Switched On: Chrome's shine could blind Android

Ross Rubin (@rossrubin) contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

It's been a year of milestones for Android in the U.S. The number of handsets with the Google-developed software has grown from one to eight. Three of the four major national carriers, including Verizon Wireless, the country's largest, now offer Android phones. HTC's Hero and Motorola's CLIQ have shown how Android supports customization by manufacturers. And the Motorola Droid has marked the debut of Android 2.0.

When the T-Mobile G1 was launched, Switched On discussed Google's growing rivalry with Apple. But now Google itself an even more formidable threat to the Android than Apple or even Microsoft. Growing out of the group that created the Chrome browser, Google's Chrome OS creates a relatively lightweight layer of hardware management code primarily for the purpose of running one native app, the Chrome browser. While Chrome OS can take advantage of local processing and resources, the OS foregoes local applications, citing a need to preserve speed, security and simplicity.

That argument resembles one Apple made in the early days of the iPhone with web apps before it committed to releasing an SDK and launched the App Store -- a reversal that's created one the most vibrant mobile software ecosystems ever seen. And unlike iPhone apps, Android apps can operate in the background. Indeed, Android's multitasking, alerts, and upgrade notifications are among the most elegant in the industry; clearly the OS development team has put a lot of thought into how to deliver the benefits of local applications in the stringent smartphone environment.

So, should developers invest in local apps for Android or is the future Web apps delivered via the Chrome browser? The mixed message Google is giving developers with

It would be a shame for Android developers and users if its path were derailed by a browser that has developed megalomania.

Chrome OS and Android smacks of the worst kind of corporate infighting and politics where the left hand not is not only unaware of what the right hand is doing, but is also competing with it. Google postulates noncommittally that Android and Chrome OS may merge at some point, but they are unlikely to do so via entropy. Just ask Microsoft, which spent a decade trying to marry the user interface and hardware support of its consumer Windows products (95, 98) with the plumbing of its enterprise Windows versions (NT, 2000).

More seriously, the treatment of desktop and handset platforms as two disparate opportunities that have contradictory app strategies runs counter to the marketplace success that Apple has had with a unified OS X foundation running on Macs and iPhones. Even Microsoft, which has struggled to create the richness of mobile applications that it has on the PC desktop, strives to leverage developer knowledge with common development tools for Windows and Windows Mobile. Nokia, which once relegated Maemo for being fit for "PC-like" mobile experiences, is now more seriously considering integrating the Linux-based OS more deeply into its smartphone offerings. This is because handsets have finally become contextual mobile computers -- Android itself is evidence of that.

And if we can trust and enrich these omnipresent epicenters of our digital lives with third-party applications, we should certainly be able to manage apps on some tertiary PC companion. In the high-stakes competitive environment in which Android competes, developers deserve to know that sponsoring organizations believe in the value of third-party applications that engage the user with appropriate user interfaces and offline functionality. It would be a shame for Android developers and users if its path were derailed by a browser that has developed megalomania.

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Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.

[Wallyum Posted Nov 25th 2009 7:37AM]

Entropy, eh? Nice job using classical thermodynamics to describe business situations.

[cobaltage Posted Nov 25th 2009 8:26AM]

I'm underwhelmed by this commentator for the second week in a row. It's not just that I disagree with his views, but rather that his basic arguments are more or less incomprehensible to me.

Apple has done a good job with the iPhone OS, whereas MS has definitely had a hard time scaling its OS over a larger variety of devices. In particular, when WM was in its prime, the most important feature was data synchronization between a computer and a portable device, which WM did and still does very well (better than Apple, at least in syncing with Windows).

It seems to me that, looking all of the negative commentary on Chrome OS and this more or less obvious statement about the eventual merging and Android and Chrome OS, people don't really understand Google at all. They're acting like it's some other software company. Android is clearly a good primary OS forsmall, portable devices which benefit from an optimized UI. Chrome OS is clearly a benefit as a secondary OS on notebooks and desktops, which don't require a specialized UI to access internet content. For devices in between, the field is less defined. But the problem is the same: the delivery of internet content in a usable fashion for each device.

I don't see how Google is "sending a mixed message" at all, or suffering from "corporate infighting." All of that is completely in the mind of the commentator, I suspect out of his blind devotion to Apple. If and when Apple releases a tablet requiring all new apps optimized for a larger, higher-resolution multitouch screen, this guy will probably think its an ingenious move on Apple's part. But Google, trying to meet a real demand for full compatibility with the internet with a free OS for every type of device, is somehow a complete moron. Okay, whatever.

[cobaltage Posted Nov 25th 2009 8:39AM]

@(Unverified) I'm so irritated after reading this column over again that I'm going to respond to my own post. What is the best app on the iPhone? I'm going to say: Google Maps, hands down. (The email app is obviously similarly useful, although gmail running in Mobile Safari has more features.) Google Maps gives me access to data that I couldn't possibly have in a locally stored application, and that information is adaptable to a whole range of circumstances: driving, walking, public transportation, plus Streetview, local business information, and real-time traffic. There is no competition for that service, and there is no better demonstration of how content in one form on the internet needs to be converted into another form in a mobile device. A phone that has Google Maps and no other apps is far more useful than a phone with 100,000 apps minus Google Maps. The whole idea that Google is causing some kind of fatal confusion to arise about the status of Android apps vs. webapps is nonsense, total and complete bunk.

[Philipp Posted Nov 25th 2009 10:35AM]

@(Unverified) Couldn't agree more. Who wrote this shit? To bad, that the guys writing these articles do not have any programming background.

[fourthletter Posted Nov 25th 2009 11:32AM]

Android is designed for small touch screen devices, Chrome OS is designed for larger (but not large) full screen devices with full keyboards and mice/touchpads.
The only overlap will be in the code base/browser it's really only blogs that are talking up all this nonsense, Chrome OS is developed by Google whereas Android is developed by the Open Handset Alliance which includes Google but it is not solely their property anymore.
Blogs need headlines thats really what this story is all about.