Breaking: Google Announces Android and Open Handset Alliance
Erick Schonfeld
149 comments »
Google just officially announced the Open Handset Alliance to create an open platform (to be called Android) for a Linux phone that can run mobile Google apps and others. The 34 partners include T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, NTT Docomo, China Mobile, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Qualcomm, Intel, and Google itself. No mention of Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, or Nokia (which is pushing its own Ovi development platform). Here is the press release. Writes Andy Rubin, the man behind the Google Phone. :
Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few months, we’re not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing — the Open Handset Alliance and Android — is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today
Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.
Reports started trickling out last week that Google is ready to announce its Gphone, or rather Gphones. It is more a reference design, than a single phone. Android-based phones will start to come out on the market in the latter half of 2008 (from HTC at minimum). One mobile startup CEO I know says he was contacted on Friday by Google and given the final go-ahead to port his app onto Android, which his company has not even started to work on yet. The software development kit will be available on November 12. Today’s announcement is just that. There is nothing concrete here in terms of products or services, but going mobile represents a major growth opportunity for Google, which wants to bring the Internet (along with search and contextual ads) to your phone.
John Biggs at CrunchGear is liveblogging the conference call, and he is also streaming the audio
Here are my notes from the call:
Google CEO Eric Schmidt notes there are 3 billion mobile users. He says:
“We want to create a whole new experience for mobile users.”
“This will be the first fully-integrated software stack, including an operating system and middleware, being made available under the most liberal open-source license ever given to mobile operators [and handset makers].”
“This is not an announcement of a Gphone. We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android. This will make possible all sorts of applications that have never been made available on a mobile device.”
He think s a”lack of a collaborative effort” is what has been keeping back the mobile Web. Android will help developers reduce complexities and costs across different mobile devices.
“Mobile software complexity and cost is increasing, but mobile users want the same apps as they have on the Internet. Android will be able to deliver on this.”
Sergey Brin: “As I look at it I reflect, ten years ago I was sitting at a graduate student cubicle. We were able to build incredible things,. There was a set of tools that allowed us to do that. It was all open technologies. It was based on Linux, GNU, Apache. All those pieces and many more allowed us to do great things and distribute it to the world. That is what we are doing today, to allow people to innovate on today’s mobile devices. Today’s mobile devices are more powerful than those computers I was working on just ten years ago. I cannot wait to see what today’s innovators will build.”
No ad-supported phones, says Andy Rubin in Q&A: “Part of this Android solution is a very robust HTML Web browser, so there is really no difference between browsing on a phone [and on a PC]. Contrary to speculation, you won’t see a completely ad-driven phone on this platform for some time.” But he confirms that this plays into Google’s overall advertising strategy by bringing a more fully functioning Web browser to the handset. Notes that Android will require at minimum the equivalent of a 200 MHz ARM 9 processor. The platform is open source, and that will be its competitive advantage over other mobile platforms.
Schmidt: “The best model is to be open. that is what the Internet has taught us. The test of course is whether the applications and developers emerge. The reason we are announcing now is to make sure developers have time to make available applications that have never been available before but are common on Macs and PCs.”
And not that he is announcing anything, but: “If you were to build Gphone, you would build it on this platform.”
Qs about ability of carriers to lock down devices. Rubin: “When you free something into the open it is up to the industry to do something with it.” (i.e., it is not Google’s problem).
Q: “So if the industry wanted to create completely locked down devices, that would be possible?”
And Rubin: “Yes.”
Schmidt: “While that is possible, it is highly unlikely.” Uh-huh, what planet does he live on?
Q: Any overlap with OpenSocial?
Schmidt: “Google announces products whenever they are ready, and the teams are different. OpenSocial will be a framework that will run extremely well on Android for all the obvious reasons. Developers building interesting social apps will have the benefit of mobility as Android becomes widespread.”
Here is a video:
Android? Are you serious? What kind of name is that?
Ryan - Check out the NYTimes.com article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11.....technology
Woohoo!
cool
The Gphone will be a great asset to developers, fostering much needed mobile innovations.
Cheers for openness!
I wonder if this will pressure Stevo down in Cupertino to open up a bit.
