Google Play Services Supplants Android As Google's "Platform" 182
exomondo writes "Google has a plan to circumvent the problem of fragmentation of its Android operating system across the installed base by using its proprietary, closed-source Google Play Services. Play Services is a privileged service that runs on Android and provides the sort of functionality to applications that would generally be seen in operating system updates like cloud backup, remote wipe, push messaging, etc... This service can be updated silently and independently of the operating system and runs on almost every version of Android out there allowing Google to add functionality to Android devices without having to go through the OEMs so having an up-to-date version of Android is looking like less of a necessity."
It might be worth noting that Google originally rejected copyleft in favor of permissive licensing in the name of giving OEMs and carriers more control over Android on their devices.
Play Services is the "Value Add" (Score:5, Informative)
After the raw OS, Google needs to have something unique/proprietary to offer users. That's all the google play interconnected stuff... The Google-specific stuff is... in the Gapps. It makes sense... that's where Google's ecosystem integrates with the OS.
That's not exactly true-- try running a Cyanogenmod build sometime without Gapps. It still works well-- just as you'd expect, you don't have the Google-related things, but there is a non-branded browser, and it's still a very usable device. But yeah, you don't get the benefits (or risks, depending on your POV) of using Google's services.
Still, it's an interesting theory that the OS work is basically done now so new feature work is going to be piled over google services/gapps. I suspect it's a bit overstated as I'd think there is plenty of platform/OS-level and basic framework improvements still to do. Many of the UI advances in the Google services have been built in tandem with corresponding framework development (though much of it is backported all the way to v4),
Re:Anything that bypasses the carriers/manufacture (Score:5, Informative)
The manufacturers want to be apple and sell a new phone every time the O/S gets even the most basic of incremental improvements to functionality.
How exactly is that being like Apple other than in your invented version of reality? The iPhone 4 was discontinued October of 2011 and is slated to also get iOS 7 coming out later this year. The 3GS got discontinued in September of last year it still received iOS updates to 6.1.3 from last March. The 3G was discontinued in June 2010 yet continued receiving iOS updates until November of 2010. And the original iPhone was discontinued July 2008 and still received iOS updates until February of 2010.
Re:DroidWall (Score:4, Informative)
F-Droid [f-droid.org] has a pretty good catalog nowadays. I've eliminated everything proprietary from my phone life except for Google Maps and those pesky hardware drivers. Osmand [osmand.net] is pretty close to replacing Maps too... navigation basically works (even offline, although I've yet to try using it for more than echoing routes I already know) but POI searching is hit and miss (e.g. when searching for my bank it says the closest location is 17mi away, when there's one about 3mi away). It's actually nicer in a number of ways: maps and POI data can be stored offline (I have my entire state stored, what's 400M when you've got a 16G SD card?), you can record GPX routes (without eating tons of battery even), navigation can be simulated, it has a handy elevation and distance tool (great for biking), ...
What Happens When Google Play Services is Buggy? (Score:5, Informative)
So what happens when a monolithic chunk of software has a *really* bad release? Putting all your eggs in one basket is a serious risk.