Google I/O 2013 thread

[CHANG3D]

I actually found arstechnica's article written better.

Thanks. It is explained better. But I would love to get a BLE update straight from Google through the Play Store. It doesn't affect carriers any. But it does affect custom OEM code that enables BLE because Google didn't... maybe Google needs to tell OEM's that in order to use the Play Store, that they can only build launchers or other more superficial things. I know it wouldn't work... yadda, yadda...

 

[ComputerBox34]

Thanks. It is explained better. But I would love to get a BLE update straight from Google through the Play Store. It doesn't affect carriers any. But it does affect custom OEM code that enables BLE because Google didn't... maybe Google needs to tell OEM's that in order to use the Play Store, that they can only build launchers or other more superficial things. I know it wouldn't work... yadda, yadda...

If any OEM incorporates the Google Apps package into their phones, they are subject to a rather large set of rules set by Google. While Android is open source, Google Apps is not (Started with Market, GMail and maps but over time has now included Music, G+, books, etc.). It's kind of a "gotchya!" tactic employed by google that allows them to keep some semblence of control over every Android phone released. No Android phone with Google Apps is released unless Google gives a seal of approval.

So if they wanted to, they could make OEM's do anything to retain access to the Google Play store and the other Google Apps but Google's business model relies on getting Android in to as many hands as possible. They wouldn't want to do anything that would appear overreaching and chase OEM's to other platforms or have other large OEM's (*cough*Samsung*cough*) create their own.

This is why when you install custom ROM's, you must install the Google Apps package separately. It dates back to a C&D that CyanogenMod received from Google back in the early days. Since then, I think Google has become more lax towards the development community as a lot of smaller custom ROM teams include GApps in their ROMS unlike CM.