Signal to Noise

Not a big surprise, here.  This move is definitely in keeping with Google’s other maneuvres, like essentially manipulating the recent federal spectrum auctions and keeping carriers out of unilateral distribution agreements for phones with the Android license.  All moves designed to keep access open, and to keep Google at the helm of web services.

But I’ve grappled with the open-sourcing of Android for a couple of reasons.  When you open source something, it’s either because you’re absolutely desperate to maintain a foothold or create one (like when Netscape Corp. spun off the Mozilla project), because the intellectual property being open-sourced is already stale (the Quake engines, etc.), or because the chances of achieving marketplace competitiveness are actually improved by going open source.  It’s one of the three, in my mind.

Sure, people say the Open Source community provides more abundant creative contribution and discourse, but I don’t necessarily buy that argument.  Don’t confuse Open Source advocacy with volunteerism.   Volunteer programmers get stuff done only when there’s something in it for them.  But real volunteers get stuff done because there’s something in it for somebody ELSE. Any contributions brought to Android by the outside world that are worth assimilation into the project are going to create project management expenses for Google, and the big G has always been an innovation leader (as opposed to a leech), so sucking the community’s cheap or free “cool new ideas” into Android is NOT what Google is up to.

They’re also not desperate for a market share grab.  Android is so far beyond anything Microsoft and RIM have brought to the table that perhaps only Apple’s iPhone is the only valid comparison.  And Apple isn’t running away with the mobile market. There’s just too much entrenchment in the wireless industry, what with all the lock-in contracts and vendor exclusivity and so on.  So Google’s open sourcing is not likely to have an effect on market share, not in the short term anyway.  And it’s clear that the Android technology isn’t what you would call “stale”.

So Google’s move to open up Android has all the appearances of a tactical error.  To figure out the “why”, it’s important to look at the “when”.   The timing of this move is peculiarly unlike previous “big open source” announcements.   Since Android has a ton of buzz and is clearly on the way up, not down, the convential wisdom that only desperate companies open source their stuff does not apply.   Android will be successful in Google’s mind, whether or not it were to become an open source project.

So why? Why now?

According to the official Google posting on the matter, which rightly accuses the iPhone of having a limited, closed distribution channel, the reason for the open-sourcing is to make the platform accessible and free it from the bonds of one hardware vendor or the next.  Open sourcing isn’t necessary to make the platform accessible, of course, but if you’re going to pull out a stop or two, pull ‘em all out.  It’s Google, after all, not Microsoft.

Google sees a future where the carriers and hardware vendors cannot collude because platform choices are going to be made by consumers.   That’s the answer to the “why”.   By giving the consumers at large access to a very compelling (free) platform choice, the carriers and phonemakers have one less competitive advantage in being tied at the hip.  And that is a very good thing.