Agility Loop

In 2008, I picked the Android side of the Android vs. iPhone religious war by buying the first Motorola Droid within its first week of release.  I had a corporate Blackberry until then, and probably could still have one, but I had grown wary of seeing all the cool things my iPhone friends could accomplish.  Besides, the damn trackball on my Blackberry Curve stopped working every other week and half of the websites I wanted to visit didnt even come up.

So why didn't I buck up and pick the iPhone, a phone and platform that was far more mature at the time?

For me, it really comes down to a bottom line...choice.  Choice for me and for everyone else.  I felt that by grabbing the iPhone and hitching myself to the Steve Jobs bandwagon, I was going to be stuck in the walled garden that is iOS. 

I had similar thoughts back in the early PC days.  I had friends who were DIE HARD Macintosh users, even if they did have to wait an extra year or two for decent PC games (except for Marathon...that game was pretty sweet).  But those users were stuck to what Apple could produce.  Yes, the user experience cleaner and the platform more stable, but I could go grab a PC for half the price and have access to a software library that was far more extensive.  I had choice, and I believe that diversity of hardware and choice is what helped bring upon the end of Apple's first grand era.

(Random aside...anyone remember the old Computer Shopper magazines?  Jesus, that thing was HUGE.  The bible of computer equipment and peripherals that I actually would read through.  Does that give me more old skool geek cred)

Which brings me to one of MG Siegler's post Why I Hate Android on his blog ParisLemon.com.  I read his blog pretty regularly, and he has some great honest and frank posts about the technology space (and yes, I am somewhat of a sucker for those who creatively curse in blog posts).  His stance on Android and iPhone are fairly well documented (and self admitted), and he chose this particular post to explain his negativity towards what Google has done with Android.

At the core is what Google publically intended to do with Android; create an open platform that would help wrestle control from the wireless operators.  As opposed to what it has become; Google's way of taking over the world.

We got all of this thanks to Google’s desire for Android to take over the world. I commented earlier that they signed a deal with the devil — I wasn’t being facetious. They actually did! And they got away with it!

On most of Siegler's points I either agree or concede the point because I am not as familar with what as happened. 

What I do disagree is how he paints Google with such a broad brush of being evil. Public companies are in place to please their shareholders and make money (and yes, sometimes to make just their board members money).  Apple has done PLENTY of shady shit over the years in the same conquest of owning the mobile market.  That has been one of their strategies to enhance market share and drive shareholder value.  When Google came to market, their altruistic intentions sounded good.  However, those same intentions demonstrated some naivety to think that they could overthrow the power of the carriers.

So would it have been better to just pursue those same altrustic intentions at the risk of not actually being able to have a valuable product?  Of course not.  They are a public company, and they had poured A LOT of money into the mobile space and had to show some return on investment rather than just try to buck the system.  So they signed shady deals, sided with the devilish carriers, so that they could actually have a viable product offering.  Apple didn't have to do this because they were first to market and were in a superior position to bend AT&T over a barrel and get the terms that they wanted.  Google was not in this position, and Verizon was not about to sign a deal like the one that AT&T did.  So Google did the deal.

Does it suck that this what has to be done to get a product to market?  YES.  But don't hate the player...hate the game.  Altruism is well and good, but most of the time it doesn't pay the bills or make shareholders happy. 

For me, Android is a GOOD THING because it is an actual viable alternative to iOS.  Without Android, would we rely on RIM and Blackberry for innovation??  Maybe Nokia?  By having Android, and iOS, consumers have choice and they drive each other to add more features, stability, and security.  I may not be an iPhone user, but I appreciate what they have done and continue to do to innovate the mobile space.  They do design better then any other, and for some folks I actually do recommend going iOS rather than Android. 

I do wonder if we will see history repeat itself from the PC era to the mobile era?  Replace Windows with Android, and it looks awfully similar.

Fodder for another long, drawn out post.