I must have missed the part where google was fighting the custom firmwares. The only complaint I've seen was in the redistribution of Google's non-free apps, but they worked that out amicably a long time ago.
I dont disagree that Google wants you to use their services. Clearly that the whole reason for the platform. But I think you're wrongly attributing where the difficulty lies in making changes. I also think you're overstating the difficulty. Hell, they have how-to's on Lifehacker.... My Google Nexus One has a hardware search button, which, by default, starts a google search. But with my custom firmware, I can navigate to Settings, Cyanogenmod Settings, Input, Search key app, and change the default app to Bing or Yahoo or whatever. That Google Search integrates with Google's Browser by default is lock in only in the mildest sense. You can easily install firefox4 or dolphin or any number of browsers and make them the default for all browers actions. Opera and Microsoft and Yahoo could all make their own search apps integrate with their own browsers and their own map application and you'd have all of that integrated on Android. And Verizon or AT&T or T-Mo or **You** could choose which ever search/map/browser vendor you wanted. Not having those options is not a lack of freedom of the Android platform, but of the vendors of your phone/phone firmware. Samsung apparently takes it a step further and tries their best to prevent custom firmware installs, but thats a completely separate topic because that is hardware vendors trying to lock their phones down, and has nothing to do with Google or Android. Dan On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 11:31 AM, William L. Thomson Jr. <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, 2011-02-20 at 11:20 -0500, Dan Trevino wrote: >> Yahoo and Bing search are available in the Android market. Verizon >> includes Bing as the default on some of their phones. > > Yes, but they are applications, not integrated into the phone the way > the Google stuff is ;) > >> And there are dozens of custom firmwares based on Googles Android >> code, so the "CentOS" of Android does exist, many times over. > > Yes and projects going to replace the Google stuff with FOSS versions. > But its not been an easy past, Google fought stuff like Cynagenmod for a > bit, before giving in and accepting the inevitable. > > I know there are others, and I could download and compile the source > myself and start to strip things out etc. My point is that Google went > out of their way to integrate and embed their stuff. So you have to go > through considerable efforts to have an Android free of Google if thats > possible. > > While CentOS goes through effort to remove RH branding, etc. The effort > required for CentOS is nothing compared to what you have to do in > Android to attempt to circumvent all Google stuff. RedHat would never do > things that Google has, they have a better understanding of FOSS. RedHat > knows anyone would just reverse engineer, or port. Something Google had > to find out the hard way ;) > > Not sure what Googles plans are for if they lose control of the Android > platform. Surely no one vendor has full control of Linux. Android being > FOSS could end up going the same route, and I really hope it does. I am > not anti-Google, just do not like having things forced upon me with no > choice. > > Like I would love to ditch Googles browser which sucks for Opera. But > trying to remove their browser and replacing that with Opera. I am sure > others have done it, but not a trivial task. Surely not just installing > opera and changing a default or two. Google really wants you to use > their stuff, for good reason. > > -- > William L. Thomson Jr. > Obsidian-Studios, Inc. > http://www.obsidian-studios.com > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 > RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml > Unsubscribe [email protected] > > -- --- Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Open Standards! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml Unsubscribe [email protected]
