If you have spent time in the dating game, you know the harsh reality: it is usually better when you are being wooed by someone than when you are running after them. When you are the one trying to win someone over, no matter how great your qualities and offerings, they may act reluctant, express doubts, second-guess your motives, and in the end, not accept you at all. On the other hand, when someone is wooing you, even knowing your flaws and idiosyncrasies, they might still brush those aside and pursue you anyway.
Reading about Google working with handset makers and carriers, it appeared that Google was wooing a bunch of reluctant partners who were demanding much and not making things easy. The angst of a hassled suitor was best expressed by Google’s director of mobile platforms, Andy Rubin: “This is where the pain happens. We are very, very close.”
Very close, but no cigar. Yet.
Imagine how much better it would have been if things were reversed: if all the carriers and handset makers were lining up at Google’s gates because they were desperate to have something great that Google had built. Even if they had to pay a high price for it.
Google should have built the gPhone first. It should have worked with one handset maker, in secret, to build the most impressive piece of mobile hardware possible. And instead of spending time and resources managing a reluctant alliance, Google should have concentrated all its energies on doing what it does best: making innovative software with a revolutionary, irresistible UI.
With that kind of focus, Google could have been ready to launch a truly landmark device earlier in 2008. Imagine a launch where Google not only showed off an unlocked, full-featured, uncrippled phone, but also offered the Android platform for free to anyone who wanted it, and announced the Android Developer Challenge all at once. That would have been a genuine knockout punch. Carriers would have lined up to get the gPhone on their networks. Handset makers would have lined up to get Android on their phones. Developers would have rushed to build apps. Google could have built the Open Handset Alliance as a coalition of willing converts, rather than a loose alliance of skeptical participants.
Instead, Google was scrambling to help T-Mobile launch the first Android phone before the end of 2008. Sprint cited this as one reason for not offering an Android phone on its own network yet, alongside other factors: management shuffling, plans to move directly to 4G, and a preference to offer its own branded services rather than Google’s built-in ones. Sprint, a purported founding member of the OHA, had made ambiguous and non-committal statements about Android from the very beginning.
Google should have learned from its Gmail launch. Gmail was a complete email product with innovative, unique features. It wowed the world when it launched, and some of its features were so distinctive that no other email provider had replicated them years later. Remember when people all over the world were desperate to get a Gmail invite? Now imagine if Google had never built Gmail, and instead built a plug-in to bring Gmail-style features to existing mail systems. It would have been a frustrating slog, and the result would not have been nearly as ubiquitous or useful as Gmail is today.
Google’s attempts to push Android on reluctant carriers and handset makers was akin to pushing a Gmail plug-in on existing email systems. Anyway, what was done was done. For better or worse, Android was on the path it was on. But it still wasn’t too late for Google to build and market its own branded, full-featured, unlocked device that could serve as a standard for other phones to measure up to. An ideal gPhone would show the world what Android could really do, and it would make it harder for carriers to cripple their own Android devices too much. Why would anyone buy a hobbled phone if a full-featured one was available? It would be a win for everybody.
