WEBVTT - Android Ice Cream Sandwiches 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.920 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.560 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.599 iHeart Radio and How Stuff Works and you know what 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:24.319 hellove all Things deck and I'm recording this episode the 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.440 week of September ninth, two thousand nineteen. That's the same 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:32.720 week that Apple held its annual event hyping new iPhones 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:37.040 and iPads and related technology. So of course I decided 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:39.760 to be contrary and to do an episode about the 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:43.159 history and evolution of Google Android. This is really going 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:47.600 to be part one, the first half of Android's existence. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:50.959 And you know, Apple can grab the attention of the 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.960 entire tech journalism world for a couple of hours with 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:58.000 these annual events. When they hold them, they stream them live. 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:02.320 People will stop their day lee rituals and watch this stuff. 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.880 And Android continues to be the dominant operating system in 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:11.040 the smartphone world all the while. Estimates very but analysts 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:14.640 say that Android accounts for somewhere between seventy and eighty 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.240 five of the operating systems on all the mobile devices 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:23.160 on the market. Now that's a pretty big range five 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:26.120 and it shows how frustrating it is when you start 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.360 to look at things like market share. It all depends 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.840 upon the analysis firm that does it. So I don't 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:38.240 know precisely how much Android makes up on the smartphone 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.920 mobile operating system world, but I know that it is 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.759 the majority, far far greater than iOS. Now full disclosure, 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:50.000 I use a Google Android phone. My current phone as 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:53.440 of this recording is a Pixel two XL that is 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:57.120 very much ready to be replaced, but Google has not 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:00.560 yet made the Pixel for available as I'm according this. 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:05.160 But I'm not a Google fanboy. While I prefer Android 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:09.040 to iOS, I am also quite critical about Google. The 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:12.280 company and the history of Android has some dark stuff 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:14.680 in it, which we will get to in our next 0:02:14.720 --> 0:02:17.760 episode in particular, and also this episode is in no way, 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:23.040 shape or form sponsored by Google. That's completely independent. Now, 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:26.520 to understand the origins of Android, it's first helpful to 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:31.400 think back before either Android or iOS had debuted, so 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:35.440 back in say the nineties. Back then, most folks, if 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:37.840 you had a phone a mobile phone, it was a 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:40.799 regular cell phone and not a smartphone, probably not even 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.960 a feature phone. There were some smartphones that were on 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.120 the market, but nearly all of them aimed at executives 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:49.480 as sort of the niche market, and there was a 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:53.560 lot of emphasis on productivity features, you know, things like 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:58.960 calendars and email. Uh. Some cell phones had a little 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:03.200 bit of Internet browsing capability, nearly all of it was 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:07.120 just text based, and there was little opportunity to develop 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:12.320 apps for phones, largely because of carrier restrictions, handset restrictions, 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.000 and some of the quirks of the various operating systems 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.040 out there. Those operating systems at the time were dominated 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:24.760 by Windows Mobile symbian and chief of all the productivity smartphones, BlackBerry. Now, 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:27.840 the story of Android is largely wrapped up in the 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:30.480 story of Andy Ruben. It's a story that I think 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:33.240 Google would love to redact parts of, considering the allegations 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:37.680 against Reuben that relate to sexual misconduct. But let's focus 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:40.560 on what happened many years ago before we get into 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:45.160 all of that salaceous material in the second episode. Reuben 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:48.520 studied computer science at Utica College in New York. He 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.400 graduated in nine six. He worked as a software engineer 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:55.040 for a company in New York. Then he went over 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:57.200 to Switzerland for a little bit and worked as an 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.840 engineer there and he met an Apple in eineer named 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.280 Bill Caswell, who then offered him a job at Apple. 