Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal

NEWS ANALYSIS
By Ben Elgin
Google Buys Android for Its Mobile Arsenal
The search giant quietly acquires the startup, netting possibly a key player in its push into wireless, "the next frontier in search"

In what could be a key move in its nascent wireless strategy, Google (GOOG ) has quietly acquired startup Android Inc., BusinessWeek Online has learned. The 22-month-old startup, based in Palo Alto, Calif., brings to Google a wealth of talent, including co-founder Andy Rubin, who previously started mobile-device maker Danger Inc.

Android (www.android.com) has operated under a cloak of secrecy, so little is known about its work. Rubin & Co. have sparingly described the outfit as making software for mobile phones, providing little more detail than that. One source familiar with the company says Android had at one point been working on a software operating system for cell phones.
SEEKING A MOBILE EDGE.  In a 2003 interview with BusinessWeek, just two months before incorporating Android, Rubin said there was tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are more aware of its owner's location and preferences. "If people are smart, that information starts getting aggregated into consumer products," said Rubin.
Rubin declined to comment on Android or its sale to Google. A spokesperson for the search giant would not elaborate on the deal, only stating: "We acquired Android because of the talented engineers and great technology. We're thrilled to have them here."
Google has been toiling to make its services more appealing to people who access the Net over cell phones and other mobile devices. In April, the company uncorked local-flavored search for mobile users. Also in April, it announced Google Short Message Service (SMS), which sends text-based information to mobile users seeking everything from driving directions to weather forecasts.
WELL-KNOWN TALENT.  In May, Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile social-networking service. Using a wireless device, users can send a text message to their circle of friends, announcing that they will be at a certain coffee shop or hangout. In addition, users can be notified if friends-of-friends are within a certain vicinity. Google has not disclosed how it will incorporate the Dodgeball offering into its services.
Google bought Android in July for an undisclosed sum. The upstart adds to Google's collection of talent and technology that it hopes to apply to this critical segment. "Wireless is the next frontier in search," says Scott Ellison, analyst at research outfit IDC.
Rubin isn't the only well-known Silicon Valley veteran joining Google via Android. Others coming over include Andy McFadden, who worked with Rubin at WebTV before helping develop the all-in-one set-top box for Moxi Digital; Richard Miner, former vice-president of technology and innovation at telecom outfit Orange before joining Android; and Chris White, who spearheaded the design and interface for WebTV in the late 1990s, before helping to found Android.
YOUTH APPEAL.  Danger, Rubin's previous company, launched the mobile Hiptop device to considerable buzz in 2002. Shortly afterwards, he handed over the CEO title, staying on as president and chief strategy officer. The company's devices continue to be popular among the younger demographic, particularly for text messaging, but it has struggled to extend its reach beyond key partner T-Mobile, a wireless service provider.
With Google's acquisition of Android, it will be interesting to see what new wireless products emerge from the joining.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2005/tc20050817_0949_tc024.htm

google Android: What Are You to Google?

The beta name for the Google phone platform is full of arrogance and disdain for potential customers. For people saying Google is the new Microsoft, Google just might be worse.

The long-rumored Google phone is instead a mobile platform code-named Android, to which I assign real meaning and connotations. Isn't Google saying that it sees users as mindless automatons? For a company whose major product is an algorithm, should anyone really expect the Google huggy, kissy customer embrace? After all, search is very impersonal. People may search for things of personal interest, but the process is methodical on the front end and mathematical on the back end.

The Google worldview is looking more like this: Customers are programmed drones who repeatedly click the mouse on Google search and advertising services. Click, click, click. The mouse goes. Click. Click. Click. The stock ticker rises.

In May I asked: "Do Google's attitudes make it more dangerous than Microsoft ever was supposed to be?" And answered: "Yes." Android is more evidence of the Google attitude and mimicking of Microsoft of 15 years ago. For Android is an empty promise—the worst kind of vaporware. The company has a code name, a promised product, a late 2008 delivery date, a list of partners and almost no details. Either in its arrogance Google refuses to share details or else it has none to share. I say both are right.

Android is the worst kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) announcement. The timing is the giveaway: days after OpenSocial and right before Facebook announces its advertising platform. More broadly, Google has given enough lead time before next year's FCC auction to create doubt about the company's intentions. The lack of real Android information further feeds uncertainty about the extent of Google's mobile intentions.

Google's FCC auction pitch was for openness requirements that sounded a lot better in July than they do today. Based on the little Android information disclosed and reading between the lines, any openness benefits Google but eventually could lead to a closed-network model. Consumers could trade one master for another.

What Google wants is a more open mobile platform for selling contextual search and advertising. What the company expects: developer drones to embrace an SDK (software developer kit) slated for release next week and to begin creating products and services, now. But the phones are at least a year away. Meanwhile, developers could (and should) create real applications for real operating systems, like Symbian OS and Windows Mobile, today.

In Friday PBS blog post, "The Next Microsoft: Google is learning too well from the master," Robert Cringely checklists some of the ways Google is out of touch with its customers and becoming a monopoly in the process. But he's wrong about something. Google isn't the "next Microsoft." Google is worse than the last Microsoft.

Google controls more information and has a more crucial and growing economic role than Microsoft ever did. And based on the extent of information disclosure and other behavior, Google has about half Microsoft's humility, which can't be good.

Hopefully, I can rightly preserve the context of a April 2006 blog post by Jess Ross, a designer and open-source developer based in Minneapolis (that's MPLS to locals). He wrote:

"I have this theory that Google is going to become a deity. We turn to Google to give answers to our problems, and Google provides. Google is ever present, an unseen force that knows more about us than we know ourselves. Google can see deep into our psyches and hidden desires, seeing the searches we share with no one else."

