[illumin8]

> The point is: if Google hadn't done that, the carriers may very well not have supported it.

I don't buy this argument. This is one of those slippery slope arguments that are used to justify everything. Let's say you're a Cisco and you want to sell routers and network gear to the Chinese. You can either give their government back doors to spy on traffic and make it easy for them, guaranteeing the business will go to you, or you can take the moral high ground and refuse to build these features into your products. Too often big companies like Cisco, Google, and Microsoft take the approach that money trumps all morality concerns, and we end up with a big brother police state enabled by the very technology companies that were supposed to save us from this future.

Google should do what Apple did and stick to their guns - refuse to let carriers mess with Android.

[wvenable]

The first Android phones were nothing compared to the iPhone. Giving everything (including revenues) to the carriers and manufacturers is exactly why Android exists now.

Google could have stuck to their guns, but the situation would be unchanged.