Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and How Stuff Works and you know what
Speaker 1: hellove all Things deck and I'm recording this episode the
Speaker 1: week of September ninth, two thousand nineteen. That's the same
Speaker 1: week that Apple held its annual event hyping new iPhones
Speaker 1: and iPads and related technology. So of course I decided
Speaker 1: to be contrary and to do an episode about the
Speaker 1: history and evolution of Google Android. This is really going
Speaker 1: to be part one, the first half of Android's existence.
Speaker 1: And you know, Apple can grab the attention of the
Speaker 1: entire tech journalism world for a couple of hours with
Speaker 1: these annual events. When they hold them, they stream them live.
Speaker 1: People will stop their day lee rituals and watch this stuff.
Speaker 1: And Android continues to be the dominant operating system in
Speaker 1: the smartphone world all the while. Estimates very but analysts
Speaker 1: say that Android accounts for somewhere between seventy and eighty
Speaker 1: five of the operating systems on all the mobile devices
Speaker 1: on the market. Now that's a pretty big range five
Speaker 1: and it shows how frustrating it is when you start
Speaker 1: to look at things like market share. It all depends
Speaker 1: upon the analysis firm that does it. So I don't
Speaker 1: know precisely how much Android makes up on the smartphone
Speaker 1: mobile operating system world, but I know that it is
Speaker 1: the majority, far far greater than iOS. Now full disclosure,
Speaker 1: I use a Google Android phone. My current phone as
Speaker 1: of this recording is a Pixel two XL that is
Speaker 1: very much ready to be replaced, but Google has not
Speaker 1: yet made the Pixel for available as I'm according this.
Speaker 1: But I'm not a Google fanboy. While I prefer Android
Speaker 1: to iOS, I am also quite critical about Google. The
Speaker 1: company and the history of Android has some dark stuff
Speaker 1: in it, which we will get to in our next
Speaker 1: episode in particular, and also this episode is in no way,
Speaker 1: shape or form sponsored by Google. That's completely independent. Now,
Speaker 1: to understand the origins of Android, it's first helpful to
Speaker 1: think back before either Android or iOS had debuted, so
Speaker 1: back in say the nineties. Back then, most folks, if
Speaker 1: you had a phone a mobile phone, it was a
Speaker 1: regular cell phone and not a smartphone, probably not even
Speaker 1: a feature phone. There were some smartphones that were on
Speaker 1: the market, but nearly all of them aimed at executives
Speaker 1: as sort of the niche market, and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of emphasis on productivity features, you know, things like
Speaker 1: calendars and email. Uh. Some cell phones had a little
Speaker 1: bit of Internet browsing capability, nearly all of it was
Speaker 1: just text based, and there was little opportunity to develop
Speaker 1: apps for phones, largely because of carrier restrictions, handset restrictions,
Speaker 1: and some of the quirks of the various operating systems
Speaker 1: out there. Those operating systems at the time were dominated
Speaker 1: by Windows Mobile symbian and chief of all the productivity smartphones, BlackBerry. Now,
Speaker 1: the story of Android is largely wrapped up in the
Speaker 1: story of Andy Ruben. It's a story that I think
Speaker 1: Google would love to redact parts of, considering the allegations
Speaker 1: against Reuben that relate to sexual misconduct. But let's focus
Speaker 1: on what happened many years ago before we get into
Speaker 1: all of that salaceous material in the second episode. Reuben
Speaker 1: studied computer science at Utica College in New York. He
Speaker 1: graduated in nine six. He worked as a software engineer
Speaker 1: for a company in New York. Then he went over
Speaker 1: to Switzerland for a little bit and worked as an
Speaker 1: engineer there and he met an Apple in eineer named
Speaker 1: Bill Caswell, who then offered him a job at Apple.
Speaker 1: So Ruben accepted that job and he joined Apple as
Speaker 1: a software engineer. In nine he would join a spin
Speaker 1: off that kind of left out of Apple. It was
Speaker 1: called General Magic. General Magic was originally called the Paradigm
Speaker 1: Project when it was still part of Apple, and the
Speaker 1: goal was to develop a small handheld computing device that
Speaker 1: could also serve as a phone. Essentially, he was an
Speaker 1: early attempt to build an Apple smartphone. The idea was
Speaker 1: a good one, but a little bit ahead of its time.
Speaker 1: The company worked on developing products like operating systems and
Speaker 1: programming languages, all the stuff that would be necessary to
Speaker 1: make such a device actually work. But General Magic was
Speaker 1: unable to find much success, partly because Apple would end
Speaker 1: up competing against it with the ill fated Newton device,
Speaker 1: and since John's Gully, who was then the CEO of Apple,
Speaker 1: was also on the board for General Magic. A lot
Speaker 1: of people at General Magic saw this as as betrayal,
Speaker 1: as Scully looking to see what General Magic was up
Speaker 1: to and then racing to beat them to the punch
Speaker 1: with Apple. General Magic would essentially close up shop in
Speaker 1: two thousand two, and all of its assets were sold
Speaker 1: off by two thousand four. But Reuben wasn't around when
Speaker 1: that actually happened. He didn't stick around to see General
Speaker 1: Magic crumble. He had left the company way back in
Speaker 1: and joined a different company, that being web tv, and
Speaker 1: that was founded by a couple of other General Magic employees,
Speaker 1: Steve Hurlman and Phil Goldman. Microsoft would then acquire the
Speaker 1: company in n for the princely sum of four hundred
Speaker 1: twenty five million dollars. Now during his tenure at web tv,
Speaker 1: Bruben was listed as the person who registered the dot
Speaker 1: tv top level domain name, which I've find pretty amusing
Speaker 1: because at the time, no one really knew who Ruben was,
Speaker 1: or of course the no one knew where he was
Speaker 1: going at that point, and the fact that he had
Speaker 1: registered dot tv was something of a shock to the
Speaker 1: government of Tuvalu, is an island nation which expected to
Speaker 1: have dot tv as its country code, you know, like
Speaker 1: dot UK is for the United Kingdom. This caused a
Speaker 1: bit of a dustop, and eventually web tv was stripped
Speaker 1: of ownership of the dot tv domain name and it
Speaker 1: was handed over to ta Valu. The country actually really
Speaker 1: depends upon revenues from other entities that are registering second
Speaker 1: level domains from dot TV. That ends up being a
Speaker 1: viable source of revenue for the nation. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting that they are largely dependent, not entirely.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to suggest that they get all their
Speaker 1: revenue from people registering dot TV domains, but it provides
Speaker 1: a significant amount to their yearly revenue, which I find interesting.
