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US Considers a Rare Antitrust Move: Breaking Up Google
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Companies already spin off android into their own custom versions to maximize profit. Look at Samsung, for example, with all of their additional bloatware.
Android is open-source. Closing the source code for android would be so devastating for the platform's app development, independent security researchers, and manufacturer customization, that it would probably hurt them more to lock it down than to keep it open.
If an alternative, entirely community-supported fork of Android were to be copied and maintained from the main branch of Android, it could still use every single APK that was available on the Play store, and every alternative app store, with no issues.
Sure, Android would likely lose some of the Google R&D money, but what has Google used a lot of that money for? AI features nobody asked for, benefits that only come from the use of Google's entirely separate apps on the system, and system improvements that could be worked on with relatively similar speed by outside alternative ROM teams.
Plus, Android uses the Linux kernel, which is already supported by outside developers, and often gets security fixes that are pushed to Android without any involvement by Google in the development of the fixes.
Do you use Android? AI was the last thing on their minds for AOSP until OpenAI got popular. They've been refining the UIs, improving security/permissions, catching up on features, bringing WearOS and Android TV up to par, and making a Google Assistant incompetent. Don't take my word for it; you'll rarely see any AI features before OpenAI's popularity: v15, v14, v13, and v12. As an example of the benefits: Google and Samsung collaborating on WearOS allowed more custom apps and integrations for nearly all users. Still, there was a major drop in battery life and compatibility with non-Android devices compared to Tizen.
There are plenty of other things to complain about with their Android development. Will they continue to change or kill things like they do all their other products? Did WearOS need to require Android OSes and exclude iOS? Do Advertising APIs belong in the base OS? Should vendors be allowed to lock down their devices as much as they do? Should so many features be limited to Pixel devices? Can we get Google Assistant to say "Sorry, something went wrong. When you're ready: give it another try" less often instead of encouraging stupidity? (It's probably not going to work if you try again).
Google does a lot of wrong, even in Android. AI on Android isn't one of them yet. Most other commercially developed operating systems are proprietary, rather than open to users and OEMs. The collaboration leaves much to be desired, but Android is unfortunately one of the best examples of large-scale development of more open and libre/free systems. A better solution than trying to break Android up, is taking/forking Android and making it better than Google seems capable of.
Think less Samsung, and a whole lot more Amazon Fire OS. And if you think Google hasn't been doing R&D for Android except for "useless" AI and something that could be done a small outside time... I don't know what to say to you then. I guess modern Bluetooth stacks, newer technology support and functionality, embedded encryption, etc... must be easy? A lot of R&D is done on the not very flashy things as well.
I never meant to claim that Google hasn't been doing any R&D that wasn't those non-requested features. I was just stating that, for a company independently maintaining the OS, it would cost substantially less than what Google currently spends, since they would likely cut out more bloat, (and anything that's Google-integration specific about Android development) and instead leave that to third-party developers, Google or otherwise.
Issue is, cutting bloat takes time and money that a smaller company would more likely view as taking away from new features which isn't viewed as a good thing. Look at reviews for versions of Android and iOS that were more focused on cutting bloat and improving code vs versions that add to the OS. You'll notice that focusing on code bloat and trimming gets at best "ho-hum" reviews with people complaining that "we've been waiting for a year for nothing" and "what's the point of updating to this?"