Google's Andy Rubin: Nothing has changed with Android's openness

April 7, 2011 7:56 AM
Devindra Hardawar
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He’s about a week late, but Google’s Android head Andy Rubin has finally responded in a blog post to claims that the platform is becoming less open now that Google is reportedly exerting more control over how manufacturers use Android and is delaying the availability of Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” to smaller developers.

Rubin’s defense of Android’s open source status is to be expected, since it’s one of Android’s biggest advantages over Apple’s closed iOS platform.

Rubin stresses that Google is operating the same way it always has with Android: It remains committed to releasing the platform’s source code when it’s ready, and he says that Google is following the “anti-fragmentation” program that has been put in place since the very first version of Android.

“We don’t believe in a ‘one size fits all’ solution,” he wrote, referring to the massive number of device types and form factors that Android now supports. He also denied that Google is working to standardize on a single Android chipset (rumors pointed to Google working with ARM).

Rubin goes on to say that the Android team is still working to bring Honeycomb’s features to phones and that its code will be released to the community once that happens. “This temporary delay does not represent a change in strategy. We remain firmly committed to providing Android as an open source platform across many device types,” he said.

Still, Rubin didn’t respond to earlier claims that Google is prioritizing certain manufacturers (in this case Motorola and other Android 3.0 tablet makers) over others. That’s likely been happening for some time, especially since Google has been tapping different manufacturers for its flagship Nexus One (HTC) and Nexus S (Samsung) phones.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=541242999 Kevin Stacy

    Of course he'll defend “his” product : doesn't change the fact that Android is the worst mobile OS in history and is the only mobile OS plagued with Maleware, Viruses and Trojan Horses and how many different OS's are there all running on different phones made by different manufacturers. It's all about smoke and mirrors, Android is not open, it's fragmented to the core. And cheap boneheads will continue to buy these POS as long as they are giving them away. /end truth

  • http://www.devindra.org Devindra Hardawar

    Did an Android phone kill your family?

  • http://profiles.google.com/mcdagan Dagan McGregor

    Oh my god, too funny. Good one Devindra.

  • http://profiles.google.com/mcdagan Dagan McGregor

    I am definitely hoping this is correct and Google keeps their OS open. I'm in the market for a tablet but hate Apple (iPad killed my family) and am looking at other options. I'm not sold on the Xoom and there aren't a lot of other options out there yet. If Honeycomb stays closed it will likely take much longer for other tablets to make it to market. I've been following a small start up company called Notion Ink that is making a tablet called Atom. I think I would want it to have Honeycomb before I would consider buying it though.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=552732086 Igor McBell

    Can't agree more.If Android was so open, why can't I create and run a simple program as I can do with old Nokia N810 (which runs Maemo, which in turn is based on Linux)?Microsoft also released sources of some of their products – does that make these products open?

  • http://profiles.google.com/jrusnak69 John Rusnak

    I'm glad to see that Google is still comitted to keeping it OS open AND to non-fragmentation. They have set up a fairly good practice in how they achieve this that is a good business balance. I am amazed at how much better designed and well thought out the underlying OS is (from both a developer and user standpoint) and I hope Google can keep things focused in targeting additional features (avoid the feature creep syndrome). You should also point out that both Google and Motorola have been offering open lectures and information sessions at various venues (from Android user groups to dev camps to ….) on Honeycomb. Pretty impressive stuff.

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