Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Android — Does It Belong To Bing and Baidu?
hype7 writes "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."
Even if Google don't see a dime out of Android, it helps to bring down locked alternatives such as the SO on the IPhone and Windows Mobile. That helps to keep the market clean and filled with options.
If you define benefit as the evil kind of benefit by which you abuse the control you have over a platform to lock the competition out and the customers in, create walled gardens, etc then Google won't benefit under this scenario. On the other hand if yu define benefit as denying your competition the evil kind of benefit, then Google will benefit immensely even if Bing and Baidu and Facebook choose android as their preferred platform.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, GOOGLE IS REALLY NO LONGER ABOUT SEARCH!
Look, Google is an advertising company. Way back when, they got their start as a search engine, but that's a small part of the pie now.
Android further fragments the mobile OS market, which drives consumers to use shitty web "apps" rather than native applications. These web "apps" are the sort of think Google can shit advertisements into, or otherwise collect the personal data you so willingly give them.
It's not like they would lose control over Android itself, since they are the primary developers. But I agree that its possible for them to lose control over the cashflow that Android generates, which is quite a different thing.
But this raises an interesting question. Google was surely aware of such a risk when they decided to open source such a high valued piece of software. They had to decide between giving away freedom and having an easier way for "android everywhere" (so they can flood the market with android), or have total control over the platform and do it in a more WP7-way. So why did they go with the first approach? How will they keep earning money off it if its open?
IMHO the answer is that it doesn't matter (to some extent) if the operating system is free or not. One of the things that make android so attractive (in terms of features) is google's services: Contact sync, app sync, android market, google voice, voice search, voice actions, google navigation, GMail and more cloud services which are to come.
Someone can "take" google's efforts - that means take the Android Open Source Project - and turn it into a phone with bing. Or yahoo maps, etc.. But they would need to compete with google in all fronts, with all its cloud services, etc.. Plus there are lots of apps which already work with google-propietary services like Google Appengine, Google Maps, etc... they are gaining lots of new users which are going mobile and using those services more and more. And its becoming more difficult for competitors to make a competing product because they can not only take Android and put bing search on it, they have to compete with Google in ALL fronts to make it really competent.
(of course thats my own opinion and view in all this, and all in all I like that android itself can bring competition within its own platform in the cloud level, which makes everything much more exciting for me as a user/consumer. I don't know if google really wanted to give away android for "the benefit of us all" but they could end up competing on their own platform as a result of it, and I think thats good)
PD: another interesting matter is what would happen if someone would make an android version that runs apps that aren't compatible with other android versions because they don't fulfill the OHA criteria and/or tests. In that instance I'd say that isn't Android anymore and could not be regarded as such, even if it was a fork of it
And as I predicted, utter crap.
Point 1: "Ohnoes, Bing's being used as the default search engine on a few Verizon phones!" Let's see... how important is this really? Anyone who cares will simply use Google (from the Market, or just in the browser, or if needed by sideloading)... as for revenue from search? I'm guessing much more of the revenue comes from things like Admob and the rest of the Google-infested web, not to mention priority placement of items in apps like "Places" and Maps searches.
Point 2: "Ohnoes, Baidu is rolling its own 'G-Apps' to replace Maps, Search, Nav, Market, Talk and so on!" Let's see... native Chinese stuff made by Chinese guys for the Chinese - sounds like a perfect idea to me. I'm sure the integration with Baidu and Chinese culture in general will make for a very usable operating system in China... outside of China, however... what's the point?
And if Google continues improving its proprietary apps at the current rate, it's very unlikely that Baidu will be able to keep up. That market will sort itself out... as we've seen with all other devices without G-Apps (tablets, for instance).
Have you actually used Android?
The whole point of a smartphone (and Android) is that you can run all the apps on all the phones (the fragmentation that prevents this in some cases is NOT a positive aspect)... Screw non-standard preloaded apps, that's the exact evil thing we're trying to get away from.
