Android still has future says Google
No clash with Chrome
By Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service | Published: 05:41, 13 July 2009
Google's new Chrome operating system won't squeeze out Android, according to senior Google executive.
Andy Rubin, the company's vice president of mobile engineering platforms said that mobile device OSes have specialised jobs that other platforms don't, such as running network protocol stacks, carefully managing battery life and handling handoffs among cell towers.
"There's(sic) different problems to be solved in different categories of consumer products," Rubin said. "But that doesn't mean that ... one wins and one doesn't win. You need different technologies for different solutions."
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Rubin said Google would use the Android Marketplace as a "carrot" to prevent fragmentation of the OS. He also said Google Checkout is just the first of what should be a wide range of payment platforms for the Marketplace.
Google Checkout became the payment system because it was easy for the development team to add on, Google's Rubin said. Google now plans to provide APIs for attaching different payment platforms that are appropriate to carriers in various parts of the world, he said.
"The idea is ... not to be locked to (Google) Checkout, not to be locked to a credit card, but to basically support everything out there as a payment system," Rubin said.
Google aims to prevent fragmentation of the Android platform by controlling access to the Android Marketplace, which is where the value lies for developers, Google's Rubin said. To get into the Android Market, applications have to pass "very basic compatibility tests," available to everyone, that ensure compatibility with Android APIs, he said.
Google continues to plan for new releases of Android about twice a year, roughly for summer and the year-end holiday season, Rubin said. Sticking with the food-oriented naming convention under which it is currently offering the Cupcake version, Google will call its next release Donut and follow that with Eclair and Flan. Social networking will be a major focus of one upcoming release, which will add social elements into "every experience on the phone," he said.