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:07.680 So Ruben accepted that job and he joined Apple as 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:13.520 a software engineer. In nine he would join a spin 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:17.240 off that kind of left out of Apple. It was 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:21.440 called General Magic. General Magic was originally called the Paradigm 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.080 Project when it was still part of Apple, and the 0:04:24.160 --> 0:04:27.880 goal was to develop a small handheld computing device that 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:30.680 could also serve as a phone. Essentially, he was an 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:34.680 early attempt to build an Apple smartphone. The idea was 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:38.119 a good one, but a little bit ahead of its time. 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.600 The company worked on developing products like operating systems and 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.800 programming languages, all the stuff that would be necessary to 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:49.919 make such a device actually work. But General Magic was 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:53.680 unable to find much success, partly because Apple would end 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:58.000 up competing against it with the ill fated Newton device, 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.440 and since John's Gully, who was then the CEO of Apple, 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:05.040 was also on the board for General Magic. A lot 0:05:05.080 --> 0:05:07.919 of people at General Magic saw this as as betrayal, 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.560 as Scully looking to see what General Magic was up 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.000 to and then racing to beat them to the punch 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:17.640 with Apple. General Magic would essentially close up shop in 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:21.080 two thousand two, and all of its assets were sold 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:25.880 off by two thousand four. But Reuben wasn't around when 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:28.280 that actually happened. He didn't stick around to see General 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.600 Magic crumble. He had left the company way back in 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.640 and joined a different company, that being web tv, and 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.800 that was founded by a couple of other General Magic employees, 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:44.320 Steve Hurlman and Phil Goldman. Microsoft would then acquire the 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:49.120 company in n for the princely sum of four hundred 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.920 twenty five million dollars. Now during his tenure at web tv, 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.160 Bruben was listed as the person who registered the dot 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:01.359 tv top level domain name, which I've find pretty amusing 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:04.200 because at the time, no one really knew who Ruben was, 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:06.840 or of course the no one knew where he was 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:10.160 going at that point, and the fact that he had 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:14.159 registered dot tv was something of a shock to the 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:18.760 government of Tuvalu, is an island nation which expected to 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.359 have dot tv as its country code, you know, like 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.120 dot UK is for the United Kingdom. This caused a 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:29.760 bit of a dustop, and eventually web tv was stripped 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.000 of ownership of the dot tv domain name and it 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.440 was handed over to ta Valu. The country actually really 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:40.680 depends upon revenues from other entities that are registering second 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:44.800 level domains from dot TV. That ends up being a 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.760 viable source of revenue for the nation. I think it's 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:52.120 kind of interesting that they are largely dependent, not entirely. 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.200 I don't mean to suggest that they get all their 0:06:55.200 --> 0:07:00.560 revenue from people registering dot TV domains, but it provides 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.279 a significant amount to their yearly revenue, which I find interesting. 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.840 Reubens stuck with Microsoft for another couple of years before 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:13.680 he left in to co found a new company called Danger, 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:18.080 and he did that along with Joe Britt and Matt Hershensen. 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.320 This company also focused on developing an operating system and 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:26.520 some hardware for a sort of proto smartphone. The focus 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:29.080 was to offload a lot of the storage needs for 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:33.080 the phone onto company servers. So, in other words, this 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:37.240 was an early example of cloud storage, at least early 0:07:37.280 --> 0:07:40.840 in terms of consumers using a device that actually relied 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:43.800 on cloud storage. So instead of worrying about filling up 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.000 the small amount of memory space you might have on 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:50.000 such a piece of hardware, all your stuff would be 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:52.840 stored in the cloud, so you could have a lot 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.240 more images than you would be able to store on 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:59.120 say a handheld device. The company built out a phone 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.080 that had a screen that would swivel and rotate up 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:05.640 to reveal a physical keyboard underneath it. So when the 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:09.760 screen was in place, like it when it was folded down, essentially, 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:14.040 then it looked like a smartphone with a touch screen interface. 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.600 But then you would push the screen just a little 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.520 bit on one side, it would swivel and rotate and 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:24.240 snap out, and then you would have the keyboard revealed underneath. 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.560 And this would end up really setting this device apart. 