[HN Gopher] How Google bought Android ___________________________________________________________________ How Google bought Android Author : samizdis Score : 202 points Date : 2021-08-13 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | kumarm wrote: | Slightly off topic. | | Chet Haase and Romain Guy both were treasures in Java community | and now in Android community. | | Thanks Romain Guy and Chet Haase for everything you guys do. | EvilEy3 wrote: | > Chet Haase and Romain Guy both were treasures in Java | community | | How so? Anywhere I can read about their contributions during | Java time? Thanks. | kumarm wrote: | Their Rich UI clients with Java Swing was common presentation | during Java One's. They wrote a book later: | https://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Rich-Clients-Developing- | Applic... | tdeck wrote: | I got to play with that original Android demo; it's floating | around Google and I even wrote an internal Google doc tour of | what I found before I left. For those that work at Alphabet you | may find it interesting to search that out. The demo itself is | basically a bunch of JavaScript. | swetland wrote: | Fun fact: The original, original demo (pre-acquisition) was Lua | based. Andy was skeptical that enough people would know what | Lua was so I shifted it over to Javascript. So for a while we | were Javascript + 2d render engine. Smells a bit like WebOS or | Flutter (though much less fancy in that early sketch). | Jyaif wrote: | Shifting from Lua to JS is not trivial! What JS engine did | you use? | | And can you tell us a bit more about the choice of Java to | create apps? Wasn't it frustrating for all the C++ coders in | your team to use such a "slow" language for apps? | swetland wrote: | At the time (very very early) there was only a small amount | of code and small amount of native bindings, so it only | took a couple days to rebuild the lower layers and I recall | Chris got the "framework" running again in js pretty | quickly after that was done. I think maybe we used | spidermonkey? It's been 15+ years... somebody at Google | with access to the fadden demo should be able to figure it | out quickly enough. | | As for Java, it worked well enough for Hiptop at Danger on | a 24MHz ARM7TDMI platform. We felt we could use a similar | approach (use Java more for "business logic" and do the | heavy lifting in native libraries and services) to get | sufficient performance on the 200MHz+ ARM9 platforms we | were looking at, and take advantage of having a real MMU | for process protection and eventually supporting native | code (the latter, more contentious). | asadlionpk wrote: | It's titled "A Tour of the Original Android Demo" | dvirsky wrote: | No go link for the lazy? :) | tiffanyh wrote: | Isn't it weird to name it "ORIGINAL android demo" since that | implies that the author new that in the future there would be | other android demo. | | It'd be like asking a solider in 1915 what war they were | fighting and they respond "WW1" (as if they new in advance | that there would be a second world-war 30 years later). | tdeck wrote: | Since I wrote most of this doc in early 2020, it takes a | look at the demo from a modern point of view. | | In fact, when I was using the demo it felt like the color | flip phone I used to have around the mid 2000s, and in | retrospect it's hard to tell why Android became what it did | today. There wasn't much unique "smartphone" functionality | in that demo from today's perspective, although I didn't | see the original materials about how it was positioned. | throwawaycuriou wrote: | I'm seeing more of this in HN where folks hint at something | that's available only if you're an employee at one of the tech | giants. I feel like it used to be gauche and isn't now. (No jab | at you specifically tdeck, just a trend I'm not fond of.) | rejectedandsad wrote: | It's overwhelmingly a Google thing in my experience, because | they're used to everyone else being part of their own insular | club (and ignoring the rest of the plebeians incapable of | getting a job there). | | It's still gauche, you're not going crazy. | zozbot234 wrote: | The original commenter is not working at Google or part of | that "club"; the comment states that they left that job. | EvilEy3 wrote: | They're still part of it because they were there. | rejectedandsad wrote: | Xoogler is a term. How many other companies have a term | like that? They even have a website internally for people | who leave and they call them "alums". Nobody thinks I'm | impressive or worthy of respect because of where I work, | but people like OP continue to promote an elitist view of | the world. | tdeck wrote: | It's because more than 100,000 people work at Google. If I | had written a comment saying "if you're ever in [small | city], you might want to check out [thing]" I suspect | nobody would have a problem with that. | rejectedandsad wrote: | You can walk into a city. You have to be judged to be in | the top 1% of