back to article Get ready for Google's proprietary Android. It's coming – analyst

Google is preparing to seize control of Android with its own proprietary closed-source version of the mobile operating system, an analyst claims. Technology analyst Richard Windsor says that a highly confidential internal project is underway to rewrite the ART runtime, removing any lingering dependencies from the freely …

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  1. James 51

    What will happen to the likes of cyanogen when that happens?

    1. toughluck

      They'll probably continue with what's available for a year or two and then give up?

      Unless they find serious financial backing and are able to hire full time programmers, I doubt they can survive.

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      If you're installing Cyanogenmod, you already have to download the Google apps (Google Play, GMail, Maps etc.) separately, so I guess it'll more more of the same.

      The commercial Cyaonogen OS will probably buy into GMS like any other manufacturer. Or they'll try and set up their own ecosystem which will almost certainly fail.

  2. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Speaking as a consumer ...

    All I really care about, is to be able to buy a phone, and have control over what crap I do - and don't want on it.

    So if this means no longer having to have a "Facebook" app I never use, bring it on.

    And don't get me started on the "Motorola" or "Samsung" apps I can't remove.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

      "All I really care about, is to be able to buy a phone, and have control over what crap I do - and don't want on it."

      So what do you do when you come across a closed market where NO phones are customizable and all the existing customizable phones are hopelessly out of date?

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

        >all the existing customizable phones are hopelessly out of date?

        Out of date? If it still makes phone calls and sends texts, it won't be out of date. I'm aware of the good work done by people on XDA, but really, they are often trying to customise something that should have been good enough to begin with, bringing bugs and security holes onto the process. I'd be interested to see a percentage figure for the number of phones that run an Android version that din't come from the vendor. It's a phone, not a toy.

        Android has slow updates because of its architecture - Google were in a hurry to catch up with the iPhone at the time. The way ChromeOS updates show how Google would like things to be done.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Flame

          Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

          " It's a phone, not a toy."

          It might not be a toy, but when it comes to Millenials its the equivalent of a baby's dummy for them. If they can't find out what their never-met-them-irl "best friends" ordered via Deliveroo last night or how many other paranaoid neurotics are on this weeks fad diet of liquidised lettuce and bird droppings, then they have an existential crisis and can't cope. Have you no sympathy for these poor creatures?

          1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
            Happy

            Re: boltar Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

            "....If they can't find out what their never-met-them-irl "best friends" ordered via Deliveroo last night or how many other paranaoid neurotics are on this weeks fad diet of liquidised lettuce and bird droppings, then they have an existential crisis and can't cope....." Well, up until recently, that is. A fortnight ago I was asked if we had any "flip phones" on the company's approved phone list. Turns out Taylor Swift has been snapped using a "dumb" flip phone so now they're all the rage again. It would be ironic if the iPhone and Android were both killed off by Swiftees!

            Of course, the diehards can always do what we used to do with Linux - ride MS's coat-tails. We used to buy MS-capable PCs and put Linux on them, so why not buy cheap Windows phones and just develop phone Linux to go on top? Oh, hold on a sec - already planned (it's called Ubuntu for phones.....).

          2. Down not across

            Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

            Have you no sympathy for these poor creatures?

            No.

        2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

          >Out of date? If it still makes phone calls and sends texts, it won't be out of date.

          If it has a security bug which means that anyone in the world can access all your data on it or can charge premium rate calls to it - and your supplier doesn't offer an update.

          So it can make calls and send texts but you daren't turn it on - then it is "out of date"

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

        "So what do you do when you come across a closed market where NO phones are customizable and all the existing customizable phones are hopelessly out of date?"

        Dance with the Devil and buy an iPhone? ;-)

        1. MrDamage Silver badge

          Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

          Or go back to using a dumb phone, with a laptop and 4g dongle for Web based stuff.

      3. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

        Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

        So what do you do when you come across a closed market where NO phones are customizable and all the existing customizable phones are hopelessly out of date?

        Weep

    2. Phil Kingston

      Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

      So be prepared to pay more for it - if the bundling of bloat helps subsidise the handset cost, then the cost will only increase if you want a clean device.

      Or, you could search around for a clean device - there's plenty to choose from. An almost limitless variations if you're prepared to stick a 3rd party ROM on there.

    3. HamsterNet

      Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

      Route it.

    4. joed

      Re: Speaking as a consumer ...

