gibwell

Google building more and more stuff directly into search has been going on since the early 2000s. Why are you uneasy now?

There are many googlers who sincerely support free software, but Google the company is a business that has no particular interest in preserving other businesses or even business models.

Why would anyone expect Google not to eliminate its competitors?

Google is in the business of organizing the worlds information and monetizing it through advertising.

If you are in the information business, Google is in competition with you.

Google/Motorola initiated a patent suit against Apple's use of push email in Germany. What did that have to do with anything Apple was doing?

That is not an answer to my question.

What do you expect Apple to do?

These things are made open source under a permissive license. The whole point is that people can do what they want with the code.

Would you prefer that Google gains a monopoly in operating systems as well as search?

What I believe is that (as you have claimed) Android started as open, and is not any longer, but that many advocates of Android (Google included) continue to assert that it is.

You seem to be trying to wriggle out of this by saying that what people mean by Android today has moved past the 'open beginning' that is all that was ever meant to be open, and that's not Google's fault.

I agree that this isn't Google's fault. But let's speak plainly. Android began as open and that was all that Google intended. Things have changed since then and only a part of Android is open anymore.

Why try to claim otherwise?

This is absolutely disingenuous. Google routinely refers to 'Android activations', and the success of Android in public communications. This use is clearly not confined to carefully referring to the AOSP.

If as you say, Google intended to have 'Android' mean the AOSP at one point, and it has stopped trying for that definition now because it failed to make the distinction to the public, then that only strengthens the point that Google (and you) know that what people think of as 'Android' is not open, and so are knowingly exploiting the ambiguity between 'Android' and the AOSP when you perpetuate that idea.

A little, but they are still regarded as 'better than the others' by those who for some reason desire that Google obtain a monopoly over search and the OS.

I don't agree with the parent poster's implication that 'because you work for Google you are a spokesperson'

But.. You have certainly claimed to have authority to speak about parts of Google's strategy because you were in certain meetings.

I don't disagree with most of what you are saying except for the part about Google putting its own most significant parts of android into closed source components.

Your comment about 'You don't get to freeride after X years' is perfectly reasonable if google's goal is to stop contributing to the open parts of android.

I am not disputing Google's right to do whatever it takes to compete, or that there is somehow something morally wrong about that.

I am disputing the canard that 'Android is open' when really only a part of it is, and that part is not what most people think of as Android.

I do thing there is something morally wrong with perpetuating this misleading idea, even though it furthers Google's PR goals.

I know that corporations mislead us all the time with communications that are technically true but pragmatically false. I realize it may be naive to expect different behavior, but it's certainly not going to stop if it isn't called out.

Sure, but this isn't just the manufacturers working somehow against Google's goal to have android be truly open. Google is actively participating in this process rather than resisting it. Android is, for example not licensed with copyleft or some other construction designed to keep it open, and Google itself builds its most significant end-user functionality as closed components.

I note that you are implicitly conceding that what is commonly considered to be Android is indeed not open.

This falls pray to a reductio ad absurdum. The android you can do this with is nothing like the android that ships on consumer's phones.

So no, you absolutely cannot do this with what almost everyone thinks of as 'Android'.

You can do it with a different thing that also has the name 'Android', but isn't the same.

I assume you haven't noticed this, because otherwise you would be deliberately trying to spread a misleading view.

By that definition, Apple uses patents defensively against those who are using to shut down iOS.

That's unlikely when so many people in the tech sphere (PG included) paint Google as an 'open' benevolent company fighting the 'evil' of everyone else.

Seems highly unlikely unless the next generation Google Glass is a quantum leap ahead of the existing one.

I'm not a naysayer about the product in general (although I am not a fan of google), but I have used Glass, and it is far from being a usable consumer product.

Iteration will change that. However I have doubt that that have got to that point yet.

If this is article is accurate, then I think the operative words are 'invitation only'. The idea would be to get massive celebrity endorsement to create desire without real consumers actually experiencing the product.

So far Glass has done a great job of making Google not look like a boring copycat. If they can keep this up and launch a great product at some point, it will turn out to be a masterpiece of marketing.

It means nothing of the sort. Regular consumers are absolutely locked into google by this, and as a consequence, so are developers.

The fact that a few hobbyists can back their phones does nothing to change this.

These aren't frand patents. And even if they are found to be, they are still entitled to a /reasonable/ license fee.

False. Google uses parents aggressively through its wholly owned subsidiary, Motorola.

Give that they are the ones with a search monopoly, that's clearly true, but it doesn't say anything about their ethics.

With all due respect, they are already suffering as if they had done this, so I think they have little to lose by actually doing it.

The Mac Pro is from Apple, so it is fair game as an example of something 'passé', bad or a dead end.

So it was just nastiness waiting for a made up justification.

That's no moon.

So all the vitriol about this issue was simply misplaced?

You have to be smart to choose intellectual property worth buying.

It's impressive if it is good for the customers, but the comparison with Apple is uninformative linkbait.

Do you think Google, or Apple AstroTurf?

I was put off by the idea they needed a business model other than selling the app for money.

A little googling should provide the due diligence you require.