The video does not work? is there a problem???
Man do Larry, Sergey and Eric sure get a lot accomplished at Quiznos on Saturday.
The’re workin with a dog, please don’t give them narcotics anymore
I read on Sunday New York Times.
This is a very underwhelming announcement, I don’t think anyone in Finland or Cupertino will be scared. Creating a big fuzzy platform is NOT going to give us sexy devices. You need one company, one vision for that. Not some democratic open debating club.
I agree is a bit underwhelming with the lack of specifics, no demo of capabilities or the fact that it’s over a year before we see any real hardware.
I’ll try to stay cautiously optimistic about this one…but when is the general public going to realize that Google is not a tech company that likes to build “free” software for everyone?
I’m not sure I want ads everywhere, all the time. I’d rather pay for an iPhone. Mobile Safari does a great job at getting me to the web services I need, especially for a 1.0 version.
I’m not sure exactly what Google is going to bring that MS, Palm, RIM and Apple haven’t already done.
The second “open alliance” from Google in a week. I’m all for this, I’m all for OpenSocial as well, but when did an “alliance” ever accomplish anything in the business world?
It’s clear to me that Google wants to be the software infrastructure of internet much like Cisco aims to be the hardware infrastructure. Inspite of their moronic motto of “Do No Evil”, this is way beyond evil.
@AnonTroll
How exactly is it evil to push open standards that give every developer equal footing? No need to “hack” the platform to install 3rd party apps (ARE YOU LISTENING APPLE).
Guys - I’m live blogging the announcement and streaming it at live.crunchgear.com.
http://operator11.com/shows/1053/episodes/28816
I can’t believe all the negative comments. The mobile industry in the US is horribly restrictive. My blackberry from verizon has its gps disabled and I’m still pissed about that. A new class of phones designed specifically to offer the consumer as much choice and flexibility as possible is great news.
Also, if anyone knows how to enable the built-in gps device on a 8830, please let me know.
Vincent, this doesn’t really have anything to do with sexy devices. (And who’s looking to Google for sexy?)
This is about fostering a sustainable mobile ecosystem–long overdue given the scale of the mobile opportunity–and I suspect it will in time prove widely and deeply impactful.
@Some Dude, it’s evil because once Google controls the underlying platform/infrastructure, they own your ass, pure and simply evil. Open source is the friendly term that Google puts out to the public but their real goal is to make you go through them.
I don’t understand this. Verizon passed up in the iPhone and now the Google OS. As a customer, I’m slightly worried.
Great to see another IDEA floating around this horrible mobile industry in the US…
Developing for many different types of phones is a royal pain and there is no solution out there today to make it any easier. Somehow though i don’t see this making that much of a difference - there will still be many mobile platforms to target.
I do find it amusing though that Google is very keen to promote open source and the benefits that they derived from it . Unfortunately they (google) haven’t been that keen to give back / open up their offerings unless it fits with their own commercial plans.
@airj1012
A simple fact of all businesses, they want to be the gateway to their customers, that way you have to pay them a toll to get to their customers. Regardless of what companies say in public, they are rarely altruistic. Their PR machine makes you think they are only doing it for the public good but not so. Right now, Verizon owns the gateway to their customers, there has be a damn good incentive for them to give that to Google.
@AnonTroll,
From what I read, Android will be released as open source, therefore, Google will not control the underlying platform/infrasructure, and anyone can fork the Android platform. Google can only control the direction of the platform to the extent that the developer community likes what they are doing, and the minute that stops, the minute a Fork of Android begins.
The mobile phone industry, nay, the phone industry in general, is ridiculously evil. Incredibly closed and proprietary, and trying desperately to impede new technologies that imperil old POTS circuit-switched business models. Ask yourself why an international call is so expensive when I can route such a call over VoIP for pennies? The costs for basic voice comm per subscriber have dropped tremendously, but the prices in plans haven’t kept up. Why are ringtones, wallpaper GIFs, etc often controlled in a walled-garden and sold at ridiculously high prices? The list goes on and on.
I’m sure Google is trying to make money off this, but if someone can profit by making the world a better place, rather than making it a worse one, I’m all for it.
