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Google Pressured Acer/Alibaba Because of Android Compatibility Issues
An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday we discussed news that Google pressured Acer and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to cancel the launch of a phone running the Aliyun OS. Google has now addressed the issue, speaking out on the importance of compatibility for Android devices. Andy Rubin, who runs Android development at Google, said Aliyun was a non-compatible version of Android, which weakens the ecosystem. He pointed out that the Open Handset Alliance provides all the tools necessary to make it compatible. An Alibaba exec fired back, saying, 'Aliyun OS is not part of the Android ecosystem so of course Aliyun OS is not and does not have to be compatible with Android. It is ironic that a company that talks freely about openness is espousing a closed ecosystem.'"
It advertises that it runs Android applications?? That seems a little disingenuous as well.
DevRT. The name was a give away. 1 comment and it's trolling.
Watch those corners
This is all due to Android's openness.
Basically this company wants to be part of the Android group, but at the same time, build a competitor to Google's interests in the Android platform... using a forked version of Android. So Google is basically saying "if you want to be dicks and go against our interests, we're going to kick you out of our club."
It should be noted that it won't affect Alibaba or Asus's ability to use the Android codebase, just Google won't be working with them in the future.
Seems fair enough to me.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
He's perfectly consistent. He copied/pasted the same exact text twice.
Please don't be evil.
It's great that you invented Android. You also must have gotten a great payoff when Google bought Android. That's enough, isn't it?
You cleverly screwed Sun out of a few millions of dollars licensing fees, which contributed to its downfall.
Now your megalomania is leading you to beat up on an Android vendor that merely wants to experiment with an Android variant?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
As I understand it Google's side of the story is they said something because Acer is a member of the Open Handset Alliance. Amazon is not a member of the AHA therefore Google hasn't said a thing to them.
Read into it yourself YMMV.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
No, what weakens the ecosystem are the Open Handset Alliance members who promise to keep their phones up to date, then renege.
I bought an Xperia Pro in 2011 because Sony announced they'd be getting Android 4. It's currently running Android 2.3, released in 2010, because Sony have completely cocked up the rollout. The rollout started back in May, then mysteriously stopped. It might have something to do with it being so buggy it's unusable (hardcoded to AZERTY keyboards, even if you've got a QWERTY keyboard), but we have no way of knowing because Sony won't talk. They announced it was being rolled out a second time at the beginning of August, but there's no evidence of that in their shitty update software. Customer support stonewall, just saying that the rollout is ongoing. This isn't even for the latest version of Android, it's for last year's version.
This is what's damaging the ecosystem. iOS developers can happily target iOS 5+, released a year ago, and get the vast majority of users (more than 80%). If you targeted the year old Android 4+, you'd only be getting about 22% of users.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Oracle was suing Google over patents and copyright infringement.
Google was never a part of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, so Oracle could not kick them out.
This is not like Oracle suing Google at all, in any way.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Well, if we're going to play Microsoft analogies, you could say that Alibaba is attempting to play "embrace and extingush". They wan to take advantage of the Android ecosystem while channeling users onto their proprietary platform.
In any case, You haven't established the validity of your analogy. What Microsoft did was refuse to sell Windows to OEMs who also offered competitive products like DR-DOS. Plenty of vendors offer Android competitors on their phones. What Google is doing is withholding cooperation from a company that is effectively using Android as the basis for a competitive product. The competitive product would be bootstrapped by having access to Android apps while steering customers toward apps that run exclusively on the network operator's service.
Where have we seen that carrier lock-in strategy before? Everywhere. That was the world of smartphone apps before iPhone, and having developed such apps before iPhone I can tell you it sucked for everyone except the carrier and handset maker.
IIRC Android is licensed under Apache, so Google can't "cut off" Alibaba from Android. Alibaba can continue to offer Android devices, even develop non-compatible Android derivatives, but they won't get help from Google. No technical assistance, no advance notice of plans, no labeling their products as "android" phones, no offering on-line access to the Android app store (although users could still side-load). Is that evil? Maybe, maybe not.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So remind me how Google make an incompatible implementation of Java?
