'with Amazon' replacing 'with Google' on Android?

Amazon is set to launch an Android Tablet on Wednesday. What if they license their code too? Android as experienced on phones is actually two separate software bundles - the Open Source core of Android, and the proprietary 'with Google' applications, including the App Market, Maps, Gmail, Talk, Contacts, Listen and other apps bound to Google services, and requiring a business development deal to ship with a device. Eric Schmidt explicitly discussed this strategy at Dreamforce.

Now there are already more Android devices than I can count that don't follow the 'with Google' playbook, including the Barnes & Noble Nook that probably inspired this response from Amazon, but there are hints of a broader strategy here. What if Amazon offered an alternative to Google's top half of Android? I think Amazon does not really want to be in the hardware design business, but wants to be sure that they can't be locked out of it or forced to pay extra by Apple, Google or any other potential competitor. As well as releasing their own 7" tablet, they could offer an Open Source or lightly licensed version of their stack to other hardware developers.

Why would Amazon do this? Because they are primarily in the shopping and media business. Apple has stopped them selling eBooks and media inside their apps on iPad/iPhone; Google has banned their App Store from the Google Android Market. Amazon could even offer a referral fee for anything bought via their store as an incentive for device manufacturers to ship it.

An even bolder step wold be to actually fork Android. Google has a delayed-open model for Android source, where a new version is released in public after a closed development process, without a clear way to send in patches to Google. Amazon could put their current version up on Github, accept patches, and treat Google's new drops as another source of possible patches.

Understanding each company's core business is what makes this likely. Apple is in the devices business, with the media business as a small side earner designed to make their devices more attractive. Google is in the Advertising business, with their Android business designed to make searching everywhere, continuously more likely. Amazon is in the shopping business, migrating from physical goods to media, with Kindle a way to drive this. A tablet that they can sell audio and video to as well as eBooks makes more sense to them if it as widely distributed as Kindle playback apps are now.

Two faces of Android

The most remarkable thing about Android is that it is the first widely adopted Open Source client operating system. It's long been clear that Open Source is the best way to preserve infrastructural code from the vicissitudes of corporate and governmental volatility, but using it for client applications has so far not taken off as well. There has often been a separation between an open source underlying layer and a proprietary user experience that is built atop it.

Android does follow this pattern to some extent - the underlying OS code is fully Open Source under an Apache License, so anyone can bend it to their own uses, but in order to get the "with Google" logo on your device, you need to conform to Google's Compatibility Definition Document. That has changed over time; for example the 2.1 version specifies that your device MUST have a camera and 1.6 requires telephony.

If you do this, you might then get access to what I call the top half of Android - the closed source Google apps that integrate the device closely with their web services - Contacts, GMail, Talk, Android Market, Google Maps, Navigation, Listen, Earth, Places and so on. However, this requires an explicit partnership with Google.

The fascinating thing here is that there is already a Cambrian Explosion of new Android devices going on in China and India. You can buy iPad lookalikes, things that look like a huge iPod, TV-based video game systems and more that run Android, often for under $100. I fully expect most digital photo frames and mp3 players being built this year will end up running some form of Android, with cameras following on too.

This means that more and more devices will be naturally web-connected, able to run browsers, and to plug into web publishing ecosystems naturally - the Android Intent model means that Apps can plug together neatly, and replace system features if desired.

However, a lot of the day-to day utility of an Android device is in the proprietary, partners-only layer - that you only get after doing a business development deal with Google of some kind. What we will start to see is alternatives for these Applications being developed. To some extent we're already seeing this from US carriers, but I think this year we'll see both an Open Source suite of apps to swap in many of these functions, and other proprietary offerings to compete with the Google upper half.

Who could build such a suite? Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft clearly have most of the necessary pieces, but how about Baidu, Tencent, Vkontakte or other companies with strong regional ties?

Now we have a truly Open consumer OS, a world of possibilities open up.

Apple's fussyness shows the real platform - the web

Recently, there have been public tussles between companies I used to work for. Apple has blocked Google's Latitude and Voice products from being in the iPhone App Store, for reasons they haven't disclosed, though it is speculated because they compete with built-in applications or carrier plans.

The iPhone App Store has gathered so much buzz recently, that it has obscured the underlying effect of the change that is happening due to the iPhone and its imitators. An iPhone is not so much a phone, as a good Web browser in your pocket that works everywhere. By incorporating the excellent Webkit browser, iPhone tipped the pocket net experience from email-like to fully web-like. As I said at its launch, even Steve Jobs can't ignore the Web.

As iPhones, iPods, Androids, Palm Pre Chrome, Safari and some Nokia phones now run Webkit browsers, the growing part of the Web browser usage is in a browser that supports HTML5 and the geolocation, video, vector graphics and local storage APIs that that implies. So Google Voice's website UI can work on iPhone, Android et al and make calls, as can other web applications that make calls.

The real platform that everyone can build on is still the web, and attempts to enclose or limit it will continue to fail. The Open Web Foundation, which I'm proud to be a member of, is working to keep this true and make it easier to grow new web standards and agreements.