Google Ecosystem

First appeared on CNN Money

Technology innovations are often blended into buzzword trends like "curation" and "social graph." This is shaping up to be the year of "ecosystem."

What does that mean? Depends on who you ask. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) chairman Eric Schmidt offered up his view during a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Schmidt started with a canned answer about how he defines ecosystem -- "scalable network platforms that deliver the best customer value" -- but he warmed up when the talk turned to Google's Android operating system.

"We even have Android in refrigerators now," Schmidt said. "By open-source we mean, 'take it and have fun.' And people have."

The panel moderator, CNET's Molly Wood, pointed out the pitfall of that strategy: hundreds of devices are running dozens of various versions of Android. But as soon as she said the word "fragmentation," Schmidt cut her off.

"You have to be careful with that word, fragmentation," he said.

"So what would you say?" Wood asked.

"I would say differentiation," Schmidt replied. "Differentiation is positive, fragmentation is negative."

Whatever you call it, the approach is working: Google activated 3.7 million Android phones on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Schmidt revealed.

But Wood pressed the fragmentation issue, asking Schmidt whether the new Android operating system -- 4.0, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich -- is a chance to "give [Google] a little more control."

Schmidt replied: "Well, control ... I mean, we want to get everybody under Ice Cream Sandwich, but we absolutely allow our developers to add or change anything, as long as they're not breaking anything."

He added: "The great thing is if you don't like one phone, you can choose another. You're not bound to certain hardware."

That potshot was aimed at Apple, whose iOS appears only on its own devices.

Schmidt's digs at competitors continued when Wood brought up Internet-connected TV and the success of Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) gesture-controlled Kinect system.

"How big a barrier is it that Microsoft seems to have all the pieces in place, with the Kinect and the Xbox and all, but hasn't really gotten it together yet?" Wood asked.

"Microsoft is trapped in an architectural problem it might not get through," Schmidt replied.

The blunt comment drew a few laughs from the audience. Schmidt shrugged them off saying, "My sense is that they're going to get there. It's a problem of user interface design. It's a matter of getting people with great taste into the company, designing."

Next on Schmidt's slam list: Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), whose Kindle Fire tablet runs on a highly altered version of Android. Schmidt said Google welcomed the customization, but that the tablet "has some limitations, [which] have been well documented."

Wood tried to close the discussion with a question based on the panel's theme: "Which is most important for the ecosystem: Hardware, content, services or software?"

Schmidt went the politician's route. He tossed that query out and swapped in his own.

"They work together," he said. "I'll answer a different question: What was the most surprising thing in 2011?" Schmidt asked himself, as attendees laughed.

"It's always surprising to people when they realize how significant these ecosystems are," he continued. "I saw this with respect to Apple, Amazon and even Facebook."

The open ecosystem allows multiple types of players to work together, Schmidt said. That means "everyone can be a winner" in a financial sense.

"All of these people can operate without your knowledge or control," he said. "It's about making it open enough so that the creative people, the app developers, the consumers -- you build something tremendously valuable for everyone."

Google Sued for Andriod

First appeared in The Guardian

British Telecom is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the US which says that the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of the telecoms company's key patents.

The lawsuit, filed in the state of Delaware in the US, relates to six patents which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android.

If successful, the suit could mean that Google or mobile handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and which they produce.

That could be expensive: Android is presently the most successful smartphone platform in the world, with its handsets making more than 40% of sales, equating to more than 40m produced every quarter. Google recently said that more than 500,000 Android devices are activated every day.

BT's move – which could also be repeated in Europe – means that Google is now fending off lawsuits against Android from six large publicly-traded companies, according to Florian Müller, an independent expert who follows the twists and turns of international patent litigation. BT joins Apple. Oracle, Microsoft, eBay and Gemalto, a digital security company.

A BT spokesman told the Guardian: "BT can confirm that it has commenced legal proceedings against Google by filing a claim with the US District Court of Delaware for patent infringement.