Speaker 1: Reubens stuck with Microsoft for another couple of years before
Speaker 1: he left in to co found a new company called Danger,
Speaker 1: and he did that along with Joe Britt and Matt Hershensen.
Speaker 1: This company also focused on developing an operating system and
Speaker 1: some hardware for a sort of proto smartphone. The focus
Speaker 1: was to offload a lot of the storage needs for
Speaker 1: the phone onto company servers. So, in other words, this
Speaker 1: was an early example of cloud storage, at least early
Speaker 1: in terms of consumers using a device that actually relied
Speaker 1: on cloud storage. So instead of worrying about filling up
Speaker 1: the small amount of memory space you might have on
Speaker 1: such a piece of hardware, all your stuff would be
Speaker 1: stored in the cloud, so you could have a lot
Speaker 1: more images than you would be able to store on
Speaker 1: say a handheld device. The company built out a phone
Speaker 1: that had a screen that would swivel and rotate up
Speaker 1: to reveal a physical keyboard underneath it. So when the
Speaker 1: screen was in place, like it when it was folded down, essentially,
Speaker 1: then it looked like a smartphone with a touch screen interface.
Speaker 1: But then you would push the screen just a little
Speaker 1: bit on one side, it would swivel and rotate and
Speaker 1: snap out, and then you would have the keyboard revealed underneath.
Speaker 1: And this would end up really setting this device apart.
Speaker 1: It was called the hip Top when it was under Danger,
Speaker 1: and it really set the Hiptop apart from other phones
Speaker 1: on the market, which were mostly in either flip phone
Speaker 1: or a candy bar phone form factors, canny Bar being
Speaker 1: that solid little brick of a phone. T Mobile would
Speaker 1: partner with Danger and then rebrand the hip Top as
Speaker 1: the phone called the Sidekick. It's an incredibly popular phone
Speaker 1: of its time, and it really caught on with a
Speaker 1: younger demographic. It was very popular because it was great
Speaker 1: for texting, which was starting to become a dominant means
Speaker 1: of communication at the time. One of the really innovative
Speaker 1: things about the hip Top slash Sidekick wasn't technological at all.
Speaker 1: It was the business model. Danger was banking on the
Speaker 1: phone's services as the revenue generator for the company, rather
Speaker 1: than selling the hardware for a profit. So companies like
Speaker 1: Apple were known for selling devices with high profit margins,
Speaker 1: so they were selling the products for much more than
Speaker 1: it costs to make them. A lot of people talk
Speaker 1: about Apple products commanding a premium price that you might
Speaker 1: look at an Apple product and you're paying two dollars
Speaker 1: for the name Apple on top of whatever the device
Speaker 1: is worth. Uh, that's being a bit dramatic, but Apple
Speaker 1: is known for having pretty big profit margins on it's
Speaker 1: on its various products. Danger was going a different route.
Speaker 1: They were aiming to sell the hip top at a
Speaker 1: price that was really close to what it cost to
Speaker 1: make the darned things in the first place, so essentially
Speaker 1: selling it for almost the same amount of money that
Speaker 1: it costs to manufacture them. Danger would instead focus on
Speaker 1: making money by sharing service revenues with T Mobile, so
Speaker 1: this was more of a long tail approach to generating revenue.
Speaker 1: The idea being will make money off people using this
Speaker 1: device rather than people buying the device. The hip Top
Speaker 1: had some basic Internet features built into it, including a
Speaker 1: simple browser, and that simple browser happened to have Google
Speaker 1: set as the default web search engine, which endeared the
Speaker 1: hip Top too. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin,
Speaker 1: both of whom were often seen using Sidekicks for quite
Speaker 1: some time. The hip Top debuted in two thousand two,
Speaker 1: and the following year, Reuben would leave the company to
Speaker 1: co found yet another company. This one would focus on
Speaker 1: building out a robust operating system for a true smartphone.
Speaker 1: This company was called Android. Danger, by the way, would
Speaker 1: later get acquired by Microsoft long after Reuben had already
Speaker 1: left the company, and there was an incident in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine in which Microsoft lost all of that stored
Speaker 1: data for Sidekick users. The servers that had all that
Speaker 1: data failed and it was all gone. So unless you
Speaker 1: were one of the users who had paid for a
Speaker 1: specific app that lets you store local backups of some
Speaker 1: but not all, of your Sidekick data, you lost all
Speaker 1: that stuff. This would become sort of a message of
Speaker 1: warning that cloud storage is not always full proof. So
Speaker 1: sometimes people point to that and say, yeah, do you
Speaker 1: remember Sidekick. Just because you store in the cloud doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's going to be safe forever, which is true.
