redstater

"Borrowing from iOS, users will be able to quick-reply to messages from notifications." Funny, I can do this already using Google Messenger on my Nexus 6. "Likewise Android is getting support for split-screen and picture-in-picture multitasking, something present on iPads since Septemer's iOS 9." Funny, I was able to do this back in 2013 with my Samsung Galaxy Mega. As Samsung and LG phones and tablets and Jide tablets and Android PCs have been able to do for even longer. What is new is that this is coming into base Android. It was unable to before because of performance reasons: 512 MB and 1 GB of RAM devices running on Qualcomm 200 and low end MediaTek CPUs couldn't handle it. This was also why this functionality is not in the iPhone 6S ... it required the extra GB of RAM that went into the iPad Pro. "Google has also made Android's compiler up to 75 percent quicker" In 2014 they went from just-in-time to ahead of time compilation to make it faster. Now 2 years later they are going BACK to just-in-time compilation to make it faster. Unless they did a major redesign in the underlying architecture, either to the JVM or to the native OS, I will believe it when I see it.

There is more to this than Nokia's feature phone business. Instead, here is what is going on. Microsoft controls key rights to the Nokia brand until 2022 and does not want to fully relinquish them. Neither do they want to openly compete with their Surface brand, which has value for their enterprise customers. So Microsoft, Nokia and Foxconn are creating a joint effort to make and sell Android phones and tablets. Foxconn will to manufacture, market and distribute the devices under the Nokia brand, to which Nokia and Microsoft will supply software/services/apps as well as some hardware design input. The relationship between the 3 companies will be handled by an intermediary, HMD Global Oy, which is the creation of the 3 companies, based in Finland and run by a "former" Microsoft executive, and will last 10 years. Foxconn will pay licensing fees to HMD, through which both Nokia and Microsoft will be compensated. Nokia and Microsoft will also make money on their various apps and services installed on the devices. So with the combined efforts of the 3 heavyweights, "Nokia" might be a major player in this space. If so, as all 3 companies have made or contributed to very good or even great products in the past, that will be good for consumers. But for the companies that make Android devices, especially small struggling ones like HTC, not so much ...

rob53 said:

So Microsoft took an almost $7B hit on this purchase. How did Wall Street respond? They probably said it was a good deal.

And what response did you want Wall Street to have? It was evident that the deal was Ballmer's last parting gift for 2 years, and the new CEO finally wrote off the deal and laid off the Nokia employees last year, to his credit choosing to take the entire hit at once instead of spreading it over 2-3 quarters, and for that reason took a $3 billion operating loss for that quarter. As Microsoft has long since returned to profitability on the strength of their enterprise products - they have the #2 enterprise server OS, the #1 enterprise client OS by a wide margin, the #1 enterprise database, and are the #2 cloud platform as a service company with a big gap between them and #3, plus they have successfully remade the #1 enterprise and consumer productivity suite (again by a huge margin) into a web/cloud/mobile subscription service - how long did you want Wall Street to punish them for their failed attempt to be a hardware company, thinking that they would be as successful there as they were at one point with the XBox? And for what reason? Fewer consumers may be buying Windows desktops and laptops because they are getting mobile devices instead, but Microsoft is still the #1 software company in the world with $94 billion in revenue last year (which puts their $7 billion writeoff in context). The #2 software company? Oracle with $38 billion, and their revenue and profits have been in decline for years. SAP is #3 with $23 billion and no one else even reached $7 billion. Microsoft's $440 billion market capitalization is not only #1, but it is bigger than the market cap of the #2-#10 software companies combined. And for several of their products, no good viable substitutes or competition exists, especially for small to medium-sized enterprises that do not have a lot of IT expertise, and who need all of their enterprise products to work mostly out of the box with very little configuration and a lot of compatibility for that reason. Take Microsoft Office, SQL Server, Windows Server (and all the products that hang off it like corporate email, messaging, document and identity management) away and most of them would grind to a halt. That's why investors took Microsoft's decision not to try to be Sony or Samsung - let alone Apple - and go back to focusing on what made them the world's #1 company for a generation - software and services - as a good thing. A lot of Apple fans keep rooting for Microsoft's decline and death because Microsoft emulated Apple's PC UX/UI back in the day to create Windows. The problem with that is that Windows - while Microsoft's #1 product by far - is nowhere near their only product, and for many of their other products no one - including Apple - offers a good competitor for.

Google fans have wanted their own Alexa for quite some time. While there is nothing wrong with this per se as it is relatively easy to do - just stick Google Now Voice on the firmware - my question is "why?" They are really going to compete with the 3 million Echo units that Amazon has pushed in nearly 2 years? They should be more concerned with making sure that Samsung and Facebook don't push them out of VR, as their Gear VR product is far superior to Google Cardboard: http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/11/million-gear-vr-users/ They should also try to rework their failed Android TV platform, as no manufacturers but Asus (for the original Nexus Player), Nvidia and Razer have come out with their own models, and the two biggest smart TV manufacturers - Samsung and LG - shunned it in favor of their own Tizen and WebOS, and the other manufacturers like Sony limited the platform to their most expensive TVs, leaving Google to try to partner with another company for Chromecast type functionality only for cheap TVs. Maybe coming out with a line of $35 dongles similar to the Fire TV stick and then practically giving the things away with a purchase of a new smartphone would actually work. Or perhaps their new hardware division should just manufacture their own TVs. Giving Android Wear - which has still yet to reach the 5 million in sales mark in nearly 2 years - yet another makeover that will allow the devices to be made a lot more cheaply and then practically given away with each smartphone should be done also. Another thing: why not just alter the Google Now API so you will be able to send voice commands over Chromecast and Chromecast Audio? Instead of selling a few speakers with Google Now enabled, use the Google Now that is already on 1 billion Android devices - and not a few iOS devices - to send search commands to the tens of millions of Chromecast and Google Cast Receiver-enabled devices that are in the wild. Why on earth would a software company emulate a poorly-selling hardware device when they can come up with a software solution that incorporates hardware that far more people already have? Eh. But that is Google for you ... so few of their ideas actually work.

