Hacker News Reader

Comment by laureny | Hacker News Reader

First there's that and then there is the eBook price fixing, and who else knows what we haven't found out about how Apple conducts business.

I, for one, am thankful that Android rose to keep Apple in check, because a world where Apple would be a monopoly frightens me about as much, if not more, that when it was Microsoft pulling the same kind of dirty and illegal tricks.

View on HN

Given Google's staggeringly broad, global and interconnected reach (Android, Gmail, search, advertising etc.), I'm not sure if they're exactly the alternative worth rooting for. And they've been found indulging in as many, if not more, monopolistic or questionable business practices as Apple.

I'm also worried about their increasing move towards taking Android at least partially back proprietary. The original idea seemed to be an open-source platform, which is a nice way of spurring innovation. But they've slowly been replacing components with proprietary Google versions, which is making the core open-source OS less and less maintained. My guess is that the goal is to make it more like a Darwin/OSX situation, where the core OS is open source but lacks all the interface elements and is not really usable as-is by competitors. What would motivate that? One guess is that they're more worried nowadays about Kindle-type competitors than they used to be, devices that build on Android but hook into an alternative (non-Google) cloud ecosystem.

Some examples: Messenger seems to be in the process of being phased out in favor of Google Hangouts; Gallery and Photos duplicate functionality to such an extent that I suspect one of them will not last; even the main keyboard is no longer open source, as Google has more or less abandoned the default Android keyboard and is rolling all improvements into the default-on-Google-devices Google Keyboard app.

> What would motivate that?

The OEMs and carriers delaying updates. By moving as much code as possible out of the core OS and into apps that they can update via the Play Store, they managed to make an end run around the OEMs/carriers. Notice how no one is really complaining about not having KitKat - the majority of the important updates are available on all Android 4.x devices, since they're in the Play Store.

So what? why cant these componets be open source?

If Google really cared, they could split them out into a separte service and still require them for official Android licensing.

I think this notion that they have to be closed source is a very strange redherring that people have bought for some reason.

Its not that people 'bought' anything. Its just the general population doesn't care. They just want something that works.

There's enough open source OS left for a rag-tag bunch of bikers ( http://cyngn.com/ ) to create an entirely independent open source mobile OS out of it.

> which is making the core open-source OS less and less maintained

Which parts of the "core open-source OS" are "less and less maintained"?

Your concern is valid. But consider that Android is still open source far more than iOS, and any team is welcome to take that as a foundation.

Indeed. The ONLY guarantee against companies abusing their near-monopoly positions is to deny them those positions of power in the first place.

Not to trust them because they seem nice and "don't be evil"-ish.

Not to trust the government to stop them from abusing it (clearly).

But supporting competitors. Competition is the regular individual's best weapon.

And that is why, where possible, I strive to support underdogs wherever possible. I use a Windows Phone (with a Jolla on the way), read on a Nook e-reader, use duckduckgo for search, and avoid lock-in wherever possible (upload my music to your cloud? No thanks), etc.

And I encourage others to do so, or at least give it a try

Android is open source, and used by many non-Googler companies, from Amazon to ChinaKnocloffProducts Inc.

Did Google open source Google Play Services when I wasn't looking?

Google Play Services are not part of Android. It's a program written for Android. Android is what you find at http://source.android.com/.

Grandparent mentioned companies like Amazon or Ouya: These companies use Android, but they do not license Google Apps and they therefore do not have Google Play Services on their systems.

Shipping propritary applications with open source software is common and does not make the open source project any less open source.

Not just as Apple, but with Apple: the price fixing of technologist wages between the two, by promising not to poach employees.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24390480/judge-oks-cl...

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html

I'm no fan of Google's practices, but any big competitor is better than a monopoly.

Note that the linked article didn't say Apple actually influenced the pricing up or down; they asked to review and approve the plans. I think there's a fair chance they were trying to prevent gouging.

> First there's that and then there is the eBook price fixing, and who else knows what we haven't found out about how Apple conducts business.

It's a little bit more complicated than that. Amazon is probably also fixing eBook prices at $9.99 and taking a loss to gain volume and market share. Apple probably wanted to break that monopoly. http://news.yahoo.com/potentially-damning-steve-jobs-email-d...

The way that cell phone subsidies work is completely different from how ebooks are priced. It's a disservice to conflate the two.

It could be argued that Google gives away Android to prop up its advertising revenue.

Apple, Google, Amazon have asymmetric business models and we are seeing them battle each other by trying to commoditize each others business.

Well, the iBook "price fixing" thing was a total BS.

There was no iBook price fixing -- if anything the deals they made made ebooks cheaper.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com