What about OpenMoko? What will happen to it now that it will start shipping?
So what’s everyone’s timeline expectation?
1 year for the first Android phone
18 months for the first Android phone you actually want to buy
2 years for the bugs and apps to be worked out
Sound about right or do the crowds think this will go faster?
@anonTroll -
i don’t think google wants to “control” the underlying platform/infrastructure, they want it to be open so that you don’t have to write 75 versions of your mobile app in order to get it to run on 80% of the closed-as-balls devices out there.
this is a “good thing” - but i don’t know if it will work. i think google would have better success building its own cellular network from scratch and having open devices to run on it - i just don’t see verizon or sprint “tearing down that wall” anytime soon. but then they would control the platform, but whatevah. i’d rather it exist and have flaws than be perfect and never happen.
This isn’t going to work. I dont care what kind of software you write, a regular old flip-phone is still going to suck. We need new hardware. Period.
an option to be able to push Google gadget into my phone would a good idea i hope this thing works
Also, I’m wondering, is this even that big a deal? It helps 3P devs yeah, but would I be wrong to compare what we have today as facebook now and what Android hopes to accomplish as OpenSocial in terms of Apps?
Is this going to actually bring anything substantially new to the enduser?
To address the misgivings about Android fairly rife in the comments above:
Name: Besides the fact that the name is fairly sexist, I think its a cool name! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android
Idea:
1. Google does not make free software.
Correct. But it does make cool platforms, which opens up a world of possibilities, majority of them driven towards Google monetizing them in some way. Free platform is not the same as free software.
2. An open platform would be a fuzzy platform and one company, one vision would do a better job.
However tempting this theory may be, this is not grounded in the reality. Imagine Internet w/o HTTP platform. That’s exactly the state of mobile scape. It’s a spaghetti of incompatible OS, softwares, runtimes, interfaces and peripheral mgmt. Step into a telecom carrier’s shoes, and you will have nightmares strategizing the drivers for selecting your next hot phone!
One company, one vision - This is pure fiction! If only someone could give me an example for this is the re-collectable history of technology. The vision needs to be driven by the needs of future. And no single company can fully comprehend all those needs, especially when they lie outside the business expedience. Plus, one company-one vision would never cater to the long tail.
With 34 partners, it may be annoyingly slow to lay out the specs, but there would be little room for getting it wrong.
3. What is Google offering that MS, Palm, RIM and Apple haven’t already done.
Well, an open platform, based on industry specs, a browser that should draw on the best from Opera, possibility of drawing a million developers to roll out a million free apps, may be a common interface for embedding a proprietary payment System (are Visa, Mastercard, Paypal listening?)
4. How private will my life remain with Google at the helm of a mobile platform?
The scenario is scary - we all would consider Second Life at some point!
@Ray, @gilltots
I see your points. I should clarify by what I mean by Google owning the platform. In this case, Android is made to be Google apps friendly meaning by default, it will come with Google Apps installed. Default apps are known to have amazingly long shelf lives, just look at IE, Media Player being bundled with Windows resulting in multiple lawsuits.
The side effect of having a common platform is of great benefit to developers, I agree wholeheartedly but that’s what Google wants you to believe is their main reason for doing it. However, their true hidden agenda is to make sure that the Google Apps are always installed by default
Where’s the y! Phone
?
@32
My take on 3.
3. What is Google offering that MS, Palm, RIM and Apple haven’t already done.
I think the Android platform will include SOAP push API and a lot of other APIs. Blackberry push is a one trick pony. Android will, I bet, be a SOAP push/pull dashboard. That would make it easier to create network enabled applications that can run in the background, wake up on events, and doesn’t waste battery life.
Also, the Android should include a set of APIs that are easy to use to grab GPS data and do a whole bunch of things mobile web app developers would love to be able to do.
MS, Palm, RIM, and Apple just sort of took the desktop to the phone.
Google has released 2 potentially, major platforms in a span of a few days: OpenSocial and Android. If you own the platform you have a chance to own everything: http://fishtrain.com/2007/10/1.....t-matters/
Exactly how is this different from J2ME or Symbian, which are both open platforms that are supported on hundreds of devices and have been around for years?..
