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Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

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1vuio0pswjnm7

"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. "

How does one know there is a long-term strategy

History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1

1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation

One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS

This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomenon but HN replies may choose to focus only on this one example and not on the overall "tech" company phenomenon of reactionism as exhibited through endless copying

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> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS

It quite literally was a reaction to iOS considering it was originally a copy of the BlackBerry OS (the older one in their keyboard phones) until the iPhone came out and they pivoted to copying iOS instead.

EDIT: to get ahead of any negative replies about them copying iOS, I’m fully aware that they work quite differently under the hood and Android has had various features before iOS, etc. I mean they were creating from a UI/UX standpoint a copy of the BlackBerry when Google bought them, and then when the iPhone came out they completely changed the UI/UX paradigm to match.

IDK what you could possibly mean by saying it was "a copy of the BlackBerry" and further I don't see how that validates the claim that "Android itself was a reaction to iOS".

The actual truth seems to be that "Android's introduction of touchscreens was a reaction to iOS", which is WAY different than saying that the entire operating system was spun up just to compete with iOS.

Android was in development well before iOS was released, really the only big change was the touchscreen, which is obviously revolutionary, but that's a long-way from "Android is a reaction to iOS".

What's the long-term strategy with Android. How does one know it exists

> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS

and it definitely was, to mitigate the risk of losing sight of the web users behaviour

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