Google's Rubin: Android 'a revolution'
Andy Rubin
Among all the companies fighting to grab a piece of the brightest star in computing--the smartphone--Google seems the least interested in taking the spoils.
Android, Google's mobile operating system, doesn't generate revenue for the company, and likely never will--at least in the direct sense. But Andy Rubin, Google's director of mobile platforms, thinks Google and the world will benefit from any device created with the intent of getting more people onto the Internet, and isn't shy about explaining why the open-source approach chosen for Android holds the most promise of reaching that goal.
Android made its debut in 2007, a few months after another computer with designs on improving the Internet experience on a phone--the iPhone--hit the streets as perhaps the most hyped gadget ever. Buzz has been slower to build around Android, but that could start to change as additional phones arrive that have a bit more pizazz than the G1, the world's first Android phone released last October.
Ahead of next week's Google I/O Developer Conference, where Rubin is expected to discuss future Android phones and goals for the software, he sat down with CNET News to review Google's progress thus far and share his impressions of what makes Android unique.
Q: How do you reconcile the goals of staying open with the need to offer carriers their own experience and the compatibility problems that may come as a part of that?
Rubin: Traditionally what's happened is the burden has been on the (phone makers) to be systems integrators. And what you get is kind of a lowest common denominator of functionality and usability because the software was actually developed by multiple parties, and nobody was really thinking holistically about the user experience.
It's (about) how do people expect these products to perform, and what are the various paces that a consumer will put these products through? No one company was thinking about that.
And so a huge benefit to this open platform is that it's complete, it's basically everything you need to build a phone. Sometimes the reason things fragment is because the platform is incomplete and people need to fill in the pieces. And when you fill in the pieces, you inherently have incompatibility.
It is possible to have a completely different user interface with a completely different look and feel but still be compatible. And that will be demonstrated.
There will be a couple of launches; we've generated a lot of interest in China. The use cases in China are slightly different in the U.S.; typically in China, because of the Asian input, people prefer a pen-based interface rather than a capacitive-touch based interface because they expect a stylus to be able to draw the complex characters. So the use case has completely changed but we have achieved compatibility.
How did the goal of Android evolve
after it was brought into Google?
Rubin: The goal was pretty much the same, the business model obviously changed. Google's business model is deep into advertising, and so for Google this is purely a scale of the business, we just want to reach more people, and hopefully they'll use Google and we'll get the upside of the advertising revenue.
By the way, we're confident enough in our advertising business and our ability to help people find information that we don't somehow demand they use Google. If somebody wants to use Android to build a Yahoo phone, great.
Did you ever consider doing a phone? A Google phone?
Rubin: Yeah...I mean, it's funny, if you build one phone...I'd much rather be the guy that does a platform that's capable of running on multiple companies' phones than just focusing on a single product.
A single product is going to have, eventually, limitations. Even if that was two products that's going to have limitations. But if it's a hundred products, now we're getting somewhere, to the scale at which Google thinks people want to access information.
Getting back to business models, Google has a great business model around advertising, and there's a natural connection between open source and the advertising business model. Open source is basically a distribution strategy, it's completely eliminating the barrier to entry for adoption.
When Android was a start-up company, it was always a razor/razor blade business. The razor, the free thing, was the open-source operating system. In Android's original business model, the blades were basically provisioning systems that we sold to wireless carriers that had hooks into the open-source operating system. That was an unproven business model, I would say, and certainly the feedback I got when we were going for venture financing was that it was an unproven business model.
I was willing to give it a go, but then Larry and Sergey and Eric came along and said, "it's much more aligned with Google's core business and Google's business model, and you'll have a much easier time executing within Google." And retroactively, I agree.
Is this a market share play? Is this something where you want to conquer the mobile world?
Rubin: We look at it first from the scale perspective. The mission here is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and relevant. So the accessible part: think of a world in which you are somehow prevented from accessing the information you want. When I go to a hotel room and pay the $19.95 to get on the Internet and they have some firewall that doesn't let me get to my Exchange server, it makes me berserk.
