Google today held the keynote for its I/O developer
event. It previewed a new version of Android for
smartphones and tablets as well as detailing narrower
user Android-based interfaces for the car, wearables and
the TV. The following comment may be attributed to Jan
Dawson, Chief Analyst at Jackdaw Research. Jan can
also be reached at jan@jackdawresearch.com or (408)
744-6244.
The overriding theme of the I/O keynote was Google
reasserting control over Android. The core objective of
Android has always been to provide the widest possible
audience for Google’s services, but over the last several
years Google has seen a variety of device vendors
customize, tweak and fork Android in ways that either
submerge Google’s services beneath their own or strip
them out entirely. Google has achieved its objective of
creating a very widely used mobile operating system,
but it’s a very Google-light version of Android which is
driving that growth. Android One is ostensibly about
expanding the availability of cheap smartphones using
Android in emerging markets, but Android is already the
default operating system for cheap smartphones. The
problem is that it’s often a version of Android which has
very little to do with Google. Android One will re-
enshrine Google’s services at the center of these
devices, which will run stock Android and be free from
the sorts of customizations so popular with the largest
Android manufacturers, notably Samsung.
Google’s increased control over Android extends to
Android Wear, Android Auto and Android TV too. As
shown at I/O, the Android user interfaces in each of
these new domains will be standard Google interfaces,
and won’t be customizable in the way Android on
smartphones and tablets has been. Google’s search and
voice control, Google-provided location and other
contextual data and other Google-centric services will
be at the heart of these devices in a way they’re
currently not on many Android smartphones and tablets.
Another theme was Google’s attempt to promote web
apps versus native applications, since Google dominates
web search but has failed to replicate that dominance in
mobile apps. Extending App Linking to all developers
allows Google to include links to specific points within
apps in Google’s web searches and will therefore bring
the world of apps into Google search. Promoting
individual web browser tabs to the level of native apps
in the recently used apps screen also gives web apps a
new prominence. Google will also include deep linking
within search results in the Google search box on
Android devices. All of these together are attempts by
Google to redress the disparity between native and web
apps on mobile and reassert its dominance.
Google also laid out its vision for increasing integration
between its various platforms, echoing a theme from
both Microsoft’s Build and Apple’s WWDC. Each of these
companies, though, is approaching that integration in a
different way. Microsoft is focusing on the top and
bottom of the stack – the user interface at the top and
the code at the bottom. Apple is focusing on back-end
services and a common user experience rather than a
common user interface. Google, in turn, is borrowing
elements of both, with Continuity-like features between
smartphones and Chromebooks, a common design
language across all of Google’s services and so on. The
smartphone is clearly at the center of Google’s
integration strategy, as it is for Apple, whereas
Microsoft’s is still more focused on the desktop and to a
lesser extent the tablet, where it’s comparative strengths
lie.
Overall, what’s striking is the way each of these three
major companies – Google, Microsoft and Apple – are
seeking to participate across four key domains: the
home, the car, the body and the mobile world at large.
Each now has a stated strategy in each of those domains
and it will be interesting to see how they shape up
against each other. Those strategies are remarkably
similar, with Apple departing from its usual hardware-
centric approach to take more of a platform approach in
the home, car and wearables. But they’re also different –
Google made much (rightly so) of its many partnerships
with car manufacturers, TV vendors and smartwatch
makers, and continues to go broad rather than deep.
Google and Apple now have very similar-sized bases –
Google has over 1 billion active monthly users, while
Apple has around 800 million iTunes accounts, and
likely a similar number of total devices in use. But
Apple’s ecosystem continues to be far more lucrative for
developers, generating over $9 billion in revenue for
developers in the past twelve months, while Google
generated just $5 billion.