There will be plenty to say, no doubt about it, regarding the GooglePhone non-announcement of yesterday. My initial response is that a new, open-source OS is not really that big a deal; OpenMoKo is also on this path, although now likely badly wounded. But a LINUX-based open-source OS endorsed by so many industry leaders, well, that’s another thing entirely.
Or is it? I don’t think Nokia and Symbian will necessarily be threatened here; Nokia isn’t part of the Alliance and has a huge investment in Symbian. Besides, (chant here) they’re Number One and need not follow the crowd – at least not yet. No real threat to Apple either; as I’ve noted before, many folks are going to buy Apple products no matter what. So the only major mobile OS supplier really threatened by all this is Microsoft; who’s going to shell out big bucks for a closed system and draconian contract terms? I’m already no fan of Windows Mobile and Android could lead many agnostics away from the evil empire. Google and Microsoft are already on a collision course, and I think the boys and girls in Redmond have a lot to worry about regardless.
But it’s much too early to reach any firm conclusions about Android yet, really. Products are not yet available, and we don’t know what form they will take. Will Google restrict access to parts of the Web (like Yahoo, for example)? I doubt it, but they might steer customers in a certain direction by default. It regardless seems very likely to me that Android will become a great platform for mobile Web services, while still allowing local applications execution when desired. And, anyway, it’s free, or at least partly so, so a large following is guaranteed.
But what I really wanted to talk about here was the CTIA’s reaction to the news. Read this carefully. What on earth does a new OS have to do with net neutrality? Now, we all know that carriers hate net neutrality and open access, because they lose power if these are present. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s tired of buying products and services designed to meet little more than the convenience of the suppliers. Openness has been the mantra of the Internet, and networking itself, since practically the beginning. Apart from the CTIA’s argument being a non-sequitur and simply nonsensical, it’s also patently offensive to those of us who pay the bills. So, please, carriers, sell us what we want to buy – open systems and services that take us anywhere we need to go on any platform of our choosing. Today, if possible.
And I wonder how many carriers will ultimately sell GooglePhones when they become available, and how they might provision them, and what they might charge for both products and services. As I said, it’s early. Very early. And there are indeed lots of unanswered questions.