Speaker 1: But the same thing is also true if you save
Speaker 1: stuff locally, stuff can happen to local drives too. It's
Speaker 1: just that you feel like you have more control when
Speaker 1: it's in your session. So I think for some people
Speaker 1: it's more about the sense of surrendering control than anything else. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's get back to Android. Rubens co founders at Android
Speaker 1: where Chris White, Nick Sears, and Rich Minor. Although you
Speaker 1: almost always only hear about Ruben when it comes to
Speaker 1: the founding of Android, they had a pretty prescient view
Speaker 1: of what a smart device should entail. They thought of
Speaker 1: creating a device that would use location based services that
Speaker 1: would tie your experience of using the device into what
Speaker 1: was going on in the world around you, so sort
Speaker 1: of a geo tagging geolocation integration with the use of
Speaker 1: the device, and that the device itself would learn more
Speaker 1: about what you preferred as you used it, so the
Speaker 1: more you used it, the more it would tailor itself
Speaker 1: to the way you used it. It would become sympatica
Speaker 1: with you. So it sounded like the goal was to
Speaker 1: make a device that would get a deeper understanding of
Speaker 1: the person using it and then adjust its performance accordingly,
Speaker 1: which was the stuff of science fiction back in two
Speaker 1: thousand three, no one really was convinced that you could
Speaker 1: actually do such a thing. Reuben would reveal in the
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen speech that originally the team was actually
Speaker 1: thinking not of smartphones, but an operating system that would
Speaker 1: be used for digital cameras. But they also recognized that
Speaker 1: digital cameras we're starting to give way to less powerful
Speaker 1: but more pervasive cell phone cameras. You know, people were
Speaker 1: starting to use their cell phones to take pictures of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it just was it was evident that, yes, digital
Speaker 1: cameras are capable of taking much better photos than cell phones,
Speaker 1: at least the cell phones of the time. But better
Speaker 1: isn't always the most important element. Sometimes convenience is more important,
Speaker 1: and accessibility and multi functional use. And so for that
Speaker 1: reason they decided they would pivot away from creating an
Speaker 1: operating system for digital cameras and instead create one for
Speaker 1: cell phones. And they thus decided to create a mobile
Speaker 1: phone operating system. Now, Reuben's goal was to build out
Speaker 1: a mobile operating system that would be open to any
Speaker 1: and all software developers. He really wanted a rich, robust
Speaker 1: environment for apps of all shapes, sizes, and purposes. He
Speaker 1: wanted to take an approach similar to personal computers. He
Speaker 1: didn't want it to be walled off and siloed. He
Speaker 1: wanted it to be a playing ground where lots of
Speaker 1: different people could contribute apps to that ecosystem because everybody
Speaker 1: would benefit from that. So Reuben hired a small team
Speaker 1: of engineers to start developing the operating system. And he
Speaker 1: had made a pretty decent fortune in his work at
Speaker 1: the various companies he had worked for, so he used
Speaker 1: some of that to fund this fledgling company. Because they
Speaker 1: literally had no product to sell for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: they had no way of generating rem new so he
Speaker 1: largely funded it out of pocket, with you know, some
Speaker 1: investors adding some extra money in here and there. One
Speaker 1: decision he made very early on was to use an
Speaker 1: open source approach to developing the operating system. And I've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about open source, but here's a quick
Speaker 1: rundown of the basic philosophy. Essentially, an open source project
Speaker 1: is transparent, meaning anyone can look into it and see
Speaker 1: what makes it tick. So in the case of open
Speaker 1: source software, you're talking about having access to the code
Speaker 1: to see how the code is constructed and how it
Speaker 1: makes the app do whatever it does, or in this case,
Speaker 1: the operating system. With many open source projects, often you
Speaker 1: are allowed to freely download tweak and then re upload
Speaker 1: code to share with a community. So you could take
Speaker 1: the basic code for an operating system and say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is good, but it could use X, Y and
Speaker 1: Z features, and I'm going to build those out and
Speaker 1: incorporate them into the code of this operating system, and
Speaker 1: then I'll upload it as a new version. And that's
Speaker 1: a way that you can actually work within the developer
Speaker 1: community of an open source project. So in this way,
Speaker 1: the team of developers expands from whatever in house group
Speaker 1: you happen to have to what amounts to the entire
Speaker 1: world becomes your developer community. Anyone can contribute to the code.
Speaker 1: People can add functionality, people can patch vulnerabilities, they can
Speaker 1: make offshoot programs, all that sort of stuff. Now I
Speaker 1: should add not every open source project allows for all
Speaker 1: of these things, but the basic philosophy is that a
Speaker 1: community of developers can contribute to a project's progress. When
Speaker 1: it works well, you end up with really rapid innovation
Speaker 1: and evolution, and you aren't dependent upon any one person
Speaker 1: or groups work. Now, when it comes to Android, the
Speaker 1: way this would play out is that you would have
Speaker 1: an internal group of developers who would create the basic
Speaker 1: version of the Android operating system, whatever version that might
Speaker 1: be at that given time. They would finish this completely
Speaker 1: in house, and then only after publishing the operating system
Speaker 1: pushing it out to users, would they then make the
Speaker 1: code available for others to download and tweak. So this
Speaker 1: was sort of a hybrid approach. You would have an
Speaker 1: in house team developing versions of this operating system, and
Speaker 1: then you would have the release of the open source
Speaker 1: code to the community afterward. So the team got to
Speaker 1: work establishing the foundation for this operating system, and from
Speaker 1: two thousand three to two thousand five they began to
Speaker 1: design what would be a web connected operating system capable
Speaker 1: of supporting apps. In two thousand five, Android would solicit
Speaker 1: investors for funding with a business plan dependent on this
Speaker 1: mobile OS model. The company got a lot of attention
Speaker 1: in general, but it was Google that would sweep them up.
Speaker 1: Google's founders were actually really keen to establish a stronger
Speaker 1: presence in the mobile world. Google's revenue depends upon ads
Speaker 1: and typically you know, it's largely a built on the
Speaker 1: search engine service that Google offers. Google's business isn't search,
Speaker 1: Google's business is advertising. So Page and Brin had the
Speaker 1: goal of getting Google's search engine on more phones as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible, because already people were starting to get
Speaker 1: the sensation that mobile computing was going to be the
Speaker 1: next big thing, that people were going to start transitioning
Speaker 1: from using laptops and desktops to mobile devices. And this
Speaker 1: is still years before smartphones would become a mainstream consumer product.
