Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web By Daniel Roth Email 06.23.08 WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.07
"Is this interesting to Google?" That's what Andy Rubin was asking Larry Page. It was a spring day in 2005, and the two were in a conference room just off the main lobby at Google's headquarters. A simple yes and Rubin would have walked away happy. They had met three years before, when Rubin was about to launch a smartphone he'd invented called the Sidekick. At the time, Google was just an up-and-comer, trailing AOL and even Lycos in traffic. But Rubin, a well-known Silicon Valley player, chose Google as the Sidekick's default search engine. Page was flattered by the unexpected endorsement. So when Rubin called out of the blue and requested this meeting, well, Page couldn't say no. The Google cofounder arrived late, as usual. Rubin walked to the whiteboard and began his pitch. There were nearly 700 million cell phones sold each year compared with fewer than 200 million PCs - and the gap was widening. Increasingly, he said, phones were the way people wanted to connect with each other and with everything else. Yet the mobile industry was stuck in the dark ages. Unlike the Web, where open standards had fostered a multitude of cool companies and applications, mobile was a tyrannical, closed system, repelling all innovators and disrupters who tried to gain entrance. Rubin said his startup, called Android, had the solution: a free, open source mobile platform that any coder could write for and any handset maker could install. He would make his money by selling support for the system - security services, say, or email management. Android would have the spirit of Linux and the reach of Windows. It would be a global, open operating system for the wireless future. Rubin didn't want money from Page. He already had funding. What he wanted was Google's imprimatur - even an email from Page would do. Rubin figured he could attract more VC funds with the search giant on board, possibly with a hint that Google might be interested in developing its own branded phone. He pulled out a prototype. Page picked up the device. He had been personally frustrated yet fascinated by the mobile market for years. He already knew the numbers - he didn't need Rubin to tell him how many PCs and mobile phones were out there. He also knew that it added up to a massive problem for Google. The desktop metaphor was fading. Phones were going to replace PCs as the main gateway to the Internet, and they were going to do it soon. Why would consumers tether themselves to a PC when phones were growing more and more powerful - and were cheaper, too? But because cell phones ran on different software, had less memory, and operated under the constraints of pay-per-byte wireless networks, the mobile Web was a stripped-down, mimeographed version of the real thing. Reading and surfing and - more to the point - viewing Google ads was a slow, stultifying chore. Even worse, a second-class Web could derail Google's grand strategy. The company was trying to worm its way deeper into users' lives by hosting applications and personal files on Google servers, then dishing them out to the always-connected consumer whenever and wherever needed. That was easy on PCs, but phones didn't play nice with the cloud. Google dominated the Web today, but tomorrow might be a different story. Working the problem had been a nightmare. Google engineers had a closet overflowing with mobile phones to test the company's wireless applications - mobile Google, Blogger, search over SMS. There were dozens of operating systems to navigate, a mobile Tower of Babel completely at odds with the easy access and universal language of the Web. What worried Page most was that the only firm from the PC world that seemed to be successfully navigating the mobile labyrinth was Microsoft, one of Google's biggest rivals. The Windows Mobile platform had less than 10 percent of the US smartphone market, but it was growing fast. Microsoft's system, however, was the ugly stepsister of what Rubin was proposing: Redmond executives cared less about opening up the Net to mobile users than about tying the mobile operating system into its desktop dominance. A decade ago, Microsoft had underestimated the growth of the Web and then lost control of it to Google. Now it looked like it was Google's turn to be caught flat-footed. ... http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-07/ff_android ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
