Google's Andy Ruben talks about Android Market

[Chris Davies]

Andy Rubin, head of Google’s Android project, spoke this week about his visions for Android Market. Rubin discussed application bandwidth limits and, more importantly perhaps, how Android Market will differ from Apples iTunes App Store.


Unlike th... Read more

[RussianSolja]

thats fantastic news!!!!!! Muahahaha AND ANOTHER VICTORY AND POINT FOR THE ANDROID!!!!! TAKE THAT IPHONE!!!! ONCE AGAIN THE ANDROID TAKES A STEP FOWARD! i love this site and the android OS!!!!

[RegGuheert]

Key quote:

“We want the next killer application to be written for cell phones, not the Internet,” Rubin said.

I believe this is why Google is SO successful. They seem to be close followers of Bob Cringely's book "Accidental Empires: How the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition and still can't get a date". To me, the idea of a killer application is a powerful one. When I read the statements by Balmer and Rubin, this is the glaring difference: Microsoft sees the key to selling their products as their marketing power (PUSH onto the masses) while Google sees power in appealing to the needs of the everyday people (PULL model: if you build it, they will come).

Clearly Apple is the REAL competition for the G1, as Steve Jobs continues to be one of the original masters of the killer application.

Reg

[Bluesk1d]

This is all great news for the consumer but the $2 fee that T-Mobile wants to be paid by the developers is completely absurd. This is exactly the same thing the ISPs were trying to do to Google a few years ago. They were complaining that much of the traffic on their networks was coming from or going to Google services. That is, they wanted Google to pay a fee for this traffic. You know, the traffic that was already being paid for by their customers. Their custoemrs were simply using the broadband they pay for and just because many of them happened to be visiting google sites, the ISPs wanted to double dip and get paid twice for the same bandwidth. Naturally, Google laughed heartily and said, "Hell no." T-Mobile customers will already be paying data plan fees for any data that goes to/from the various app servers. In short, T-Mobile can shove the $2. Nice try though. Again, just like before with the ISPs vs. Google, it is NOT the app developers who are using up your precious network, it's your paying customers.

[swaney29]

you took this from me

[phillramey]

Cool stuff. Just one note though. You may want to update the spelling of "Ruben" in the title to match the article.

[moooseman]

so am i the only one who thinks that it might be a bad thing to charge developers 2 bucks a month to put up a free app? it might discourage developers. What does everyone else think?

[refused9150]

iPhone web apps are often more useful than the applications they allow. We just need them for the device rather than the web. Having them as web apps creates a lot of problems because they cant take advantage of all the hardware.