“Google’s Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products but could have more overlap, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said, a week after the two came under a single boss.” That’s that, then.
“Google’s Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products but could have more overlap, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said, a week after the two came under a single boss.” That’s that, then.
Chrome OS is exclusively web-based. Apps that must be on a server. Android OS is independent of the web. I can work offline easily. I can root my device and have access to a richer system architecture.
I have no problem with them influencing each other, but I frankly do not desire their convergence into a single simplified, web application only, locked to one type of hardware OS that I can not take control of if I so desire.
Edited 2013-03-21 13:48 UTC
Not entirely true. Chrome Apps can be offline, and quite a few are at this point.
Though that being said, I too would rather see influence than merger.
Thanks for the correction.
That was not entirely clear to me when I played around on my sisters Chromebook recently. Compared to even my older tablet running Gingerbread, I totally preferred Android to ChromeOS.
So, yes, definitely influence but not merger.
Chrome OS apps do not have to be on a server. There is this wrongly held view that html5 or wep apps require an internet connection.That is not so.
They should at least make it possible for you to run Android apps at some point on Chrome OS. Otherwise, it will go the way of Reader eventually.
I can hardly wait for it.
I think Google are more likely to kill it off if ChromeOS did start supporting Android:
* Developers wouldn’t bother to write web apps tailored for ChromeOS if they they could just target Android
* There’s be no point Google maintaining two OSs if they both just run Android Apps.
Edited 2013-03-21 15:21 UTC
I agree, but you would conclude that Google would then kill Android.
From a business point of view, what will Android bring to Google in 1 or 2 years when most major smartphone and tablets vendors (Samsung, Amazon, ZTE, Huawei) will put their own services on their devices instead of Google services?
And what is the point for Google to keep improving Android to help Samsung compete against Google’s own Motorola division?
On the other hand, Chrome OS may become a nice mobile proprietary OS for Google hardware.
Edited 2013-03-21 16:16 UTC
So long as Google is the default search engine and Admob (I think it’s called) is the preferred API for service in-app adverts, then I don’t think it matters too much if vendors do load their own services.
If the rumors and speculation are to be believed, then that point is moot as Samsung will be switching away from Android and using Tizen instead.
Google make money from their online services. It doesn’t really make much sense for them to go the way of Apple and have a their OS’s limited to their own hardware.
If Samsung has the guts to run their own app store infrastructure, then setting up or buying out an existing advertising solution for developers isn’t that impossible.
Apple did it with iAd. Nokia did it with NAX which is just an exchange network.
As far as search, there are plenty of alternatives to search. There’s Bing, and then there are new types of search up and coming like that from Facebook’s Graph which searching a different type of data.
Google is becoming increasingly replaceable in Android and it definitely is cause for concern.
It does if they want to have a leash on their OEMs. Look at Microsoft with the Surface.
I don’t consider this as a “cause for concern”, far from it.
Thanks. You completely changed my mind.
It’s a cause for concern for Google shareholders but apart from that ??
Android has 90% market share in China without Google services: who cares ?
Edited 2013-03-22 09:38 UTC
Are you saying that it being a cause for concern for Google’s shareholder (who have Google’s profitability in mind) is not a Google problem? I’m not sure I’m following.
Is Google making Android because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside?
I’m saying that it’s a problem for Google, not for us. Simple enough ?
You’ve raised some interesting points, but most of them aren’t related to my post at all:
I didn’t say it was impossible. In fact I didn’t even comment on whether it was likely or not. I just said Google care more about getting advertising revenue than what skins vendors modify their ROMs with.
Totally. Though I never said that Google was the only search engine around. All I said was that Google care more about being the default search engine than what skins vendors modify their ROMs with.
Google were always replaceable in Android. That’s never changed.
And it’s not a cause for concern for anyone other than Google. Why should my mum or wife care if Bing or DDG is the default search engine or even who provides the mobile app ads? All they want is their apps to work.
That doesn’t address my comment at all. If Google wanted to release their own hardware then they wouldn’t be distributing Android to OEMs to begin with. Plus you can have a leash on your OEMs without releasing your own hardware anyway.
However that’s all moot because Google doesn’t really care about what crap OEMs add to Android just so long as Google’s advertising and search services stay connected.