Google doesn't sell Android, but hopes to encourage mobile Internet use to drive Web searches--and ads.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)I look at things--and Google looks at things--in (terms of) how could the landscape change in such a way that consumers who want to access Google services can't?
In that honest goal of not having consumers being blocked and allowing them to access information, it helps our competitors as well. What we don't want to do is disadvantage anybody by being the only person; we don't want to create any kind of separate structure where people can only access Google. And this is the definition of openness: it's not just open source, it's the freedom to get the information that you're actually looking for.
Why is this approach better what Apple or Palm is doing where they control the whole device?
Rubin: Controlling the whole device is great, (but) we're talking about 4 billion handsets. When you control the whole device the ability to innovate rapidly is pretty limited when it's coming from a single vendor.
You can have spurts of innovation. You can nail the enterprise, nail certain interface techniques, or you can nail the Web-in-the-handset business, but you can't do everything. You're always going to be in some niche.
What we're talking about is getting out of a niche and giving people access to the Internet in the way they expect the Internet to be accessed. I don't want to create some derivative of the Internet, I don't want to just take a slice of the Internet, I don't want to be in the corner somewhere with some dumbed-down version of the Internet, I want to be on the Internet.
Even if that comes at the cost of compatibility or UI advances? If you're going to be the Everyman phone, you're going to have to make some sacrifices at some point, right?
Rubin: I think that's yet to be seen. I think we've done a pretty good job. Again, we're talking about a clean slate technology that didn't exist a few years ago. So I'm actually thinking this could be a revolution.
Remember people used to trumpet "write once, run everywhere"? Well, I think we're actually there. I think when we start talking about the possibility of exploring things like Netbooks and car navigation systems, you have potentially different processor architecture types. You have Intel, you have ARM, set-top boxes have MIPS.
We have all sorts of different processor architectures, and the guys who are steeped in legacy have trouble addressing those markets with a single solution. I actually think Android is the potential single solution that can address all those markets, and it's new, it's revolutionary. It will change the game.
If this is a revolution, why haven't we seen more of these phones?
Rubin: It takes about 18 months to build a phone from end to end. What we wanted to do for our market entry was make sure that we had one successful showcase product to prove that the product was reliable and robust and ready to go. We chose HTC as our partner for that.
The forthcoming Samsung i7500, based on Google's Android
(Credit: Samsung)At the moment we open-sourced, November 7 (2007), that's when a lot of these guys got their hands on it. We're still in that 18-month window of building products, and what you'll see coming up is a whole string of products.
What did you learn from Android 1.0 to 1.5?
Rubin: I learned that 1.5 was the product I wished was 1.0. The reason is it's a different business for Google: helping the industry build operating systems for their cell phones.
Because on the Web, you can iterate very quickly, and you can put things out in beta, you can fix bugs literally hourly. On cell phones you're blasting something in a ROM in a device that's in manufacturing where you did just-in-time ordering of all the parts and have inventory risk and everything else. Widgets are literally coming down a factory line, and if software isn't ready by the time they reach the end of the line they're going to drop on the floor and pile up. And that winds up costing a lot of people a lot of money. And if you don't get it right, you're kind of hosed.
What is going to dictate who wins and loses in this market? We all have different things that we may want in a phone. How do you try to be the Everyman phone and try to keep up with what's going on?
Rubin: We're trying to be something really unique, and I don't think anybody else is offering this. We put a very focused spotlight on openness, and openness is the means by which you get the product that you want.
Do people care (about openness)? I mean, the industry might care, the partners in the Open Handset Alliance may care, but do consumers?
It's an enabler. I'm not on some marketing campaign to educate consumers about what openness means. Actually, if you ask anybody on the street, you're going to get 10 different definitions of openness. The Symbian guys are going to be like "I'm open," and the LiMo guys are going to say "I'm open."