Speaker 1: People could see the writing on the wall and they said, well,
Speaker 1: if we want to get ahead of this, we want
Speaker 1: to make sure that the Google Search engine is the
Speaker 1: default search engine on as many platforms as possible, because
Speaker 1: that's where we generate our revenue now. On July eleven,
Speaker 1: two five, Google acquired Android for an undisclosed but presumably
Speaker 1: princely some The general figure that's bandied about is fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars, which isn't bad at all. The acquisition was
Speaker 1: kept pretty quiet at the time. In fact, I found
Speaker 1: a c net piece about the acquisition that was written
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, which was two years after it
Speaker 1: actually had happened. Google was keeping the smartphone project it
Speaker 1: was working on under wraps. Now, while Rubens team was
Speaker 1: working on building out the operating system, Google itself was
Speaker 1: searching for a hardware manufacturer to supply the actual physical
Speaker 1: handset that would be the first to host this new
Speaker 1: operating system. Google wasn't gonna build it itself. He needed
Speaker 1: to find a manufacturing partner, so Google selected a company
Speaker 1: out of Taiwan called HTC. And here's a quick note
Speaker 1: about Taiwan. Now, if you listen to my recent episode
Speaker 1: about why Everything is Made in China, you'll remember that
Speaker 1: I mentioned that in nineteen twelve, a government called the
Speaker 1: Republic of China established itself as the new leadership structure
Speaker 1: for what had previously been an imperialist nation. In ninety nine,
Speaker 1: the People's Public of China, which was a different thing.
Speaker 1: You had the Republic of China and the People's Republic
Speaker 1: of China. Well, the People's Republic of China was a
Speaker 1: communist organization and it still is and rested control of China,
Speaker 1: and many officials with the older government the Republic of
Speaker 1: China would flee to Taiwan. So Taiwan has operated in
Speaker 1: a sort of nebulous designation being sort of but not
Speaker 1: really part of China. Uh. The China would argue that
Speaker 1: Taiwan is very much part of the country, and if
Speaker 1: you don't agree, then China will not work with you
Speaker 1: at all, uh. And that ends up being an issue
Speaker 1: for a lot of other countries. So they all effectively
Speaker 1: agree that Taiwan is part of China. Meanwhile, Taiwan is
Speaker 1: just not so fast there. We really are our own thing.
Speaker 1: It's a complicated issue. So anyway, this Taiwanese company got
Speaker 1: to work building a couple of prototype handsets upon which
Speaker 1: Android would be installed. And I'll have more to say
Speaker 1: about those in just a minute, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay. So HTC had started out as
Speaker 1: a computer manufacturer, that would be the Taiwanese company and question,
Speaker 1: but it had been designing and producing mobile devices since
Speaker 1: the late nine so it wasn't brand new to this.
Speaker 1: It had built a touch screen smartphone in two thousand
Speaker 1: and had built Windows based smartphones in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: It also produced p d A s, which are not
Speaker 1: public displays of affection in this case, but rather personal
Speaker 1: digital assistance. It's kind of like a smartphone without the
Speaker 1: phone part, but would end up being Android. That would
Speaker 1: elevate HTC's status in the smartphone arena, at least for
Speaker 1: a time, and it was actually something of a risk
Speaker 1: for HTC. The company had been making Windows mobile based
Speaker 1: phones for a while and Microsoft and Google weren't exactly
Speaker 1: best buds, so it was possible that if the Android
Speaker 1: phone would flop, HTC's involvement might be enough to convince
Speaker 1: Microsoft to take its business elsewhere, and then HTC would
Speaker 1: have backed the wrong horse. Now, the company had two
Speaker 1: basic prototype designs in those early days for the Android phone.
Speaker 1: One was code named Sooner, which sported a small color screen,
Speaker 1: had a resolution of three two pixels, had a physical
Speaker 1: keyboard that was positioned under that screen, and it kind
Speaker 1: of looked like a more boxy version of a typical
Speaker 1: BlackBerry phone. It was all one piece. You had the
Speaker 1: screen on top and the physical keyboard beneath it. The
Speaker 1: other prototype, called Dream was kind of like the old
Speaker 1: Sidekick design. The handset screen would slide up to reveal
Speaker 1: a physical keyboard underneath. Now, unlike the Sidekick, the screen
Speaker 1: slid up, it did not pivot and rotate up, but
Speaker 1: it was basically the same concept. Things were progressing at
Speaker 1: Google meanwhile, and then in January two seven, Apple would
Speaker 1: upset the well the the Apple cart by unveiling the
Speaker 1: upcoming iPhone, and the iPhone design was aesthetically pleasing. It
Speaker 1: is showed all the physical keyboard elements entirely put the
Speaker 1: keyboard on the screen, though the iPhone still supported a
Speaker 1: few physical buttons. I'm sure to Jobs dismay it wasn't
Speaker 1: the first full touchscreen smartphone, but you'd be forgiven for
Speaker 1: thinking it was. But based on how Steve Jobs was
Speaker 1: promoting it, and it was clearly in a league of
Speaker 1: its own. It was sleek, and the gesture controls like
Speaker 1: swiping or pinch to zoom got a lot of attention,
Speaker 1: and some companies like BlackBerry and Microsoft largely dismissed the iPhone,
Speaker 1: at least publicly stating it's a fat it's never gonna
Speaker 1: take off. But several of the team members at Google
Speaker 1: paid attention and really re evaluated the progress of Android.
