Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How Google is Taking Back Android!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here and the other day google made their keyboard for android available in the play store. The stock google keyboard that comes on all the nexus devices. They kind of picked it out of android and made it available in the google play store. Now.
This was not immediately seen as a big deal by anyone i mean you can get tons of keyboards in the play store for free, even there’s swipe, there’s swiftkey, there’s even third party duplicates or replicas of the google keyboard and the play store. But this is actually a bigger deal than it seems at first, because if you look at the timeline, if you look back at what google’s been doing over the past couple of years with android, this fits into their plan and it’s kind of an important thing. So, looking back, google actually has a long and slow but very deliberate history of bringing android core apps that were originally built into android and making them available for everyone. Officially now, when you get an official google app in the play store, you know it’s going to be updated. Every time google finds a bug fix or wants to add a feature, and some apps like google talk, google search, google calendar. All these sorts of things are already built into android, like chrome and music, and even sound search for google play have been built into android and now are being shoveled off into the play store, it’s subtle, but it is very important, subtle difference. It’S about context. At this point, google has a ton of apps that they’re, maintaining and updating through google play about five or six pages in the play store of apps that are just in android being updated officially from google as the official developer. Now there can be replicas or duplicates of others that google isn’t updating.
So, for example, the google clock app in jelly bean. It’S not in the play store it’s built into the core of android, but you can grab a third-party replica of it from the play store. It’S not google’s, but it’s about as close as you can get. We could, as time goes on eventually see all of android’s core in the play store, so the sms app a calendar app the gallery app the dialer app the people app, maybe even the full android launcher someday officially supported from google having the google version is pretty Much always better than having a replica of the google version, because when google decides to add a new feature, it’ll be added to the play, store version and everyone can get it rather than someone trying to code and make it available for every phone.
When google ads it, it gets added to everyone, but what’s more important here is the fact that they’re moving it to the play store before. If there was a bug in a core system, part of android like the keyboard, they would have to roll out an over-the-air update of the entire operating system to fix that bug built into the os, because the keyboard was part of the os. If it was just a small bug, they might wait for a whole bunch of small bugs to accumulate and then roll out a larger system update and that’s when you’d see your nexus update for something like 4.1.1 to 4.1.2. But if there’s just one major security update that needs to be fixed quickly, that can be a bit of a problem because dealing with carriers and getting a major os update out to everyone is just about impossible.
So, with moving core apps from android to the play, store and freeing them from the spine of google and being updated individually, one after another, papa pow pow. That makes it way easier for android and google as a whole to keep track of everything and update everyone. Without having to deal with over-the-air updates of an entire operating system, so with this, android is becoming what we’d like to call a rolling release and if you’re, a developer. You’Ve heard this term before.
If you’re a software maker, you’ve heard this term, there are several different types of rolling releases. There are fully rolling releases and there are partly rolling releases. Android is pulling itself into the partially rolling releases category.
It’S a partly rolling release because there are so many different parts of android that are being pulled out of it and updated through the play store that actual android os updates will be few and far between. There will be major overhauls rather than smaller, 4.1.1 to 4.1.2 update. Actual android updates will be a big deal each time they happen.
But alongside each of those big deal steps forward, there are hundreds of little rolling releases of all the different apps inside of android rolling. Alongside those big incremental upgrades, it’s a nice refreshing change of pace because that’s not always the case. We always see apple, getting a really good job done of getting their new operating system out to all of their phones because they control that really tightly. Android is open source; they don’t control that quite as tightly so slowly. Taking back android taking back parts of android one by one into a partly rolling release. Schedule is uh.
It’S a smart thing. It’S subtle like we said, but it’s smart. This is also good because verizon is especially bad verizon sucks when it comes to updating phones.
Let’S take a look back at the verizon galaxy nexus. There was a whole rant video that actually did if you want to watch that i’ll put it below the like button, but the verizon galaxy nexus. First of all, came out a few months after the international galaxy nexus.
Verizon also had their way with bloatware pushed bloatware upon the phone and then had their way with over-the-air updates, so they basically held every over-the-air update hostage until they could force their bloatware into it again and make it their way. Verizon just killed the nexus experience with the verizon galaxy nexus and you could probably say google learned their lesson from that and decided. I don’t think we want to deal with that again and now they’re, just bringing out parts of android and dealing with it themselves.
So google is taking android back from the carriers and from the manufacturers, mostly from the carriers that have been holding back your over there updates from so long and being able to give them to you faster. So there you go good work. Google props, to you again way to take cues from apple and way to learn your lesson from verizon being a piece of crap uh yeah. So there you go thanks for watching this video. If you enjoyed, it definitely feel free to hit thumbs up below and there’s also a subscribe button below. If you want to watch more videos like this in the future, either way this has been mkbhd.
Thank you for watching and i’ll talk to you guys in the next one peace you .