This is an interesting detailed example of Google's strategies in the past.
http://goo.gl/cT01R
One point made is that Moto is a very weak vendor .. around 4% of the android market. HTC, Samsung, LG all are ahead, and HTC & Samsung *way* ahead.
This is an interesting problem with google and being "open". According to the detailed example (Skyhook, a location service), google stopped skyhook from being a vendor to HTC & Samsung who used skyhook as a preferred location service provider .. being considerably better than google. This threat caused google to threaten loss of license for HTC & Samsung if they used skyhook. They went along with google. Not particularly "open". Sounds like Oracle and the Java feud.
I'm a bit puzzled by google's licensing: apparently they make nothing on the handset use of android due to being open source. They do control the use of the open source use of android however, much as Sun/Oracle have done to keep the standard compatible across devices.
The more I look at the deal, the best I think google will do is "have a nice phone" with a small (< 10%) market share. They will, however, have power over the big vendors and probably be a good thing to consumers by forcing compatibility. Hopefully that will help the current apps market where google does seem problematic for app writers. As an example, it would be good if google had a set of device categories like "feature" (dumb) phone, smart phone/pod, tablet, computer so that an app writer had solid targets. Apple apparently has made that a priority, and possibly one of the reasons my gotta have app (ultralingua dictionary) has never bothered with android.
One prediction: there may be a return to HTML5 "apps". The recent silly fight between amazon kindle reader and apple had a wonderful result: the kindle reader now has a web version that is *great*, showing that the whole app thing, for an interesting set of services, is just silly and html5 a better solution, letting the app work in any browser from a phone to a desktop.
-- Owen
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