There's probably like a royal flush of openness, where you can lay your cards on the table and say (pointing) "open, open, open, open, open," it's the guy with the most open that's going to win.
I think we're that. I think that we have an open ecosystem, we have an open-source platform, we chose the right license, there are no viral aspects, it's absolutely 100 percent free, it's complete, it's everything you need to build a phone. When you add all that stuff up, all those ingredients, potentially--I think the jury's still out--we can make a really successful product.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
They embraced and perpetuated a proprietary system with their own phones. Palm will find their little niche, but they will never become more than just another cell phone company, just another RIM.
Android will likely move up the food chain to bigger hardware devices including PCs in time.
For now, it is aimed at the phone and Netbook as these market are not dominated by Microsoft as PCs are.
Andriod is just another Linux based smartphone OS, not even as good as Backberry, Nokia's Symbian or Windows mobile.
What ris evolutionary about that?
Not to mention Andriod is getting clobbered in market share by Blackberry, the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Symbian and practically everyone smartphone OS maker out there.
I continue to be puzzled as to why CNET continues to devote an inordinate amount of space and time to an operating system from Gooogle that continues to have very little effect on the market. Not to mention CNET has continued to shill for Google's Chrome since before it even came out, even as Chrome's market share performance continued to founder and get nowhere.
I guess CNET has to push it's own agenda.
Marketshare has nothing to do with anything at this stage of the game. You've got one handset(the second emerging now) that's managed to sell 1M+ on the 4th largest carrier in the world. If you take it all into account, they've been very successful(considering the spartan hardware(G1)).
The reason why Google gets as much play as it does on CNet is, Google's business practices, products and philosphies are different than the rest of the major players out there. Whether you buy it or not, it's about empowering people to access information. Your thought process on this is way too compartmentalized.
Android is just another piece of the puzzle. Free applications mean more accessability for everyone. I fail to see how that's a bad thing.
And this is where the revolution fails. There is no better example of the need for an integrated hardware/software model than in mobile phones. Android (or WinMo) will never be able to provide a, say, iPhone-esque experience because of the vast array of hardware running it. Ultimately, consumers don't care as much about choice as they care about a seamless user experience. And a hardware-agnostic mobile OS won't be able to provide that. That's just the reality of the situation.
I don't disagree. However, that's been precisely my experience with Android. The point is, you can build an OS that provides exactly what you are describing. Will it be for everyone? Of course not. However, will it be compelling enough and provide choice? I'd say yes.
Windows Mobile, Symbian etc say "Hello"
They have been doing that for years.
nothing new here. Move along.
@ Crackbone :"You've got one handset(the second emerging now) that's managed to sell 1M+ on the 4th largest carrier in the world"
How many iPhones have been sold?
iPhone sales in the last quarter alone were over 3 million.
Didn't the andriod phone launch just after the iPhone?
I wouldn't boast too loudly about that 1 million if I were you.
@ Crackbone :"The reason why Google gets as much play as it does on CNet is, Google's business practices, products and philosphies are different than the rest of the major players out there"
Yeah.
Google is more evil, more dicatorial, and uses mafia style intimidatory tactics to kneecap their search clients, and anyone who falls foul of their left wing agenda, more than any other company out there.
For example, HTC, the dominant WinMo maker, have reported that Android based handsets are eating into the market shares of WinMo even though HTC has only 2 models for Android right now.
China mobile have place announced Android app stores and will fully support the Android platform with announcement of new devices. China market is what 30-35% of the worlds handset market? And most of not all of the sweat shop handset makers in China will probably be making Android phones as soon as Taiwanese Mediatek comes out with their solution.
The platform it will hurt the most is likely to be WinMo because of its popularity in Asia. But with so much developer support in Europe, I expect Symbian to have market share taken away as well.
There were plenty of Linux smartphone Operating systems long before andriod, everyone of which is as open, if not more open than andriod. There is nothing revolutionary about andriod. It's the same old yet amnpother version of Linux for smartphones.
