outside.

> The person can run two threads in their brain, one that deals with Samsung and one that deals with the internal product.

Great find! Does this also apply to a police officer investigating a crime where their spouse is a suspect? Or to a judge presiding over a court case involving themselves?

He may also "operate" with 50% of his bonus depending on Google Hardware doubling in market-share.

How much would you bet to win against me in a card-game if you have to show me all your cards and I show you none?

Rest assured, I will maintain the task to beat you in another container than all the details I need to beat you.

> So? You're talking about the person, which is just the host hardware. There can be multiple threads running on that hardware at the same time in containers.

...what?

Weren't the 2 teams already part of the same company? And OEMs do make custom modifications to Android before shipping their devices, so they don't have to share everything they intend to do with the Android team.

>Conflict of interest is a human invention, and not a law of the universe. There is no "conflict" unless you see it as one.

That could be said for anything in the moral and judicial sphere. "There's no theft, property is a human invention", "There's no rape, animals don't have that concept", and so on.

That's true, but there are good reasons for calling theft and rape crimes in civilization.

Conflict of interest, on the other hand, was invented by some lawyer and HR types just to make life harder for the rest of us.

I'm an optimistic engineer, believe in win-win situations, and don't see everything as a conflict.

Conflict of interest has been a thing way before lawyers and HR types existed, they understood it and tried to prevent it at any point in history, from ancient Babylon to Rome, and from Amazon native tribes to imperial China.

It's of course also the explicitly expressed reasoning for why there are independent branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial in the US).

>I'm an optimistic engineer, believe in win-win situations, and don't see everything as a conflict.

Yes, it's called naivety :)

Civilization is already an unnatural situation, in the sense that we have to coexist in groups (and with other groups) bigger than Dunbar's number.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com