Herbivore2 said:

redstater said:

With Microsoft, arguing against something and then using it when you lose the argument isn't exactly anything new ... they all do it including Apple.

As far as Oracle Linux goes, as much as I am so much not a fan of Oracle for a bunch of reasons that I will not get into - let's just say that their CEO infamously predicted that the cloud and services based business model would fail - Red Hat made the base version of their Linux open source. So you are free to take their open source Linux code, fork it and commercialize it, just as you can do with AOSP Android. Oracle is merely one of several companies and organizations that have done so, though they are by far the biggest that is trying to commercialize it. It is the same with Debian: it is open source and Ubuntu is a commercial fork of it. And yes, the same exists with Java: OpenJDK. Had Google used OpenJDK's APIs instead of Sun Java's APIs, they wouldn't be in this mess. The problem: OpenJDK came available too late for Google to use at the time, as its initial release was 2007, and as a decidedly inferior version of Java its APIs weren't suitable anyway. Another reason: using OpenJDK would have required using the General Public License, the terms of which mean that Google would have been required to publish their proprietary code whenever it deviated from the existing OpenJDK. Of course, Google can respond to this by simply forking OpenJDK, and if Oracle keeps trying to extract money out of them or tries to assert ownership or control of Android, that is exactly what they will do.

There remain issues with Google's Java Android implementation. 

http://readwrite.com/2015/12/30/openjdk-java-android-n/

It seems that Google is going to have a rough go in moving Android forward and their best hope is that the courts minimize their financial impact and that they can continue to use the infringing code. 

The fact that they are looking to implement their own version of a JDK suggests that they believe there might still be a stiff financial penalty awarded by the courts. 

However, it would seem that forking openJDK may be a poor substitute and potentially may alienate a host of Android developers. Hence Schmidt's response which reminds me of a slimey lawyer trying to use doublespeak to pull a fast one on the court. If he happens to "get lucky," Google can just use the infringing APIs, ensuring full Java compatibity while paying a paltry monetary fine. 

Oracle does not "need" to play nice with Google. It is much different from the relationship between Samsung and Apple. Especially with Samsung providing critical components for Apple and Samsung also needing Apple's business. Google has some serious issues and it all stems from Schmidt assuming he can simply take and appropriate another company's intellectual property in any way he sees fit. Well, it doesn't work that way. 

Google pays huge amounts to lobbyists, but it won't matter this time. The entire tech. community is against them on this one. 

Reverse the shoe for a moment. How would Google feel if someone took their proprietary search code and used it in a competing product? Perhaps in Bing or Yahoo? 

Google wouldn't be quite so understanding of that one. And for them to take the stand that they are now taking is more than a little hypocritical, especially for a company whose motto is "Don't be evil."

Hmmm. Looks like you are one of those guys whose real issue is that Google decided to enter the mobile operating system business in the first place. My first reply to you: the people who developed Java and owned the IP at the time, Sun, were fine with Google using their APIs. The former CEO of Sun testified on behalf of Google in the first trial to that effect, and will testify on behalf of Google in the second one. Of course, you knew that already but you do not care, as you simply wish for this action - or any action - to result in Google and Android exiting the mobile arena and Apple getting a monopoly. Because we all learned from Microsoft and before them AT&T that monopolies are totally in the best interests of consumers and innovation.

As for the readwrite.com article; looks like wishful thinking from a bunch of people who either dislike Google or like Apple as much as you do. What the article failed to point out:

A) Google removed the infringing APIs from Android years ago, began the process of migrating to OpenJDK as far back as 2013 and completed it in 2015. So Marshmallow is already entirely OpenJDK and there are no app compatibility issues at all. Google can fork OpenJDK into their own version of Java and go forward with it tomorrow. Not only that, they could open-source it, which would lead to a mass migration from Oracle Java - which everyone has hated ever since they took it over from Sun - to Google Java. (Your claims that "everyone hates Google" is ... so not true. The only Google haters are a small subset of Apple and Microsoft fans, plus some Edward Snowden types.)

Google has been working on porting everything that is vital about Android - the apps and the design language standard - to ChromeOS for years, and they are just about finished. They are widely expected to announce that Google Play Store apps are going to be generally available on ChromeOS at Google I/O in a few days. And they also own the Android name (for operating system purposes). Long before this court case is finished, they will be able to walk away from Android and AOSP as they currently exist, rename the new mobile platform Android, and distributing that to Samsung and their other partners and making it the basis of AOSP and letting Oracle have Android as it currently exists (which is Oracle's actual goal, which is why they chose suing Google over simply trying to work out a licensing agreement). 

So if you are hoping that Oracle's patent troll actions kills off Android and gives Apple a monopoly, the opposite is far more likely to happen: Google replacing Android as it currently exists with a version of the software that is more secure, offers better performance and they will have far more control over updating.

The circumstances under which Android was created - very rushed as they were trying to keep Microsoft from gaining market share in mobile and using it to lock Google out - were less than ideal, and yes they should have signed a licensing agreement with Sun rather than relying on being on good personal terms with Sun's CEO. Still, there is no scenario where this patent trollish lawsuit will cause any real harm to Google other than the few bucks they are going to shell out. Indeed, lots of Google fans already wanted Google to merge the two operating systems before this lawsuit.