The Android Market now offers the $200 'I Am Richer' application.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)An application that did nothing beyond showing a person was willing to spend gobs of money for it didn't last long on Apple's App Store, but now we'll begin to see if Google lives up to its more laissez-faire approach to its rival Android Market.
Apple banned Armin Heinrich's "I Am Rich", which cost $1,000 and only showed a red ruby, from its App Store last August. Now the conceptually similar "I Am Richer" has arrived on the Android Market from Mike DG.
Perhaps owners of T-Mobile's G1 phone are more cost-conscious, or the recession has hurt the market for inane software, or Android programmers are willing to offer greater value, though, because the new application offers basically the same feature set for only $200, a fifth the price of the app Apple banned.
"Prove your wealth to others by running this app and showing them the mesmerizing glowing crystal," the software's description says.
Google has some rules for Android Market--no malware is allowed, for example--but generally has a much more liberal attitude than Apple. While each application on the App Store requires Apple's approval, Google plans to let the world at large sort out Android applications through the mechanisms such as the rating system. Good applications will eventually sift their way to the top of the heap the way good YouTube videos do, Google argues.
Update 7:06 p.m. PST: The $200 price is as much as Google permits organizations to charge, the company said. And yes, Google appears perfectly happy to let people buy the application:
"We check applications for compliance with the Market Content Policies and Terms of Service (in order to remove malware, porn, spam, or profanity)," the company said in a statement.
(Via IDG News)
Google's Rich Miner had little new to say about Android, the company's almost-live mobile operating system, during a conference in San Francisco on Thursday.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News)Google's Rich Miner had nothing new to share Thursday with Mobilize attendees regarding the company's Android software for mobile phones, except that it will be really, really cool.
Android is set to make its debut next week in the form of an HTC handset running on T-Mobile's network, but Miner ran through Google's standard pitch for Android in San Francisco for an audience of mobile industry insiders already very familiar with Android's potential. He painted Android as the answer to the industry's search for a truly open operating system that erases the headaches of the past.
Google has spent almost a year finalizing its plans for Android, a Linux-based combination of nuts-and-bolts software with applications and a user interface designed to run mobile phones. The idea is to give the mobile industry an open operating system that they can use as they see fit without breaking application compatibility across a wide variety of handsets.
Miner returned often to the theme of openness during his 20-minute presentation on Android, noting that "once you start talking open, you don't come back from that." He also emphasized that no one party would control Android, in that Google plans to release the code for the operating system under an open-source license.
But Google plans to make sure that the first Android customers know who designed their phone's software. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the first Android phones will emphasize Google's brand on the handset. Miner did not take questions from the audience following his keynote speech, and refused to answer questions regarding the report outside the auditorium following the conclusion of his talk.
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