Wanna listen to a short audio ad before we connect your call?
@37
I agree that the way Android is being described, it is no better than Symbian. See my post 35. Symbian apps don’t extend existing web apps very well, and don’t do push with any kind of data you want. A SOAP push/pull dashboard should ideally form the basis of a mobile OS.
leave it to google to pursue this… I would have rather seen an iphone/gphone battle…
so what exactly is the cost of licensing an existing OS on a mobile from an OEM standpoint? Is it like 5% or 50% of the cost? That is the real question.
Also, the idea of multiple platforms brings with a terrifying reality: The next time I purchase a phone, will I have to answer the question: Symbian or Android? Like Mac Vs. Windows? Ahhhh! I just want to make a call - is that so hard!
blackberry OS FTW!
Their stock is going through he roof, they support several good causes but few can see that they will be history in a short period of time in respect to business life. Yes you heard it here first.
Symbian:
a) Isn’t open source
b) Is a pretty crappy OS to develop on
As for Google Apps being installed by default, the handset manufacturers and networks will control this. They will have the source, so they can build custom firmwares with whatever they want.
If Google wants a manufacturer or service provider to keep their apps, it will have to ink deals with them, and as such, isn’t much different than today’s walled-garden approach.
Moreover, with the source being open, endusers will most likely be able to build their OWN firmwares for Android devices (even if DRM attempts to stop a firmware patch), much like people have hacked up custom access point firmwares (DDWRT for Linksys for example)
Really, people are trying desperately to draw phony comparisons between say, Google and Microsoft here when none apply. So far, software that Google has released has been the most open and benign we’ve seen with respect to end user and developer rights.
It’s so cool. And the best thing… : Here in Germany Google will work together with T-Mobile, which is also the provider for the iPhone. That’s awesome. German Readers can read more in my german blog… http.//www.blogh.de/779
Android is going to be so much fun to play with. Even if it doesn’t take off, I am going to become an Android freak.
And like others have said, Symbian and WM are steaming piles of crap. Blackberry is a one trick pony good only for the enterprise (will every social network need to create a special Blackberry application?). The iPhone is pretty but where are the background applications and where the hell is push? As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a mobile web device market yet. Android will be the first real product in that market.
No pictures? Then I couldn’t care less
Great news to mobile startup or mobile developers. It would be nice for Google to lineup those manufacturers into a standard platform, but the problem is if they cannot lineup the majority, then it would becoming another SDK for special set of phones, just like Windows Mobile, J2ME, the not yet came out iPhone SDK, etc….
It seems like a hard task to beat other platforms and colonize a single platform into majority, but i think Google has done a good job in providing sustainable and practical open-platforms, see GMap and those many many APIs it is providing. I believe Google is a very suitable company to take the challenge.
is it going to be compatible with OpenSocial?
Yes I think its going to be compatible with Open Social.
I’m sorry. How is this related to facebook, and why is it posted on Techcrunch?
Google realizes the importance of having platform to produce innovative applications and took charge of leading the effort here.
My predictions:
2008 Q1: Google will ask move many of its employees to work on this effort instead of those “me too” worthless efforts.Anyways, majority of the revenues currently are from its core products (search/ads).
2008 Q2: Google Mobile OS pre-beta will be ready and app prototypes developement kicks off.
2008 Q3: Google integrates mobile OS with gphone.
2008 Q4: GPhone just in time for holidays.By then there are thousands of cool mobile aps available.All cellphone carriers by then charge nominal flat rate for data charges as they see google’s magic will increase the volume that justifies the low rates.
Now I woder what will iphone folks do in parallel to minimize google’s effect.
Google can be so open because they make a killing in ad revenue. They use openness as an excuse to monopolize and kill competitors. Open social to kill facebook, and this to kill the iPhone. They don’t like these closed systems because they can’t get exclusive ads in. I think their no-evil guise will start to wear thin.
Does Google truly believe in openness for the greater good/innovation rather than a way to monopolize? Consider whether they would ever open up their revenue split calculations, the source or their billions.
