What Google should do with Android

Just read a post, where the author talks about what he thinks Google should do with Android to make profits. In brief, he wanted Google to close Android and license it to companies for $10-$20....

God, what a terribly dumb idea :-(.

Reasons:

1. Android is based on Linux which has GPL license restrictions
2. It would be horrible publicity for Google - the PR losses will be real in $ terms
3. Samsung would be pissed enough to look more seriously at Windows Phone 7.x/Bada as its preferred platform. Other vendors who had a choice would, too. It would actually give an open source OS a real break!

Fortunately, Larry Page has better things to do than listen to him. Hopefully he will use his copious free time to take a look at these suggestions ;-).

What I would do if I were Larry Page and about to own Motorola (till I could sell it off):

• Insist that Motorola run stock Android and commit to supporting upgrades to whatever the latest version of Android is for 3 years from the date of manufacture of the device.
• Upgrade to the latest version within 1 month of a new version being available to it (subject to carrier restrictions in the US).
• Allow Motorola to license software to improve Android functionality (e.g. to improve Outlook integration, enterprise capabilities), but only if that software doesn't require any weird changes to core Android. This might also be customized for carriers ie. let the carrier license third party software.
• At the high end, require them to ship with better hardware than Apple (not sure if this will always be possible, just because of Apple's volumes).
• Let the bootloader be easily unlocked by the user
• Use Motorola to ship non-phone/tablet devices based on Android - e.g. Google TV, thermostats, etc.

Anyway, I do believe that in the phone market, if there is a first rate vendor who commits to shipping with and supporting the latest version of Android, this will force other manufacturers to do the same. This will allow users to choose the best device when they are buying a phone without needing to worry about upgradability. It would be completely in keeping with Android's open philosophy and Google's commitments to phone manufacturers.

One other thing Larry might want to use Motorola to do, is to design a reference phone that is also open sourced - this will let manufacturers in Taiwan/China make knock-offs at really, really cheap prices to flood the market. Will kill Nokia in developing countries and make Android the largest market for app developers - both for paid, ad supported or free apps - win the numbers game against Apple.

Personally, I think Google is taking a way longer view of things than Apple. They want to own the mobile OS platform - Apple wants to make as much money as it can now.

Any thoughts?

Why Google might be part of a group bidding for Yahoo

There was this long article about why Google might be bidding for Yahoo

Wonder if the authors thought that Google might just want to bid up the price to squeeze more dollars out of MS or whoever actually buys it?

An unfortunate, but true statement.....

Great post http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support

Talks about how manufacturers don't support their Android phones much past the OS they release with. It needs people to root their phone and run something like CyanogenMod to get to the current OS....

Why don't manufacturers focus on making great hardware and just run stock Android? I am sure Motorola will start doing so once they get acquired by Google. How long is it going to take the others to understand that we buy their phones because of the hardware performance/features they can provide - not their silly UI modifications....

Google Acquisition of Motorola

Google announced today that it was going to acquire Motorola for $12B+. I am reading a lot of speculation about why Google was interested and the future of Android, some of which appeared quite dumb, so let me, for the record, put in my predictions:

- Google mainly acquired Motorola for its patents and to stop Apple and Microsoft from slowing down the spread of Android.
- Google has no real interest in making its own phones/hardware devices. They benefit if a lot of hardware manufacturers adopt Android and have no interest in jeopardizing that. If they could have got the patents without the hardware business, they would have taken that route, but I am sure Motorola refused that deal.

Predictions
- After some futzing, the acquisition will be approved by the regulators. Google will be required to build a wall between the Android group and the Motorola group (a wall that already exists between Android and the rest of Google, just because Android is so hot (and snooty ;-) )!).
- Google will be happy to leave the Motorola group to its own devices. In a year or two after the acquisition, Google will try to sell off the Motorola part of the business to someone who might want it.
- Google will work hard to keep Samsung and HTC happy - it is more likely the the next few Nexus devices post merger will not come from Motorola at all.
- Google might use Motorola to design other, more experimental Android devices that it has a hard time getting other manufacturers to develop - e.g. Google TV players, Chromebooks, etc.

Comments?

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G+ and Blogger

Interesting that my posts on Blogger (which is a Google company) appear on FaceBook, but not on G+.

Come on Google

3G/4G Tablets

If I were Verizon, I would offer a customer 100MB of data for free per month on their Verizon 4G tablets. This gets customers hooked onto using their tablets when they are roaming - and then Verizon can charge for any overages (by allowing the customer to pay for more data).

Feels like this fits in nicely with the freemium model that is so popular on the Internet.

Verizon isn't/doesn't need to subsidize the tablet itself (the ones with 3G cost more). Hopefully it earns something for retailing the tablet. It creates a new customer base of people who will use more of Verizon's data services....

Todays model, where a consumer spends more on a 3G tablet and doesn't get any benefit while roaming outside his WiFi area doesn't make much sense to me.

Any thoughts?

G+me

Ok - this is not Android related, but is cool anyway!

Just found a great G+ plugin that runs on Chrome called G+me

Gives you a GoogleReader kind of interface with G+, so that you can quickly glance at your stream and look at the items you want to.

