Nilay Patel has read through the 750 pages of legal filings in the Skyhook v. Google case we have also reported on extensively, and it’s one damn fine piece of work. An absolute must-read, with detailed timelines of how Google uses compatibility to push Android device makers into a certain direction. “So what does all this mean? At the very least, it’s now extremely clear that Google plays a major role in Android device development, to the point where Andy Rubin himself approves and denies requests from OEMs. It’s also clear that Google places tremendous value on collecting location data, and it acted swiftly when it determined Skyhook’s deal with Motorola might threaten its ability to collect that data.”
Is anybody really surprised at anything there? Google controls android, this was obvious from the beginning. While the android platform itself is open, Google’s apps and most importantly market access are not freely available and Google controls them tightly. This was known a long time ago.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. Google certainly has a monopoly over Android, just a Apple has a monopoly over iphone and microsoft windows phone 7. But is control over Android sufficient at this point to trigger anti-trust protections. No one is surprised when Apple locks someone off their platform after all. Why should Google be different ,remember this is the mobile market, no one has even over 50% share yet, microsoft comparisons are still a long way off but on the other hand maybe bad behavior should be nipped in the bud before it really get started.
Nokia held 50+% of the mobile market for many years. The problem here is not the “mobile” part, but the data harvesting enabled by so called smartphones. I propose to rename them to spyphones
Rarely does a company do something for the good of humanity, they do it for the good of company, that goes for Google, Apple, MS, IBM and so forth.
Google, Apple and others aren’t good, but they aren’t evil either, they are company.
Apple wanted to bring down big brother, Google says “Don’t be evil”… MS never even bothered to say anything like that Fact is, ideals are one thing, stock holders are another.
I guess it shows what’s Google’s main business: collecting information to serve up ads.
Considering this article I doubt it was an “accident” the Google cars collected WiFi information. How can you program a system that makes photographs and then accidentally add a WiFi logger? That data also got stored somewhere. This all requires planning and human effort.
If it results in less update waiting time and stops OEMs from putting ugly overlays on top of Android (I am looking at you Samsung), then let them control it as tight as possible.
Let’s face it people, Google’s decision to GPL Android was a mistake, because every OEM did whatever he wanted with Android, and didn’t had to report to Google. Now Android is closed source. It’s not “free” anymore, but at least consumers will win.
Your post makes no sense.
Android is not GPL, in fact GPL could have avoided some of these problems. If OEMs had to make their android changes public, as required by GPL, fragmentation becomes less a concern since differentiation become pretty much impossible since everyone can read and copy your code. This is probably why OEM would never have got on board with a GPL Android.
Android is still open sourse, an Apache license which does not requite much of contributors or themselves. They make up for the weakness of this license with contracts in others for things like market access.That is where they control android.
Hmm. It seems just a lately that ADOLF Rubin would be more apt. There is no doubt that Google becomes more evil every day. Perhaps a anti-competitive judgement against them wouldn’t be a bad thing and serve to steer them back on track!
The definition of evil has really changed it’s meaning.