For example, John Carmack/id Software don't release their current engines until they've made progress on the next, better version. I don't think many people consider Carmack to be evil or non-altruistic.
Also, Carmack doesn't engage in PR wars about the non-openness of others.
Google created a hardware ecosystem with a variety of partners. If they start playing favorites with who gets new Android releases, they will undermine that ecosystem.
It's not so much that they're keeping the code closed, it's that they're only releasing the code to a handful of select partners. All the small players get left out in the cold.
They operate in so many markets they have to have internal chinese walls between departments. The ads team is separated from search team, and the search team is separate from their analytics team. Google knows that these internal teams would have conflicts of interests so it keeps them separate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices#O...
You think Google will share future plans etc. with all of those? Might as well broadcast it on Google.com since Apple, MS,HP, RIM, etc. will anyway get wind of it.
Reminds me of the Windows 95 and MS Office fiasco which resulted in Word Perfect suing them.
[1] The degree of Motorola's access/influence and the degree of the partners' (HTC/LG/Samsung/Etc) access/influence.
We don't know what will happen, but it's likely that the partners will have the same access and influence to Google/Android that they always did. Google is going to "run Motorola as a separate business".
[2] The non-partners that don't license android still won't have any access/influence.
The fact that non-partners won't gain more access/influence to Google/Android because of the acquisition is a non-story. Also a non-story: pigs wont fly as a result of this acquisition.
Their interpretation of "Don't be evil" has never prevented them from writing proprietary software.
"Do no evil" is a declaration of hubris or wilful blindness: no moral agent fails to do evil at times. An entity that did no evil would necessarily be incorruptible, immune to dilemmas, and in most ethical systems, omniscient as well.
"Don't be evil" is an almost comically low bar. Almost nobody other than comic-book villains, and perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer and certain pedophile priests, is evil according to the moral code they aspire to live by. The only reason it's even worth mentioning is that Google was born in a world dominated by Microsoft and Doubleclick, which were generally agreed to actually be evil, and Google aspired to do better. "Don't be evil" is satisfied by having the tiniest modicum of ethical achievement.
In short, the distinction between the meanings of the two phrases could hardly be more pronounced.
Anyone who claims that Google aspires to "do no evil" is excluding themselves from any serious discussion.
close in-house integration of software and hardware hasn't been known as a way to commoditization
On the other hand if "do no evil" means "do no evil as long as it helps our bottom line", then this could very well mean the end of Android's openness. And it doesn't have to be obvious: It could just be that in the future, we'll see cool "Google Android" devices running so-far unreleased OS versions.
"The code will be coming - it's just not quite ready for our partners yet" will be their line.
But the code won't be arriving. Either not until the even newer "Google Android" device is out, or not at all.
We'll see how this will develop.
Personally, I would love to believe Google here because that means that we are going to see awesome pure-google phones which will both be a pleasure to use and well-built hardware-wise, while nobody else will be pissed and will continue to be able to sell their phones - maybe even without paying Microsoft for FAT in the future.
If Google doesn't follow through with their promise, we'll still see awesome devices from them, but the rest of the manufacturers will be stuck with an outdated, possibly not updated any more, version of Android which is a shame because I would really love to see Android on devices that are not pure consumer-phones (like barcode scanners which still run Windows CE or Windows Mobile 6)
The part of Motorola which Google didn't buy, incidentally is a huge producer of these scanners after their acquisition of Symbol Technologies a while back. They continue to produce Windows CE devices to this day.