Android still sucks but I’m impressed by Google

The author misses at least a couple things that drive the success of Android, and may have been critical in the early stages of success:

1. Android was open enough that every chip maker for mobile devices and interactive embedded systems saw it as a huge step forward: no more crappy UI stacks licensed from proprietary technology providers.

2. Being based on Linux, having a liberal open source license, and having most of the code created by Google under this open source license, except for a suite of proprietary applications that are not a critical part of the OS.

3. Using Java and a familiar toolchain

On top of which, though this is a subjective measure, Android is elegant. Android was a novel solution made by very capable people with a background that gave them good taste and good judgement. When I first saw Android, the first Macintosh immediately came to mind. Just like Macintosh, Android did things differently in pursuit of doing more, with less, in a mass market device.