Some time ago I wrote a post speculating on what the launch of Facebook Home might mean for the future of an open Android platform. I think it’s safe to say that Facebook Home, while not exactly a “dud,” has also not taken the world by storm. But it’s still out there chipping away at Google’s Android hegemony, and the threat that it represents to Google’s competitive position remains very real. In the penultimate paragraph of my post I wrote:
I believe Google needs to think of a way to regain control of the OS that they created and start extracting revenue from it. And I think part of that means “closing” Android and licensing it for... well... money.
At the time it wasn't clear to me how Google could do such a thing even if it wanted to. Then the other day I saw this piece in Ars Technica. It explains how Google can nominally keep Android open, yet still — incrementally — erode that openness one app at a time. Essentially, it takes apps that were previously open source and part of the Android Open Source Project, ceases any ongoing development for those apps while simultaneously launching a “new” version of the same app under a closed source model. The old open source app remains freely available, but inevitably the new app features functionality that the open source app never had and (it's safe to assume) it never will have. It also continues to be developed while the old open source app becomes abandonware.
Very clever.