Android uses the Java language and some Java core libraries, but the implementation is neither a complete implementation of Java SE (e.g. no AWT or Swing compatibility) nor of Java ME (e.g. no MIDlet compatibility), and it uses Dalvik bytecode instead of JVM bytecode.
They build an open source operating system. When they refuse to release Honeycomb, people start claiming they're going back on the open source commitment. They release ICS and JB source code less than a week after the official announcement. They literally give Android away for free - http://twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429
Yet they get far more criticism than Microsoft and Apple running increasingly closed ecosystems. They get blamed for Android fragmentation. Now, when they decide to do something about fragmentation, they get blamed again. It's pretty simple isn't it, you join OHA and you maintain compatibility with Android. Or you don't, like Amazon, and take the source code for free and whatever the hell you want with it. Is that really so onerous for Acer?
When Android OEMs get sued with crap patents, Google gets blamed. Even when it's Samsung, a far bigger company who is making the majority of profits off Android (Google isn't making nearly as much), Google is somehow supposed to show up and save the day for them. When Google registers patents of their own, every time there's a Slashdot story about the pot calling the kettle black although Google have NEVER used patents to sue anyone except in retaliation, not their search patents, not their Hadoop, Mapreduce, etc. patents.
If you're an Android device used, you should be glad Google is doing this. The last thing we need is another Amazon. Try playing with a Kindle Fire - Amazon completely skinned Amazon and made it incompatible with normal Android apps. I have tried putting many in through apks, most install but almost none work properly. Despite coming with a powerful dual core processor, the devices are terribly slow and laggy. The browser is awful compared to Chrome or Safari on mobile devices. They could have gone with a completely skinned version of compatible Android, with their own skin but retain compatibility with apps. Instead, we get different versions of Android apps for the Kindle Fire. I am not sure this even works in Amazon's favour, they could still have sold all the content and made proper tablets offering real tablet functionality, not glorified content consumption devices with terribly proprietary software.
Here's the kicker:
You don't have to pay Google a cent to retain Android compatibility. Amazon could do exactly what they are doing now: run their own app store instead of using Google Play, use Nokia maps, use Bing as the default search engine, put their own browser in that tracks all websites you visit. Google's own Motorola branded handset, the RAZR M ships with the Amazon app store installed. I don't know why Google let this happen, it makes no business sense. But it's good for us consumers, you don't even have to be tied to the Google Play store.
What? Apple's never released an open source OS and had it forked. Seriously, Apple suing the entire mobile world over rounded corners has nothing to do with this. What's going on here is very simple. Google has no problem with an independent company using the open source Android to make their own fork. Amazon and numerous other companies have done it without so much as a complaint from Google. What's not fine is for members of the Open Handset Alliance to support Android forks, because compatibility is part of the stated mission of the OHA. If Acer wants to build devices using an Android fork, then they would have to leave the OHA.
What Microsoft did was refuse to sell Windows to OEMs
Wrong, Microsoft did not do that. They got into trouble for a similar thing that Google is doing now(though Android is not a monopoly so it's a different legal situation here). Microsoft withheld OEM incentives(which included discounts, advertising money etc.) from the OEMs that didn't toe their line. Google is withholding incentives like early code access(and perhaps will increase the price for or remove access to the Android app store, Google apps on the device which are neither free nor Free). Good luck with competition with the other Android OEMs if that happens, which is why Acer backtracker REAL quick and even canceled a scheduled launch event which companies do only in cases of dire need.
I don't see any difference with the Microsoft situation except these three
1. Android doesn't have a monopoly (although it's 67% marketshare in the market and since Acer can't get a iOS license which is the other 22% of the market, it's effectively a monopoly as far as Acer's options to get any revenue are concerned).
2. Android is "open", so they could probably go the Amazon route, fork Android, get AOSP code super late when competitors have already released devices with the latest and greatest OS and features, build an app store from scratch, get hundreds of thousands of developers to submit apps, develop in house replacements for Google Maps, GMail, Currents, etc. etc. etc. Or maybe try to hook up with Amazon and get access to the store. But again, good luck with competing with Samsung, HTC, Motorola, LG, Sony given these constraints.