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:33.360 It was called the hip Top when it was under Danger, 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:37.679 and it really set the Hiptop apart from other phones 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:41.120 on the market, which were mostly in either flip phone 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.160 or a candy bar phone form factors, canny Bar being 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:49.079 that solid little brick of a phone. T Mobile would 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.520 partner with Danger and then rebrand the hip Top as 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:57.400 the phone called the Sidekick. It's an incredibly popular phone 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.040 of its time, and it really caught on with a 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.880 younger demographic. It was very popular because it was great 0:09:03.920 --> 0:09:08.400 for texting, which was starting to become a dominant means 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.760 of communication at the time. One of the really innovative 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:16.319 things about the hip Top slash Sidekick wasn't technological at all. 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.560 It was the business model. Danger was banking on the 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:23.800 phone's services as the revenue generator for the company, rather 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:27.600 than selling the hardware for a profit. So companies like 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:32.000 Apple were known for selling devices with high profit margins, 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:35.439 so they were selling the products for much more than 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:37.719 it costs to make them. A lot of people talk 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:41.839 about Apple products commanding a premium price that you might 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.559 look at an Apple product and you're paying two dollars 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.960 for the name Apple on top of whatever the device 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:53.400 is worth. Uh, that's being a bit dramatic, but Apple 0:09:53.559 --> 0:09:56.800 is known for having pretty big profit margins on it's 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.680 on its various products. Danger was going a different route. 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:02.800 They were aiming to sell the hip top at a 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.400 price that was really close to what it cost to 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.920 make the darned things in the first place, so essentially 0:10:08.960 --> 0:10:11.000 selling it for almost the same amount of money that 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:14.480 it costs to manufacture them. Danger would instead focus on 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:18.319 making money by sharing service revenues with T Mobile, so 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.200 this was more of a long tail approach to generating revenue. 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:24.200 The idea being will make money off people using this 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:28.040 device rather than people buying the device. The hip Top 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.520 had some basic Internet features built into it, including a 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:35.280 simple browser, and that simple browser happened to have Google 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:39.880 set as the default web search engine, which endeared the 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:43.240 hip Top too. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.160 both of whom were often seen using Sidekicks for quite 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.199 some time. The hip Top debuted in two thousand two, 0:10:50.400 --> 0:10:53.760 and the following year, Reuben would leave the company to 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:57.080 co found yet another company. This one would focus on 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:01.080 building out a robust operating system for a true smartphone. 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:06.120 This company was called Android. Danger, by the way, would 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:10.000 later get acquired by Microsoft long after Reuben had already 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.920 left the company, and there was an incident in two 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.959 thousand nine in which Microsoft lost all of that stored 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:22.160 data for Sidekick users. The servers that had all that 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:25.680 data failed and it was all gone. So unless you 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.160 were one of the users who had paid for a 0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.600 specific app that lets you store local backups of some 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:35.600 but not all, of your Sidekick data, you lost all 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:38.760 that stuff. This would become sort of a message of 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:42.720 warning that cloud storage is not always full proof. So 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:45.040 sometimes people point to that and say, yeah, do you 0:11:45.080 --> 0:11:47.960 remember Sidekick. Just because you store in the cloud doesn't 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:50.480 mean it's going to be safe forever, which is true. 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:52.319 But the same thing is also true if you save 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:56.120 stuff locally, stuff can happen to local drives too. It's 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.000 just that you feel like you have more control when 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:01.800 it's in your session. So I think for some people 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:07.720 it's more about the sense of surrendering control than anything else. Anyway, 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:11.079 let's get back to Android. Rubens co founders at Android 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.200 where Chris White, Nick Sears, and Rich Minor. Although you 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:18.200 almost always only hear about Ruben when it comes to 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:22.079 the founding of Android, they had a pretty prescient view 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:26.360 of what a smart device should entail. They thought of 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.319 creating a device that would use location based services that 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.880 