What the heck is going on at Google?
It shouldn’t be this difficult. But then Android has always been a fast follower, a platform that arrived in the wake of Apple’s original iPhone announcement and has been tagging along ever since, like an annoying younger sibling.
Yes, Apple and Google have decidedly different go-to-market strategies–Apple goes it alone, focuses on selling hardware devices, and has quirky ideas about user experiences, while Google open sources Android, partners with hardware makers, focuses more on its software platforms than its hardware, and offers more traditional or even conservative user interfaces–but the dynamic has never really changed.
Apple delivers a premium experience with vast integration across its ecosystem. And Google targets the masses, with less consistency and a far more disjointed ecosystem in which no product or service is safe.
Where Apple is calm and steady, Google is volatile. Apple ships new products when they’re ready. Google ships new products and then seems almost eager to kill them off when they don’t meet its needs.
That both ecosystems speak to the ideals of their respective user bases is perhaps obvious. But I’ve found myself torn between the two over the years, and I suspect my experience isn’t unique. Sometimes I long for a world in which everything just works, but I sometimes find that world boring or even restrictive. I bounce back and forth between the two, always identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each, but neither is perfect, or at least so good that it obviates the other. It’s like being on a rollercoaster or, to stick with the bouncing theme, in a pinball machine.
That the Apple/Google dynamic maps directly to the Apple/Microsoft dynamic of the PC era is, of course, perfect. We’ve described various companies as “the next Microsoft” over time, but the parallels with Google are too obvious to ignore. Where Apple makes a closed mobile platform, Google makes an open mobile platform. The closed platform guarantees a certain level of quality and integration, and the open platform promises the same, but never quite delivers. But it side-steps the complaints by offering choice, lots of choice. And lower prices. On and on we go.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, Google adapted Android for tablets. When Apple introduced the Apple Watch, Google adapted Android for wearables. When Apple created its own mobile chipsets, Google created custom chips for its devices and then its own mobile chipsets. Apple makes earbuds, so Google makes earbuds. Apple charges 30 or 15 percent feeds in its online store, so Google does too. Apple finally experienced slower growth, so it expanded into subscription services, and so Google did too. There are competing digital personal assistants, smart home ecosystems, TV solutions, and now AI strategies. It never ends.
Google was so good at being Microsoft in this new era that it even beat Microsoft at its own game. By the time …
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