MG Siegler, writing for TechCrunch, on Google’s fatal mistake with Android: making it open-source
Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open. Open.
Every chance they get, someone from Google brings this up as a huge advantage of Android over rivals like iOS. Never mind the fact that a good percentage of the time it’s pure marketing bullshit — why exactly isn’t Google Wallet on Google’s own Galaxy Nexus device? — even when it’s true, there are some very real downsides. The user experience angle has been debated ad nauseam. More interesting is what we’re seeing now. A downside for Google.
It’s an article that raises a lot of interesting points, and also the very stupid one that “Google is surprised that its open-source project is being used for other projects.” Even if Google has a silly definition of what it means to be open, that’s not really proof that the Kindle Fire is a failure of Android as a platform.
