Digital Media

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.

MyScreen Mobile announced Thursday it is offering a version of its advertising rewards service for Google's Android smartphones.

Under the service, users sign up for MyScreen Mobile to receive targeted ads on their mobile phones. In exchange for viewing the full-screen ads, users receive rewards points for such subsidized mobile services as ringtones, mobile games, and gift cards.

MyScreen, which already has versions of its service for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm OS devices, is offering up a service that is akin to other Internet advertising incentive programs that have popped up over the years from the former AllAdvantage to the former CyberGold.

AdMob put out a call Tuesday for Android developers, as it unveiled an ad unit specifically for applications running on Google's smartphone.

AdMob's ad unit is designed to allow third-party developers to generate revenue from the applications they create for Google's Android mobile phone. AccuWeather, Jirbo, and TapJoy developers have already put AdMob's Android ad unit to work, the company said.

"We are already seeing strong interest in developing applications for Android-based devices, similar to what we saw with the iPhone last summer," Ali Diab, AdMob vice president of product management, said in a statement.

AdMob, based in San Mateo, Calif., serves mobile banner and text ads. The company works with more than 6,000 mobile sites and 450 iPhone applications.

Steve Horowitz, engineering director of Google's Android project to build a Linux-based open-source phone operating system, has left the company to become chief technology officer of Coupons.com.

"The company is at a pivotal point in its business, and I am eager to help further advance its development and deployment of new platforms and services for digital promotions," Horowitz said in a statement Tuesday.

Coupons.com offers coupons online. Using its technology, people printed coupons worth more than $300 million in 2008, up 140 percent from 2007, the company said, but it's not clear how many people actually used them.

Google's gift to staffers: the HTC Dream, or G1, smartphone.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET Networks)

Clarification added December 30 (see text below).

For Googlers eagerly awaiting their famous holiday bonuses, be warned: Santa is tightening his belt too.

Google employees, some of whom have reportedly grown used to fairytale-like cash bonuses on the north side of $20,000, apparently got coal in their stockings this year. Certainly that's the takeaway for gossip blog Valleywag, which in a headline likened this year's bonus to "dogfood"--a euphemism for in-house testing--because Google would like some feedback. (Clarification: A few Google employees have contacted me to suggest that Valleywag's report on holiday bonus amounts of $20,000 likely confused performance bonuses with holiday bonuses said to be on the order of $1,000.)

So how bad was it? Well, Google gave its employees a smartphone. Yep, can you believe it? Man, if I had a nickel for all the years my bosses gave me a smartphone...

But I digress. Back to Google's gift. Apparently, Valleywag took issue with Google giving its employees an Android--its own phone! Well, actually, the memo that Valleywag reprinted referred to it as a "Dream phone." It's basically the T-Mobile G1 that retails for $179.99, but it's been customized to "work anywhere in the world" on the carrier of their choice. (Google estimates its value at $400.)

The nerve!

Here, in the real world, while many in the tech industry have received pink slips, Google employees are receiving a gift--oh, yeah, it is a gift--that many people would love to find under their trees. What a bummer, man. As far as the dogfooding goes, I am guessing that this company that has a reputation for being astoundingly generous when economic realities were more positive isn't going to can employees for not sending back the questionnaire.

Now, back to the topic of Santa...

HTC's Dream, aka the T-Mobile G1, next to an Apple iPhone

Updated 4:28 p.m. PST to reflect that it's T-mobile's ad campaign, with no Google involvement.

T-Mobile plans to flood the market with a billion ads in two days for its G1 Android phone, with AOL's Platform-A network delivering the advertisements, according to Advertising Age.

Platform-A President Lynda Clarizio estimated the campaign will reach 81 million people when it runs next week, according to the article, which quoted an unnamed source as saying the ad campaign will cost about $1.5 million.

"The goal for T-Mobile was to reach as many people as possible in a short period of time," AdAge quoted Clazario as saying.

Google said the campaign is T-Mobile's and it's uninvolved in the marketing effort.

The T-Mobile G1, a version of an HTC phone called the Dream, is the first phone to use Google's Android operating system. The phone went on sale October 22, but future Android phones are expected in 2009 from other companies including Motorola, Kyocera, Samsun, and LG Electronics.

Android may be a freely available open-source operating system, but Google hasn't shied away from the idea that it hopes to profit by subsidizing its development. And with Google's first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 built by HTC, nigh upon us, it's becoming clearer exactly how.

