Google's Open Source Mobile Platform

As expected, today Google took the wraps off of the gPhone (as the media have for months been referring to the rumored project). Google is "leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers," and will be licensing its software to all comers on an open source basis under the Apache license. (The Wall Street Journal's Ben Worthen demonstrates a miserable grasp of what "open source" means.) Google's US partners include Nextel and Sprint, but not AT&T nor Verizon. Phones will be available in the second half of 2008 — not the spring as earlier reports had speculated. News.com's analysis warns that Google won't take over the mobile market overnight, though they quote Forrester in the opinion that Google may be one of the three biggest mobile players after several years of shakeout.

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open phones rock

For the past 3 days I've been trying to modify and mess with my Motorola V3M Razor and it's a glitchy hell to try and do. Any phone that's more open than the current phone Nazis keep them is fine with me. All those dollar per ringtone and wallpaper people can shove it. Oh and especially that chick on late night TV commercials with the weird accent telling me I can win like $32,000 if I unscramble the word and text it in. I hope Google tracks her down and gets her deported. Now some of you may be asking, "Do you have anger issues with cell phone carriers and their associates" to which I say, "Don't you?"

DUPE

Let me be the first to say DUPE [slashdot.org].

Come ON! I guess Slashdot's speed at getting the original post on the front page threw you guys off. Usually these things come at least a day after everyone else.

(Not that I don't prefer Slashdot. I flame because I care.)

Boo

It's still just a client device. Somehow I was hoping for a much bolder stroke from google, like if they'd bought up that new spectrum, thrown in their own fiber backbone, and used it to change the cellco/customer relationship fundamentally. So long as they're working through the same old networks, the US cellphone industry will stay pretty much as-is.

I for one...

...welcome our Android overlords.

Good. With that out of the way, I have to say I'm really looking forward to seing what Google can do in terms of getting functionality that has typically been the domain of "smartphones" that typically go for more than $200 w/ contract into the domain of phones that range from free to $50 (again w/ contract). With the minimum requirements set at an ARM9 @ 200MHz, this platform should allow open development on a huge new range of phones. I've already seen people earlier today making dire predictions about how Google is not going to be able to compete with the iPhone or how they prefer phones based on Symbian...and I think these people are completely missing Google's whole plan. I'm sure that initially phones based on Android will fall closer to the smartphone price range, but I can't help but think that eventually Google has to be aiming at the free-to-$50 phones. The "just a basic phone" market is an area in desperate need of a unifyied platform. Between lack of openness and the lack of a properly standardized Java implementation development for a wide range of low end phones is pretty much intractible. If Google can get Android onto low-cost phones *and* ensure "write once, run anywhere" between them I think they will have all the developer support they need. And since they already have the ears of the carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint, etc) they've already ensured they have a way to get this on shipping phones.

Why do I think low end phones are so important to these companies in the open handset alliance, when they don't have the profit margins of smartphones or "feature-phones"? Simple: Emerging markets. For billions of people around the world it is too expensive or impractical to own and maintain an Internet connected PC. It may be because of upfront cost or it may be a lack of Internet infrastructure in their area. For those people a phone will be their first (and maybe only) connection to the Internet. Right now the browsing experience on basic phones ranges from useless to unbearably slow and there is an impressive *lack* of easily accessible third party applications. If someone could change that it would add incredible value to that class of phones. So what's in it for Google? Making sure that their page is the first one a couple billion people see the first time they get on the Internet is probably worth it.

Obligatory

So I suppose instead of hot spots if you have a gPhone you look for gSpots....

Re:Obligatory

It will presumably have vibration functions, so sure, if you are a particulary Google-loving nerd girl you could indulge in that kind of... product placement.

Second half of 2008 great for vapor phones

Both Nokia and Google have announced iPhone-killers and neither of them is going to ship one unit before the second half of 2008. Microsoft will need at least that long to shrink Surface down to the size of a Zune.

Nokia is promising touchscreens and multimedia and Google is promising open source and the Web. Like we already have in our iPods. And they're going to get that to us real soon now. Like in another year from now.

It shows how miserable Palm has become that Google didn't even buy them. Not even for the name.

Re:Second half of 2008 great for vapor phones

Yeah, because Nokia - well, everyone knows they can't build a phone to save their life, right? Let's see. Camera: iPhone, 2MP, N95, 5MP. Storage: 8GB apiece. Web: iPhone, Safari. N95, based on Mozilla. Accelerometer (that 'gee whiz, doesn't every device need this' that fanboys rave about)? iPhone, check. N95, check. Display? iPhone, 320x480, touch sensitive, N95, 320x240, no touch.

Shall we continue? 3G? iPhone, uhh, no. N95, UMTS, HSDPA. GPS? iPhone, no, N95, yes. MMS? PTT? Ability to use your music as ringtone without paying money to the empire? Java? iPhone, no no no no no. N95, yes yes yes yes yes.

A few other neat features of my N95. Tethering? Oh so cool. Especially when your phone can act as a wireless access point. OpenGL hardware acceleration? Yes, you read me right.