would tie your experience of using the device into what 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:36.720 was going on in the world around you, so sort 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:42.760 of a geo tagging geolocation integration with the use of 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.320 the device, and that the device itself would learn more 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:50.440 about what you preferred as you used it, so the 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:54.840 more you used it, the more it would tailor itself 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:58.120 to the way you used it. It would become sympatica 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.400 with you. So it sounded like the goal was to 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:02.520 make a device that would get a deeper understanding of 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.319 the person using it and then adjust its performance accordingly, 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.320 which was the stuff of science fiction back in two 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.600 thousand three, no one really was convinced that you could 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:14.000 actually do such a thing. Reuben would reveal in the 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:17.640 two thousand thirteen speech that originally the team was actually 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:21.080 thinking not of smartphones, but an operating system that would 0:13:21.120 --> 0:13:24.320 be used for digital cameras. But they also recognized that 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.520 digital cameras we're starting to give way to less powerful 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:31.880 but more pervasive cell phone cameras. You know, people were 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.240 starting to use their cell phones to take pictures of stuff, 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.240 and it just was it was evident that, yes, digital 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.559 cameras are capable of taking much better photos than cell phones, 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.440 at least the cell phones of the time. But better 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:52.040 isn't always the most important element. Sometimes convenience is more important, 0:13:52.080 --> 0:13:56.920 and accessibility and multi functional use. And so for that 0:13:57.000 --> 0:14:00.520 reason they decided they would pivot away from creating an 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.120 operating system for digital cameras and instead create one for 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:08.320 cell phones. And they thus decided to create a mobile 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.720 phone operating system. Now, Reuben's goal was to build out 0:14:11.760 --> 0:14:15.199 a mobile operating system that would be open to any 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:19.280 and all software developers. He really wanted a rich, robust 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.160 environment for apps of all shapes, sizes, and purposes. He 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:27.440 wanted to take an approach similar to personal computers. He 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.520 didn't want it to be walled off and siloed. He 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.120 wanted it to be a playing ground where lots of 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:38.479 different people could contribute apps to that ecosystem because everybody 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.640 would benefit from that. So Reuben hired a small team 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:44.760 of engineers to start developing the operating system. And he 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.000 had made a pretty decent fortune in his work at 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:51.000 the various companies he had worked for, so he used 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:54.600 some of that to fund this fledgling company. Because they 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.960 literally had no product to sell for a couple of years, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.960 they had no way of generating rem new so he 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.200 largely funded it out of pocket, with you know, some 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:08.040 investors adding some extra money in here and there. One 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:11.440 decision he made very early on was to use an 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.360 open source approach to developing the operating system. And I've 0:15:14.400 --> 0:15:17.160 talked a lot about open source, but here's a quick 0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:21.240 rundown of the basic philosophy. Essentially, an open source project 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:25.160 is transparent, meaning anyone can look into it and see 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:27.680 what makes it tick. So in the case of open 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:30.920 source software, you're talking about having access to the code 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.960 to see how the code is constructed and how it 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:37.520 makes the app do whatever it does, or in this case, 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:42.240 the operating system. With many open source projects, often you 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:45.920 are allowed to freely download tweak and then re upload 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.360 code to share with a community. So you could take 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.080 the basic code for an operating system and say, you know, 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:56.560 this is good, but it could use X, Y and 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:59.160 Z features, and I'm going to build those out and 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.040 incorporate them into the code of this operating system, and 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:05.360 then I'll upload it as a new version. And that's 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.200 a way that you can actually work within the developer 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.640 community of an open source project. So in this way, 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:15.040 the team of developers expands from whatever in house group 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.120 you happen to have to what amounts to the entire 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.160 world becomes your developer community. Anyone can contribute to the code. 