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

Posted Nov 18, 2010 23:45 UTC (Thu) by swetland (guest, #63414)
In reply to: It's not *search* that matters, it's *ads* by jmm82
Parent article: Did Google Arm Its Own Enemies With Android? (HBR)

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!