@ chyang888 :"Most importantly there are so much support from the developers and hardware makers all over the world."
There is a heck of a lot more support from developers and hardware makers for Windows Mobile than andriod.
@ chyang888:"China mobile have place announced Android app stores and will fully support the Android platform with announcement of new devices. China market is what 30-35% of the worlds handset market?"
China mobile has been makking Windows Mobile smartphones for eons, long before android
@ chyang888:"But with so much developer support in Europe, I expect Symbian to have market share taken away as well."
Pipe dream.
What is andriod market share in Europe again, as compared to the total dominance of Symbian?
For example, the regular home screen on the phone has 3 screens and allows you to switch wallpapers and add shortcuts to any application on the phone. Someone decided this wasn't good enough and didn't give the consumers a good enough ability of customization. This person decided to take that system code and rewrite it to allow all consumers who download their new version(its on the market, no jailbreaking needed to do this) can now enjoy being able to have more home screens(more than 9 for you apple fanboys), abilities to change icons, widgets(prior to 1.5 release), abiltity to change the theme of your phone(including an iPhone themes that literally changes the interface to match apples), docks for easy application access, oh my god the list keeps going...this is the innovation google talks about, these additions have only been on the market for a couple months but they have literally changed the way users use their phone.
The idea of openness is allowing developers into the system...Apple doesn't do this, RIM doesn't do this, WinMo doesn't do this...I'm not too sure on Symbian but I'm pretty sure their "openness" is as limited as these others. I honestly think the reason true "openness" hasn't been done before is because these companies want people to know it is them behind their system...Think about all the different WinMo systems there are. Most of them look completely different even though they are running the same OS. This is because WinMo has a god awful UI and manufacturers build around it so that their consumers stay happy...but you can still tell it's WinMo. Now if WinMo decided to give that same ability to consumers, to allow them to change the way their system looks, feels, and interacts with the user, you would have a million different operating systems that show no signs of it being an actual WinMo remake. Google doesn't care about their image on the system...they don't make money off of it so the consumers are free to do what they want with it. This is the idea that google is promising. They will still be around make sure the world doesn't run in chaos but otherwise they are hands-off. More or less a laissez-faire approach.
Anyway, I'm tired and am probably just rambling on now, so hopefully that gives some of the outsiders insight on what IT really is.
Man you have a lot of hate against Android. I am willing to bet that you were anti iPhone too when it came out. And it only changed the entire philosophy of Smartphone UI design for the industry within 1.5 years of its existence.
Android is a new platform, so you've got to give it time for it to take shape. WinMo and Symbian have been out for years. One thing is clear when I went to Taiwan / China recently. the manufacturers are gearing up for manufacturing of this new device.
One point about other linux being ported to mobile devices, they didn't have Google behind it. What makes Android potentially disruptive is all the built in Google web services and the massive development support behind it.
Is it purely a mobile phone OS? Or could it conceivably be a desktop computer OS in the future, an alternative or rival to Windows and Linux?
I guess it's one step at a time for Google Android but the possibilities are interesting. Can anyone see it as a future desktop OS? Does it have that potential?
They are not gonna get anywhere with it, especially if they release it on ARM chips.
Andriod is simply another version of Linux, and Linux has just been clobbered by Windows XP in the netbook space in the past year. I don't see andriod doing any different.
I fail to see how they are pushing it on anyone when it's free.
Explain that to me. I smell a M$/Apple fan.
Nebooks specs have been clobbered by XP restrictions as well. To run XP you can't innovate. Because of that there is room for Linux and Android on a Netbook. Especially if they have software that does the basics that 90% of us do on computers.
Room for success doesn't mean they will succede.
You don't?
You should try walking through Time sSuare some time. They push "free" stuff on people all the time..ranging from "free" flyers/leaflets to free energy drinks. Of course they are not really free. They are marketing tools.
