That’s right. Google is suggesting to Verizon users that they just get the Droid Incredible instead. Which makes sense, since the Incredible is a better phone anyway, but that’s the problem with Android. A better Android phone is never more than two months away, so there’s no way for anyone to sell any particular Android phone with any success.
It would be extremely difficult to botch the Nexus One debut any worse than Google did. My guess is that the Nexus One will fade into obscurity by next year, and Google will hope everyone forgets just how huge a FAIL this whole experiment was.
Clearly, Verizon wants to leverage all that money they’ve dumped into the Droid brand, and has no interest in supporting a phone that is Google-branded instead. That makes perfect sense. But it demonstrates just how foolish it was to release Nexus One so soon after the original Droid. Never mind poor Motorola, whose original Droid is already a relic thanks to HTC’s new Droid Incredible.
Do you see how having all these carriers and handset makers pitted against one another causes more problems than it solves? Pretty soon, many of them will figure out that the only company benefitting from Android is Google. And they’ll start looking for alternatives again.
The old-world Microsoft licensing model is dead. No one wants to be pushed around by a giant monopoly anymore.
More importantly, why is Google still getting a pass from the press on these obvious missteps? Just try and picture for a second if Apple were to announce tomorrow that the iPhone were coming to Verizon, and then in August announce that they weren’t going to do that release, after all. Can you even begin to imagine the barrage of negative press that would accompany that?
