Android runs millions of devices worldwide, but could consumers have reaped the rewards of a more open Android system?

When Google, along with a consortium of other companies, announced the open-source operating system we call Android way back in 2007, the world was paying attention. The iPhone had launched the same year, and the entire mobile space was wary of the rush of excitement around the admittedly revolutionary device. AOSP (Android Open Source Project) was born, and within a few years Android swallowed up market share with phones of all shapes and sizes from manufacturers all over the globe. Android eventually found its way into TVs, fridges, washing machines, cars, and the in-flight entertainment system of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

  • @ExtremeDullardEnglish
    4•1 month ago

    AOSP was never about consumers. Google used it as a trojan horse to gain massive marketshare and use it as a platform to run their surveillance software on the biggest possible scale.

    The fact that it’s open source helped AOSP succeed at first and gave Google a good corporate image. Then, slowly over the years, Google moved more and more open-source features behind their proprietary stack, and now AOSP is only nominally open source: look at the state of the dialer, the contact list… in a vanilla AOSP installation, like on most deGoogle phones: it’s quite pathetic compared to modern, privacy-invading phones.

    So yes: AOSP has failed consumers because it was designed to serve Google and nobody else from the get-go.