intelligence to work at Google. | | People like me are untermensch to folks like you. | javert wrote: | I feel lucky to hear these stories and "hang out" with these | engineers, even if I can't personally get access to what | they're discussing. | | I think it's absolutely awful that you and others in this | thread are actively discouraging this kind of wonderful | discussion. | | I think you are going against the hacker ethos and the Hacker | News ethos. | tdeck wrote: | Sorry about that. I love computer history and put a lot of | work into documenting the demo and want people to be able to | learn about it, but it's very unfortunate that people outside | Google (including me) can't see it. Basically it was a | collection of screenshots and some notes on the code / commit | log iirc. | harshaw wrote: | This was a very interesting time in the development of mobile | technology and as was mentioned you clearly could see the writing | on the wall but the challenge was how to get to a useful mobile | platform from all the crap that predated Android / Iphone. When I | was at Orange I hacked on all sort of devices: Symbian / UIQ, | N60, Windows mobile, etc. They all sucked in one way or the other | - mostly due to crappy tooling and crappy devices. Or completely | broken understanding of software ecosystems which doomed Symbian | and others. We all knew that there was going to be an explosion | of cool things and a better platform was critical. | | There were some other companies doing interesting things - one | was a startup called Savaje that had a complete java based phone | environment up and running. However, they weren't a silicon | valley company and didn't have Andy's connections (or reputation) | from Danger. | miohtama wrote: | I worked with Series 60 teams. For Nokia Series 60, an external | developer was not a stakeholder, but a thread clamped down with | NDAs and horrible permission system. Apple App Store changed | this mentality and was what truly changed the mobile industry. | zozbot234 wrote: | It's interesting that pre-acquisition Android seems like it was | very much tailored to high-end feature phones. There was no touch | screen support, and even "apps" themselves seemed to be a bit of | an afterthought, although of course better planned than the 'J2ME | profiles' mentioned in OP. The closest thing to it today would | probably be KaiOS, even pure Linux on phones is aiming quite a | bit higher. (Albeit with sxmo https://sxmo.org/ | https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Sxmo being a bit more | minimalistic, even that is way above most feature phones.) | jaywalk wrote: | iPhone changed everything. | pier25 wrote: | Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty much | inevitable. The same components were available to everyone. | | I think Apple's stroke of genius was in the software and | UI/UX. | downWidOutaFite wrote: | No one else was working on a capacitive touchscreen device. | oblio wrote: | Easy there, rewriting history. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada | | > It was first announced on 12 December 2006. | | > It is the first mobile phone with a capacitive | touchscreen. | | > The LG Prada was announced shortly <<before>> Apple CEO | Steve Jobs announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007. | | > After the release of the iPhone the head of the LG | Mobile Handset R&D Center was quoted saying he believed | Apple had stolen the idea from the KE850 after it was | announced as part of the iF Design Award. | swetland wrote: | Yup, Apple made software and UX important. And had the | clout to ship their device with their software and ignore | the carriers' obsession with random checkbox features. | | Which, in the end, helped us a ton with Android -- post | iPhone announcement everyone wanted to compete with that, | nobody knew how, and the carriers eased back a bit on their | absurd requirements documents full of random features | nobody cared about (WAP?). | | At the time iPhone was announced we were already running on | the prototype of what became G1 (Dream), with multitouch. | We just expected it would be the second form factor to | ship, after a more "traditional" blackberry wedge sort of | thing (Sooner). Post-iPhone it seemed silly to ship such a | device first (you can imagine the reaction), so we skipped | it and shifted focus to Dream. | oblio wrote: | > WAP | | WAP made sense for its time: limited computing power, | limited bandwidth, super low data caps. | swetland wrote: | Sure, but it made a lot less sense on a device with a | much faster data network and full featured web browser... | even so carriers had their lists of all the features | _required_ for phones to be certified on their networks | and it was very feature-phone-centric at that time. | Someone wrote: | It may look like that in hindsight, and given advances in | hardware, something with lots of sensors would have been | built, but I'm not sure how similar it would have