If Samsung threatened to drop android they'd be the new Nokia. There is a reason they they stick around and abide by google. They know they have something to lose if they make too big of a power grab.

The only way I can see this happening is for them to develop their own offering, sell the two for a while, and when (or if) their option reaches a big market share they'll switch.

But you won't be getting rid of the google made applications anytime soon on samsung phones.

No, they can't.

Acer tried to do that with Alibaba (a forked version of android with their own appstore, etc) in China and google threatened to put them off the "open handset alliance" (that would stop them from getting new Android versions before they were released into the wild).

So, no, they can't do whatever they wanted. If they could, Samsung would have ditched google a long time ago, I'm quite sure of it.

Again, people fail to understand that, just because YOU can, not everyone does. A normal user (those that make or break a platform) cannot and SHOULD NOT be expected to install anything anywhere. Geeks will always consume technology, the success of a product like this is dependent on the masses, not in the tech minority.

"people have put linux on it" is NOT a valid argument. I was also able to "fix" my old HTC Desire (yes, corny European name for a Nexus One) with custom roms (making it live well beyond its years), but a female friend of mine simply got rid of it and said "I'll NEVER buy HTC again". And then got an iPhone.

1) Is the average consumer tech savy enough to install linux? Just because you and I are, not everyone is. You have to understand that the success will be valued by how the masses adopt it, not how the tech geeks do.

2) I'd explain to you the meaning of a logical fallacy, but not in the mood. But google it and see why that argument holds very little value evaluating the success of a platform.

Chromebooks depend on a google service to keep running. Take the service out and it'll fail, very much like many RSS apps that consumed man-hours to develop and are now useless, since they based their efforts solely on using reader content in a seamless way.

The lesson is, you can't trust google to support your chromebook forever, if it fails they don't seem to have any problem shutting the platform down.

No, but chromebooks depend on googles' cloud. Take that out and, unless you're a geek and are able to use it for something else (linux and whatnot), you'll have a useless computer.

And then when it fails to bring money it gets discontinued. And you have a very expensive paperweight... Google Reader was an eye opener. Depending on a third party for core functionality is something I'll be avoiding from now one, since you never know...

Those do not get payed so it doesn't count.

Spread through the thousands of articles they have the cost would be minimal. And there are other solutions like colaborative efforts between universities where one would take care of their own stuff. Planetlab is a good example on how this is possible.

And if they sell 100 articles / month you have all the costs and proffits covered. But they get way more than that since unviersities pay them for access, etc.

It costs them nothing. Everyone that does actual work does not get payed for it by the publication.

Only the magazines and websites get any kind of money for them, and hosting a 3mb pdf will never cost 30$ per copy, no matter how much they say it does. It's taking advantage of a system that was established when only print would do and actually printing and delivery would cost lots of money.

Right now, it's ridiculous and it will die sooner or later if someone comes forth with a good alternative (no matter how good nature is).

And the argument that no money makes things unbiased is complete bulshit. In that case, judges should not be payed either.

1- Headsets
2- Building a userbase and tying it to your ecosystem (and your app/movie/whatever) store.
3- Ad network for your now ubiquitous smartphone ecosystem.

If you only plan to offer what the others already do, then you'll die a very painful death.

The problem with ubuntu (and any new mobile OS in the past few years) is that they do not innovate, they simply copy and add a few gimmicks.

Developer tools need to be available WAY before the launch. They need to be free. Pay developers for startup apps. Make an office suit, a few games, etc. and make them freely available for everyone. Make them run android binaries (last I've heard, the dalvik code is open source). See those cloud services others charge for? Make them free.

Let your hardware partners go crazy. Don't impose guidelines, just make sure all binaries will run. The rest, leave it to them so they are not all clones of one another (like windows phones).

Be ready to spend a few millions without return of investment.

And above all, don't try to keep your competition out, invite them in. Google develops for iOS and with that they give out a good company image to iOS users. Maybe those that love the new Maps app will want to get it on android without the limitations. Having a full set of google services would be a plus.

The difference is, if an iPhone does that, there is nothing you can do, since it might be happening behind your back.

If you see your flashlight app uses the internet or GPS, you can skip it.

That study is irrelevant. Most of those apps don't know that because they need to, but because they are free and the averts do.

Do the same study on payed apps. For example, GPS location access is not present on any of the games I bought so far.

What's so wrong about that? Google should be able to get something in return for providing turn by turn navigation and all the premium features they include on their maps.