Google freaked out a bit and turned its vanity Nexus brand into a proper consumer brand. Remember, Nexus was the "developer's phone" originally. The situation with tablets was even worse. Outside of the Xoom and the Transformer, the tablet quality was terrible and just couldn't compete with ipad. Nexus branding is an admission that you can't rely on OEMs anymore. Google can't be Microsoft. It needs to be Apple. Hardware and vendor relationships can't just be passed off to a couple Korean and Japanese firms. You need to do this in-house if you want to compete.
Think about how applications got onto phone before the iPhone; all of the money was "pre-loads". In a world where the only access comes from a a proprietary cable in a factory there's no reality of consumers updating.
Moving from that to a agile development cycle turned out to be too great a leap.
Seems like Microsoft feels it has to be Apple too.
Maybe, but where the idealism gone? Both on HN, in tech circles, and, yes, at Google, there was some healthy dose of idealism. You know, this thing that make people do thing for something else than money, for the better good of humanity for example.
Idealism (and anger) brought us Linux, Vim, the Web, etc.
And it is killing me to see Google follow the normal evolution of mammoth corps, doing all for the brand idol, trying to launch a vast fishnet and catch as much fish as they can to feed the idol.
Brands are not bad per se. In the old times, a good label for wine was just the name of a family who knew how to craft wine, and same for clocks, cars, and on. The brand was a simple hook to hang a carefully pampered reputation vis-a-vis your clients. The core was craftmanship.
Now the reputation has become an end by itself, and one spend more time or money building a "reputation" than crafting and selling useful (or useless) tools. And the more reputation you have the more you need, just like power.
-- I'm the security master.
Andy has embarrassed himself several times by restricting access to the Android code while, at the same time, claiming that Android was open. Granted most users don't care about the source code but it's a punch in the face for all the OSS enthusiasts who believed in Android's open model.
And Android still developed behind closed doors for no good reason. Not only that but the team is siloed from other parts of Google, like some sort of exclusive club.
The people who brought Linux, Vim etc.. had a different motive from the outset. A public company spending millions, if not billions, on a project needs to see return on that investment. I'm not saying that the people involved were not doing it for the sake of improving technology for humanity, and they certainly have, but when you're accountable to shareholders profits often take higher priority.
Too often in these kinds of threads people start with something like "Google should have..." or Apple should..." and arguing from the position of those companies. People play armchair manager and identify fully with a multi billion dollar corporation.
I don't mind studying a business case for education, but I can't cheer on every silly action that a company ends up doing, intentionally or not.
The accountability to shareholders also seems a little like a strawman at times. With regards to Android, a few years ago you could have convincingly argued different product/marketing strategies.
Denying every single "good" action in our professional lifes because it could cheat a shareholder somewhere ... that would definitively be a strawman.
What's right for consumers may not be, and often isn't, right for the business so it's not a case of "right" or "wrong" (because that can vary depending on who's point of view you're looking from) but a case of explaining why the strategy was taken.
>Denying every single "good" action in our professional lifes because it could cheat a shareholder somewhere ... that would definitively be a strawman.
No one said every single good action can be denied and, in fact, I explicitly said that I don't believe the people involved didn't have good intentions. However, if there was a choice to be made between increasing profits or "being good", a public company would often choose the profit route.
I understand what you mean regarding the accountability to the shareholders but I think it's used more as a euphemism to say that they are required to make a profit. They're more than welcome to have a philanthropic branch to their company but if you're investing millions of investor funds without financial gain, questions will be asked; that's the reality.
Completely agree on this point. The over commercialism of brands has killed the idea of good craftsmanship. Add in our "throw-away" society and it looks bleak for people who just attempt to build something that lasts.
If there is one thing which depresses me most on a daily basis, this is it.
I think Google's strategy was to provide no-name handset manufacturers, without the clout to develop these proprietary services or make such deals, with a cheap platform that could browse the web and access Google services. It was a desperate attempt to avoid a world where all mobile services were carrier controlled.
In hindsight they actually needn't have bothered. Apple had sufficient leverage with the iPhone to avoid having to make carrier on-line service lock-in deals. Still, Google couldn't afford to risk that changing, or Apple locking in users to services of it's own.
The generics have some great selling points - they're always the first movers on new chipsets, so you can get good specs for cheaper. The downside is that they're bad at the device integration and quality control aspects, and that can really burn the buyer. OTOH, average quality seems to be better than it was just a few years ago - I think in another year or two some of those companies might become worthy competition for the big names.
This import reseller has some really interesting articles on recent market developments: http://www.topnotchtablets.com/articles
In the end I gave up on the generics and got the Lenovo A2109. In the past I've biased towards Lenovo for laptops too - they never have amazing specs for the price range, but they're one of the only manufacturers that are willing to advertise the physical sturdiness of their equipment, and that always puts me over the fence.
Compare this:
* http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/models/notebooks
* http://www.htc.com/us/smartphones/
vs something like this:
* http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.htm...
It's brilliant for another reason. Other companies might be tempted to go with another OS. But then they'd be foregoing the network effects and other advantages already established by the Android ecosystem. The competing OS project will have to compete internally with Android.
Google is fixing this in the best way possible. Instead of having a 'Windows Phone', a 'Blackberry', an 'Apple', and an 'Android', you now have a 'Galaxy', a 'Droid', a 'Nexus', and an 'Android' (cheap Chinese), etc.
This means that instead of Blackberry now competing against just Android and being a go-to choice if you didn't like Android, they're now competing in mind share with each individual manufacturer. This is going to be very bad for non-Android, as their brand share is now being heavily diluted among countless choices for general consumers.
Brilliant marketing play - I wonder if it's a conscious move by the Android alliance, or it's just playing out naturally?