Speaker 1: According to Christa Salvo, who worked on the Android team,
Speaker 1: the Android OS looked dated in comparison, like it had
Speaker 1: come from the nineteen nineties. Until Apple unveiled the iPhone,
Speaker 1: Google had been leaning toward the Sooner handset prototype as
Speaker 1: the first piece of hardware to support the Android operating system,
Speaker 1: but the iPhone changed that entirely. It was obvious to
Speaker 1: everyone at Google that the Sooner style phone would look
Speaker 1: too stodgy and too dated next to the sexy iPhone,
Speaker 1: and so the decision was made to focus on the
Speaker 1: Dream prototype, which was the one that had the sliding
Speaker 1: screen and the physical keyboard. And they also decided that
Speaker 1: they would give the Android operating system a bit of
Speaker 1: an overhaul in the process, which would mean launching Android
Speaker 1: a little later than they had planned, but the general
Speaker 1: feeling was that this would help keep the project from
Speaker 1: being a big flop after Apple's splashy debut. Now, the
Speaker 1: iPhone would officially launch later in two thousand seven, while
Speaker 1: Google was still at work on the first Android phone.
Speaker 1: In fact, Google didn't really officially acknowledge its phone efforts
Speaker 1: until around November of two thousand seven, which was months
Speaker 1: after the iPhone had launched, let alone been unveiled. The
Speaker 1: company led the effort to establish an organization called the
Speaker 1: Open Handset Alliance, with companies like T Mobile, Motorola, and
Speaker 1: Texas Instruments. In that alliance, Google would not be ready
Speaker 1: to launch until late two thousand eight, so a year
Speaker 1: after the iPhone had come out. The flagship phone was
Speaker 1: the HTC G One. At least that's what it was called.
Speaker 1: In the United States and other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: it was called the HTC Dream. And just take a
Speaker 1: listen to these amazing specs. The phone had a single
Speaker 1: core processor that could run at a blistering five hundred
Speaker 1: twenty eight mega hurts. The phone had one two megabytes
Speaker 1: of RAM. The display measured a whopping three point two
Speaker 1: inches on the diagonal with a resolution of three hundred
Speaker 1: twenty by four pixels. And yes, I'm being a bit
Speaker 1: cheeky as I celebrate these specifications because we have come
Speaker 1: a long way since two thousand. The iconic Android character,
Speaker 1: sometimes called the bug Droid internally, was one of several
Speaker 1: designs that were kind of trying to create a mascot
Speaker 1: or logo for Android Arena Block, a graphic artist would
Speaker 1: design the logo. She's still with Google today, though now
Speaker 1: she's a product design lead for Google AI and Research.
Speaker 1: The phone launched with Android version one point oh, which
Speaker 1: did not have a code name, neither did its successor,
Speaker 1: Version one point one, but then with the third version
Speaker 1: of Android, the third released version, which was confusingly version
Speaker 1: one point five, Google would assign dessert names in alphabetical order,
Speaker 1: so those would become the code names for the operating
Speaker 1: system versions. Version one point five would thenceforth be known
Speaker 1: as Cupcake, so he skipped over A and B, and
Speaker 1: that did not stand for alpha and beta since they
Speaker 1: were actually real releases of the operating system. They were
Speaker 1: not internal test builds, as an alpha and beta typically
Speaker 1: would be. But the third version would be called Cupcake,
Speaker 1: and the naming scheme would continue until the most recent
Speaker 1: build of Android OS, which was released on September three,
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen. That one is just called Android ten,
Speaker 1: presumably because finding a dessert name that starts with the
Speaker 1: letter Q was a little tricky. One thing Android had
Speaker 1: over the iPhone operating system, which you know we'd later
Speaker 1: call iOS, would be a few capabilities like copy and
Speaker 1: paste and true multitasking. The Android operating system could simultaneously
Speaker 1: run multiple applications, whereas on the iPhone you would have
Speaker 1: to be satisfied with running one application at a time.
Speaker 1: You could switch between apps on an iPhone, but it
Speaker 1: would mean that the apps in the background would not
Speaker 1: be running. They'd essentially be frozen in stasis until activated
Speaker 1: by the user. Again, Google's Android was different, and keep
Speaker 1: in mind that the iPhone didn't include support for third
Speaker 1: party apps when it first launched. The g One slash
Speaker 1: Dream did. The Android market contained dozens of unique, first
Speaker 1: of a kind Android applications, according to Google, So can
Speaker 1: you imagine that dozens? Again? I'm I'm being cheeky, because
Speaker 1: of course, back in those days it was very slow going.
Speaker 1: Google included a browser which predated Chrome, and support for
Speaker 1: Google services like YouTube and Google Maps was native for
Speaker 1: the device. The phone had support for three G cellular service,
Speaker 1: something the original iPhone lacked, though, to be fair, the
Speaker 1: second generation iPhone, the iPhone three G, would include support
Speaker 1: for three G cellular service. That also launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, so it wasn't like Apple was trailing way
Speaker 1: behind Android. It's just that they didn't include it with
Speaker 1: the initial iPhone release. On top of that, Google chose
Speaker 1: to follow an over the air update strategy, which meant
Speaker 1: that operating system updates would get sent out to all
Speaker 1: the handsets out there, at least in theory over cellular
Speaker 1: data rather than as a download that you would save
Speaker 1: to a PC and then you would transfer over to
Speaker 1: the phone via a cable. Apple did it that way
Speaker 1: for a long time. In fact, they would not support
Speaker 1: over the air updates until iOS version five. Now, the
Speaker 1: advantages weren't necessarily evident to the mainstream public, but there
Speaker 1: were a lot of geeks, including me, that felt these
Speaker 1: features set Android ahead of the competition. Apple would catch up,
Speaker 1: of course, implementing features in future versions of iOS, but
Speaker 1: always seeming like Apple was kind of lagging behind on
Speaker 1: certain features, perhaps purposefully to make sure that the implementation
Speaker 1: wouldn't affect the experience that Steve Jobs wanted to create
Speaker 1: with the handset. Google's approach was more you know, lucy
Speaker 1: goosey with that sort of thing. That being said, Apple
Speaker 1: was light years head when it came to graphic design
Speaker 1: and aesthetics. The iPhone's design philosophy extended all the way
Speaker 1: to the icons that you would see on the display.
