zlacker

And by destroying the Android development team you'd achieve what exactly? Magical appearance of the security patches you're complaining about here?

Would you start to actually pay for all those hundreds of engineers maintaining the OS?

>>izacus+(OP)
Either the new company takes over maintaining Android, or it fumbles the bag and the development becomes less centralized for a while - until some leader emerges and takes over.

Either way, the new control center of Android wouldn't be Google. A decade ago, I would have seen that as a very bad thing. Now, I'm almost certain that this would be a change for the better. Google is not what it once was.

>>izacus+(OP)
Drone manufacturers like Samsung, Xiaomi etc need an OS. Right now it's more profitable for them to just pay licences to Google. But if Google lost Android... they would need to find a solution.

I would like to see this, at least something would be happening.

>>ACCoun+t
Or a more likely scenario is that Apple picks up even more market share, and we go from a duopoly to a monopoly.

>>palata+Q
I could see sort of an Android consortium taking over developing it and keeping it going outside of Google. Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Huwawei, Motorola, etc.

Honestly it'd probably be better off that way. Google has far too much influence and control.

>>theweb+Mf
None of those companies have a tiny little bit of interest of helping their competitors with joint development. I guess you're too young to remember the balkanization of Symbian among such companies?

>>wstran+Te
Well, there is barely any new Android feature worth talking about for the past three years (no, new skins definitely don't count). I seriously doubt there is going to be any change in the market share if Android were controlled by a different company. We would have already seen that by now.

>>izacus+rq
Those are companies, their only interest is to maximise profit. Apparently right now the most profitable is to pay Google for the Android licence.

Huawei found themselves on their own because of the ban, and decided to go for HarmonyOS NEXT. Probably they wouldn't come back to a "joint development AOSP" now.

Now if Google lost Android, what would happen for the others? Would they each try their luck with their own OS or would they try to go for a joint development?