14 DAY TRIAL // One thing that Google likes to boast is Android's 'openness' as opposed to Apple's iron rule over iOS and the App Store. Openness, Google says, ensures that the best solutions always come forward and that the focus is on the technology, with the users and the companies involved benefiting.
It's getting harder and harder to keep a straight face while telling this story for Google since it's becoming clearer that the company is tightening its grip on Android and the ecosystem.
Android 3.0 source code won't be available for the foreseeable future
Last week, Google revealed that the source code for Android 3.0 is not going to be available any time soon, meaning that any lower tier hardware manufacturer or hobbyists building customized versions have at least a few more months to wait before being able to do anything with Android 3.0.
In the meantime, Android 3.0 devices from a number of high profile manufacturers have hit the stores and more are to come. But these are the privileged few that have gotten access to the Android 3.0 sources under much stricter rules from Google than before.
Google says that the reason for the delay is that the code needs to be cleaned up and brought up to open-source standards. In order to get Android 3.0 out the door as soon as possible, the Google team took a few shortcuts and dropped good code etiquette in favor of speed.
This meant that Android 3.0 tablets landed before the iPad 2 was launched. But Google says that it can't release this code publicly and that it's not sure when it will be able to provide a sanitized version.
Google has delayed source code releases for Chrome as well
Google's explanation makes sense, especially since it's not the first time this has happened. In order to get Google Chrome done as fast as possible, even though it was labeled as an open source project and it used the open WebKit rendering engine, the code was not released until after the first beta builds of Chrome became available.
Google projects like Android and Chrome are open source, but they're definitely not community driven. So moves like this should not be unexpected and are generally accepted as the status quo.
Google's definition of open source is a rather peculiar one But Google is now testing the limits of the 'open source' definition again, according to a report from Bloomberg. Apparently, Google is telling Android major carriers and mobile phone makers that they're going to have to obey Google's much stricter rules if they want early access to new Android versions.
Any changes to the operating system have to be approved by Google which reserves the right to veto everything, including what services carriers or phone makers get to bundle and what tweaks they can make to the UI.
So far, most manufacturers created their own custom themes and environments for Android. Arguably, this was because the standard one was rather dull in the early days and continues to be rather thrill-less even now.
Fragmentation is a real issue
However, all this freedom has lead to quite a big fragmentation problem and users can be quite confused by the myriad of options. Developers have problems as well if their apps don't work the same on any device.
So Google is looking to maintain a common interface and experience across any device. What's more, it's even starting to require that only certain hardware components are used to ensure that everything works on all devices and that development can move forward faster, since there are fewer configurations to test.
Furthermore having control over every aspect of the OS, the device and the experience has worked great for Apple and it's hard to argue against it. Android clearly needs a more hands-on approach from Google.
Android has always been a means to get Google apps and services on devices
But all of this flies in the face of everything that Google has said for the past two years. Countless times it has said that Apple's approach is the wrong one, in the long term, since it's not open.
But now that Android is the dominant smartphone platform, it can start acting more aggressively since carriers and phone makers depend on Google, more than the other way around.
And there's an added benefit to Google choosing what goes in and what doesn't, it ensures that its apps are always used, that Google Search is the default search engine, that there's a Gmail client pre-installed, that Google Maps is used and so on.
The threat of the third-party marketplaces
Even more importantly, it ensures that the Android Market app is always present and that it can block any competing app marketplace. This last point is increasingly a threat to Google.
Amazon has just launched an app store. A few days ago it also launched a cloud storage and music streaming service, another direct swipe at Google. The Kindle has been a huge success so far, so it's not that much of a stretch to assume that Amazon working on an Android-powered tablet, to compete with the iPad.
And you can be sure that any Amazon tablet is going to come bundled with its own app store, services and applications. And there's nothing preventing Amazon from striking deals with carriers or manufacturers to have its store bundled with other devices.
Facebook is said to be working on its own Android device as well and you can bet that not only is it packed with Facebook services and functionality, Google apps will be taking a very distant back seat.
Google will probably get away with it
Under Google's new rules, this kind of thing would be out of the question if you want your devices to run the latest and greatest Android version and not one that is several months old.
Twitter has made a similar move when it started cutting out third-party developers and favoring its own apps, also for consistency officially. Not a lot of people liked it, but the site is still growing, faster than ever in fact.
Google is not Twitter though, so any prediction is hard to make. At this point Android is rather unstoppable and Google can get away with a lot more than it could just a year ago. It remains to be seen how much it can play the 'open' card from now on, though.