      I'm not sure that shifting towards the model that MS is trying to force onto their customer base is any better. The only thing that changes is centralized control of cr-apps you're being served. Unfortunately we've got trained that mobile platform should be locked

  3. Dan 55 Silver badge

    "The mobile industry’s failure to build an alternative stack to Google’s services"

    Their failure to following the moving target that is Play Services? They might as well write their own OS, it'd be easier.

    Amazon managed it, or at least some of it, but nobody likes their app store. You can't have an alternative to Play Services but keep the Play Store.

    Of course, if Oracle gets their way, it'll be moot. There'll be no building an alternative to anything.

  4. joeW

    Bit worrying if its true

    Android/Google basically morphing into the new Windows/MS. Cue much "No Google, you were supposed to bring balance to the force" angst.

    Whats Richard Windsor's track record like on calling this sort of thing by the way?

    1. TVU Silver badge

      Re: Bit worrying if its true

      "Android/Google basically morphing into the new Windows/MS. Cue much "No Google, you were supposed to bring balance to the force" angst.

      Whats Richard Windsor's track record like on calling this sort of thing by the way?"

      So far, this report remains unsubstantiated...but it wouldn't surprise me if Google went down this route. They seem to be going down the standard route of principled start-up --> increase in market share --> dominance --> abandon all principles --> power, corruption & greed.

      I know of one instance where they sent in their legal heavies to "encourage" a Linux OS developer to change the name of their Linux distribution because they didn't like it (they succeeded).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @TVU Re: Bit worrying if its true

        "I know of one instance where they sent in their legal heavies to "encourage" a Linux OS developer to change the name of their Linux distribution because they didn't like it (they succeeded)."

        Which one ? (Curiosity, I guess, though maybe the G-men obliged him to change more than just the name ?)

    2. eclairz

      Re: Bit worrying if its true

      They did bring balance to the force but like the Jedi false reasoning, balance usually implies a equal amounts. And based on the films the Jedi outnumbered the Sith by a large margin so Darth Vader balanced it by killing all the Jedi, until there was an equal amount of Sith and Jedi. In terms the number of Windows devices to Non-Window devices are much more balanced so not sure why complain about balance. Balance != Justice and sometimes anarchy is just better than organisation, however Google have opted for the latter, but like Microsoft they started off as the former.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bit worrying if its true

      You serious... Google long ago became the evil guy in the room... MS/Apple have nothing on them any more... Kind of like how the Taliban look at ISIS and think.. "geez, these guys are taking things too far". Hahaha

  5. vgrig_us

    Complete fantasy, none of the arguments make sense, not even a little - the one with copyrighted APIs is downright stupid.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Oh? The Red Book is a critical interface if you wish to design audio CDs. Can you get that for free? What about all the other closed-door interfaces out there that require paying to play?

      1. vgrig_us

        I don't need "The Red Book" if i'm not calling it "The Red Book CD" or "CD" at all, so - thanks for making my point for me...

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Windows

          To think that Stallman slept underneath his desk and coded during the day to ensure API compatibility between the open and closed version of LISP machines (which of course went out of fashion soon after these heroic efforts) and now APIs have become the next West Bank of "Intellectual property" fetishists, to be partitioned, patrolled, assimilated and "monetized" slowly but inexorably.

          Some kind of "industry" we have got ourselves here.

        2. Charles 9

          If you plan to make an audio CD that correctly plays in all the players on the market, or make a player that can correctly play all those CDs, then yes, you need the "Red Book" which specifies the formats and so on for them (IOW, it's the interface for making audio CDs). And last I checked, you have to PAY for the Red Book. And there are plenty of other interface books you have to PAY to access.

          1. vgrig_us

            Wow-wow-wow - are you saying that if i make and Red Book compliant audio CD, but never claim it to be one, never call it that, or even "CD" or "Compact Disc" - i'll call it, say, COpD instead - that i still have to pay them? that sounds very wrong - i mean legally: any lawyers want to chime in?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Could be interesting....

    ...especially if all the Asian manufactures get together and dump it like a hot potato.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Could be interesting....

      "...especially if all the Asian manufactures get together and dump it like a hot potato."

      Dump it for what? No other mobile OS open to them has nearly as much in terms of availability, and apps require the Network Effect to really take off. Google had the resources to play the long game, and that's pretty much what you need, especially with incumbents already in the market.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Devil

      Re: Could be interesting....

      if all the Asian manufactures get together and dump it...