"The patents in question relate to technologies which underpin location-based services, navigation and guidance information and personalised access to services and content. BT's constant investment in innovation has seen it develop a large portfolio of patents which are valuable corporate assets."

A Google spokesman said: "We believe these claims are without merit, and we will defend vigorously against them."

In the filing, BT cites a number of US patents which were applied for and, apart from one, awarded in the 1990s which it says Android is infringing. BT has a long history in the mobile business, having been one of the original providers of mobile phone services with the Cellnet joint venture in the UK in the 1980s.

Müller says: "Android already had more than enough intellectual problems anyway. Now Google faces one more large organisation that believes its rights are infringed. BT probably wants to continue to be able to do business with all mobile device makers and therefore decided to sue Google itself."

Google is fending off multiple lawsuits relating to Android, while a number of handset makers including HTC and Samsung have yielded to patent claims by Microsoft against Android and are paying a per-handset fee for every one they make.

Many of the alleged infringements made by Android would also seem to apply to Apple's iPhone and iPad mobile devices – such as the "Busuioc Patent", which detects whether a mobile device is connected to a cellular or Wi-Fi network and allows streaming dependent on that.

Apple's iTunes Match service, launched in the US earlier this year and last Friday in the UK, also detects what sort of connection the device has before allowing file uploads or downloads. It is not known whether Apple has licensed use of the systems from BT, or whether BT has decided they do not infringe its patents, or whether litigation is pending.

BT points in the lawsuit to its large patent portfolio, from research at its Adastral Park centre near Ipswich, and that it has a portfolio of more than 10,000 patents.

The new lawsuit marks a return to attempts by BT to monetise its patent portfolio over web use.

In 2000 it asserted a patent claim in the US against Prodigy, one of the biggest internet service providers, claiming a patent on the hyperlink – the method by which people follow links between pages on the web. But embarrassingly for BT the claim was rejected when a judge said that no jury could find that the patent was infringed.

HP Considering Android
As Posted at InformationWeek

The computer maker reportedly may be considering swapping out Microsoft Windows for the Android operating system in some PCs.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) on Tuesday said it's studying Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s Android operating system to determine whether it would be useful in PCs and other products, but didn't commit to using the software in any particular device.

HP's comments to InformationWeek came in response to a Wall Street Journal report that said the computer maker is considering swapping Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows for Android in some HP mini-laptops, which the industry calls netbooks.

While acknowledging it's studying the OS, a company spokeswoman said HP hadn't committed to using the software in any computer.

"HP is acknowledging that we are studying the Android operating system," the spokeswoman said. "We want to assess the capability that Android may have for the computer and communications industry.

"As to how and when HP might produce any products using the Android OS, we don't comment on any speculation like that."

As the world's largest PC maker, HP's use of Android would be a major boost for the Google-developed OS that's used today in mobile phones. Because Android is open source, any company can download the software at no charge and use it without permission from Google.

Google confirmed that fact Tuesday in calling Android a "free, open source mobile platform" in an e-mail sent following a request for comment by InformationWeek.

"This means that anyone can take the Android platform and add code or download it to create a mobile device without restrictions," a Google spokeswoman said. "The Android smartphone platform was designed from the beginning to scale downward to feature phones and upward to MID [mobile Internet devices] and netbook-style devices."

The use of Android in a netbook isn't new. Asustek Computer said last month that it had dedicated engineers to create an Android mini-notebook, but had not decided whether it would sell it. The system could be completed by the end of the year.

In January, Matthaus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann, who run startup Mobile-Facts, compiled Android for an Asustek EEEPC 1000H netbook and got the system running with all the necessary hardware, including graphics, sound, and the wireless card for the Internet. They described their work in an article published by the site VentureBeat.

Netbooks, defined as having screens 10 inches or less and costing less than $500, with many models selling for as little as $300, are the fastest-selling segments of the PC market. While the rest of the market is expected to see a decline in unit sales, global sales of netbooks will grow nearly 80% this year to capture 8% of the total PC sales, according to the latest Gartner forecast.