T-Mobile's G1, aka the HTC Dream, is the first phone to go on sale with Google's Android operating system.

(Credit: Corinne Schultz/CNET)

Google executives have spoken about Android's indirect benefits: the company wants to use it to accelerate the use and sophistication of mobile Internet browsing. "If the Internet is widely available, that's good for us," co-founder Sergey Brin said.

But judging from my testing of a G1 phone, it appears Google wants a more direct benefit, too: more users of Google's online services. Although there's nothing stopping a G1 owner from using online services from Google rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo, Google technology is built deeply into the G1 and featured prominently as well.

Search ads are of course Google's bread and butter. Android's Web browser can use others' search engines, but a secondary part of the G1's home screen features a prominent Google search box. There's no option to change the search box to use search from Microsoft or Yahoo.

The hooks get a little deeper when things get more personal. The Android phone asks you for your Google account information when you first start it up, and if you have an account, it immediately slurps in your contacts, calendar appointments, and Gmail messages. At this stage of Android development at least, Yahoo and Microsoft don't get that kind of treatment.

The tie-in to these personal services is telling. Google has trounced its competition when it comes to search, a relatively anonymous act, but it hasn't made as much headway when it comes to more deeply personal uses of its services such as e-mail, photo sharing, and social networking. With Android, Google apparently hopes to establish more of this direct contact with Internet users.

E-mail comes in two tiers on the G1. The upper tier is given to Gmail, which gets its own application; others get relegated to the generic e-mail application. I could connect fine to Yahoo Mail, but lacking a Plus account for free POP access, I couldn't try Microsoft Live e-mail.

Personally, I think the two-tier approach makes sense because Gmail fans (I'm among them) can get accustomed to features not commonly available in ordinary e-mail client software, such as conversation view, the ability to archive and star messages, and sophisticated search abilities. Other e-mail services don't need their own applications.

Google also gets a direct link to its online map service. Here again, though, Google has a bit more to offer than its rivals when it comes to online services. As with search, mapping use is a fairly generic activity at this stage, but geographic information can be very personally useful, especially while on the road, and I wouldn't be surprised if Google Maps became much more tightly tuned to each user's needs and account settings.

With instant messaging, Android is neutral. The software can handle Yahoo, AOL's AIM, MSN Messenger, and Google Talk with equal aplomb.

There are of course other possible places that Google could create direct Android ties to personal services. Orkut, iGoogle, Google Reader, and Picasa Web albums spring to mind.

But it's still early days for Android. At the same time Google or others could write applications that dovetail with these services. And by the same token, given Android's free software development kit and unfettered Android Market for offering new applications, I'd expect mobile applications from Google rivals, too. Whether they'll get prime real estate on future Android phones, though, is another matter entirely.

Click here for CNET's review of the T-Mobile G1.

Google's Photostream application is for viewing Flickr photos on Android phones.

(Credit: Google)

Google released on Thursday a new sample application called Photostream that will let phones running its Android phone operating system view photos stored at Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing site.

Although Photostream is intended to be a tool to illustrate the use of various Android features, it also looks like a potentially useful application for when the phones start shipping later this year. The open-source program lets people browse a particular user's photos, in groups or individually, and create separate shortcuts to different Flickr accounts, according to a description at the Android developers blog.

Google is trying to attract developers to Android so the project has a rich set of applications. Part of the promise of the effort is to build an "open" foundation, not unlike personal computers, where people can install new software.

Users will be able to find new applications at the Android Market, though that online service likely will launch only with free applications, so developers hoping to profit from the site will probably have to wait.

Google is also moving technology from its Chrome browser to Android.

Google on Thursday announced Android Market, an online center that will let people find, buy, download, and rate applications and other content for mobile phones equipped with the open-source operating system.

These screen shots show the Android phone interface to the Android Market. The software shows what applications can be downloaded and reviews of applications that people are browsing.

(Credit: Google)

Attracting developer attention is a key part of the Google-led Android software effort, and those who produce applications will have an easy time getting them to the market, Eric Chu of Google's Android project said in a Thursday blog post.

"Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it," Chu said. "We chose the term 'market' rather than 'store' because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available."

Though the first Android phones are planned to arrive later this year, Chu said to expect the initial phone-based Android Market application to be a beta version that might only support distribution of free applications. An update later will handle different versions of applications, support for different profiles of Android phones, and analytics to help developers track adoption.

The move was expected. Google said in May at the Google I/O conference that it would provide a central repository of Android software.