been. | | The removal of the keyboard, in particular, was far from | universally perceived as a good idea at the time. | | I also think it would have been quite a while before | anybody would have had the guts to not provide a slot for | memory cards or to not have removable batteries. | swetland wrote: | I dunno, touch-only had been done before (Newton, Palm), | and I think it would have surfaced again. The UI/UX Apple | built on top of the technology that was in everyone's | (manufacturers) hands, I still think, was the biggest | factor in pushing things forward industry-wide. | oautholaf wrote: | As important was Apple's brand power. Everyone already | had an iPod in their pocket and loved it. That gave them | legitimacy to set terms with carriers. | macintux wrote: | > Hardware wise, the iPhone or a similar device was pretty | much inevitable. The same components were available to | everyone. | | I agree (more or less) with the fact that someone would | have come out with something similar. I strongly disagree | that it would have changed the world. | | Apple had the "courage" to go all-in on the form factor | with the retail footprint to sell it, and of course the | built-in fan base and long history of innovation to make it | interesting even in its fairly primitive form. | | Any other manufacturer would have either been too small to | be so influential, or would have hedged their bets with a | dozen alternatives, and their "iPhone" would have just been | another dusty device in the corner of an AT&T store that no | one knew how to use. | pier25 wrote: | > Any other manufacturer would have either been too small | to be so influential | | Maybe small manufacturers, but if Nokia or Motorola had | done it first (with good software) maybe we'd be a in | different world. | macintux wrote: | You left out the rest of that... | | > or would have hedged their bets with a dozen | alternatives | | Nokia or Motorola wouldn't have bet their phone business | on a single UI/hardware combination like Apple did, and | so I don't believe it would have had the technological | impact the iPhone did. | pier25 wrote: | That's a good point. Maybe you're right, who knows. | toast0 wrote: | Nokia pissed off too many US carriers around this time. | They were pushing a preinstalled VoIP client, and US | carriers responded by dropping their phones. | | Even if they had something great, the US focus of tech | media would have made it hard to see, and the US/EU | frequency differences would have made it hard to use in | the US unless Nokia made a US version, but lack of | distribution makes that less likely. | zozbot234 wrote: | LG Prada changed everything. iPhone was a lame ripoff of that | device. | jaywalk wrote: | You think iPhone ripped off a device that was announced | less than a month earlier? Really? | lostlogin wrote: | If you entertain the idea, what has that thing got that | the iPhone could be accused of copying? | jaywalk wrote: | I don't think either company copied the other. | Mikeb85 wrote: | Not really. It was going to happen with or without Apple. The | first touchscreen smartphone was in 1992. Microsoft had | touchscreen Windows devices from the late 90's through the | 00's. Symbian and BlackBerry were things. And the LG Prada | which was released before iPhone. | | iPhone just did what Apple's good at, taking existing | technology and packaging it nicely, but it would have | happened with or without them. | GeekyBear wrote: | The biggest thing the iPhone did was come up with a user | interaction method that made using a mobile computer/phone | intuitive. | | >Chris DeSalvo's reaction to the iPhone was immediate and | visceral. "As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one | immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought 'We're | going to have to start over.'" | | "What we had suddenly looked just so . . . nineties," | DeSalvo said. "It's just one of those things that are | obvious when you see it." | | https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the- | d... | | Android was nearly ready to launch as a Blackberry clone | when Jobs demoed the iPhone. | crmrc114 wrote: | The reason I left my Treo for the OG iPhone was the data | plan. No one could touch that unlimited data at the time. | To me that is what sold the iPhone. I don't know that it | ever would have taken off if it had been constrained per KB | as was popular at the time. Also the data plan was a bit of | a requirement considering the first iPhone was all webapps. | I was so pissed when I found out it lacked copy and paste. | 908B64B197 wrote: | But Apple had a two years leap in front of everyone else | shipping a useable touch interface. | | I remember the BlackBerry Storm, the first touch screen | phone by RIM launching at the same time as the iPhone 3G. | No Wifi, slow janky scrolling, no apps (well, sure, if you | don't mind downloading some random .jar that have to be | recompiled for the custom fork they ran on that device). | Felt