Re: The Android Detour
I really enjoyed this article on Google. Android was, without a doubt, a defensive move.
One of the most amusing headlines we see today is of the “Samsung dominating Android.” They point to profits and market share. Good for Samsung, terrible for HTC, LG, and Sony. But I doubt Google cares.
Android market shares and fragmentation are all extremely secondary. Google only needs control of two aspects of Android, one being the system APIs and the second being Google Play, aka app distribution.
Undoubtedly Google remains in firm control of Android’s APIs. Which means each iteration allows them to build better and better Google apps…and only one version, instead of one for Symbian, Windows, BBOS, etc. This is why Android development largely happens without outside contributors. Google’s priorities are Android’s priorities. Imagine if iPhone or Windows Phone had achieved total dominance, a la Windows of the PC era. The introduction of Siri or deep embedding of Bing would have been disastrous, not because they competed with Google, but because the system APIs with which to complete are not even publicly available.
The second bit is app distribution. Google controls the Play. Now, this is a bit shakier, with Amazon and various Chinese companies threatening to break this monopoly. If Play were ever to get entirely replaced, it might put Google at the store’s mercy. Google’s already had to fight the battle for net neutrality and prevent ISPs from taking a bite of their profits. Even in Android, carriers have effectively blocked Wallet, in favor of their own solutions. Imagine if AT&T’s app store supplanted Google’s. Suddenly, they could threaten to throttle Google searches if not paid a portion of the profits. In a game of chicken, AT&T customers might howl, but nothing like Google’s shareholders. If Google plans on being a service company, they must protect access to their services.
That’s precisely why Google introduced so many developer APIs this year, instead of releasing a new version of Android. No one is competing with them for control of Android’s source code, their app’s platform. However, they are beset both by carriers and other distributors for control of app distribution. Ensuring more key apps leverage APIs specific to Google Play, and not to Android, means that if a carrier or distributor ever attempts to displace them, a significant portion of Android apps could not easily follow. I have no doubts that hosting real time games is not cheap. But it’s no wonder they would go to such lengths. Moat-building is not cheap.
None of this should be revelatory or surprising, but it seems silly that the conversation is still focused on Google achieving Apple-like control over Android, when all it really needs is to control source code commits and app distribution.