But no mind, you just go on being a raving, frothing at the mouth Apple fanboy, oblivious to the RDF.

That platform won't be open

Sure, the platform will be open for the partners, but not for the developers.
First, look at the guys forming the "alliance": Broadcom, NVIDIA, Wind River, who are all acting towards closing linux (Wind River was even a vocal opponent to linux some times ago). Furthermore, look at why they choose Android's licence [openhandsetalliance.com]:

Why did you pick the Apache v2 open source license? Apache is a commercial-friendly open-source license. The Apache license allows manufacturers and mobile operators to innovate using the platform without the requirement to contribute those innovations back to the open-source community. Because these innovations and differentiated features can be kept proprietary, manufacturers and mobile operators are protected from the "viral infection" problem often associated with other licenses.

There. You can dream all you want about an open platform, like your traditional Fedora or Ubuntu desktop, but that won't be it. Go for Openmoko [openmoko.org] instead.

Re:Phone or Platform?

Ok, so not reading the article I get, who has the time. I am getting used to people not reading the summary either. But not reading the title of the article is just too much! Thats it, you are expelled from slashdot!

Re:Phone or Platform?

Are you kidding? He's fast approaching the Ideal Slashdot User, who to this point has only been simulated mathematically - he who reads nothing at all.

Re:Phone or Platform?

Nope, it's Linux based, and any add-on Google writes will be under the Apache license. The video also seemed to indicate that linux hackers will be comfortable in the system, as well. Compared to just having some crap Java virtual machine, this could be huge. Hacked iPhones made rapid progress partly because they run real *-nix, and Apache was ported before any of the traditional toy web servers, and SSH before telnet, and even a VNC viewer (with a somewhat broken control interface). I guess we'll see in about a week what's under the hood.

Re:Phone or Platform?

It's not the 'openness' of the platform that matters. It's the openness of the end-product, that is delivered to the customer [namely you and me] that matters [well, to you and me]. And that's an issue that's pretty much independent of what OS the phone is running. Particularly in the US.

And Sprint being part of this 'group' means nothing w.r.t. how open the shipping product will be.

The US wireless carriers will fight tooth and nail to NOT be treated as what they are: wireless service providers.

On the other hand, if anything this could make customer demand for 'openness' more difficult, because this fractures the market for developers a bit more. Now, to develop a ubiquitous app, you need to support another platform. One that with the source available, developers can't necessarily count on a given set of API's even being available on a 'googleos' phone...

I think it'll still take quite a while before the US wireless carriers permit much advancement. Even Apple had to deliberately cripple iTunes support on the iPhone so you can't use it over your "unlimited data plan" EDGE connection.

Re:Software Development Skills / Security

You read the article I take it?

Viruses need to self replicate.
Social Enginnering 'OMG Download this cool app d00dz' doesnt count.

There arent any easy ways to get a phone to send a virus to another phone.
The easiest way is Bluetooth or Wifi and then its still a pain in the ass to make it spread.

With Bluetooth you first need to somehow get another phone to connect to you, without user intervention which is impossible (without flaws in the stack).
Then you need to send data to the other phone in a way which makes it execute the code. Also basically impossible.

Whats the chance of Google's code having fundamental bugs like that? Nil.

Re:first psot!!!

If anyone was interested in Ben Worthen's moronic grasp of open-source, its pasted below. E-mail your tirades to [e-mail], of which Ben Worthen is the lead writer, and ask him about how he got his job in the first place.

Information-technology departments will ban employees from connecting phones that run Google's operating system to their computers or the corporate network. The reason is that Google's operating system is open, meaning anyone can write software for it. That includes bad guys, who will doubtlessly develop viruses and other malicious code for these phones, which unsuspecting Google phones owners will download. Employees could spread the malicious code to the rest of the company when they synch their phones to their computers or use it to check email.

The way to combat this is to develop anti-virus and anti-malware software for phones and to develop security procedures similar to those that have evolved for PCs over the last several years. But that's going to take time and money - neither of which the average IT department has. So until then, expect Google phones to be persona non grata at companies.

Re:first psot!!!

FWIW, he followed up with the following:

Update: I've read through the comments and most people seem to think I'm saying something I wasn't trying to say. That's my fault for writing sloppy. I don't think that Google's mobile operating system is a security problem because it's open source. I think that the phones that use it could become a security threat because if Google succeeds there are going to be a lot of applications for this phone and individuals are going to be able to download whichever ones they want to use. As this happens bad guys are going to start targeting these people with their own code, much the way they target PC users today.

The fact of the matter is that while most companies have anti-virus and anti-malware software on PCs, they don't do much of anything to secure phones. The point that I obviously didn't succeed at making originally is that if Google achieves its vision companies will realize that they have this weakness, and not knowing how to address it — companies would need to buy all sorts of security software and put in place all sorts of policies — their first instinct will be to ban the phones. Employees will get upset because, again if Google achieves its vision, these phones will be pretty darn cool and a pretty helpful business tool. Hence the conflict that I think it will cause. It has nothing to do with open source or Google per se, and everything to do with companies not being prepared for the phone as a dominant computing platform.