like a rushed beta. | | Meanwhile the iPhone just worked. Smooth scrolling, fast | browser especially on Wifi. You could get apps from the | AppStore, no friction. | foobarian wrote: | The thing I remember about non-iPhone touchscreens in | those days is seeing the little mouse icon jump to where | you pressed, and tiny scrollbars. And having to get out | the stylus to better hit the targets. And seeing the | cross-hatch X-windows background while the phone was | booting up. It felt like using a handheld oscilloscope. | At least the UI was not done in Tcl/Tk :-) | downWidOutaFite wrote: | iPhone's capacitive touchscreen was new and revolutionary. | Microsoft had some success in the early 2000s with Windows | Mobile but they inexplicably stopped investing into it | after 2005. Without Apple it might have taken many more | years before the mobile revolution kicked off in earnest. | Mikeb85 wrote: | LG released a capacitive touchscreen phone before Apple | by a month. The technology was out there and was always | going to get used by someone. | techrat wrote: | You must also think Apple invented the notch, fingerprint | scanner, capacitive touchscreen phone, music playing | device, the desktop GUI and mouse. | swiley wrote: | The iPhone changed nothing and has, infact, been holding | mobile computing captive in the 2007 era. Modern hardware is | more than powerful enough to run decent desktop OSes without | all the crap that Apple and Google insist is necessary on a | phone. | zozbot234 wrote: | Mobile computing was _way_ more limited prior to iPhone and | Android. Mobile phones are embedded devices, and the | embedded ecosystem has always been messy irrespective of | raw computing power. Even today, this is clearly the main | obstacle to running "desktop" Linux on phones. (Though one | shouldn't underestimate the UX challenges involved in | building a viable phone OS, these are largely solved by now | thanks to Plasma Mobile and Phosh. What remains is 99% | hardware bugs and lacking support.) | swiley wrote: | I run a desktop UI on my phone. The only place it really | doesn't work is when I'm driving and that's illegal | anyway. | | The main obstacle is SoC drivers that are kept closed. | pjmlp wrote: | While Symbian C++ might have been a pain to use, the | phones could run J2ME, Apache (yep that web server), | Python, Flash and Web Widgets (PWAs before it was even an | idea!). | EvilEy3 wrote: | Android can do that today too. | pjmlp wrote: | Symbian was doing that in 2004. | dmitriid wrote: | > Modern hardware is more than powerful enough to run | decent desktop OSes | | Good luck running a desktop OS optimized for keyboard, | mouse and large screens on a mobile phone with a small | screen and only touch as input. | | Oh. WinMobile was like that. And the original Android was | like that. People went over to iPhone _in droves_ , and | Google had to scramble to change Android to mimic iOS. | realusername wrote: | I'd say the iPhone 2G changed everything, the first one did | not really make a revolution on the mobile landscape. | jaywalk wrote: | I could not disagree more. No handset manufacturer ever | dared to make the demands that Apple did, including full | control of the software with no ability to customize or | even pre-install apps. It was completely unheard of, but | that's what they got Cingular to agree to with the first | iPhone. And they maintain that control to this day. | lostlogin wrote: | You disagree but then state that Apple did something no | one else had ever done? | jaywalk wrote: | What? I disagreed with the statement that there was no | revolution until the iPhone 3G, because what I stated was | done with the original iPhone. | lostlogin wrote: | Apologies, I misunderstood your point. | kllrnohj wrote: | And nobody has done that since. Can it really be an | industry revolution if it's still a solo act over a | decade later? | jaywalk wrote: | Google has, with Pixel. And even though the other Android | OEMs allow for carrier apps to be preinstalled, it's | nothing at all like it used to be. Verizon at one point | was requiring feature phones to run a custom Verizon OS. | Carriers would arbitrarily disable features on phones. | | The carriers had complete control over everything up | until Apple came along. Even Android enjoys the fruits of | Apple's initial demands. | realusername wrote: | I'm not in the US so that's why my perspective is maybe | different but the first generation iPhone did not have | MMS support, which was a critical feature at the time and | pretty much killed it as a mainstream phone. | wmf wrote: | _high-end feature phones_ | | This kind of classification only makes sense in retrospect. | Blackberries and Danger Hiptops were pretty much the best | phones you could get in 2005. Sure, keyboardless phones existed | but they weren't necessarily better. | pjmlp wrote: | As ex-Symbian user/dev I beg to differ, specially the | communicator models. | rootsudo wrote: | HTC 6700 and palm too. There