Does Google Really Care About Android Developers?
Two different announcements from Google came out last week with regard to their Android platform and taken together seem to indicate that they don’t care quite as much about their developer partners.
First was the announcement of Google’s App Inventor which puts app development in the hands of virtually everyone. This would seem to not only diminish the relative value of the development skills that people have been investing in learning the ins and outs of the Android platform over the past year or two. And it would seem to contribute to an increased of low-quality apps that already seems to pervade the Android store, at least in comparison to those found on Apple’s App Store. I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing.
The second item came from Google’s earning call when Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s SVP of Product Management said: “I think the most important thing beyond the growth [of the Android ecosystem] is that the most popular app is a browser.” Rosenberg also noted that search on Android devices grew 300% in the first half of 2010. But monetizing mobile web properties is harder than monetizing apps.
So that tells me a few things. One Google doesn’t really care as much about app growth and still sees search as the key element of its mobile strategy. But apps are theoretically how developers get paid. Taken together with numbers quoted on how many dollars have been paid out between Apple and Google through apps it seems to me that if I were considering where to put my development efforts, I would be less interested in developing on the Android platform.
Do you agree with my point of view? Are you putting more resources behind iOS development, Android or some other platform (e.g. RIM or WebOS)? Let me know.
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