During a keynote presentation at Google’s IO developer conference last year, Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra proclaimed that the search giant created Android in order to bring freedom to the masses and avoid a “draconian future” in which one company controlled the mobile industry. Looking past the self-congratulatory rhetoric, Android’s poor track record on openness is becoming harder to ignore.
The company revealed Thursday that it will delay publication of the Android 3.0 source code for the foreseeable future—possibly for months. It’s not clear when (or if) the source code will be made available. The decision puts Android on a path towards a “draconian future” of its own, in which it is controlled by a single vendor—Google.
For-profit companies are only open when it suits them to be open. Apple, for instance used the open AAC format in iTunes because it knew a proprietary format would never be able to compete with the open MP3. It gave away Webkit as an open platform, because it knew no one would adapt web sites to suit the Safari browser if it used a proprietary engine. The same goes for adopting USB, DVI, Display Port, and Thunderbolt. Apple could use open standards in these cases because it makes its money elsewhere.
Open is what you do when you’re the underdog and you need to get your product into as many hands as possible. And when using the open standard doesn’t interfere with your ability to profit from your own intellectual property. There’s nothing wrong with that, in practice, as long as you are clear when you are being open vs. when you are not.
What Google has done is dupe the open zealots into cheerleading the platform by making elaborate speeches about the free exchange of ideas, the need for standards, etc. All the while keeping its own search algorithms, Gmail, etc. locked up tight. The whole thing is a ruse. A sham.
And the open fanboys fall for it every time.
“Don’t be evil is marking bullshit.” Right as usual, Steve. He wasn’t criticizing, so much as pointing out the obvious.
Now that hardware manufacturers are taking advantage of the “open” Android by adding their own user interface tweaks, and more offensively, cutting deals with Microsoft to add Bing search instead of Google search, Google is clamping down Android 3.0. Suddenly the pure numbers game isn’t working out so well. After all, a world full of Android devices that make more money for Microsoft than for Google doesn’t help Google much.
So this move should not be surprising at all, if you’ve been paying any attention. Google will open anything so long as that openness helps it make money. Otherwise, it’s closed, closed, closed. And that’s no different from Apple, or Microsoft, or RIM, or anyone else. So I’m not even knocking Google for that.
Being a hypocrite, though. Well for that, I’m happy to knock Google quite a bit.
