This project would be interesting only to the extent it accurately showed the negative impact of monopolies.
Unfortunately, this subject area is full of strong emotions and opinions that make it hard for people to be objective.
For example the article you link says that Google and Blackberry worked jointly on the 1:1 format phone, and jointly decided to stop working on it. That hardly sounds like an abusive monopolist.
And sure, at that point Android was more popular than the BlackBerry OS. But this actually demonstrates healthy competition. I had a Blackberry for work (edit to clarify: running BlackBerry’s own OS and software), and so did all my coworkers. Blackberry was the dominant mobile platform once. Through complacency and poor decision-making, they stopped innovating and competing. And thus, allowed new products with zero installed base on day one to come in and take their market.
> Unfortunately, this subject area is full of strong emotions and opinions that make it hard for people to be objective.
I actually think it's not possible to be objective on that matter, hence it needs to be properly explained, to understand the limitations of one post (but the goal is to have many posts, so hopefully readers can reject the ones they feel is wrong)
> For example the article you link says that Google and Blackberry worked jointly on the 1:1 format phone, and jointly decided to stop working on it. That hardly sounds like an abusive monopolist.
Let's just say that I've seen a bit of first-hand, and a lot of second-hand of "Google working jointly with XXX", and in the vast majority, Google-side doesn't spend much engineering time on those issues. I completely agree this is not an objective point of view. This can hardly be proved, shown or explained, so I have no issue with you not taking my word for it. Hopefully if other people join this project, there might turn out /some/ people that you do trust?
> And sure, at that point Android was more popular than the BlackBerry OS. But this actually demonstrates healthy competition. I had a Blackberry for work, and so did all my coworkers. Blackberry was the dominant mobile platform once.
I wouldn't exactly call the replacement of BBOS by Android a "healthy competition", when the main reason Android won was that it was an OS completely free of charge, paid for by another recurring stream for the company. (I'm not saying Android was worse than BBOS, that I have no idea, )
> Through complacency and poor decision-making, they stopped innovating and competing. And thus, allowed new products with zero installed base on day one to come in and take their market.
The iPhone came out before Android, was more expensive than a Blackberry at first, but started taking share from RIM. It also caused the Android project at Google to reset (their initial phone was similar to a Blackberry before the iPhone launch).
RIM’s complacency and flat-footed response to the iPhone has been very well covered, and can be Googled. By the time they were trying to partner with Google, it was already too late for them. Android is not what killed the Blackberry.
Except this assumption that there can be only a few winners taking all and the rest end up "killed" is exactly what effective anti-trust would prevent. Imagine the possibility where Blackberry kept making devices that fit their niche of hardware keyboards, running Android, and selling them to their established customers.
The elephant in the room is the heavy natural monopoly on software compatibility/interoperability, and the above thought experiment only makes sense because Android is a purportedly open platform.
Effective tech anti-trust has to work around that and not merely police behavior aimed at restricting competition. Modern tech anti-trust should be focused around mandating open access to proprietary systems (for starters, anything a web user can do, a program running on the user's behalf should be able to do), and privacy legislation to make it so that customers have to be earned rather than everyone being treated as a data subject by default.
Not reset, reprioritize. Fred Vogelstein only talked to one source who was on the Android team for his book, and that source may have had their own agenda.
Other sources, such as Chet Haas's book, make it clear that what became the G1 was already on the roadmap. It was just prioritized.
Unfortunately, this subject area is full of strong emotions and opinions that make it hard for people to be objective.
For example the article you link says that Google and Blackberry worked jointly on the 1:1 format phone, and jointly decided to stop working on it. That hardly sounds like an abusive monopolist.
And sure, at that point Android was more popular than the BlackBerry OS. But this actually demonstrates healthy competition. I had a Blackberry for work (edit to clarify: running BlackBerry’s own OS and software), and so did all my coworkers. Blackberry was the dominant mobile platform once. Through complacency and poor decision-making, they stopped innovating and competing. And thus, allowed new products with zero installed base on day one to come in and take their market.