Anyway this is pretty ironic coming from Google, given the same Andy Rubin's tweet about being open:
https://twitter.com/bttp/statuses/27864903610
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/andy-rubin-twitter/
Well would you look at that. Earlier today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs went on a bit of a tirade against Google and Android in particular. And you know that couldn’t have made Android chief Andy Rubin too happy. But how was he going to respond? Well, he decided to awaken his dormant Twitter account and send his first tweet tonight. And sure enough, it’s clearly (but subtly) in response to Jobs.
Without further ado, here is Andy Rubin’s first tweet:
the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”
For those keeping score at home, that’s Rubin using some geeked-out lingo to explain exactly what open is to Steve Jobs. In other words: Android.
This space for rent.
You've got several things wrong..
1. Don't use any official Android distributions (operate as a niche/self-supported market, ie. Amazon)
2. Use any combination of Android and forked android-derived distributions, but can't join the OHA
3. Join the OHA and use only an official Google Android derived OS
That's completely wrong.
You have several choices:
1) Develop an Android compatible device, compatible with existing Android applications, and don't pay a cent to Google or anyone else for Android.
Sell your devices with getjar app store, Amazon app store, Bing as default search, Nokia maps, change the UI, whatever the hell you want as long as you don't break compatibility.
2) Do 1) and also join OHA. Still don't pay a cent to Google, still sell your devices with getjar app store, Amazon app store, Bing as default search, Nokia maps, change the UI, whatever the hell you want as long as you don't break compatibility.
3) Do 1) and 2) and also license Google applications and the Google Play app store.
4) Use the open source Android code (definition of open) and do whatever the hell you want with it like Amazon, modify it, make it incompatible with Google's Store and current Android applications, don't pay anything to Google, don't join the OHA, get the source code for new versions of Android soon after Google announces them, make your own app store.
Acer chose option 3) for their current devices. Google said if they're doing option 4) with Alibaba, they cannot also do option 2) and/or 3). And Acer made their choice, nothing was forced on them. All Google could do was force Acer to leave the OHA and refuse to license Google Play and other Google applications to them. Acer could still make Android compatible devices, even continue to sell their current devices with the Amazon app store for example. They chose to remain part of the OHA.
the OEMs are already way behind in keeping official Android up to date in their design and production pipelines even with that inside track and help from Google. An OEM on its own trying to make an official Android device is thus at a large disadvantage against OEMs that are part of the OHA.
That's simply not true. Some of the first non Google devices to come out with Android 4.0 were from Chinese low end manufacturers who are not part of the OHA, much before the bigger well known OHA members. That was because the OEMs insist on customizing their devices to distinguish them from stock Android. And far from being uncompetitive, those manufacturers have been incredibly successful. Some have gone on to license Google Play and Google Apps. Want to beat Google? Make your own app store and your own apps that are better than Google's proprietary apps like Maps Gmail etc. Amazon are trying. Acer didn't want to take up that challenge. No one forced Acer to do anything. They made a choice.
How exactly do you propose that Google kick Amazon out of the Open Handset Allienace when Amazon is not, never has been, and is not trying to be a member of the OHA? Your post is ludicrous.
Amazon has been doing this from the beginning; using the Android codebase as a starting point and releasing a product using their derived version of Android, without any Google support or any of the otehr advantages that OHA members get. They're doing fine, too... but they aren't making a smartphone.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Google's not afraid of the competition. They're not complaining about Amazon's fork of Android. What they mind is that this member of the group organized to build a successful open Android system was trying to both be in the club, getting the benefits of being in the club, and also break the club rules about working counter to the purpose of the club. That's fair. That's not evil. "In or out, Acer buddy, but close the door. We're having a meeting."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All google is saying is that if you don't want to play by their rules, they won't give you support. Fork it, and you're on your own. Seems fair to me and they're not "going after anyone".