Speaker 1: Google's user interface looked like it had been built by
Speaker 1: and four engineers. It worked, but it wasn't, you know, sexy,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't quite as intuitive and interface as what
Speaker 1: Apple had created. There was a bit of a learning
Speaker 1: curve to Android, which was somewhat smoothed out when handset
Speaker 1: manufacturers began to create what amounted to special skins for
Speaker 1: Android to make them more user friendly. They could do
Speaker 1: that because, again, the operating system was open source, so
Speaker 1: handset manufacturers could take that basic version of Android and
Speaker 1: then tweak it a little bit so it might run
Speaker 1: a bit better on that particular hardware. The HTCG one
Speaker 1: was my first smartphone. I jumped on the Android bandwagon
Speaker 1: about as early as I could. I had held off
Speaker 1: getting a smartphone for many reasons. I didn't care for
Speaker 1: Apple's closed garden approach, and besides, I already used a
Speaker 1: lot of Google's services like Gmail and Google Docs, so
Speaker 1: I figured going with Android would make the most sense.
Speaker 1: These days, I look at all the Google stuff and
Speaker 1: I think, man, that's a company that needs to get
Speaker 1: broken up. But at the time, I was just excited
Speaker 1: to have a phone that would, at least in theory,
Speaker 1: work seamlessly with all the services I was already using.
Speaker 1: More importantly, Google would take a fundamentally different approach than Apple.
Speaker 1: Over at Apple, the smartphone operating system was a jealously
Speaker 1: guarded property. Only Apple phones could sport iOS if you
Speaker 1: wanted to use that operating system, you had to buy
Speaker 1: a phone from Apple. No one else would be allowed
Speaker 1: to create a phone running that operating system. In this way,
Speaker 1: Apple was following the same philosophy it employed with its
Speaker 1: computer systems, apart from that one shaky period when Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs wasn't at Apple and the company began to allow macclones. Google, however,
Speaker 1: was going the opposite direction. The open source Android was
Speaker 1: available for at least in theory, any manufacturer to use,
Speaker 1: so handset manufacturers like Motorola and Samsung began to develop
Speaker 1: their own handsets that would run the operating system. Moreover,
Speaker 1: it wasn't tied to specific carriers, although it took a
Speaker 1: while to get support for all the different carriers. So
Speaker 1: when the iPhone launched in the United States, Apple had
Speaker 1: made an exclusivity deal with A T and T. That
Speaker 1: story could be its own podcast episode, the whole story
Speaker 1: behind a T and T and Apple exclusivity in the
Speaker 1: early days of the iPhone. But the point is that
Speaker 1: for a couple of years in the United States, iPhone
Speaker 1: users had no option when it came to service providers.
Speaker 1: It was a T and T or it was nothing.
Speaker 1: Android would have no such restrictions, but this would introduce
Speaker 1: other problems. I'll explain more in a second, but first
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Android Cupcake would provide support
Speaker 1: for on screen keyboards, both from Google and from third parties,
Speaker 1: So this is a case where Google had to catch
Speaker 1: up to Apple, which had skipped the physical keyboard step entirely.
Speaker 1: Cupcake also added other features, such as the ability to
Speaker 1: record video using the handsets camera. Android Donut would add
Speaker 1: even more features, including support for c d M A networks,
Speaker 1: which were used by companies like Verizon and Sprint in
Speaker 1: the United States. So c d M A is one
Speaker 1: type of cellular phone technology and then G s M
Speaker 1: was the other one. Uh, you can think of him
Speaker 1: as two branches of cellular technologies. Most of the world
Speaker 1: was using g s M, but in the US you
Speaker 1: also had a couple of networks using c d M A,
Speaker 1: and once Donut added that support in and meant that
Speaker 1: companies like Verizon and Sprint could actually offer Android phones.
Speaker 1: So at that point, Android could theoretically exist on any
Speaker 1: compatible hardware on any cellular provider, and that leads into
Speaker 1: the problem I was mentioning earlier. The main problem was fragmentation,
Speaker 1: meaning there were several different active versions of Android out
Speaker 1: on the market at the same time. Some hands that
Speaker 1: manufacturers would augment Android with software of their own, so
Speaker 1: that you'd have a slightly different flavor of Android on
Speaker 1: Samsung than you might find on Motorola, for example, And
Speaker 1: that's perfectly legit, because, as I mentioned earlier, Android is
Speaker 1: an open source project. Google set up some rules. However,
Speaker 1: anyone who wanted to tweak Android would have to submit
Speaker 1: it to the Android Compatibility Program that would make sure
Speaker 1: that the build wasn't so different that it would no
Speaker 1: longer work with key components of the Android ecosystem like
Speaker 1: the play Store or the Google Mobile Services. So while
Speaker 1: a company like Samsung could release its own version of Android,
Speaker 1: it would first have to submit that code to Google
Speaker 1: to make sure that could still play nice in the
Speaker 1: Google sphere overall, and carriers didn't necessarily push out Android
Speaker 1: updates to users all at the same time. So you
Speaker 1: might have a handset that's technically capable of running the
Speaker 1: latest version of Android, but the carrier you are on
Speaker 1: hasn't distributed the OS update, so you're stuck in an
Speaker 1: older version. Then carriers could also include bloatwear that would
Speaker 1: change the nature of Android. This whole fragmentation was a
Speaker 1: point of frustration not just for users but also developers,
Speaker 1: who couldn't be certain that their work would be usable
Speaker 1: by the majority of the Android install base. Developers typically
Speaker 1: want to take advantage of the best hardware and operating
Speaker 1: system features that they can, but when there's a lot
Speaker 1: of fragmentation in an operating system, that becomes difficult to do.