were better phones. | bane wrote: | It's really useful to look at the context of the market at the | time. High-end phones ran a mobile variant of Windows, or were | Blackberries. Screen sizes _were_ getting larger and having | data coming to your phone at all was still considered a bit | exotic but was starting to happen. Touch, if there was any, was | usually on a non-capacitive screen and was generally pretty | terrible. The integration of sensors, data, GPS, etc. was | starting to happen, but wasn 't ubiquitous. | | The market was also _incredibly_ fragmented both on the | hardware _and_ software side. The hard divide between feature | phones and smart phones hadn 't yet been delineated in a | general sense (the Windows phones were just kind of clunky and | weird, and Blackberry basically had it's own market segment and | represented "smart phones" in the press). Phones just kept | getting higher and higher end, and adding more and more | features. | | https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/best-mobile-phones-of-2006/ | | The most anticipated phone for 2007 was Nokia's N95, the press | called it a "multimedia device". It came with GPS, quad-band, | 5MP camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer, a Web | Browser, a big screen, apps. It looks vaguely like an older | iPod, but has a pop out numeric keyboard. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95 | | At the time it was considered one of the best phones ever | released and sold 10 million. At the time it was sometimes | called smartphone, but I think today we'd call it an advanced | feature phone. | | Android thus came out in this market, and the phones it | originally targeted looked more like the N95 than the iPhone. | When Apple introduced the iPhone, they rethought the form- | factor and simplified it, getting rid of most buttons and | making touch not suck. But functionality-wise the iPhone was | about on par with the N95, and so was Android. However, the | first iPhone didn't support user apps, had limited connectivity | and sold only 6.1 million devices. | | When Android started supporting phones with iPhone-like form | factors, it wasn't a given that it would become the predominant | form factor for phones. The first few generations of Android | phones still features lots of vestigial keyboards and buttons | and rollers and sliders and such carried over from the N95 and | blackberry style phones that Android devices were also looking | like. Once the iPhone style form factor started leaving | everybody else in the dust, Android phones (and the OS) simply | dropped that stuff also. | majormajor wrote: | The high-end Symbian phones ticked all the boxes for "smart" | I can think of. Not sure how they'd get bucketed as "feature | phones." Browser, apps, fast cellular, GPS, camera... several | things (like local filesystem management and access for apps) | considerably before the iPhone. | | It was all just a bit of a pain to DO. Mount on a PC, copy | video or ebook files over to certain directories, operate | through the numeric keypad, etc... the cumulative friction of | all that compared to the iPhone was pretty groundbreaking | even if it in a lot of ways it was just a lot of things being | "a little bit" easier. | | But I still held on to it for a few years because it took a | while for the iPhones to really be able to do all the same | things. | ufmace wrote: | It's the app ecossystem that really changed things and | makes a true smartphone. Symbian could technically install | and run apps. I think there was a Nokia/Symbian app store, | but it only had like 10 crappy apps. I never had any idea | where you would even start if you wanted to build one of | your own or get it on the store. I'm pretty sure even power | users of those phone never had more than one or two | aftermarket apps. Rumor was that the development experience | was terrible. I used Symbian phones for like 10 years I | think, and never saw any improvement whatsoever in the app | situation. | | Apple and Google now both run app store hosting millions of | apps, they both maintain their own development environments | and adopted more advanced languages to make it easier. It's | easy to submit apps (relative to Symbian days) and even | nontechnical users commonly install and use dozens of them. | The development tech and available APIs are being added and | improved at breakneck speed, relatively speaking. | foobarian wrote: | One other thing that played a huge part is how Jobs beat | AT&T over the head to provide an unlimited data plan. We | don't think much of this today, but in those days data | was _expensive_. It put a huge cognitive load on any kind | of data operation. Merely turning on the data modem was a | "will I be able to eat through payday" kind of decision. | It was very stressful! And suddenly Jobs comes along with | the cool new phone AND takes away this barrier. Now you | could have data always on, not worry about how big the | app was you