Then it's evident... people should compete better. I don't find Google's offerings better than others. Just that people are more aware of their offerings.

I agree to a certain point but Google is in a similar position to Microsoft.

Microsoft are very good at analyzing a competitor's product, cloning it and then either offering it free or including it as a "feature" in a product.

Netscape navigator, stacker, Wordperfect and Lotus 123 comes to mind. All excellent products but eventually died-off to the inferior (at the time) Microsoft version.

Google also offer most of there products free which means any competitor that charges for a service is at an immediate disadvantage.

How do you compete against free?

Netscape Navigator sorta did a lot of their own downfall to themselves. I remember still purchasing Netscape Navigator 3.3 Gold to avoid having to use the inferior IE 2/3. I hated IE, all of my peers (ironically all of us were MCSE's at the time) hated IE, and we used anything we could to avoid using IE.

But they kept getting more and more bloated. When Mozilla finally came about, it was free, it was less bloated and I moved to it. In the interim between Navigator and Mozilla, I purchased Opera. You compete with free by just being a better option and people know that you're a better option.

That's my take. It doesn't always work though. People will take the free route when they can.

Before GMail, Hotmail (pre-Microsoft purchase)... and Yahoo Mail. So it's not like they didn't walk into a situation there where the competition wasn't already free... but it was already huge. In that one case, they just made it seem better, and earlier on... they made it "exclusive" where people just WANTED an invite so badly that they'd switch anyway. Smart move on Google's part, imho.

So that's a place where guerrilla marketing worked well.

But back to Android... I think honestly them pulling out the Android code from the kernel was... smart. They're so behind in so many forks that I stopped watching. It's beneficial, I just hope they hurry up and get back to mainline or else I fear the naysayers will have a field day with the "evil" chants.

It's funny how "evil" has been placed on IBM, to Microsoft to Google and Apple now in my lifetime. I wonder who's next?

My bet is on Oracle.

I don't how much google have changed their fork of linux but if they cannot keep up with the linux kernel then they have probably done the right thing.

It is not as if they are trying to hijack the kernel itself. They maintain there own fork and I imagine at some point they will catch up.

Just people being weary of Google's intentions.

Google's size = bloat + control

So because their procucts are cutting edge, they can' be evi? is "evil" defined as "not cutting edge"?

sounds like from a world where beautiful people are always good and honest. - oh, and btw: they do data mining even if you don't sign up to their services. even you don't know they exist at all they collect your data.

evil and hate are to easy words; as google is not evil, nor is hate whats being displayed. What we see is a change away from the usual nature of treating everyone equal, towards where a select few is allowed access to a special set of feature not available to the rest.

benny you have yet to show me the evil. My point in cutting edge gives you reason to use their products. And I still do not understand why everyone freaks out about data mining. Do you really think you your self are so important that Google is going to single you out to wrong you? Really? It only takes one known wrong doing to kill them. And if you are so worried about whats being seen, maybe you are doing a bit of evil yourself

tso if you are referring to google voice, then yes it is a private "beta" at the moment....just as gmail was. I'm sure once they see the success and figure out how they can be profitable with the voice, they will 1 work with international telco's and 2 open it up for free sign up

no, i am referring to how google web services work on all browsers, while the android apps for the same services are only available on select devices. And this includes android market, where the name alone suggests it should be part of the base android package.

At the 2010 LFCS they basically said "we need people to do it," which I don't buy (Google lacking manpower?) But it is an ongoing issue with technical problems that have to be solved, and they won't get the code in until it isn't so Android specific.

Oracle was already evil, only now they can sell you hardware too.