It allows G+ to serve as a Twitter stream very nicely!

Love it!

Getting NetFlix on your Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

Finally Netflix came out with a version that runs on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. However (possibly for marketing reasons), they don't claim to officially support it - they only support the Lenovo tablets.

There were a few posts about where you could download the Netflix apk from, but being a paranoid security guy, I didn't want to pick up an apk from an unknown source. So here is what I did:

Downloaded the Netflix app on my NexusOne. Then connected it to my laptop and pulled the apk off the phone and then installed it on my Galaxy Tab.

Manual steps:
1. Download Netflix on your supported Android phone
2. Connect phone to your laptop via USB (I assume you already have adb working correctly - to verify, run adb devices and make sure your phone shows up)
3. On a command line, run:
    adb pull /data/app/com.netflix.mediaclient-1.apk
4. Disconnect phone and connect the tablet (again, verify with adb devices)
5. On the command line, run:
    adb install com.netflix.mediaclient-1.apk

If you do download the apk from another place, verify that the sum (using the cygwin sum command) is:
33864 7206

Enjoy!
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Somebody else's post on what RIM should do

Check the last 2 paragraphs from this article:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388432,00.asp

Mike Abramsky, a long-time supporter of RIM at Canadian financial firm RBC Capital Markets, suggests breaking RIM up into two companies; I think the result would be similar. One RIM would diversify into business software and servers to support multiple mobile platforms. The other would make powerful, enterprise-oriented Android phones.

Why don't phone manufacturers add real value?

For the life of me, I can't figure out the logic that makes phone manufacturers put their own semi-crappy UI on top on Android phones.

Phone manufacturers are generally pretty bad at software development. HTC Sense, Motoblur, etc don't really add a lot of value to Android phones - they just delay our ability to get updates quickly.

Why don't device makers do what they do best - make great hardware. Let Google do the fancy features (unless are adding hardware that Google can't use).

And this whole discussion about Motorola developing its own OS to try and hedge their bets. That only makes sense if their OS is going to be dramatically better than Android. Not sure I see a huge chance of that happening...

What RIM should do

Nokia just announced that they are moving to WinMo - which I think was absolutely the wrong decision (as, I guess does a lot of the rest of the web).

Big question is: What should RIM do?

I think the 3 huge strengths and one minor strength of RIM are:
- Outstanding exchange integration
- Great enterprise management app
- Phenomenal international roaming agreements, where you get unlimited international data roaming for ~$10 per month

The minor strength is BB Messenger, which for some strange reason my niece's just love.

The big problems they have are:
- Their developer environment sucks
- Hard to develop code that works across their phones
- Poor APIs

What I think RIM needs to do, is get out of the mobile OS business. If they think they are great at manufacturing (which isn't clear to me), then make hardware. Otherwise, let Samsung, HTC, Motorola fight that battle. Instead,  get your phone make by somebody in China/Taiwan, slap Android on it and add the BB pixie-dust on top - the exchange integration, the enterprise app management and the roaming agreements. Call these the new Blackberries and sell them like crazy.

About BB Messenger: Not sure why some people love them, but since they do have a loyal following, port BB Messenger to iPhone and Android and sell them before somebody else does that (thinking Kik here).

Comments?

OWA doesn't let you mark messages as unread?

This is a RANT - has nothing to do with Android

Unfortunately, my company uses Exchange and OWA for remote access to email.
OWA doesn't let you mark a message as unread (or rather requires you to buy a premium version to do so).

LAME!

Wonder what it will take my company to move to gmail?

Why don't the phone companies allow cheaper roaming for data?

I was travelling abroad recently. What I love about Blackberry and hated about Android, was that with BB, I pay my phone company an extra $10 per month and they automatically allow me to roam all over the world with great data access.

For Android, the best my carrier would do, was kindly offer to charge me $15/MB - which basically means I need to be paranoid about data....

Why can't carriers do something similar to BB - charge me $10 per month and allow me worldwide roaming. They would actually make more money and I would actually use my Android phone when I was abroad.

Great article on how to specify whether you need some hardware for an app

Love this article! Android has done it just right. Let me tell the OS what features I need and which ones are nice to have. Then let me dynamically detect what is available on the phone and degrade gracefully!

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/10/five-steps-to-future-hardware-happiness.html

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Installing the new Google CarHome and StreetView on CyanogenMod (CM6)

Warning: Geeky entry - if you don't use CyanogenMod on your Android phone, please ignore


Have CyanogenMod 6.0 on my NexusOne. Heard about the new release of Google's CarHome app and decided I needed to have it. Tried installing it from the Android market, but got a signature failure. Searched around the web, but couldn't find instructions. Was impatient, so decided I needed to do this for myself.

Remembered seeing an earlier post on how to get Google Voice Search on CM6, so pretty much copied the instructions for that, along with this great post by Diane Hackborn on getting the package name from an apk, to create the following command sequence:

adb pull /system/app/ ~/Desktop/app/
adb remount
adb shell
cd /system/app
rm -f CarHomeGoogle.apk
pm uninstall com.google.android.carhome
rm -f  Street.apk
pm uninstall com.google.android.street

You can create appropriate instructions if you don't have adb and just have Terminal.....