were about to download. You could browse the | web and go to any website, with images turned on, without | fear. | | I remember the day this was announced and even though I | never bought into the Apple ecosystem I remember feeling | that it was a game changing move. | Izkata wrote: | > and the OS | | At least as of Android 8, the OS still supports hardware | keyboards (and likely the rest); my current phone has one and | can scroll by swiping on the keyboard. | spaetzleesser wrote: | I always wonder if Android was a success for google from a pure | business perspective. Did it really help them make more money? | samizdis wrote: | > This time, there were more people in the room, and Google was | ready to talk specifics. Andy and his team had assumed they were | coming to give an update on the company's progress since the last | meeting. But in the middle of the presentation, Nick remembered, | "They just said, 'Let us interrupt you there. We just want to buy | you.'" | | > Google turned what Andy's team thought was a meeting of Android | pitching to Google into a meeting in which Google was pitching to | them instead. | kyaghmour wrote: | Yet another example of how what looks later as a slam dunk / sure | winner acquisition is anything but for those involved during the | process. | | Also, not sure if it's covered elsewhere in the book, but it | would've been interesting to get to understand Google's | motivation for doing this deal. My understanding is that Google | understood mobile was important and given that, at the time, | network operators had a lot of control over mobile software, the | fear was that they could control access to the search engine and, | hence, exclude or take control over Google. | 6510 wrote: | I don't get why investors would have doubted that all it took | is money after Microsoft made Windows such a success looong | before. I also cant think of any motivation for google bigger | than their competition with MS. | thepangolino wrote: | Worked so well for windows mobile ! | 6510 wrote: | Greed is overwhelming in MS. Its success made it into a | very different company. | | In hindsight the camera OS was also a brilliant idea. I | primarily use my phone to take pictures, make calls and | send text messages. SMS can do that well enough. | mrkramer wrote: | >it would've been interesting to get to understand Google's | motivation for doing this deal | | Motivation was that Microsoft at the time was developing | Windows Mobile or whatever it was called and Google got scared | that they will put Microsoft Bing as a default internet search | engine on millions of Windows Mobile phones that were suppose | to conquer mobile phone industry. | | It's funny how Steve Jobs was mad at Google because Android was | chipping away Iphone's dominance but in the reality Android was | about and against Microsoft not Apple and Iphone. | | Search for an article on HN or Google I can't find it atm. But | the article talks about just like I said how Google was | developing competition for Windows Mobile then famous 2007 | Iphone presentation happened and Google engineers realized | touch UI and UX is the future not QWERTY plastic keyboard and | then they pretty much copied most of the Iphone and iOS | features. | | Edit: here is the article: | https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d... | lawrenceyan wrote: | Definitely give _Losing the Signal - The Untold Story Behind | the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry_ [0] | a read if you're interested in the genesis of mobile. In many | ways Google was actually late in comparison to Apple, but was | able to leapfrog the ecosystem by focusing on abstracting to | the operating system platform/layer that is Android. | | This is also why I personally believe Microsoft failed but | Google was ultimately able to succeed in competition with | Apple. | | [0]: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Losing_the_Signal/oE- | TB... | avh02 wrote: | definitely taking a look at this book - spent a short part of | my career as a blackberry OS developer - worst dev experience | of my life, so I'm glad they're dying a slow and excruciating | death for it. | ndesaulniers wrote: | Why do you say that? (Worst dev experience) | vnorilo wrote: | Maybe BB saved you from Symbian though? | enjo wrote: | I spent 6 years slogging through Symbian work. The whole | "C++ but not quite" approach was infuriating, and the | system level API's weren't much better. It was _very_ | difficult to work with. The original iOS SDK felt like a | revelation in comparison. | Apocryphon wrote: | MeeGo ended up being not too bad, it used Qt. | | https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/13567772811889 | 377... | Mikeb85 wrote: | It was probably the best phone OS at that point in time. | It was just a little too late for Nokia and they | disastrously threw their lot in with Microsoft. | joecool1029 wrote: | It's funny that BB10 was in many ways similar to MeeGo, | it