Open standards is one thing. But open software is simply giving away work for free and killing competition and jobs. It does lower the barrier to entry for product development which is a good thing but I think Google is more motivated by the possibility of more publishers, of which it takes half of their ad revenue, rather than the quality of products.
Google is stepping on developers like ants. It makes small business nervous to think that Google can simply erase your product with something free of charge. Of course small business could make their product free and generate revenue from ads but could still not compete with Google, who gets 100% of ad revenue while the small business gets 50%. This is monopoly.
F*ck Google
That is great!
Is this a new platform for Opensocial-apps?
The german source for gPhone news:
http://www.gphone-news.de
“I’m sorry. How is this related to facebook, and why is it posted on Techcrunch?”
Good question, only reasoning I can come up with is, this open alliance goes hand in hand with OpenSocial which threatens to kill facebook’s growth.
So, if Google erases your business with open source, it’s bad and evil, but if Richard Stallman or Linus does it, it’s absolutely peachy? And how can you characterize the carriers and handset manufacturers as little guys, small fry developers getting stepped on, when it is these people who in fact make it expensive and difficult for the small developers to deploy to their platforms!
I own an iPhone, I love it, but Steve Jobs says no to small time developers deploying native apps, and this is less evil than Google releasing a mobile operating system where anyone can build it, and anyone can write apps for it?
Google can only kill your platform with an open solution, if you weren’t open enough in the first place. It’s the greedy and fearful people creating walled gardens that are shooting themselves in the foot by giving Google the opportunity to upstage them.
man…this is huge. these guys are really shaking up the industry via humble little text ads.
maybe Blodget’s forecast has some merit afterall…
@52
If you don’t like what Google is doing, how about what the rest of the mobile industry is doing? You can’t even make a simple web app that’s available and works decently on most smartphones. As a software developer, I don’t want to be using .NET on Windows Mobile, using sockets for Symbian, figuring out push for each and every application I make for Blackberry, etc., etc. etc.
I will admit that Google is developing into a monopoly if you admit that Android sounds like the closest thing to a really powerful and flexible platform for mobile web apps. The problem isn’t Google, its Symbian, Microsoft, RIM, Yahoo!, ……
55: “Google can only kill your platform with an open solution, if you weren’t open enough in the first place”
Really? So making something open makes it Google proof? Really? So if my company had mad an open Ajax mapping solution before Google maps and licensed it to companies for use it would still be ok? Or by open, do you mean free? It’s hard to work for free when you don’t have a billion dollar ad network. Could a an open and free maps product really compete? Not without an ad network. If you go the ad supported route Google will only give you 50% revenue while their product takes 100%. This is a monopoly.
@57
Yes, you’re right. The way the mobile industry works at the moment is disgusting, and this move by Google is for the better. But that’s not to say its harmless to other industries. I’m not comfortable with Google leading the effort because they’re involved in many other areas of the web including consumer products and advertising. This means that their priorities are not going to be exclusively for the benefit of the mobile software industry.
Two questions
1. How much cash Sun made on Java and how much Google is going to earn releasing this Android software for free?
2. If open technologies are so great then when Google will release its search software for free. I would like to see some innovation in the search field also.
I think a lot of the things people are talking about here seems misguided. People are saying this will not foster a slick sexy interface, but it is not the iphone.
Google is targeting the world (3 billion users) Apple is targeting rich Americans (10-15 million users). Google can’t control the platform if they want to reach people in New York, Bangdad and Taiwan.
I think the announcement is very interesting and is right in line with last weeks opensocial announcement. Google seems to have a very unified corporate vision.
“If open technologies are so great then when Google will release its search software for free. I would like to see some innovation in the search field also.”
@60: good point
@58,
if you had such a solution, why couldn’t you get the major webportals to license it, and why couldn’t you market it successfully for the small guy to mash it up? As I see it, it’s a failure of your business, not Google’s fault. Perhaps if you had launched a site with a free mashable version, but then charged for enterprise use and support, you’d have a more viable business. Moreover, why did you fail to differentiate your product from Google’s free version?
who cares but if it gets connected to opensocial it will be cool too.
