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In business there are times when opportunity knocks and you had better be ready to answer the door. Is your hair combed, your shirt tucked in, does your breath smell good? Because on the other side is royalty, and it's called "opportunity".

Google had such a knock on their door in 2009 when Apple decided to enter into a third year of exclusively with AT&T. On the other hand, Google was working with several handset makers across the other three major US carriers delivering the Android OS. While Android wasn't yet mature and its feature set somewhat lacking, Mr. Opportunity knocking at Google's door. But did Google answer?

Google's strategy has been to get as many devices in people's hands that use the Google Search engine. More Google searches means more revenue to the company. So if Google gives away software (Android) to handset makers in order to grow their search business so be it.

The trouble was Google decided to make Android open-source and use this as a selling feature. Google claimed (and still claims) that their open-source operating system brought more choice to the market. However, the reality is Android's fragmentation has brought confusion. For example, if I purchased a Motorola Droid with Android 2.2 and in two years decide to get a Samsung phone running Android (and perhaps a different screen size), will all my apps work? Maybe. Maybe not. Moreover, when Google released Android 2.3, can I download it onto my Droid 2.2 phone? Maybe — only if Motorola works on their flavor of Android to work with the Droid. So now I have to wait for Motorola to modify Android 2.3 for my phone, but there's one big problem with this — Motorola doesn't make money doing this, they make money selling phones. The chances now are slim to none, especially if my version of the Droid has been replaced with a newer model. What we've seen so far from Samsung is likely to take place industry-wide. If you want the latest Android OS, then buy a new Android OS phone. How's that for a "platform"?

Developers have also seen this confusion in having to choose which flavors of Android to develop for. Developing for Android means nothing. Rather, Devs have to develop for a particular flavor or "branch" of Android. This significantly shrinks the Android market share quickly. This is exactly why developers first develop for the iOS (largest market) and then decide if its worth developing for an Android handset or two.

Google had a huge opportunity to really put Apple on its heals, but missed their chance big time by going the open-source route. Instead of being a true market leader, Google has created a convoluted mess for Apple, HP and Microsoft to scoop up.

1 Comment

1. Robert ~ April 9, 2011 14:41
   I totally agree. I was going to say Google is the new Microsoft but (and it's hard to say anything good about Microsoft) Microsoft at least made sure its OSes worked on every flavor of PC that ever came out while Google seems to be forcing the handset vendors to do the heavy work. Microsoft would release tons of patches and special drivers and vendors would add their own hardware drivers but, except when Vista/W7 came out, Windows would run on older hardware, something I don't think is going to work for Google. We've already seen what has happened to the computer world with the ton of garbage Microsoft forced onto the world, I really don't want to repeat this and have a whole bunch of half-finished Google handsets to contend with. Microsoft owned the PC market and did it by forcing hardware vendors to use their software for better or worse. If one hardware vendor didn't want to do this, so what, there were many others waiting in line to drink the kool-aid (and not the kool-aid Apple haters keep saying Apple users supposedly drink). Well that kool-aid has gotten a lot of people, especially those in enterprise and government really drunk. I hope we don't revisit this path in the phone market, this time with Google.

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