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:26.080 People can add functionality, people can patch vulnerabilities, they can 0:16:26.120 --> 0:16:29.160 make offshoot programs, all that sort of stuff. Now I 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:32.560 should add not every open source project allows for all 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.880 of these things, but the basic philosophy is that a 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.760 community of developers can contribute to a project's progress. When 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.720 it works well, you end up with really rapid innovation 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:45.840 and evolution, and you aren't dependent upon any one person 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:48.920 or groups work. Now, when it comes to Android, the 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:50.880 way this would play out is that you would have 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.480 an internal group of developers who would create the basic 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:58.480 version of the Android operating system, whatever version that might 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:03.400 be at that given time. They would finish this completely 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:07.960 in house, and then only after publishing the operating system 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.240 pushing it out to users, would they then make the 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:16.400 code available for others to download and tweak. So this 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:18.520 was sort of a hybrid approach. You would have an 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:22.240 in house team developing versions of this operating system, and 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:24.960 then you would have the release of the open source 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.840 code to the community afterward. So the team got to 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.840 work establishing the foundation for this operating system, and from 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.280 two thousand three to two thousand five they began to 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.960 design what would be a web connected operating system capable 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:42.000 of supporting apps. In two thousand five, Android would solicit 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.760 investors for funding with a business plan dependent on this 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:49.200 mobile OS model. The company got a lot of attention 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.000 in general, but it was Google that would sweep them up. 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.080 Google's founders were actually really keen to establish a stronger 0:17:56.119 --> 0:18:01.400 presence in the mobile world. Google's revenue depends upon ads 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.280 and typically you know, it's largely a built on the 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:08.399 search engine service that Google offers. Google's business isn't search, 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:12.520 Google's business is advertising. So Page and Brin had the 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:15.719 goal of getting Google's search engine on more phones as 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:19.680 quickly as possible, because already people were starting to get 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.040 the sensation that mobile computing was going to be the 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:26.320 next big thing, that people were going to start transitioning 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.399 from using laptops and desktops to mobile devices. And this 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:35.880 is still years before smartphones would become a mainstream consumer product. 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:38.760 People could see the writing on the wall and they said, well, 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:40.240 if we want to get ahead of this, we want 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.639 to make sure that the Google Search engine is the 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:46.920 default search engine on as many platforms as possible, because 0:18:46.960 --> 0:18:50.040 that's where we generate our revenue now. On July eleven, 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:55.400 two five, Google acquired Android for an undisclosed but presumably 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:59.920 princely some The general figure that's bandied about is fifty 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.840 million dollars, which isn't bad at all. The acquisition was 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.080 kept pretty quiet at the time. In fact, I found 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.159 a c net piece about the acquisition that was written 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:12.439 in two thousand seven, which was two years after it 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:15.919 actually had happened. Google was keeping the smartphone project it 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:19.679 was working on under wraps. Now, while Rubens team was 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.119 working on building out the operating system, Google itself was 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.960 searching for a hardware manufacturer to supply the actual physical 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:30.280 handset that would be the first to host this new 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:33.440 operating system. Google wasn't gonna build it itself. He needed 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:36.600 to find a manufacturing partner, so Google selected a company 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:40.800 out of Taiwan called HTC. And here's a quick note 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:43.920 about Taiwan. Now, if you listen to my recent episode 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.240 about why Everything is Made in China, you'll remember that 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:49.919 I mentioned that in nineteen twelve, a government called the 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.840 Republic of China established itself as the new leadership structure 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:58.560 for what had previously been an imperialist nation. In ninety nine, 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:02.280 the People's Public of China, which was a different thing. 