“A club to make them do what we want.” That’s the way one Google executive described the gauntlet device makers must pass to get Android certification. So much for being “open.”
Court papers from a 2010 lawsuit against Google by Skyhook Wireless suggest Google retains tight control over which handsets are deemed Android-compatible. To obtain licensing, handset makers must pass an Android Compatibility Test. Skyhook fell under the head of Google’s ‘club’ when they planned to offer their cell tower positioning system on the Motorola Droid X. However, Google stepped in before the phone shipped and the app was subsequently dropped by Motorola.
In documents describing the Android approval process, we learn Motorola’s license with Google is set to expire Dec. 31, 2011. As part of the licensing procedure, Google requires manufacturers agree to let the Mountain View, Calif. company decide which apps are pre-loaded and that no apps can be reverse-engineered. Most striking, however, is how an Android Compatibilty Test and an Android Compatibility Definition are controlled by Google. It is so obvious, Google’s Dan Morrill emailed a warning against the company “swinging compatibility around as a weapon.”
“It’s not like it isn’t obvious to the OEMs that we are using compatibility as a club to make them do things we want, and that just weakens their motivation to be compatible,” he adds in an email released by the court.
We also get a timeline of Google’s reaction to news that Skyhook might be added to Motorola’s Android handset. After sending out a link to a BusinessInsider story detailing Motorola choosing Skyhook, an hour later, Google employee Charles Mendis wrote the news “feels like a disaster.” Later the same day, Google’s Zhengrong Ji wrote: “It’s sad to see first Apple, now Motorola moving away from us, which means less collection” of data for Google’s location database. By the afternoon, a Google PR employee was asking whether the story could be favorably spun by planting a story in a blog.
In the end, after Google issued Motorola a “stop ship” order on June 2, Skyhook’s location app was removed from the Droid X on June 6.
