Zaim3

Technically Nexus devices have always been "at cost" to Google, since it's the OEM who gets the profit off the hardware sales in exchange for Google controlling the experience. So Rubin's statement about "selling through" the Nexus 7 actually says very little since that's always been the case. The real issue (and what the media is mostly missing) is whether ASUS is selling it at a loss or not, and considering the Memo the Nexus 7 was refactored from was originally going to be sold at $250, it seems unlikely.

"Because the FRAND abuses originated by Motorola and supported by Google is some of the most disgraceful behaviour seen in the industry since the days of Rambus. You don't participate in the creation of a standard and then turn around and sue companies who adopt those standards in good faith. It undermines the entire industry."

You do if you're grasping at straws to defend yourself against the initial patent aggressors. Can't really blame them.

"What the hell? How is the PageRank patent not protection to Google?"

Because it belongs to Stanford University, not Google.

The Android tablet ecosystem was stuck in a chicken/egg problem where nobody would develop for it until there was a market, and they'd be no market until there are tablet apps. A successful Nexus tablet increases the value of the entire ecosystem.

Also keep in mind that there -is- a margin for ASUS. Google's reference devices have always been a split where the OEM gets the hardware profit and Google controls the entire experience. The Nexus 7 follows the exact same model all of their previous efforts have.

Hard to feel sorry for "abuses" against the initial aggressors.

I think that was more down to 4.0.3 not being stable than anything else. Even the T-mobile Nexus S had that OTA pulled after 2 weeks, so made no sense to push it out to the 4G.

"Indeed. Google could have implemented it on iOS if they had wanted to, but that was a pretty big selling point for some people to get an Android phone over iOS."

No they couldn't, Apple controlled the app, Google was just the pipe. A recent WSJ article claims that both Google and Apple wanted feature parity/turn by turn, but Google wanted an increased amount of Google branding in exchange which Apple refused so they ultimately couldn't come to terms.

But the "vanishingly few" are often the most significant features of a particular years iOS upgrade, whereas Google's 1st party apps are for the most part decoupled with the major differences between 4.X and 2.X being UI.

The situation is much more nuanced than you state.

It's pretty important to user satisfaction that Joe can say to Sally "You have an iPhone, right? Check out what they can do now!" And Sally be able to say "Mine does that too? Awesome!"

Sally won't be able to do Turn by turn if she has a 3GS or iPhone 4, whereas even out of date Android's on 1.6 can.

Yeah, I read it as the iOS/OS S style convergence. Different systems, but consistent UI/UX/feature implementations across the two.

The T-Mobile Nexus S you're referring to had its 4.0.3 OTA pulled within the same month it was released due to mass complaints with Android OS wakelocks/battery drain, instability and other misc things.

For 3 months after that, even their current flagship the yakju Galaxy Nexus was stuck on an "old" version of Android 4.0.2 whilst they worked on a fixed version of 4.0.3 which they eventually shipped in March as 4.0.4.

While I'm not saying you should be pleased at the complete lack of communication/respect given to you, I think their decision to stick with an older, stable version of the OS on the Nexus S 4G as opposed to pushing an update they knew was broken was the correct one.

Not really seeing why Gruber thinks Win8 "contracts" are "richer" than Android's intents/content providers. They're pretty much identical (though "contracts" has a much clearer name).

Getting B&N to drop their very effective invalidity claims against MSFT's "license for linux" mystery patents couldn't have hurt either, and was probably the main motivator.

Well in the case of ICS, it's more accurate to say that Matias Duarte re-used his earlier ideas than "copied" from himself.

Looks like Google accidentally started two memes this month: #whitespace and #selectivelyquoteprivacypolicy

"create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services)"

Seems reasonable enough to me. Seems like you're taking the wording to the logical extreme and rolling with it.

Win8 contracts seem very similar to Android's "Intent" functionality.

ChromeOS/Chrome Web Store seems to be about countering the the trend towards "appification" (the consumption of the web through native clients) by turning the web itself into an app store and giving websites native abilities.

Android is Google's take on the appification model. While there's overlap in that Android has a Chrome browser, I think the distinction is that Android's interaction model means that native apps will be primary method for navigation for the forseeable future since the native Web app model doesn't translate cleanly on a touchscreen device.

The Web is essentially Google's Desktop OS, so it has a vested interest in keeping it alive. ChromeOS is a way of accelerating that process, since the closer it gets to becoming viable alternative to an OS running native apps, the closer the web gets by extension. Creating a standalone OS allows them to frame the problem better than just Chrome browser, since a host OS always has a slight masking effect, even if the observer is aware of it.

> "Well my app just happens to run smaller on your huge screen" approach."

Android has adequate methods of dealing with that (density independent pixels, Relative positioning/Box model of layout) so I still think the source argument holds.