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:04.719 You had the Republic of China and the People's Republic 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.159 of China. Well, the People's Republic of China was a 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:12.159 communist organization and it still is and rested control of China, 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:16.439 and many officials with the older government the Republic of 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:20.240 China would flee to Taiwan. So Taiwan has operated in 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:24.720 a sort of nebulous designation being sort of but not 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:30.080 really part of China. Uh. The China would argue that 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.920 Taiwan is very much part of the country, and if 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:36.439 you don't agree, then China will not work with you 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.800 at all, uh. And that ends up being an issue 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.320 for a lot of other countries. So they all effectively 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.800 agree that Taiwan is part of China. Meanwhile, Taiwan is 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:48.840 just not so fast there. We really are our own thing. 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:53.240 It's a complicated issue. So anyway, this Taiwanese company got 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:56.560 to work building a couple of prototype handsets upon which 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.200 Android would be installed. And I'll have more to say 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:02.400 about those in just a minute, but first let's take 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:13.160 a quick break. Okay. So HTC had started out as 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:18.000 a computer manufacturer, that would be the Taiwanese company and question, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.720 but it had been designing and producing mobile devices since 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:24.480 the late nine so it wasn't brand new to this. 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:27.840 It had built a touch screen smartphone in two thousand 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.240 and had built Windows based smartphones in two thousand two. 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:33.919 It also produced p d A s, which are not 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:37.480 public displays of affection in this case, but rather personal 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.560 digital assistance. It's kind of like a smartphone without the 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.120 phone part, but would end up being Android. That would 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.840 elevate HTC's status in the smartphone arena, at least for 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:50.600 a time, and it was actually something of a risk 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:54.120 for HTC. The company had been making Windows mobile based 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:57.520 phones for a while and Microsoft and Google weren't exactly 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:00.840 best buds, so it was possible that if the Android 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:05.240 phone would flop, HTC's involvement might be enough to convince 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.800 Microsoft to take its business elsewhere, and then HTC would 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:11.720 have backed the wrong horse. Now, the company had two 0:22:11.760 --> 0:22:15.200 basic prototype designs in those early days for the Android phone. 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:19.679 One was code named Sooner, which sported a small color screen, 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:23.760 had a resolution of three two pixels, had a physical 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:27.080 keyboard that was positioned under that screen, and it kind 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.200 of looked like a more boxy version of a typical 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.199 BlackBerry phone. It was all one piece. You had the 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.439 screen on top and the physical keyboard beneath it. The 0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:40.080 other prototype, called Dream was kind of like the old 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:44.240 Sidekick design. The handset screen would slide up to reveal 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:47.879 a physical keyboard underneath. Now, unlike the Sidekick, the screen 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:52.320 slid up, it did not pivot and rotate up, but 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.920 it was basically the same concept. Things were progressing at 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.960 Google meanwhile, and then in January two seven, Apple would 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:05.800 upset the well the the Apple cart by unveiling the 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:10.399 upcoming iPhone, and the iPhone design was aesthetically pleasing. It 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:14.439 is showed all the physical keyboard elements entirely put the 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:17.679 keyboard on the screen, though the iPhone still supported a 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:21.919 few physical buttons. I'm sure to Jobs dismay it wasn't 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:25.240 the first full touchscreen smartphone, but you'd be forgiven for 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:27.600 thinking it was. But based on how Steve Jobs was 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:30.560 promoting it, and it was clearly in a league of 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:34.520 its own. It was sleek, and the gesture controls like 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:37.360 swiping or pinch to zoom got a lot of attention, 0:23:38.040 --> 0:23:42.400 and some companies like BlackBerry and Microsoft largely dismissed the iPhone, 0:23:42.440 --> 0:23:45.359 at least publicly stating it's a fat it's never gonna 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:48.480 take off. But several of the team members at Google 0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:52.320 paid attention and really re evaluated the progress of Android. 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:55.760 According to Christa Salvo, who worked on the Android team, 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:59.120 the Android OS looked dated in comparison, like it had 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:03.280 come from the nineteen nineties. Until Apple unveiled the iPhone, 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:07.880 Google had been leaning toward the Sooner handset prototype as 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:10.879 the first piece of hardware to support the Android operating system, 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:14.040 but the iPhone changed that entirely. It was obvious to 0:24:14.119 --> 0:24:17.800 everyone at Google that the Sooner style phone would look 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:21.639 too stodgy and too dated next to the sexy iPhone, 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:23.960