Allegedly. I hope this gets greater carrier adoption.
@59
Well I admit that your arguments are somewhat convincing, but consider the following scenario.
If I wanted to create a city-wide (say, in Singapore) location-based shopping directory with user profiles and social interaction so that people could share product information and store locations, etc., it would be easiest for me to use the Google Maps API, Android, and OpenSocial. I could hope to get bought out by either Yahoo! or Google. But there is really no way I could survive on my own in the long run.
The reason the above mentioned fictional business could not survive on its own is the size of the dominant players, not monopoly. As China develops, Google is certainly not going to be the only major player. Baidu and Alibaba group are going to be very powerful. And certainly Microsoft isn’t going to lay down and die.
And don’t we need huge companies to create industry standards?
Most bogus announcement EVER! Google has just shown themselves to be more Microsoft/IBM than Apple. We wanted a new, ultra-innovative high-tech phone on a new cell network owned and operated by Google. We got a rock instead (ala Charlie Brown). Apple/ATT have the iPhone. HTC/Sprint have the Mogul. Google gives us a rock. Open platforms, alliances, frameworks, open source software, it all sounds so early ’90s. This is what it feels like when a dream dies….
@63 Ray, I don’t think you’re this naive. Now instead of simply being open your argument is that you just need to differentiate.
When a billion dollar company becomes your direct competitor I will be a bit nicer and not call it a failure of your business. This is the equivalent of Walmart entering small towns and instead of selling products for cheaper prices they give them out for free since they already have lots of revenue from big cities.
No matter how good you’re product is when the economics are not in your favor you cannot succeed.
I’m really just responding for a different point of view. I’d like to think you’re playing devils advocate with this cascading argument. I’m excited to see the next reason is for failing to compete with Google, after not being open enough and not differentiating enough. It would also be enlightening to so the company behind your feelings.
So, basically, they never heard of that vast alliance once called Symbian, huh?
As uncov would say: FAIL!
why do you remove the video from youtube?
@66
I see your point. In other words this helps Google compete with other large companies. However both opensocial and this seem to be annoucements for small developers. Especially opensocial which talks about giving small developers what they crave: distribution, (read: giving google what they want, ad revenue). I get the feeling that Google is trying to gain techie support with this type of annoucement when the next day they don’t think twice about stepping on small developers. I think you’re right that with Google being a dominant force there is no market for small developers. Maybe not a monopoly, but sad.
@68 Anon,
The reality is, a person with a billion of anything competing with you is going to have a huge advantage, but I’m saying, you can’t run a business with the idea that no one with a huge competitive advantage is going to get into your niche. It’s almost guaranteed if your niche turns out to be a large market. Thus, if you were such an early adopter/innovator, it behooves you to see the handwriting on the wall, and either figure out a way to remain viable and independent, or figure out a strategy to play along with the big boys, either through licensing or acquisition.
The ad-network supported subsidy argument is really important here. Plenty of companies are being hurt by open source versions developed not by ad-network subsidized companies, but by a bunch of individuals. The point is, anyone can come by and eat your lunch in software due to the costs of distribution, as well as low barrier to entry. When Google does it, you’ll whine about them translating ad network dollars into free source code. But when Linus does it, you won’t complain, in fact, you’ll be grateful that you got an OS for free and didn’t have to pay a Microsoft tax.
A few people are going to complain, but so many more people are helped by Google’s open platforms, that I doubt many will have sympathy, anymore than I have sympathy for the guys who used to make a living selling commercial TCP stacks to DOS/Windows users before they were commodified and free.
Eventually will the market be filled with big Software As a Service applications on a stagnant .Google platform, so that most software jobs will deal with support, configuration, and some customization?
Personally, I think the mobile web market will grow rapidly, moving ultimately towards the ideal human communication filter. Google isn’t going to completely own the mobile web.
Will “little” developers get pushed aside in certain areas of the mobile web market? Perhaps they will. And I am one of those little developers.
But if us little developers get off our asses right now, this is our opportunity to actually build powerful web apps that get off the ground, while Google is still struggling to get their platform off the ground and Microsoft/Facebook/Yahoo are competing with them.