Internal emails from Google manager suggest Android isn’t so open

This is like a terrible national news story, picking out one sentence to fuel the fire, but leaving out the rest of the details that could change the whole thing. Can we get some actual context for this email? What were they talking about specifically? Who’s “them”? How about the rest of the email or others in the chain?

This is a record for BGR… posting about a story, not only after it’s been out for awhile, but after even strong Apple fanboys (like MG Seigler) call the whole thing FUD.

Dan Morrill writes, “we are using compatibility as a club to make them do things we want.”

And what are the things Google wants them to do – push the platform forward, maintain compatibility so users don’t suffer from buying apps on one phone and later not being able to run it on another phone? In other words Google is trying to do what it can to maintain an open yet still mass consumer grade platform with the hooks they have less they risk becoming Linux – anyone does anything they want without caring about end users. Or was there something evil Google is making them do that the writer forgot to mention?

”

we will still win.”

Win what, exaclty?

“its open ENOUGH. ”

A very interesting statement, not just because it relates to Android, but rather how it illustrates the dissembling everyone does to explain away disappointment or uncomfortable facts as still consistent with one’s personal ideology.

This is about money. When money is involved, billions of dollars, people adjust the way they see things. People at Google are no different from those with other companies, in fact, most of the people at Google were with other companies. They want to succeed, they want to make money, they want to “win” in every way they can. They are not in business to be your friend, my friend, or lead some righteaous fight. They are in business to make money.

Is Android completely open? No. If people have to have a discussion about that then the point is already proven. Is Android open enough? Debate the heck out of it. I don’t know and you probably don’t either. Is is more open than other major mobile operating systems? Yeah, for the most part.

Right now I am generally happy with the Android device I am using. Sure, there are always things to improve upon, but it is a much better experience overall than on my various iPhones. Open or not I feel like I am getting what I paid for and that is my goal.

Translation: Yes it’s still open, but if you want get extra cool stuff, you need to stay within a certain series of parameters. Seriously? This is news?

Of course Google isn’t open. Google and the term open source has been butchered to say the least. Cyanogen ROM was the perfect example of this hypocrisy. It was actually entertaining how Google said Cyanogen was distributing closed sourced apps such as Google Search, GMail, Google Maps, and how these were for Google experience phones only. Uh what? At the time Cyanogen ROM only worked on Google experience phones.

But thats not the entertaining part. The entertaining part was the dirty little secret that soon became known to most anyone that knew a little something about Android. See, Android the OS might be open source, but the Google apps that are required to accompany all Android device are most certainly not open source. Gmail, Market, YouTube, Google Search, Google Maps are closed source. That’s how Google keeps control, they’re able to wield this like a wand to force companies to do their bidding. It’s very easy for Google to claim certain technologies, which compete against Google technologies are incompatible. In fact to even compile the APK files into your own ROM is illegal. So are you open source or not? I’d say not because without the APK’s it’s useless.

Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan had a good quote, “while Android maybe open source, the platform isn’t necessarily open.” In many of the industry Android is as open as iOS.

Sure it’s open… that’s why Google hasn’t (won’t) release Honeycomb source? Do you think it’s by chance Google made their license Apache based and not GPL? Do you? Think about it, Google had this planned in-case they needed to close things, neatly, without fuss and without legal worries. Nobody puts their eggs in one basket, not even Google.

Android is not open.. Example I bought a phone from Att and I couldn’t get amazon app store on I could Install apps from sd card. You have to root the phone which can be a night mare I finally got it root it the battery still sucked because of Att crap ware. Finally got that out and you still can’t do half of the stuff you can on iPhone.. I returned the phone today and went back to my iPhone which can be easily be jail broken and I can get tons of cool apps plus the app store. Android if not open at all. Also half of the apps are stupid junk.

I will go out on a limb and say…so what. We’ve all seen rouge android builds pretty much suck and nobody buys the cheap hardware they are attatched to. Nobody is fussing at Microsoft about opening up Windows Phone 7. If these companies need an OS so bad they should create their own.