There's a bit of a story going on between Google, Acer, and Alibaba, a Chinese mobile operating system vendor. Acer wanted to ship a device with Alibaba's operating system, but Google asked them not to, and Acer complied. The reason is that Acer is a member of the Open Handset Alliance, which prohibits the promotion of non-standard Android implementations - exactly what Alibaba is shipping. On top of that, Alibaba's application store hosts pirated Android applications, including ones from Google.
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Member since:2006-06-18
Google is totally cool with competitors offering Windows Phone, iOS, Tizen, Firefox OS, MeeGo, WebOS, BB10 or whatever open source or proprietary operating systems alongside Android.
But if you want to offer an incompatible competing OS based on Android code, they will not let you be part of the club that has early access to said code.
While I would have preferred that Google competes on merit and educating consumers about such practices, their actions are totally understandable.
Member since:2011-04-25
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-01-09
Acer joined OHA and agreed to abide by the terms. As I read the news around this, it's quite simple. Acer was going to release a phone that ran the other OS that included a "market" hosting Google apps. Never mind that allegation that the market is hosted pirated apps, let's pretend Acer has a license to them because of being a member in the OHA.
And there's the rub, the license Acer has to the app is from membership in the OHA which has compatibility guidelines which this other OS does not meet. Therefore there's no license for the Google Apps.
It is perfectly reasonable for Google to say nuh-uh for putting their apps on this other OS. If this other OS is partially compatible and the apps have problems then Google's damaged by the appearance of faulty apps. That's why there are compatibility guidelines in the first place.
This time, I think Google is being reasonable. Lately it's been rare.
<off topic rant>
I'm still sore about the bait-and-switch Google Galaxy Nexus phone. It was released first and premiered on Verizon, you'd think they'd back it. Instead the drop the CDMAs like a hot potato and now I've got a Verizon phone with sluggish Verizon releases and minimal (if any) official Google releases. The other Galaxy Nexus' devices have Jelly Bean from an official released download on Google's site. The only Jelly Bean for the Verizon Nexus is a leaked version. I bought the Galaxy Nexus BECAUSE it was a Google Nexus "official" device. Silly me to expect it to be treated like previous Nexus devices.
</off topic rant>
I'm considering the new iPhone now. I'm also thinking about jumping carriers, but both are irrelevant to the topic at hand. As generally annoyed as I am with Google, in this particular case with Acer, Google so far appears to be in the right.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2008-06-09
Acer didn't fork Android. They wanted to release a phone based on another vendor's OS. Like they release Windows Phones and Android phones. Did you read the article?
Alibaba is not a member of OHA. So telling Acer they will revoke any Android ecosystem privileges when they release a phone that is not branded as Android is dubious. Especially since Acer makes 100% compliant Android phones as well that would ship along side the one running Aliyun OS.
Google is using their Android OHA membership as a tool to add a barrier to entry to a competitor's OS based on an Open Source Project.
Edited 2012-09-16 21:16 UTC