      For what, pray tell? Firefox? Ubuntu? Sailfish? Tizen? Not going to happen. They can stick with AOSP for Chinese no-names, but that won't fly for the Western volume markets. And if you look at their own crap Android skins, and inability or reluctance to implement the official Googldroid updates, there's not a snowball's chance in hell of a posse of warring mobe makers coding up any alternative.

      They do have another choice of course: Windows.

      1. vgrig_us

        Re: Could be interesting....

        "They do have another choice of course: Windows."

        LOLZ

      2. Tom 64

        Re: Could be interesting....

        > "For what, pray tell? Firefox? Ubuntu? Sailfish? Tizen? Not going to happen. They can stick with AOSP for Chinese no-names, but that won't fly for the Western volume markets."

        Since 60% of the worlds population lives in asia, I don't suppose they'll care too much.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They already have

      Most Chinese phones are sold without the Googly bits, in favor of Chinese stuff like Baidu. They will continue using the AOSP code like they always have been.

      If Google quits updating AOSP, which they probably would, no doubt an open source project would quickly spring up to maintain it. Heck, Microsoft might pick up the ball and write in support for Bing and sell their own Android that is freer than the one Google offers. Wouldn't that be a crazy turnaround?

      1. Richard Plinston

        Re: They already have

        > Microsoft might pick up the ball and write in support for Bing and sell their own Android

        They already did, or actually Nokia did it for them.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_X_family

      2. Tomato42
        Unhappy

        Re: They already have

        > Heck, Microsoft might pick up the ball and write in support for Bing and sell their own

        > Android that is freer than the one Google offers. Wouldn't that be a crazy turnaround?

        with current Microsoft and current Google, that's not exactly inconceivable...

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        If Google quits updating AOSP [...] an open source project would spring up to maintain it.

        Are you sure? Why some Chinese manufactures may have the resources, they may not be much interested, especially for models for other markets. It would be a fairly complex project to maintain a commercial-grade software for devices like phones which a lot of people truly depends on, even in critical situations. And you'd also need to have access to a lot of specific hardware, possibly before it starts to appear on devices. That can't be some amateurish project, it would need to be a well funded project able to obtain the hardware it needs.

      4. bazza Silver badge

        Re: They already have

        They may continue to use AOSP, but it would take a phenomenal investment by someone to keep it anything like up to date. If Google remove themselves from the community there'd be an almighty development vacuum to be filled.

        And I can't see the like of Samsung, etc stumping up the man hours. They don't have swathes of highly talented OS developers sitting around just in case. It's a vacuum that might not get filled.

        Curve Ball

        If a bunch of manufactures suddenly find themselves needing an OS, they could do worse than BB10. There's some good aspects:

        1) it'll play with cars nicely. QNX is beginning to rule that market, and there'd be a lot in common between a BB10 phone and a QNX car

        2) technically, under the hood, BB10 is very good

        3) BlackBerry are almost certainly willing to license on favourable terms, and indeed are very purchasable.

        4) whilst it isn't quite so flush with services as Google, there's a lot already there

        5) it's Android runtime provides an app bridge

        6) it doesn't data slurp

        If all the likes of Samsung, HTC, Sony, Huawei, etc all decided to standardise on BB10, that'd save BlackBerry and there'd be an instant market for apps. That would make it viable for developers to write for it.

        Though what I suspect will happen is that Samsung will try to do their own thing, fail, whilst everyone else whither and dies rather quicker.

        Like him or loathe him, Jobs was right about one thing; software matters. The android crowd may find themselves with any software pretty quickly unless they take matters into their own hands.

        1. Get the puck outa here

          Re: They already have

          Meanwhile Blackberry has abandoned BB10 in favour of Android. Chen just keeps sawing more holes in the leaking boat to let the water out...

  7. Don Dumb
    Holmes

    If it's true

    "Technology analyst Richard Windsor says that a highly confidential internal project is underway"

    Clearly not *that* highly confidential then - Unless of course it's bollocks.

    1. wayne 8

      Re: If it's true or false

      Windsor could be "controlled opposition", a Google asset to release the worst possible predictions to the public. Google can say "No, no, we are not going to do anything that. What we are going to do is...[something not as bad, but still in our interests and not yours]."

  8. Pseu Donyme

    In effect Android is proprietary already ...

    ... because GMS is. Most importantly Google's stranglehold is cemented by GooglePlay, which at this points enjoys an unsurmountable advantage due to network effect*. (Not that coming up with the other components (browser, maps, ...) would be trivial, never mind something phone manufacturers on razor thin margins were likely to pull off or even try.)