Having to pay Apple $100m annually for the search box is nothing, even though it is probably more than Mozilla gets. Google revenues are what, $28b annually? How much of that is due to being the default search engine in major browsers? They would probably pay 10 times as much if they were asked to, although perhaps not for the iPhone and iPad at this point ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I had a similar reason for wanting to post (before reading a few comments and the article). Baidu and Bing are search engines (and indirectly ad platforms). Android is an operating system. Who cares if Baidu or Bing muscle out Google's search on their own mobile OS platform? How is that going to spell the end of Android or Google as a company?
Article is full of speculation and wild hyperbole. Waste of time to even read. Sad for Harvard Biz review, really.
Google's preference order for the structure of the mobile market, from most preferred to least preferred, is probably something like:
1) Android is a popular, unified platform controlled by Google.
2) Android is a popular but fragmented platform, with carriers and handset makers doing whatever they like.
3) Android is an unpopular platform. Apple dominates the market, and has the power to lock Google out of mobile advertising.
Based on Google's behavior, it's clear their primary goal with Android was simply to avoid #3. Trying to achieve #1 would have required Google to exert control over the platform that carriers and handset makers would have likely objected to, this lowering adoption rates and increasing the probability of #3 occurring. So Google was willing to give up nearly all control, and settle for #2. They'd rather have a fragmented market than one controlled by Apple.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
The main reason for Google to produce and promote Android is so the mobile/embedded Internet isn't locked up, either by a monopoly (Apple/Nokia/Microsoft/telco) or by a technology (iOS, Symbian, Win7+). With a large minority, or even a majority, of non-desktops off Windows, Google is more likely to have more access to more content to index, and more searching to insert ads into. That is Google's core business, the only one that makes money, and it makes money by the bargeload. Google is the only truly cross platform Internet business other than eBay or any other site that isn't original content. Android makes the Internet more cross platform, so Google has more natural advantage in it. Even if Google doesn't control Android. In this way Google's strategy is just like Sun's Java strategy. And Google is sticking to it much more closely, unlike Sun which never became an "Internet company", but rather a company that the Internet benefited. Consider whether Sun (even as an Oracle division) would still have a future without Java, and whether Java would have as substantial a future without Android. Android free of Google (even more than Java is now free of Sun) would still benefit Google more than does Java free of Sun benefit Google, even as Java keeps Sun alive.
--
make install -not war
Not so much the Market (which kind of sucks, IMO), as Google services themselves, which are integrated into the OS. Remove things like Google Maps, and most location-aware apps will just stop working, access to Market or not. Oh, and of course Google search is integrated with Maps, so ditching Google search for Bing degrades the quality of the phone -- and not only because Bing sucks big hairy camel balls, which it actually does. Who would have thought that a Google phone was in fact a Google phone.
I'm not convinced that #1 is even a strong interest of Google's. When Google bought Android they could, after all, have kept it and made it available to handset makers under attractive terms. Instead, they set up the Open Handset Alliance -- which they don't control -- and transferred ownership of Android to the OHA. I think that, for Google, as with Chrome in the browser market, the two main purposes of Android in the smartphone OS market are:
1. Prevent any one non-Google vendor from dominating the market and using that to dictate which services can be accessed, either directly or simply by favoring their own services or their partners,
2. Drive expectations in the market so that future offerings, from whatever vendor, provide an excellent platform for the online services at the core of Google's business.
The bias of the Harvard Business Review is given away with the question "What's the endgame here?" The domination and ossification model we're used to - "embrace, extend, extinguish" has an endgame: the state where no more effort need be made toward progress because the domination of the market is self-reinforcing. James Plamondon called this "critical mass". This is rent-seeking behaviour, and participating in it is essentially self destructive from a customer point of view because it advances the plan toward the ossified end state. We desperately don't want an "endgame".
Google's game doesn't have an end state. Their game involves continually staying ahead of progress to catch the benefits, and continually driving progress to keep moving the goalposts so others can't achieve dominance because the market is too dynamic. It's better for us in the long run. It requires a great deal of courage and vision to come up with a plan like this, and excellent execution to keep it working. I hope it continues to work.
Help stamp out iliturcy.