People keep comparing Google to Microsoft in terms of Android and Windows. However that comparison doesn’t really work because Windows is Microsoft’s product, where as Google created Android drive more traffic to Google’s ads and search. Thus Android isn’t Google’s product as such, it’s more a facilitator for Google’s products.
It’s very unlikely that these vendors will switch to their own android version.
They have to do this “Cold Turkey” style because the license treats this as forking, and if you fork android – you are not allowed to use the Google version.
They will loose early code access, they will have to build a new app store overnight, and even if they find a decent google maps replacement – many people will still be disappointed.
This is why Samsung will develops a new OS (Tizen)
Running Android apps isn’t important in the long term. HTML5 is getting heavily invested to reach parity with modern APIs. Pretty soon, people be able to differ between regular native apps and web apps.
People who follow the adventures of ChromeOS and Chromebook will see where Google is going.
Meanwhile companies keep on switching back to native after discovering HTML5 is just a fad and the support is still quite far from what native offers.
Talking about Facebook and its IPO fiasco?
And on Xero, Wooga and a few others I know about but I am under NDA in those cases.
The problem is that to get to a point where the HTML5 app is similar to the native one, they need to spend way more time and money.
It’s not looking promising any time soon.
Wait? You’re telling me it costs more money to develop an application using…
* a web server
* Server side code (PHP)
* CSS
* JavaScript
* HTML
… than it is to develop a Java application?
Say it ain’t so.
With the recent announcement of the demise of Google Reader, I think people have a vested interest in wanting to run local/offline apps. Who wants to run apps that can be yanked by the developer at any given time? I don’t. This is a conversation we’re not having about web apps being the future, but really should be.
Of course, some apps, such as Facebook or Google Voice, could never really be run entirely offline, but those are not the ones I’m talking about.
Google Reader could not have been implemented without a remote service for synchronizing subscriptions, content, and state across devices. At the very least, a local app would need to connect to a personal server. But if you also want the social features, than you need a public cloud.
There are thousands of feed readers, but most of them either had no cross-device synchronization or relied on the Google Reader API. Only a few web apps like Feedly or NewsBlur had an independent synchronization service. But those services could conceivably disappear as well.
Your vision depends on the uptake of private cloud appliances or other personal server solutions. That’s the only way to implement a seamless mobile computing experience without depending on the fleeting whims of web companies. It could happen, but it’s a long-shot.
Actually, the biggest problem with the demise of Google Reader is that it can’t easily be replaced by offline apps. It’s chief advantages are that it’s always online – meaning that nothing ever gets missed – and that storing state on a central server allows feeds to be accessed from multiple devices without syncing.
Well, it’s like email in that way… you need somewhere for the data (email) to be stored, but you don’t need to have the APP in the cloud. I think what we really need is for the RSS standard to be updated that defines a standard way of storing FEEDS in the cloud, so you can use whatever app you want and then have a server that stores the feeds, and if the server goes down, you just move the feeds to a different server, and continue using the same app.
The problem isn’t where the feeds are stored – that’s already on the net, whether by a cloud provider or someone’s personal web server. The problem is where the subscriptions are stored, and where you keep the information of which feeds you’ve read.
If you’re using a desktop reader, then each client (laptop, work desktop, mobile, etc) has to track that stuff itself, so that a) if you subscribe to something new, it needs to be separately added to all clients, and b) any given client doesn’t know which items you’ve already read on a different client. Google Reader solved that problem by centralising that info…
Right, that’s what I meant when I said ‘feeds’
Why can’t we standardize all that shit so any app would work with any ‘feed repository’? In other words, I set up my feeds/subscriptions/whatever on a server, and then I can use whatever app(s) I want to access them.
We already do this with email (IMAP), so don’t see a reason why it couldn’t work with RSS. Google has already proven it can work, but the only problem is that everybody was using the same repository/API.
Edited 2013-03-22 01:11 UTC
It is called IMAP in email’s case.
Any given protocol would just needs to have enough information to track those situations.
OTOH, we have enough information overload already…
This isn’t going to happen. HTML5 proponents have only harmed HTML’s long term adoption by pushing HTML5 on shops too early. The recoil from this will cause developers to be wary of HTML for years for app development.
Yes, because Eric Schmidt has never said anything that has proven wrong, inaccurate, or deceptive.