also used Qt/QML and had a similar UI. I went to BB10 | after wanting the next closest thing to the Nokia N9 I | had before. | Apocryphon wrote: | BB10 was QNX-based, otherwise I wonder if RIM and Nokia | could've pulled their efforts along with other big guys | (Samsung and Intel who went on to do Tizen) to set up a | compatibility layer between their respective platforms to | allow an app ecosystem to flourish. | 908B64B197 wrote: | One of the big thing was that it was a perceived as a career | upgrade to go from BlackBerry to Apple or Google. But the | opposite was unheard of. | samizdis wrote: | > ... what looks later as a slam dunk / sure winner acquisition | is anything but for those involved during the process | | Exactly. | | > ... it would've been interesting to get to understand | Google's motivation for doing this deal. My understanding is | that Google understood mobile was important and given that, at | the time, network operators had a lot of control over mobile | software, the fear was that they could control access to the | search engine and, hence, exclude or take control over Google. | | That's sort of hinted at in the article: | | _When Android met with Google, Larry Page observed that it | would make sense for Google to acquire the small company, to | help them build a platform that would enable Google to enter | the mobile market._ | | Perhaps we all need to buy the book to find out ... | jcun4128 wrote: | Somewhat related, I heard an interesting podcast recently by | Corecursive about Sqlite and they mentioned how Android was so | far ahead... excerpt: | | > This was back in 2005 or so, and we were in meetings with | Android, and this was before Android was a thing... they had a | prototype of their Android phone, and this was before iPhone... | but we were debugging something with SQLite and we were | plugging into the phone and we were running the debugger on a | workstation which was pretty amazing. Nobody else could do | that... here we were, we were debugging an application in GDB | on a phone that was on the public network, and this was utterly | mind blowing. Nobody at Motorola, nobody at Symbian, nobody at | Nokia had anything close to that, and in that one moment, I | knew that Android was going to be huge. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | Which is a ridiculous assertion, since I clearly remember | running gdb targetting a Handspring/Palm way before the ARM | transition, late 90s or the like. In fact m68k gdb was the | only option available if you couldn't pay the big compilers. | Damn gdbpanel. | | Not to mention that in 2005 Nokia already had the 770, which | was basically a mobile desktop GNU/Linux device, with Gtk+, | Gnome and everything. You could run gdb on the device itself. | wyldfire wrote: | > Which is a ridiculous assertion, since I clearly remember | running gdb targetting a Handspring/Palm way before the ARM | transition, late 90s or the like. | | From the description it sounds as if gdb was running off- | target (same as it would for debugging Palm), except | perhaps it connected via gdbremote-over-TCP instead of a | 68k debug stub via RS232 or similar. And in this case, the | phone's TCP stack is running over the phone's radio. | | > basically a mobile desktop GNU/Linux device | | From the sound of it, this device likely could have matched | these claims. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | > except perhaps it connected via gdbremote-over-TCP | instead of a 68k debug stub via RS232 | | (he clearly says "plugged in" in the audio track, which | does not hint to a over-the-air solution). | jcun4128 wrote: | The full couple of paragraphs is kind of lengthy to paste | here but I think the main "coolness" is that while | debugging, the phone rang. Not sure if in the other cases | people are mentioning, the phone couldn't run. Also the | development turn around time was much faster for | Android's case apparently. | | > ...whereas the engineers that other companies, they had | the big breadboard prototypes, the big full sized | prototyping board, and the phone would run on that, and | it was not connected to a radio so they couldn't actually | use it as a phone. | jsjohnst wrote: | > Which is a ridiculous assertion | | To the person who made the claim, it was the first, because | of their limited view of the world. I always take claims of | being first with a grain of salt for this reason. | | That said, I completely agree. I definitely used remote | debuggers and on-device debuggers on mobile before | Android/iOS existed. | cat199 wrote: | > To the person who made the claim, it was the first, | because of their limited view of the world. | | Then one would say 'it was the first i've seen' | | We have language for a reason. Despite what you hear on | daytime talk shows about 'your truth', back in reality, | actual truth is objective | ipaddr wrote: | Isn't that what everyone is saying. To say otherwise | would mean you have a perfect understanding of