Wow, some of the comments on that article saying Google should have made Android closed source are mindboggling. They realize they never would have had their current worldwide marketshare if they did that, no?
But maybe if they did, we would have had more people working on true linux phones 🤔 I'm a bit torn on this one haha.
I doubt they would've gone Linux.
They liked Android partly because it enabled them to isolate the Linux core from being easily accessible, so conventional Linux tools wouldn't be easily used. This is all part of their path toward a fully locked down device for DRM.
This was a discussed a fair amount early on in my group at work. We had seen the Linux phone (that later became Android) and were excited. Then we were disappointed to see Android layered on top like Posix or Win32, rather than just the shell. All we could think is "wtf", you have an OS, and a layer based on html/scripting is gonna be sluggish, bad on battery, etc. And it was for quite a while.
I don't think this article is right.
Competition is good. The problem is uneducated buyers.
Sad how far Android Police have fallen, as well as Google themselves
Is the author proposing that exclusive features are a bad thing? I don't think the premise of Android is everyone should be the same tho. It's also not a bad thing to have different options.
The author seems to be upset that a Google accessory doesn't work with a non-Google phone, because they expect Android to just mean Android. If you don't want to be locked into Google hardware, buy an Android phone from literally anyone except Google