Speaker 1: This was one of those things that Steve Jobs thought
Speaker 1: would spell the end of Android, and while it was
Speaker 1: a point of pain and frustration, it didn't kill the
Speaker 1: operating system. By two thousand nine, Apple was sticking with
Speaker 1: a T and T in the U S and Google
Speaker 1: was trying to get more carriers to offer Android phones
Speaker 1: on their networks. One big target was Verizon, and Verizon
Speaker 1: was searching for a good alternative to the iPhone because
Speaker 1: it still didn't have access to it, so it banked
Speaker 1: on an interesting alliance. The parties included Verizon, HTC, Motorola, Google,
Speaker 1: and a little company called Lucasfilm. Alright, so the Lucasfilm
Speaker 1: thing is a little bit misleading. The big contribution that
Speaker 1: Lucasfilm would make would be to license the name Droid,
Speaker 1: which it had trademarked from the Star Wars film franchise,
Speaker 1: and it licensed it to Verizon. Thus, HTC and Motorola
Speaker 1: would manufacture handsets running the Android operating system for Verizon,
Speaker 1: which then marketed those phones as the brand Droid. In addition,
Speaker 1: the handsets were the first to feature Android version two
Speaker 1: point oh otherwise known as a Claire now like the
Speaker 1: old HTCG one the Motorola Droid. The original Motorola Droid
Speaker 1: had a slide out physical keyboard, and if you preferred,
Speaker 1: you could use the on screen keyboard, so you had
Speaker 1: some options. The phone featured voice recognition technologies like voice Search,
Speaker 1: so you could actually engage the voice search feature, say
Speaker 1: something into the phone and it would search for that
Speaker 1: term for you. The Droid also contributed to the death
Speaker 1: of another company, and that would be Palm, which was
Speaker 1: famous for its p d A s. Back in the
Speaker 1: good old nineties. Palm had created a smartphone running on
Speaker 1: web os called the Palm pre and had another version
Speaker 1: called the Palm Pre Plus that was supposed to run
Speaker 1: on Verizon's network, but Verizon would largely neglect the Palm
Speaker 1: pre Plus, instead focusing its marketing power on the droid,
Speaker 1: and that helped spell the end for Palm, which would
Speaker 1: end up getting acquired and then kind of sort of
Speaker 1: fizzled away and died. Now you could argue that Verizon
Speaker 1: got a little bit of come upance for all that,
Speaker 1: because in Verizon launched a phone from Microsoft called the
Speaker 1: Kin K I n never remember when I talked about Danger,
Speaker 1: the company that Andy Rubin co founded before he moved
Speaker 1: on to Android. Well, Microsoft had acquired Danger, and then
Speaker 1: several people from that team had worked on the Ken smartphone.
Speaker 1: It was meant to be a phone that sort of
Speaker 1: straddled the gap between cell phone and smartphones, sort of
Speaker 1: a feature phone with lots of social media type applications
Speaker 1: in mind. But the phone was seen as a lackluster effort,
Speaker 1: and Verizon would end up discontinuing the sales of the
Speaker 1: Kin about a month and a half after launching it,
Speaker 1: and it was a bust. Now the Droid wasn't a bust.
Speaker 1: It would become the most popular Android phone in the
Speaker 1: United States at that time and would help drive Android's success,
Speaker 1: which reached a level in which the OS became the
Speaker 1: dominant operating system in the smartphone market. Google began to
Speaker 1: outpace Apple starting in two thousand eleven, with Android available
Speaker 1: on more phones than Apple's iOS, and it would increase
Speaker 1: year over year until it reaches the crazy levels it's
Speaker 1: at today now. However, it's very important to note that
Speaker 1: comparing iOS market share to Android market share is a
Speaker 1: little bit like comparing apples to oranges. So many Apple puns. Well,
Speaker 1: what I mean by that is that Apple has consistently
Speaker 1: taken aim at the high end market for its phones.
Speaker 1: The premium cost for Apple phones drives profits. Google's Android
Speaker 1: is available across a wide range of smartphones and price points.
Speaker 1: Google is not consume concerned about selling expensive phones because
Speaker 1: Google doesn't sell very many phones at all. It mostly
Speaker 1: just makes the operating system available. It's more concerned with
Speaker 1: getting the operating system out there as much as it
Speaker 1: possibly can. And remember, most of those phones are not
Speaker 1: coming from Google. The company doesn't really care about how
Speaker 1: expensive any of those handsets are, so Google continues to
Speaker 1: make money off the services it provides. So, just like
Speaker 1: in the world of desktops and laptops, the real product
Speaker 1: Google selling isn't phones or even operating systems. It's the
Speaker 1: data of users. People like me and you, especially people
Speaker 1: who use Android phones. People like me. We're generating so
Speaker 1: much data that can then be profited from in various ways.