    * i.e. the value of a product or service to an user increases as the number of users increase, which in this case happens because of the feedback loop of: more GooglePlay users -> more developers using GooglePlay (exclusively) -> more GooglePlay users -> ...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You're overstating the value of the network effect

      There are two levels of network effect.

      It is a big hill to climb to port your app to a totally different environment. App writers will support iOS and Android, because both are profitable for them. They would be very reluctant to support a new mobile OS, because it would be starting out with zero customers and would entail a lot of work developing to a totally new API.

      By contrast, if you already have an Android app at the Google Play store, if there was a 'alternate' flavor of Android using the AOSP that was either supported by an open source project or run by a big company like Microsoft, it would be a tiny hill to climb for those devs to port their "Google Android" app to "Microsoft Android" or "GNU Android". Same API, they'd just have to test that it works with the alternate location services etc. and upload to a different app store. Nothing Google can do about that, any more than they could prevent an Android dev from porting his app to iOS.

      1. Richard Plinston

        Re: You're overstating the value of the network effect

        > if there was a 'alternate' flavor of Android using the AOSP ... run by a big company like Microsoft, it would be a tiny hill to climb for those devs to port their "Google Android" app to "Microsoft Android"

        Why do you say 'if' ?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_X

        """ Nokia-X. ... It is currently [mid 2014] sold and maintained by Microsoft Mobile."""

        """ Operating system Nokia X platform (Modified Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2[3])"""

  9. hellwig

    If it works for Apple...

    I think the bigger issue here is how the EU keeps nipping at Google's heels about every other option in Android.

    "You can't bundle your Search". "You can't supply your own services as a result of when people do use your search". "You can't bundle your maps". etc. etc.

    If Google closes it down, then the whole thing, OS, Apps, Services are ALL part of the Google Android Experience. No more arguing that Google is locking in their search or maps, because those search and maps are an inextricable part of the new closed-source Android. Just as Safari and other Apple services are an inextricable part of iOS.

    Sure, using the Oracle lawsuit might be an easy excuse, but if the EU likes how Apple does things, might as well jump on the bandwagon.

    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: If it works for Apple...

      This. Since Google is, per The Register, an evil monopolist on the basis of leveraging their supposed monopoly in the licensable mobile OS space, the obvious choice is to cease licensing the OS, then they won't be a monopolist in that space. Really, what choice do they have?

    2. Pseu Donyme

      Re: If it works for Apple...

      While I wouldn't (at all) mind the wall around Apple's walled garden to suffer a fate akin to the structure that once circled West Berlin there is a crucial difference between Google and Apple: Google has a dominant market position in the EU (with Android, search, ...) while Apple doesn't (of course, Apple has monopolies within its own ecosystem, but then that isn't the dominant one within the general market(s), so, while I wish this could be acted upon it might not be possible under EU law ?).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: If it works for Apple...

        Pseu Donyme has it right. Apple has ~15% of the worldwide smartphone market. Google has almost all of the remaining 85%. That's a dominant market share by almost any definition, and EU law holds them to stricter requirements. I don't know the exact numbers in the EU, Apple may be a bit higher than their worldwide market share since the EU is richer than the worldwide average, but I doubt Apple is above 20% there.

        If anyone is wondering why the FTC in the US hasn't acted, they don't talk about "dominant" they talk about "monopoly" and Google could easily make the argument that it is a competitive marketplace when the world's most valuable and most profitable company is the the second placed competitor in the market. Plus the fact that Android doesn't have anywhere near 85% in the US, they are barely above 50%, with Apple holding 40% and Microsoft and RIM less dead in the US than they are worldwide.

        1. hellwig

          Re: If it works for Apple...

          Your "Apple's too small" arguments ignore the fact that Closed-Source Google Android (lets call it aOS) would NOT maintain 85% of the market share.

          They would re-release their aOS as a new product, instantly making them a new player in the game. Even Apple's measily 15% would be dominant over Google's now zero-percent over night market share for aOS (open source android having been cutoff from the Google teat, left to suckle off the open source community, good luck Cyanogen!).

          What happens, then, if using Apple's own model, Google once again dominates the market? Is it really Google's fault, and does the EU keep suing them just because they're more successful than Apple?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Closed source Android would not be a "new" product

            It would seamlessly install on the same devices, run all the same apps, even have the same name. If anything, the "open source Android" (if someone even bothered to develop that, which isn't in any way a sure thing) would be the new product with 0% of the market.

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