Google's Open Source Mobile Platform

As expected, today Google took the wraps off of the gPhone (as the media have for months been referring to the rumored project). Google is "leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers," and will be licensing its software to all comers on an open source basis under the Apache license. (The Wall Street Journal's Ben Worthen demonstrates a miserable grasp of what "open source" means.) Google's US partners include Nextel and Sprint, but not AT&T nor Verizon. Phones will be available in the second half of 2008 — not the spring as earlier reports had speculated. News.com's analysis warns that Google won't take over the mobile market overnight, though they quote Forrester in the opinion that Google may be one of the three biggest mobile players after several years of shakeout.

Comments

Re:Phone or Platform?

[clarkkent09]

Ok, so not reading the article I get, who has the time. I am getting used to people not reading the summary either. But not reading the title of the article is just too much! Thats it, you are expelled from slashdot!

open phones rock

[ILuvRamen]

For the past 3 days I've been trying to modify and mess with my Motorola V3M Razor and it's a glitchy hell to try and do. Any phone that's more open than the current phone Nazis keep them is fine with me. All those dollar per ringtone and wallpaper people can shove it. Oh and especially that chick on late night TV commercials with the weird accent telling me I can win like $32,000 if I unscramble the word and text it in. I hope Google tracks her down and gets her deported. Now some of you may be asking, "Do you have anger issues with cell phone carriers and their associates" to which I say, "Don't you?"

Re:first psot!!!

[caffeinemessiah]

If anyone was interested in Ben Worthen's moronic grasp of open-source, its pasted below. E-mail your tirades to biztech@wsj.com, of which Ben Worthen is the lead writer, and ask him about how he got his job in the first place.

Information-technology departments will ban employees from connecting phones that run Google's operating system to their computers or the corporate network. The reason is that Google's operating system is open, meaning anyone can write software for it. That includes bad guys, who will doubtlessly develop viruses and other malicious code for these phones, which unsuspecting Google phones owners will download. Employees could spread the malicious code to the rest of the company when they synch their phones to their computers or use it to check email.

The way to combat this is to develop anti-virus and anti-malware software for phones and to develop security procedures similar to those that have evolved for PCs over the last several years. But that's going to take time and money - neither of which the average IT department has. So until then, expect Google phones to be persona non grata at companies.

Re:first psot!!!

[emurphy42]

FWIW, he followed up with the following:

Update: I've read through the comments and most people seem to think I'm saying something I wasn't trying to say. That's my fault for writing sloppy. I don't think that Google's mobile operating system is a security problem because it's open source. I think that the phones that use it could become a security threat because if Google succeeds there are going to be a lot of applications for this phone and individuals are going to be able to download whichever ones they want to use. As this happens bad guys are going to start targeting these people with their own code, much the way they target PC users today.

The fact of the matter is that while most companies have anti-virus and anti-malware software on PCs, they don't do much of anything to secure phones. The point that I obviously didn't succeed at making originally is that if Google achieves its vision companies will realize that they have this weakness, and not knowing how to address it — companies would need to buy all sorts of security software and put in place all sorts of policies — their first instinct will be to ban the phones. Employees will get upset because, again if Google achieves its vision, these phones will be pretty darn cool and a pretty helpful business tool. Hence the conflict that I think it will cause. It has nothing to do with open source or Google per se, and everything to do with companies not being prepared for the phone as a dominant computing platform.

I for one...

[MrLizardo]

...welcome our Android overlords.

Good. With that out of the way, I have to say I'm really looking forward to seing what Google can do in terms of getting functionality that has typically been the domain of "smartphones" that typically go for more than $200 w/ contract into the domain of phones that range from free to $50 (again w/ contract). With the minimum requirements set at an ARM9 @ 200MHz, this platform should allow open development on a huge new range of phones. I've already seen people earlier today making dire predictions about how Google is not going to be able to compete with the iPhone or how they prefer phones based on Symbian...and I think these people are completely missing Google's whole plan. I'm sure that initially phones based on Android will fall closer to the smartphone price range, but I can't help but think that eventually Google has to be aiming at the free-to-$50 phones. The "just a basic phone" market is an area in desperate need of a unifyied platform. Between lack of openness and the lack of a properly standardized Java implementation development for a wide range of low end phones is pretty much intractible. If Google can get Android onto low-cost phones *and* ensure "write once, run anywhere" between them I think they will have all the developer support they need. And since they already have the ears of the carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint, etc) they've already ensured they have a way to get this on shipping phones.

Why do I think low end phones are so important to these companies in the open handset alliance, when they don't have the profit margins of smartphones or "feature-phones"? Simple: Emerging markets. For billions of people around the world it is too expensive or impractical to own and maintain an Internet connected PC. It may be because of upfront cost or it may be a lack of Internet infrastructure in their area. For those people a phone will be their first (and maybe only) connection to the Internet. Right now the browsing experience on basic phones ranges from useless to unbearably slow and there is an impressive *lack* of easily accessible third party applications. If someone could change that it would add incredible value to that class of phones. So what's in it for Google? Making sure that their page is the first one a couple billion people see the first time they get on the Internet is probably worth it.

Re:pictures

[Mr.Radar]

I don't have any experience with Sprint but T-Mobile is probably the best in terms of being "open" of the big four mobile operators in the US. For example, until a few years ago you could get free web browsing through them by exploiting a hole in their free WAP access service. Instead of just shutting the hole and ignoring the people who didn't want to pay for a full Internet plan, they decided to shut it while transitioning to tiered Internet plans so people who didn't need to tether could still get the full web on their phones at a reduced price. Most phones also apparently will still let you tether with their cheap service, though T-Mobile will cut off your access if you use too much bandwidth while doing this.

They use GSM which is a big plus if you want to buy your own phone. I haven't yet needed to because, while all of their phones that I've owned were locked and had T-Mobile logos and "premium services" everywhere, none of them were in any way crippled like Verizon is infamous for doing. I even added a custom ringtone to one of my phones using only a standard USB cable and the manufacturer's ringtone transfer software. Their coverage is pretty good, the only time I've had trouble with it was when I was traveling through West Virginia which is a hard area to cover with cell phone service anyways. Their biggest problem is that they don't yet have any 3G service available anywhere (they're waiting for the spectrum they bought for it to become available for their use) and their customer service is nothing to write home about, but that's pretty much par for the course in this industry.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

So I suppose instead of hot spots if you have a gPhone you look for gSpots....

Betamax

[flyingfsck]

This guy is so clueless, his Betamax VCR is still flashing 12:00...