Android is 5 years old today: Here's how it all began | Hacker News Reader

Android is 5 years old today: Here's how it all began

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78 pointsForFreedom28 comments

Of course, Google purchased Android in 2005; the Open Handset Alliance is 5 years old, not Android.

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2005-08-16/google-buys-a...

For a more complete history, there is an article from 2008 that goes back to how it all began, only this time starting from 2003, quoting Andy Rubin in an interview with Business Week before founding Android Inc. that October.

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/phone-and-communications/mo...

I remember being at the first meeting of OHA companies at the Googleplex. I don't recall the meeting going as a democratic group of companies banded together to change the world. We were all subcontractors helping Andy Rubin get the project launched.

This article neglects a large piece of the history of the project. Don't bother reading it.

Any better reading to suggest ?

Saurik's techradar link is a good one, considering it was written shortly after the OHA announcement was made.

The thing to remember was that iPhone had just been announced and everything was about to change radically. Even in this 2007-2008 timeframe everything was about the mobile web. Google's intent for Android - as it was explained to us - was to get the rest of the planet that didn't own a PC into a mobile device that they could use to see the web...and see Google's advertising by consequence. There was no App Store yet. Even Apple was trying to get everyone to do their apps in Safari, remember?

I think Android went on to fill the same role for mobile devices as Windows did for the PC.

A platform able to run on a large number of devices, not perfectly tuned to the hardware as iOS, but very good nonetheless,

Google managed to spot the market opportunity with great timing and went for it with pretty good execution.

This should have really been Microsoft territory, I wonder if the scenario will change somehow with Windows Phone 8 ?

I see people arguing that with Windows 8, the synergy with WP8, ability to remotely admin this new class of devices via group policies etc, corporate will jump on Windows 8 across the line, and somehow it will out of the blue be a clear contender in what is now a two horse race.

I don't quite buy it though. The place i have seen least enthusiasm for Windows 8 is in the Enterprise.

From zero to 75% in 5 years. Not bad. Others are still struggling at 2% after 2 years, with not much chance of improving.

Hopefully Microsoft will stop dragging it's feet with Windows Phone 8. I dred to think of a mobile market with only two decent OS options.

I agree. I am hoping MS does a turn around as competition helps everyone.

Having only two is great for developers, though, at least as long as native apps are preferred by users.

There's a limit to the number of different platforms one can support, especially if they have their preferred programming languages like Android with Java and Apple with ObjectiveC, Microsoft with C#... and even worse, they all have their own UI metaphors, so just porting the code isn't enough. And of course they all have their own app store with weird rules and specific payment options.

Edit: and then I'm forgetting the OpenGL versus DirectX debacle that we'll also get on mobile if MS gets their way. At least now both big platforms use OpenGL ES. Sometimes I wish that standards actually worked and not everyone tried to invent their own :/

I'm not a fan of artificially limiting choice.

I agree that native development across platforms is a pain, but I think the answer is to make cross-platform development easier, not remove platforms. We're getting there- MonoTouch+MonoDroid+Windows Phone mean that you can iOS, Android and WP with just C#- the front-end UI will need to change each time, but you can save a lot of backend reprogramming. Mono-X might not the answer- maybe JS will spread to native as well, or something like that. But let's at least try before we cut people off.

I create several apps on iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows 8, J2ME and Brew. The idea that it is to hard to do this is simply false.

It is NOT in your best interest to lock yourself into 2 platforms who will have increasingly less interest in giving you good terms on your iron-clad developer agreements. I can't believe you'd even think this was a good idea.

Can't find any of your "leavesofcode" links : (

I'm sorry but I've professionally worked in the mobile space for years and the idea that it is easy is simply false. I've done BREW and J2ME you know how hard it was. Devices weren't "spec compliants" but "examples compliants" (only a few basic examples would work). Any non-trivial app targetting J2ME devices required a gigantic QA team and the money needed alone to acquire the various devices to be able to test your app was sufficient to drive most small players out of that market.

It was hard on J2ME / Brew because of fragmentation. Then for a few months/years it was "easy" because one iPhone was the only player in town and ruling the entire app market. No fragmentation. Things were great.

But now fragmentation is here again: various Android versions, various iPhones / iPads / etc. and dealing with all these different devices is a complicated things.

You cannot say that it is "easy" because you shipped a "todo app" (or whatever) on these devices.

There are a lot of companies with succesful mobile apps out there stuggling to solve the fragmentation issue.

Of course you can do it but it's not anywhere near "easy".

So saying "The idea that it is too hard to do is simply false" is quite misleading.

Oh I agree fragmentation within an OS is TERRIBLE. I dont however equate that with multiple OS's. I hope we continue to have at least 3 if not 4 or 5 healthy players in the smartphone mobile space.

"There's a limit to the number of different platforms one can support"

I keep hearing that. However, I don't think customers care as long as comparable products from developers who have decided that a platform is part of their market develop products for it. That is, not every ISV can, or should, cover every platform. Some should specialize in only one platform. Some should shoot for market entry on "less crowded" platforms.

In what way are they dragging their feet?

Well, they announced it a long, long time before shipping- not good, when existing phones are not going to run it. No-one is going to buy a WP7 phone now, so they really need to get WP8 out as fast as possible.

>Others are still struggling at 2% after 2 years, with not much chance of improving

Better than still struggling at 2% after 20 years, with not much chance of improving.

I'm as big a fan of taking shots at Apple as anyone, but only when it's on topic. This is about mobile. Apple's inability to gain traction on the desktop for decades didn't affect the popularity of their take on the smartphone and tablet.

And it isn't even relevant now. In the PC market Apple needs no large market share to make boatloads of money.

They actually don't in mobile either. The iPhone and iPad market shares could both drop to single digits and they'd still be making more than the Android manufacturers. The fact they have a much more 'competitive' market share is just large boat loads of gravy.

Don't forget that Android only had a narrow lead over WebOS until the Droid came out. For most of its first year Android, in the U.S., was relegated to T-Mobile and I believe only 2 models there. It added Sprint in October of that year and in November, Verizon.

Quite interesting considering how shitty android was only a year ago (edit: 2.2). Not surprising however, as there was no better alternative (if you didn't want an iPhone). It's still a nice outcome though, we could've ended up with every manufacturer running their own system.

2.2 was released May 20, 2010, but I agree that 2.2 was awful. If you haven't used Android since Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0 released December 16, 2011), then I highly recommend you give it another chance. The difference between them is massive.

It's not like I dismissed android forever after that. I still own an android phone and don't plant to change OS when I'll be getting a new one.

But it seems I was way off in the version history as I thought that 2.2 was released just last year, thanks for correcting me.

Android is the grey goo of operating systems, and it's almost breathtaking to realize that a dragged-out Linux will close out next year as the single most relevant and dominant OS on Earth.

The only remaining question mark in my mind: how much might it eventually sell into the portable PC market? (Beyond the natural cannibalism of mobiles blunting PC sales)

_"it's almost breathtaking to realize that a dragged-out Linux will close out next year as the single most relevant and dominant OS on Earth"_

Two things about that:

1. The price of admission to the OS business is to come up with a better kernel than Linux, with better driver support. If that price is higher than the benefit a new kernel will deliver to end-users, it won't happen.

2. The center of gravity in OS innovation is in the managed language runtime and middleware, where Android has done a great job (while Microsoft failed to capitalize on the userland power of the CLR, MSIL, and C# and other CLR languages).

Truth and truth.

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