Re:Still moronic.

But more importantly, he's assuming that cell phone viruses are somehow new with this phone, and that they will somehow cause problems for a corporate network, and that the way to deal with it is anti-virus.

This is wrong on all counts. Cell phone (and mobile) viruses are not new, though they've never been widespread. They generally don't jump to desktop machines -- the corporate network should be safe. And generally, no one's stupid enough to run anti-virus software on Linux, and very few on the Mac -- even on Windows, the usefulness of anti-virus is questionable.

Things might change if this platform becomes ubiquitous. I'm not saying it's likely, mind you, and anyway the same arguments could be applied to the iPhone SDK (once the bad guys yoink themselves a copy of those dev tools).

Betamax

This guy is so clueless, his Betamax VCR is still flashing 12:00...

Re:first psot!!!

No, it's not at all harsh for what is supposed to be a professional writer. He starts off with an idea, a dangerous beginning in the first place, that there should be some sort of software security specifically for interfacing phones and PCs in the office. A good idea (perhaps even a profitable one) and doesn't think it through at all. He starts off, not with the good idea, but with a broad, one-sided assumption that all open applications are prone to security issues simply because they are open. If he were somewhere in the ballpark range of competent he would have reversed the two topics and stated that we need security software for smart phone to PC interfaces and that the result of not developing it could be rogue open applications creating a security nightmare. But he didn't. He speculated on something that went well in hand with his idea, but he didn't have a clue about it worked, and also didn't do any research on it to get more knowledge. He even pretty much says all this (sans admitting that he doesn't know what he's talking about and didn't do any research, but that much is very obvious) in his rehash he added to the article to address the people who e-mailed him about his mistake. The update is almost as large as the article itself. I'd say he pretty much deserves to be criticized on his grasp of Open Source as it is demonstrated by this article.

Re:pictures

I don't have any experience with Sprint but T-Mobile is probably the best in terms of being "open" of the big four mobile operators in the US. For example, until a few years ago you could get free web browsing through them by exploiting a hole in their free WAP access service. Instead of just shutting the hole and ignoring the people who didn't want to pay for a full Internet plan, they decided to shut it while transitioning to tiered Internet plans so people who didn't need to tether could still get the full web on their phones at a reduced price. Most phones also apparently will still let you tether with their cheap service, though T-Mobile will cut off your access if you use too much bandwidth while doing this.

They use GSM which is a big plus if you want to buy your own phone. I haven't yet needed to because, while all of their phones that I've owned were locked and had T-Mobile logos and "premium services" everywhere, none of them were in any way crippled like Verizon is infamous for doing. I even added a custom ringtone to one of my phones using only a standard USB cable and the manufacturer's ringtone transfer software. Their coverage is pretty good, the only time I've had trouble with it was when I was traveling through West Virginia which is a hard area to cover with cell phone service anyways. Their biggest problem is that they don't yet have any 3G service available anywhere (they're waiting for the spectrum they bought for it to become available for their use) and their customer service is nothing to write home about, but that's pretty much par for the course in this industry.

Re:Creativity

Google has never called it the "gPhone"; Bloggers and press came up with that name since they needed to call it something. Google's name for the platform is Android [openhandsetalliance.com].

gPhone

Well if it does end up being called a gPhone, I reckon it'll hit Apple right in the iSpot.

Re:Won't take over the market overnight?

There are already plenty of phones that you can install your own software on and not have to pay for ringtones (I can't believe that people are stupid enough to do that). For example, I have a Treo (Windows Mobile) - I can install any software I want on it, and easily create my own Compact .NET Framework apps for it if I want to - it doesn't have to be signed by the carrier or anything. I believe I can use any MP3 file as a ringtone, though I just use one of the MIDI's that came with it. Song ringtones annoy the hell out of me. Text messages aren't free - but that obviously has nothing to do with the phone and isn't going to ever happen. You'll always be paying a service provider for text messages - whether its per text, for unlimited text messages, or bundled in with some plan.

If Google is really successful it'll be because they are able to lower the price of smartphones from several hundred dollars to where the cheap toy phones (that don't let you install software/ringtones/etc) currently are. While I do not know how much of the cost of smartphones is for the OS, I highly doubt that a free OS will make smartphones that much cheaper. Maybe they'll subsidize some of the cost through AdSense or something, though I personally would hate to have a phone that forced me to look at ads.

More competition is a good thing though, at the very least it'll hopefully drive prices down a bit.

Re:open but for who?

yeah, i read the propaganda, but the question remains open. who decides what runs on your phone? you, google, the maker or the service provider? there is no answer to that question in the paragraph above, nor in the apache license. the makers/carriers are obviously free; it not so obvious if the end user will be.

incidentally, how come something which is GPL2-based (if it really is off the linux kernel) can be released as Apache2. as far as i remember, the two licenses aren't really compatible.