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by taligent 5124 days ago
Right. Because everyone who dares criticise Android is an iOS fanboy.

The fact is that Google has handled the Android ecosystem poorly and reflects where their motivation lies. Microsoft for decades has shown that it is possible to support a wide variety of innovation on top of their core OS whilst still allowing updates to be made. People such as yourself who continue to make excuses for ineptitude do nobody any favours.
2 comments
georgemcbay 5124 days ago
"The fact is that Google has handled the Android ecosystem poorly and reflects where their motivation lies."

Google has handled the Android ecosystem neutrally, not poorly. It is the device makers and the carriers that are responsible for the situation you're talking about with updates.

It is in Google's interest for device makers to support updates to the latest Android release so long as the hardware is capable of supporting the newest versions (of course, limits to this sort of backward compatibility would always exist, just as they do in the iOS world).

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Karunamon 5124 days ago
>It is the device makers and the carriers that are responsible for the situation you're talking about with updates.

Google could have just as easily bargained for the same kind of terms that Apple gets on iOS devices with carriers. No pack-in garbage, no mucking about with the OS. If not with the G1, certainly with the later releases.

Their desire to have Android be "open" is also its greatest weakness.

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chrismsnz 5124 days ago
> Google could have just as easily bargained for the same kind of terms that Apple gets on iOS devices with carriers.

Right, and what about the hundreds of other manufacturers of Android phones?

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2muchcoffeeman 5124 days ago
I think Kuranamon is suggesting that they could have dropped the openness or prevented others from calling their phones "Android phones".
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Karunamon 5123 days ago
Exactly. As I said, the openness is also its greatest weakness. Fragmentation is still a huge issue (look at the average Market app for one star reviews of the format "Force Closes on $device")

I see what they were going for, but their execution frankly sucked.

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ZeroGravitas 5124 days ago
You appear to accusing Google of having different priorities from other platform vendors (the dreaded advertising perhaps? It's not clear) and of ineptitude in carrying out those priorities.

You can't really accuse them of both, either they were trying to copy Apple's business model and failed spectacularly, or they were following their own business model with great success. Personally I'd lean towards the latter, particularly as their own business model has found them providing search, video and maps by default to Apple's platform as well and getting map data in return.

(Also, one of Microsoft's biggest problems in recent times is... getting people to upgrade. This applies to the OS, the browser and Office. As a response they tried to move people to a model where they pay by subscription regardless of whether they upgrade or not, much like Google's advertising based model.)

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