Not to mention Google uses their so-called "free" OS to push their default serach engine onto smartphones and will try that with netbooks etc.
Huh?
Is that why netbooks have had more innovation in the last 12 months than ever before since they started using XP on them?
@ Renegade Knight :"Because of that there is room for Linux and Android on a Netbook"
Perhaps..like the usual 2% that linux has on the world's desktops and laptops, yes?
"I fail to see how they are pushing it on anyone when it's free. Explain that to me. I smell a M$/Apple fan."
Having spent a significant part of my career at Nokia and the Samsung Mobile handset division, involved in the development of a number of handsets (Nokia E60, E61, E70, E90, Samsung Omnia, i8510, i8910HD) I can tell you one thing: as far as software is concerned, and especially mobile OS, there is nothing more expensive than free.
Think Linux on desktop - their market share never extended beyond the geek community, and for a good reason.
Think Andriod.
- Boris
At the end of the day, it's about building the Google model.
Not even close.
Andriod will never even get 5% market share, let alone be the #1 smartphone OS.
And you can add Blackberry(#1 smart phone seller in North America), and Nokia(#1 smartphone seller on the planet) to the list of smart phone makers that are closed to android.
Can you be good enough to give us the link for that claim?
One thing that is for sure, andiod is not even close to 5% of smartphone market share. Not within even a mile of that.
@ Jeff2473:"Palm, Apple, Blackberry, and Nokia will continue to make good phones and probably have the more popular single devices, "
Those firms will continue to clobber andriod in smartphone market share far into the forseeable future.
@ Jeff2473:"but the OS won't get the kind of mass exposure Android will get because they are the only manufacturers that use it"
Nokia already controls approx 40% of all cell phones sold on this planet. They are cell phone mass exposure already.
All Google has is code for andriod. That is not mass exposure.
When it comes to mindshare in America, the iPhone and the Blackberry have infinitely more mass exposure and mass appeal than any so-called andriod from Google. Don't see anything from Google that is even close to changing any of that.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/iphone-now-50-percent-of-smartphone-web-traffic-in-the-us/
and that was 2 months ago.
Nokia may have 40% of the smart phonemarket now (I think even higher for feature phones) ...but they are also losing ground. When the market is expanding as fast as the smartphone market is, it's pretty easy for positions to shift.
And you're right, Android isn't anywhere close to 5%...yet. It only has 2 phones out and the G1 had no hope of mass appeal. The G2 isn't much better, but it's still closer. With as many android phones planned as there are, I stand by my estimation that will hit 5% within 2 years. Android may never beat the other OS's but it won't have a problem holding it's own. And when I I say more exposure I mean in sheer number of phone models that have the operating system. From that perspective the only OS's that will match Android will be WinMo and maybe Symbian. As far as mindshare, you may be right, Android may never be as recognized as Palm, BlackBerry, Apple, or Windows mobile, but for the average consumer who doesn't even know what operating system their phone has, it'll fare every bit as well. And then you'll always have the fanboys like me who refuse to buy anything else :)
Look at what's happened since Chrome's release? Firefox and Safari have both come out with notably better Javascript engines. Why did Google want that? Cause AJAX is a huge part of what they do. Firefox and Safari making Google's apps work better is good for Google, good for consumers, and even good for both Apple and Mozilla. Heck even IE is trying to be more standards compliant as a result of competition.
Google has realized a great thing, by coming out with products that put pressure on the market leaders, they force those people to innovate or copy their ideas, and thus they force those products to be better. Look at the latest version of Safari? It's borrowed several things from Chrome and I promise you Google doesn't mind!
As far as Google is concerned, their only real competitor is Microsoft in this space. And frankly they're gonna clobber em. Least that's how I see how Google sees it. They're providing a valid, and superior OS competitor for companies like Motorola, LG, Samsung, HTC, Panasonic, Sony, Acer, Lenovo and so on and so forth. They're trying to build up a reputable OS, that can go standard on any phone, even other devices. Essentially they're trying to be the windows of the mobile phone, only they're trying to do it by offering the OEMs a lot more control than Microsoft does. They're out Microsofting Microsoft.
