The Catalyst Code

In its latest stick ‘em in the eye approach to the mobile industry Google came out swinging at a recent forum sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission Google Pushes Open Mobile Platform at FTC Event.

According to Rich Miner, who’s heading their Android mobile software platform initiative, when someone controls a platform “it stifles innovation” and he gives the example of the desktop PC.  All Google is looking for is a “level playing field.”  Of course it is all a bit more complicated than that.  Without debating whether the world would have had more innovation or just more confusion without Microsoft guiding the industry, all one has to do is to look at Apple to see that closed platforms can be quite innovative. The iPod/iTunes platform is about as closed as one could get but it hasn’t stood in the way of bringing lots of innovations to the digital media business. That’s continuing with the iPhone. And of course Google’s search/advertising platform is hardly open. Sure, they made some APIs available for developers but Google tightly controls the search ad ecosystem.

The problem with the mobile carriers is that we get sort of the worst of all worlds: on the one hand they haven’t been very innovative and have been, it seems, more concerned with “protecting” their investments in mobile capacity than in advancing creative ways to use that capacity; on the other hand, by closing their platforms they have made it difficult for people to innovate around them. Google isn’t pursuing Android because of some ideological belief in “openness” or because it’s decided that it’s made enough profits and wants to become a charity.  Rather, it wants to maximize its ability to run ads on mobile phone. Its been frustrated at the slow pace of the mobile business and wants to do to mobile what Microsoft did with the PC industry back in the 1980s: make it a highly competitive commodity business.  While we should be dubious of Google’s motives we should applaud their efforts.