Speaker 1: And yes, that is not something I am particularly happy about.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we trade uh convenience, you know, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: convenience and we'll trade off some security and privacy and
Speaker 1: things like that, and then later on we wonder if
Speaker 1: we made the right choice and then think we've gone
Speaker 1: too far. But now we're going down my psyche. Let's
Speaker 1: get back to Android. Backtracking a little bit. Google unveiled
Speaker 1: a flagship phone on January. It was the Nexus one phone,
Speaker 1: which was manufactured by HTC, just like the g One
Speaker 1: had been, and it sported the Google logo on the
Speaker 1: phone itself. The Nexus was closer and designed to the
Speaker 1: iPhone compared with other Android phones on the market, including
Speaker 1: the Droid. It had a one giga Hurts processor, It
Speaker 1: had an m o led display with a hundred by
Speaker 1: four a d resolution, had five twelve megabytes of storage,
Speaker 1: and uh five megapixel camera. This is back in the
Speaker 1: days when smartphone cameras still were just okay. This phone
Speaker 1: also would feature a pure Android build when no manufacturer
Speaker 1: or carrier add ons, bloatware or anything like that. It
Speaker 1: was meant to be as pure a version of Android
Speaker 1: as you could possibly find, so obviously I needed to
Speaker 1: get one of these phones, and I did. Now that's
Speaker 1: not to say that the launch of the Nexus one
Speaker 1: was without its problems. For one thing, Google and HTC
Speaker 1: apparently never worked out which party would actually be responsible
Speaker 1: for providing customer support, so when something went wrong with
Speaker 1: a person's Nexus one, there wasn't really anyone to turn
Speaker 1: to for help. Now Google would eventually address this and
Speaker 1: create a customer support department, but the lack of support
Speaker 1: on launch was a bit of a misstep, and that's
Speaker 1: putting it lightly. It was actually a really big problem. Now,
Speaker 1: rather than cover all the minnutia of Android over the
Speaker 1: next few years, I figured it'd be good to skip
Speaker 1: ahead a little bit. So Android's user interface was still
Speaker 1: a bit of a dated and clunky experience. To address that,
Speaker 1: Google would hire Matthias Duarte. Duarte had previously worked for
Speaker 1: Ruben's old company Danger, then he went to work for
Speaker 1: Palm in the development of web os. That was largely
Speaker 1: part of his work, and he would end up working
Speaker 1: with a team to overhaul the look and feel of
Speaker 1: androids user interface. He would become essentially the Director of
Speaker 1: User Experience at Google, though his title would get juggled
Speaker 1: around in various ways in different interviews. Duarte came in
Speaker 1: just as Google was preparing to push out the Gingerbread
Speaker 1: update to Android that was version two point three. Now.
Speaker 1: According to an interview he gave to Engadget at CS,
Speaker 1: he really didn't have time to have a big impact
Speaker 1: on the operating system for Gingerbread. He did get involved
Speaker 1: in a conversation around the idea of parrying the OS
Speaker 1: with a specific phone, which would end up being the
Speaker 1: Nexus S. That was a phone that was produced by Samsung,
Speaker 1: but Duarte would have more of an influence on Honeycomb
Speaker 1: or Android version three. This was a peculiar version of Android.
Speaker 1: It was meant specifically for tablets, not for smartphones, so
Speaker 1: it was never released for smartphones. It was only released
Speaker 1: for Android based tablets. Unfortunately, this would also be a
Speaker 1: version of Android that essentially fizzled out. It sported a
Speaker 1: so called holographic user interface and was the Android OS
Speaker 1: featured on the Motorola Zoom spelled x O O. M
Speaker 1: Apple had once again set the conversation by introducing the
Speaker 1: iPad tablet and succeeding where no one else had in
Speaker 1: the consumer space. The Zoom and Honeycomb were supposed to
Speaker 1: be Google's answer to that, but it wasn't a very
Speaker 1: good answer or Early reviews criticized the lack of apps
Speaker 1: optimized for Honeycomb, and this was made worse because Google
Speaker 1: had not released the code for Honeycomb the way it
Speaker 1: had for previous versions of the Android operating system, and
Speaker 1: for the most part, Android Tablets and Honeycomb were seen
Speaker 1: as a misfire. Now that being said, some of the
Speaker 1: design elements from Honeycomb were also in the next Android
Speaker 1: operating system for smartphones. That one was called ice Cream
Speaker 1: Sandwich or Android four point oh. Where hunting Comb and
Speaker 1: the tablets fell short, ice Cream Sandwich seemed to succeed.
Speaker 1: Critics overall liked the updated appearance of the UI. Duard
Speaker 1: was heavily involved in the design and implementation of Android
Speaker 1: four point oh, and his work was receiving praise from
Speaker 1: critics and users. While Android had already proven itself to
Speaker 1: be a popular platform for smartphones, it was ice Cream
Speaker 1: Sandwich that helped establish a cohesive feel for the operating system.
Speaker 1: And the user interface. You know, you can look at
Speaker 1: the iPhone U I and you could say I get it.
Speaker 1: I get the esthetic, I get how it all connects together.
Speaker 1: I get what the overall vision is. The same was
Speaker 1: not true for early Android phones, so this marked a
Speaker 1: change where you could actually say, oh, I see where
Speaker 1: the aesthetic is. I see where the design components are
Speaker 1: with Android. Now, in our next episode, we will continue
Speaker 1: the story of Android's evolution leading up to present day.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about more about rubens uh controversies, which are
Speaker 1: truly terrible allegations that are are against him, really awful stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm kind of glad I saved that for the
Speaker 1: next episode so I don't have to go into it
Speaker 1: right now, But it does mean that Friday's recording is
Speaker 1: going to be a doozy anyway. We're gonna conclude Android's
Speaker 1: evolution in the next episode, at least so far. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the operating system is still very much alive and well today.
Speaker 1: And if you guys have any suggestions for future topics
Speaker 1: for tech Stuff, you can reach out to me the
Speaker 1: email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line by popping over
Speaker 1: to the social media networks that I happen to frequent,
Speaker 1: being Facebook and Twitter. It's tech stuff HSW For both
Speaker 1: of those. You can go to tech stuff podcast dot
Speaker 1: com to go to our website, where we have an
Speaker 1: archive of all of our past episodes. Every single one
Speaker 1: that's ever published is there. You can also find a
Speaker 1: link to our online store, where every purchase you make
Speaker 1: goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon. Text
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
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