As for it working on netbooks? That's more something the OEMs are playing with. Fact is if Google already has developers working with it that creates a wealth of app developers and apps that people will be used to from their phones. This is one reason the iPhone platform took off so well, while a lot of devs were new, a lot of old ones came on and showed that awesome stuff could be done and then new devs wanted a piece of the action.
I'm all for Android and I hope it does well... and honestly I hope they kick RIM's ass since they're sooo focused only on hardware.
Let the hardware mfgs make the hardware, let someone else produce the OS. If Google can do it for free, do it across a variety of devices, and do it well, then by all means, welcome our new Google mobile overlords.
Google's model is diametrically opposed to the other comepetitors in their space. That's why they are doing so well, and will continue to do so. Android is just one more piece to the whole puzzle, and a very good one at that.
1. It provides a "light" UI for size & power constrained devices.
2. It already supports the hardware that will likely be included in ALL future mobile devices (touchscreen, 3G, GPS, accelerometer, compass, etc.).
3. It supports cell phone calls, SMS, etc. (important for mobile operators).
4. It implements a highly stable & secure application environment (Dalvik VM).
5. It supports a commercial app store for free & paid applications.
Perhaps Android could be extended, to also support an X Server desktop like Moblin. Then, it could be configured, one way or the other, depending on device and/or user requirements.
Check out the HTC Hero: It's not Google branded, and it's running Android.
The entire OS is customizable by the carrier/manufacturer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw55TSW8aTE
Granted, it is a bit iPhone-ish, but still, it demonstrates the flexibility and openness of Android. As long as device vendors maintain app compatibility (for obvious reasons), they are free to change the user experience to whatever they want.
"The entire OS is customizable by the carrier/manufacturer."
And how is that a good thing? Carriers and manufacturers don't care about the platform, the only thing they care about is *differentiation*. Or in other words, fragmentation. The worst thing that can happen to a platform.
- Boris
Manufacturers don't care about the platform?? You realize the platform is the most important part of the phone right? No matter how good the hardware is, if the software doesn't unlock that hardware's potential, then what's the point?
Obviously you haven't noticed that different phones running the same operating system, operate differently. I'll tell you right now, it's not because the manufacturers added a 3.2 megapixel camera to the phone. Manufacturers are the only ones who normally get their hands on the "actual" system and they are always making tweaks and changes, with their consumers in mind...for the better or worse, of course. The reason Android is different is because the consumers get the same access and abilities as these manufacturers when it comes to modding the system.
Android?s success, at least in the immediate future, is bad news for Symbian and Microsoft; namely mobile OS platforms chasing system OEMS, as opposed to integrated hardware, software, service offerings like iPhone, Blackberry and Pre.
Along those lines, if interested in analysis of Android v. iPhone, here is a post that I wrote on the topic:
Why Openness May Not Be Best: Android versus iPhone
http://bit.ly/jih2x
Cheers,
Mark
When it comes to cell phone OS, its a pick your poison type of situation none are perfect. Symbian does well cuz of how long its been out compared to the rest. RIM does well because it went for a niche market. The iphone does well because of the hype apple provides. Android is nice because its more open to everyone involved that you can create your own personal experience. And winmo is winmo the worst out of the bunch imho.
Chrome --- great --- free
Google Earth --- great --- free
Gmail --- great --- free
Docs --- great --- free
youTube ---- good --- free
what else?
- by devilfly1 August 5, 2009 3:03 PM PDT
- I'm quite certain that Phillip K. Dick would be much happier today. His wacko theory based on his writings about sheep, turned to a major film blockbuster "Blade Runner".
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(45 Comments)Way to go! Say Good bye to Microsoft and Say Hello to Android Operating System.
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