Will Google win its battle for mobile domination? Or is Android starting a war it can't win?
Remember the Google Desktop? Some of you may still have it up and running, but its usefulness has diminished given that Apple and Microsoft have done a decent job integrating search within desktop apps. To my mind, the Google Desktop was the Big G's attempt to grab control over all of our desktop "operating systems."
Well, Google's back at it again, this time with an ambitious attempt for its product Android to be the mobile operating system and the mobile business model with advertising. The company is taking an aggressive "open" stance -- creating an Open Handset Alliance with some, but not all, wireless industry players on board and promising software developers like myself a truly open mobile operating system. Its promise to the end consumer is lots of options; everything from what the phone's idle screen looks like, to the browser/email settings, to being able to speak commands to the phone rather than clumsily typing on a tiny mobile keyboard; basically, to change the definition of a mobile user experience.
It's worth noting here that we are about to embark again on the great Cathedral and the Bazaar battle, with Apple as the Cathedral, bringing us the mobile revolution via the beautiful but proprietary iPhone, and Google creating the Bazaar, built around Android. It must be fun to be Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and Apple board member, effectively driving both sides of the battle. Not to mention Al Gore, who is on the board of both companies.
While an open approach is always a laudable thing, I can't help thinking that Google is playing the role of a U.S. president trying to bring together all the warring parties in the Mideast to Camp David to hammer something out by mid-2008. They all come to the table with vested interests, frequently contradictory business models, probably an earnest desire to make things work for their users and third-party developers. Google will have to cajole, provide financial aid, deliver tons of technology and chair never-ending committee meetings while true industry progress is made in tiny increments. Meanwhile, the real aggressors, Microsoft/Apple/Nokia/AT&T/Verizon/Vodafone/Orange sit on the sidelines smirking, quite confident that their parochial ways will prevail.
The open source approach is one that depends a lot on third-party developers embracing, understanding the SDK/capabilities, building, testing and finding distribution for their apps. The "garden" of third-party applications is not going to flower overnight:
- Linux took 10 to 12 years before getting commercial traction. Assuming Google can go 10 times as fast (which is going to be a huge effort), we're still looking at 18 to 24 months before a critical mass of differentiated third-party apps is available for gPhones.
- We are assuming that developers will be incented by an ad revenue share. But there have not been any details in the Android announcements from Alliance members, especially the carriers, what they intend to support in terms of an advertising business model. Are gPhones going to be significantly ad subsidized? If so, there needs to be high clickthrough rates plus Google paying the freight to cover the $150 to $400 (see my blog) per subscriber of cost that the carrier incurs for a 2.5G/3G connection.
- As a developer, when I look at the list of players in the Alliance, there isn't any other name besides Google that jumps out at me (e.g., Blackberry, Orange or Nokia would have been nice) to get me excited about the great distribution capabilities of the partner. Unfortunately, Motorola, which has an incredible installed base of RAZR users, has shown an inability over the past few years to tap that goldmine again.
If I was a wireless carrier, I would take a huge wait-and-see approach even if I thought the ad-subsidized economics made sense, primarily because of my customer support, developer support and security concerns:
- Who do I contact when one of my subscribers calls and says he'd like to stop the built-in location-tracker app on the phone? Google? The little location-tracker developer?
- Who do I contact when a developer calls and says his app works on all networks except mine? Why do I care about this developer, i.e., when is it worth me devoting resources to this guy?
- Now that I have all of these apps on my subscriber phones, making calls to the phone memory, and going over my network, probably with a few bugs in them, is Google responsible for certifying these apps? I assume Google is doing this for free (as far as the carrier is concerned).