something | static. | | It is the first they know about. It may be defined | differently. | | You cannot claim absolute truth on most things you can't | can't claim absolute understanding of the language people | use to express things. | | If you expect absolute truth in a variable world you're | in for disappoinment. | jeffbee wrote: | Yeah that's completely ridiculous. BlackBerry in the x86/C | and ARM/Java eras could be attached to a workstation and | debugged with Visual C or the later RIM JDK, setting | breakpoints and single-stepping on real hardware live and | on the air. Was debugging on the BlackBerry 857 over serial | port attached to PC in 1999. | kelnos wrote: | I think that's just a case of someone being relatively | ignorant of how things work in embedded contexts. gdbserver | has been a thing since well before 2005, and remote debugging | was not at all new, even then. | | If nobody at Motorola, Symbian, or Nokia could do | (specifically) that, it just means that they didn't have GDB | ported to their OS. But they absolutely certainly had other | remote debugging tools; it's preposterous to suggest they | didn't. | pjmlp wrote: | I was at Nokia back on those years and also didn't get his | point. | cpeterso wrote: | Here's the podcast and a transcription: | | "The Untold Story of SQLite" | | https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/ | GeekyBear wrote: | The interesting thing is that the company Google feared might | push them out on mobile was Microsoft. | | >Google worried that if Microsoft made it hard enough to use | Google search on its mobile devices and easy enough to use | Microsoft search, many users would just switch search engines. | This was the way Microsoft killed Netscape with Internet | Explorer in the 1990s. If users stopped using Google's search | engine and began using a competitor's such as Microsoft's, | Google's business would quickly run aground. | | https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d... | ksec wrote: | That was the era when everyone thought Microsoft was un- | defeatable. Including myself. Little did I know how Microsoft | was totally incapable to execute anything. Windows Mobile ( | Or heck Pocket PC ) was there years before Android was even | founded. | | And Bill Gate blame it on Anti-Trust and monopoly lawsuit | against them. | mrkramer wrote: | Yea he blamed it on antitrust lawsuit and said that | Microsoft lost $400bn because of missed mobile OS | opportunity or in another words because Android beat | Microsoft and its Windows Mobile/Phone. | oblio wrote: | > Little did I know how Microsoft was totally incapable to | execute anything <<mobile>>. | | Fixed that for you. | contingencies wrote: | I worked in mobile video in 2009-2010 and was chummy with our | CEO who was hobnobbing with all the mobile device manufacturer | executives. We did headline work for HTC, LG, Nokia, Samsung, | Sony-Ericsson, etc. and sold to HTC in late 2010. | | The way he explained it, the mobile phone industry in many | markets, particularly the US, used to be such that the customer | was owned by the carrier. | | iPhone changed the status quo in 2007: Apple could pick and | choose carriers on their terms, the smartphone class device | became a primary network interface for the customer, and the | customer was effectively owned by the device manufacturer. This | was a _huge_ threat to Google, but also the carriers. | | Android launched in 2009 as Google's hugely successful ally in | their response to commodify their complement. | | Google politically aligned themselves with carriers and the | status quo and maintained a 'half-open' rapid-change policy | which has created constant API and language churn. Great | potential futures from recent smartphone history like Samsung | Dex (phone-based dockable Linux workstations), wireless mesh | networking as a first-class connectivity paradigm and | standards-based IOT control never had a chance to mature. | | By now we could be running UUCPesque media feeds over local ad- | hoc wifi with free educational resources, reliable dockable | workstations in our pocket and a self-organizing community | economy rewarding social and environmental values. Instead we | pay for VPNs and watch TikTok while our right to repair, | understand or modify are wholly eroded under the auspices of an | "open" platform shepherded by well-paid corporate lawyers and | doublespeak. | | The phone industry is absolutely terrible now. It's like a | conspiracy against society focused on capturing consumer | attention, surveilling consumers, using them as intelligence | nodes for building global wireless infrastructure maps and | media OSINT and actively preventing off-carrier cooperation | among the population. We desperately need open mobile hardware. | oblio wrote: | > We desperately need open mobile hardware. | | There's no money in it. It's dead on arrival. | | I'd be glad to be proven wrong. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-13 23:00 UTC)