It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 18, 2010 20:55 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: It's not *search* that matters, it's *ads* by pizza
Parent article: Did Google Arm Its Own Enemies With Android? (HBR)

And don't forget the tie-ins with google's other services -- mail, chat, etc etc etc, all of these result in ad impressions too

AFAICT Google Mail, Talk etc. on Android don't display ads.

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 18, 2010 21:38 UTC (Thu) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link] (10 responses)

Yeah, but when you buy an Android phone you are required to open a Gmail account.(I was at least) People will use the Gmail account on their phone and through a desktop browser, so now they are locked into the "Google Apps" system.

Each phone is one more person converted to a Gmail user and when the user checks their mail on a normal computer then are served ads.

I realize that you can use other email accounts, but Gmail is a decent product and many people will "just use it" since it is highly integrated into the phone.

Once people get conformable with android as a phone it will open the door to some Linux/Google desktop which looks nothing like the Linux desktops which us geeks know and love(GNU/Linux/(Fedora|Ubuntu|Suse|etc)).

The Linux kernel will still benefit as a whole by a Linux/Google desktop by gaining hardware driver support even if "we" hate linux/Google desktop. Who knows maybe it will kick @ss, that is just a bonus. The average person knows Google brand and are not scared is it.

Boy did I drift off topic fast, sorry!

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 18, 2010 21:56 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

Each phone is one more person converted to a Gmail user and when the user checks their mail on a normal computer then are served ads.

I use an Android phone but I seldom if ever use the browser-based Gmail. (I have only mail from selected senders forwarded to my phone from my regular mail account.) Nor do I use the browser-based Google Talk – on the desktop I use Pidgin to connect to the Google Talk server, and again I get to see no ads.

Having said that, I agree with what you say about the ads on the »normal computer« but I don't really mind them. To me, the degree of integration, automatic sync etc. between Android and the Google browser apps like Mail and Calendar is certainly worth looking at a few ads every so often (or, more likely, glancing over them and ignoring them), usually when I deal with calendar events, which IMHO is a lot nicer in the browser than on the phone.

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 18, 2010 23:29 UTC (Thu) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link]

It is a probability game. Plus, LWN users are not the Norm.

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 18, 2010 23:45 UTC (Thu) by swetland (guest, #63414) [Link] (4 responses)

Android as of Eclair (2.0), iirc, does not require account creation at activation -- you can just press the skip button. You do need to create or login to a Google account to use gmail, etc -- and will be prompted when you first run such an app -- but that doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 19, 2010 13:31 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (3 responses)

You do need a Google account for a number of mundane uses, including installing software from their official repository and using the calendar.

I can somewhat understand the rationale behind the former, although I have never been asked to create an account with Debian to use apt-get, but the latter is just plain madness.

Calendar

Posted Nov 19, 2010 19:08 UTC (Fri) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (2 responses)

The reason the Android calendar requires a Google account is that it doesn't store any of its data on the phone; it's all stored in Google Calendar. It may seem a mad choice to someone who wouldn't otherwise use Google Calendar, but when you're implementing something that is intended to sync with Google Calendar anyway, it's a reasonable way to skip a lot of on-phone complexity.

Calendar

Posted Nov 21, 2010 23:17 UTC (Sun) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Could what you describe actually be true? If the phone finds itself without a data connection, would reminders fail to run? Would I be unable to enter new appointments? I doubt it somehow, although I haven't used that particular feature myself because I am not interested in hosting my data elsewhere for a number of reasons.

Calendar works without Google account.

Posted Nov 22, 2010 3:29 UTC (Mon) by skierpage (guest, #70911) [Link]

The calendar works without a Google account, and obviously it stores info locally on the phone.

However, my HTC Evo calendar app has no import/export capability at all, not iCal, vcs, or CSV files, nor Event > Send to Bluetooth device. So if you have an existing calendar, the easiest way to get it onto your phone is create a Google account, import your existing calendar into http://calendar.google.com (which *can* import iCal and Outlook CSV files), then trigger sync with the phone. Then you realize how great it is to edit your calendar from phone and desktop, then you share calendars with your partner, then you add the meta-calendar of birthdays from your GMail Contacts, and before you know it instead of deleting your Google account after the initial sync as you intended, you've been assimilated. Resistance is futile.

I believe Google Calendar can instead sync with Microsoft Exchange using ActiveSync Exchange, and there are third-party import/export and sync apps (such as Ics Bot) in the Android Market... but Android Market requires a Google account!

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 19, 2010 0:33 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (2 responses)

"The Linux kernel will still benefit as a whole by a Linux/Google desktop by gaining hardware driver support"

Really? Exactly how many Free SoC GPU drivers did we get from android? Android runs on pretty much all available SoC GPUs, and there are - precisely - zero free drivers available for any of them.

And those Free drivers that android has produced mostly live in a separate tree and the general opinion is that they aren't of high enough quality to go into mainline.

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 19, 2010 8:02 UTC (Fri) by swetland (guest, #63414) [Link] (1 responses)

We have three GPU vendors releasing the kernel side (resource and queue management) as GPLv2. That, to my mind, is some nice progress. Would it be nicer if the userspace side were also open source? Certainly. Is that likely to happen at this point in time, given the US patent system being what it is, etc? Seems like a stretch. How many fully open source hw OpenGL driver stacks exist for desktop Linux?

Regarding the assorted other SoC and peripheral drivers that have resulted from 5 years of Android, well, those drivers are all GPLv2 and people can do whatever they like with 'em. Even rewrite 'em if they don't like them the way they are. I know the folks who had been doing Linux ports to Qualcomm based HTC devices, for example, have found some value there.

It's not search that matters, it's ads

Posted Nov 19, 2010 14:31 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]

"That, to my mind, is some nice progress."

_Very_ little. If anything it's proof of how much these companies just don't get it.

"How many fully open source hw OpenGL driver stacks exist for desktop Linux?"

Well the idea is that there should be one stack which drivers just have to plug in to. This is partly the idea of Gallium3D. A vendor can release a Gallium3D driver, get support for all the Gallium state trackers and not have to reveal any of the proprietary details of how they implement the higher layers.

But currently we have full support for intel GPUs and quite good support for most radeons.