Cyanogen Partners With Microsoft To Replace Google Apps

Unknown Lamer writes: Microsoft and Cyanogen Inc have announced a partnership to bring Microsoft applications to Cyanogen OS. "Under the partnership, Cyanogen will integrate and distribute Microsoft's consumer apps and services across core categories, including productivity, messaging, utilities, and cloud-based services. As part of this collaboration, Microsoft will create native integrations on Cyanogen OS, enabling a powerful new class of experiences." Ars Technica comments, "If Cyanogen really wants to ship a Googleless Android, it will need to provide alternatives to Google's services, and this Microsoft deal is a small start. Microsoft can provide alternatives for Search (Bing), Google Drive (OneDrive and Office), and Gmail (Outlook). The real missing pieces are alternatives to Google Play, Google Maps, and Google Play Services."

Rather than distribute more proprietary services, how about ownCloud for Drive, K-9 Mail for Gmail, OsmAnd for Maps, and F-Droid for an app store? Mozilla and DuckDuckGo provide Free Software search providers for Android, too. With Google neglecting the Android Open Source Project and Cyanogen partnering with Microsoft, the future for Free Software Android as anything but a shell for proprietary software looks bleak.

Comments

Real fight

[__keronin]

seems Microsoft decide to have a real serious fight with Google ! who will win ? Apple

Re:Real fight

[MightyMartian]

But everyone already knew that Android could run without the base apps. Most of the people I know that run Cyanogen do so to free themselves from data sieves that are the Google Android app suite. You don't get very good apps to view common office-format files, to be sure, and Microsoft will certainly fill that void. But in the grand scheme of things, Cyanogen simply does not matter that much.

What will matter in the medium term is that Microsoft works on a Google Apps replacement suite that it ready to go when (not if, when) the EU forces some degree of unbundling on Google.

But the lesson of Microsoft's experience, of course, is that the EU's unbundling requirement ultimately meant very little, and it was Microsoft's own decade of stagnation with Internet Explorer 6 that gave competitors the edge. The unbundling did nothing to help the actual victim of Microsoft's predatory bundling; Netscape.

Frankly if the OpenOffice/LibreOffice groups wanted to do something important right now, they'd put development of an Android version of the suite at the top of the priority list, because I think in the next couple of years a major opportunity will appear.

This makes no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing this is just a matter of the cyanogen guys going from "open android" philosophy to "how can we make ourselves money?"

Re: This makes no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

...implying that it is remotely possible for them. This is like when Oracle tried to do stuff to OpenOffice. What happens when a free software product whose only reason for existing is as a free software product tries to stop being a free software product? Forking, or death.

What alternative ROM would you recommend?

[staalmannen]

I am definitely moving away from CM as soon as this bundling gets in place. What would be the best alternative Omnirom? Something else?

Re:What alternative ROM would you recommend?

[mrchaotica]

Replicant is the only one I know of that aims to be actual, you know, 100% Free Software.

I have no idea why hardly anybody knows about it.