But a deity presumably wouldn't profit from personal prayers information, the way Google does. The business model is rife with conflict of interest. Google mines data from customers it serves and then profits from it. The goldmine with the most valuable nuggets is the mobile phone. It's a captive, personal device for which customers can be clearly identified and their habits more easily cataloged than PCs. The mobile phone is an advertiser's dream machine, for the company that provides the demographic data.

Does Google know more about you than you know yourself? I don't recall my searches from last week, so not even last month. But Google knows and reminds me how long ago I went where whenever there is a new search. That's just the little information the all-mighty Google reveals to me. I'll ask: Do you really want to know what Google knows about you?

Microsoft is no candidate for sainthood, not that all-mighty Google would grant such designation. But Microsoft is repentant, or at least cowed. Whacked aside the head by stagnant share price and U.S. Justice Department and European Commission two-by-fours, Microsoft has changed. Call it brain damage or perhaps the simple desire not to get whacked in the head anymore. Microsoft is more focused on customers now than ever in its history.

Steve Ballmer deserves some credit for the change. In nearly eight years as Microsoft's chief executive, Ballmer has shifted the priority to customer satisfaction. For a company with a huge install base to which the same products are sold over and over, the customer is the right priority. Microsoft is more people-focused than ever.

Microsoft's slogans are all about people: "Your Potential. Our Passion"; "People Ready"; "Open Up Your Digital Life." Google's slogan is, well, what? There's not much people branding beyond the name's use as a verb.

Right, but there is Android. And, what are you to Google?

 

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/desktop_mobile/android_what_you_are_to_google.html

Google’s Mobile Android Comes to Life

Tara Seals
11/05/2007

The maw that has become Google Inc. mobile-mania was fed again Monday with the announcement of a Google-sponsored, open-source platform for mobile applications and handset development. The launch of Linux-based “Android,” which Google and its partners hope will have more life than its name suggests, caps weeks of speculation and leaks about the search company’s wireless plans.

The upshot is that the era of the under-$200 smart phone (not counting any operator subsidy) may finally upon us. New types of consumer electronics devices with wireless Internet will start to appear far faster than anyone thought. And the promise of the wireless Internet — the true, open, app-ready wireless Internet — may finally become reality. In fact, Google says consumers should expect the first phones based on Android to be available in the second half of 2008, and they will natively support the open Internet.

In short, Google hopes Android will create the same sort of applications explosion for mobile as we’ve seen on the Web. “I reflect, 10 years ago I was sitting in a graduate student cubicle, and we were able to build incredible things,” said Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “There was a set of tools that allowed us to do that, all the open-source technologies available at the time – Linux, GNU, Apache, PipeBomb. All those pieces and many more allowed us to do great things and distribute it to the world. That is what we are doing today, to allow people to innovate on today's mobile devices … which are more powerful than the heavy iron I was using in those offices 10 years ago."

Here’s how it works: Android will be made available to developers later this week to create IP-based, rich-media applications that handset manufacturers can embed in their devices next year, which in turn are distributed by carriers looking to give their subscribers a more enriched Internet experience.

The big news is that it’s completely open source, and will be made available to the industry freely to do with as it chooses. The idea is to start a wave of innovation that everyone can participate in by providing a standardized platform (operating system, middleware, user interface and applications) for the entire industry. Technical details are scanty at present, but will become more clear when the “early look” SDK comes out in a few days, Google said.

“Basically it means you no longer have to shoehorn applications in,” said Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt. “Anything that can work in a Web environment will work well here, and also on PC or Mac – games, multiplayer, video and audio, social networking. Apps obviously useful to the mobile user.”

Thirty-four developers, wireless operators and handset manufacturers have come together to get Android-based products to market, calling themselves the Open Handset Alliance. HTC will have an Android phone rolling off the assembly line in the second half of next year, and Motorola probably will too. T-Mobile USA will make open Internet applications and social networking available to subscribers based on the platform next year. Qualcomm Inc. will contribute the 7000-series chipset to the project. Android will run on any existing data network, and any that are to come.

Android is not the gPhone, the long-rumored Google-branded handset. Schmidt made that clear in the conference call on Monday. And in the press release, he said pointedly that Android is much more important than any gPhone announcement could be.

Check out continuing coverage on what Android means for Google as a company and wireless as an industry.

Open Handset Alliance Founding Members

Aplix (www.aplixcorp.com)
Ascender Corporation (www.ascendercorp.com)
Audience (www.audience.com)
Broadcom (www.broadcom.com)
China Mobile (www.chinamobile.com)
eBay (www.ebay.com)
Esmertec (www.esmertec.com)
Google (www.google.com)
HTC (www.htc.com)
Intel (www.intel.com)
KDDI (www.kddi.com)
Living Image (www.livingimage.jp)
LG (www.lge.com)
Marvell (www.marvell.com)
Motorola (www.motorola.com)
NMS Communications (www.nmscommunications.com)
Noser (www.noser.com)
NTT DoCoMo Inc. (www.nttdocomo.com)
Nuance (www.nuance.com)
Nvidia (www.nvidia.com)
PacketVideo (www.packetvideo.com)
Qualcomm (www.qualcomm.com)
Samsung (www.samsung.com)
SiRF (www.sirf.com)
SkyPop (www.skypop.com)
SONiVOX (www.sonivoxrocks.com)
Sprint Nextel (www.sprint.com)
Synaptics (www.synaptics.com)
TAT - The Astonishing Tribe (www.tat.se)
Telecom Italia (www.telecomitalia.com)
Telefónica (www.telefonica.es)
Texas Instruments (www.ti.com)
T-Mobile (www.t-mobile.com)
Wind River (www.windriver.com)

Open Handset Alliance www.openhandsetalliance.com