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Ask HN: Did Google made a mistake by making Android free & open source?

2 points by srik1234 ↗ HN
Right now, Android is a success. Obviously, much of its success is attributed to the fact that it is free and open source. However, I'm not so sure whether it is a good long term strategy or not. I'm wondering what hacker news community thinks of this. Here are the pros and cons of current Android strategy:

Pros: 1. Free 2. Open source. 3. Low barrier to entry for any hardware manufacturer. 4. Support & evangelism by Google. 5. Google apps.

Cons: 1. Loss of "license fee" revenue. This can be huge, since it is projected that smartphones and Tablets are the future and millions of devices are getting activated every year. 2. Low barrier to entry for competing search providers (Yahoo, etc) & other web services providers (consider Facebook, Amazon). There have been rumors that Facebook is working to implement its own Android implementation and it could very well replace google search with Bing or facebook version of search. Amazon has already started its own Android Market and it already has a successful device (Kindle) under its belt. 3. Patent issues (law suits from Oracle, Microsoft and Apple).

4 comments

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Drakim
It seems fairly obvious to me that if Android wasn't free and open source, it wouldn't have grown big and there wouldn't have been much money in license fee revenue in the first place.

Same goes for stuff like Wikipedia and such. If it wasn't free, we wouldn't be talking about how big it is today, and the potential revenue would have been minimal.

johng
Drakim is right. The question is, once it hits a critical point (arguably, it's already there with only Apple as a serious competitor) when will they decide to further monetize it?
wmf
Carriers besides AT&T were so desperate for anything modern, they would have taken Android if it was $0 and "curated/opinionated" instead of open source. Google probably could have used licensing to lock out Bing, Sense, and other junk while ensuring that the ad revenue continues to flow.
bdfh42
I am pretty sure that Google's agenda was simply one of trying to ensure that the maximum number of mobile devices had unfettered access to the Internet - which is where they make their advertising dollars. If that meant building the new "windows" (but for mobile not desktop) then they are more than happy to pay the price.