Now we have to jailbreak our Android phones, too

As Google gives carriers more sway over the operating system, customers need more options


By Dan Gillmor
Salon.com

When Google introduced the Nexus One smartphone early this year, we got a glimpse into what the future could be if device makers a) wrested control of the device from the mobile carriers and b) trusted users to decide what software they could run on the hardware they'd purchased. The heart of this notion was Google's Android operating system running on a device that wasn't subject to a mobile carrier's deliberate limitations on how it could be used.

The experiment wasn't a rousing success for several reasons, not least Google's ineptness at running a store where it had to, gasp, deal with actual human customers needing technical support. Still, the Nexus One was the class of the not-Apple world, in my view, which is why I bought one and still use it with almost entirely happy results.

But Google has withdrawn from selling its own devices except to developers. And in the process, as ZDNet's Jason Hiner persuasively explains, it's ceded back to the carriers selling Android phones the control that users had expected for themselves with an open-source operating system.

Meanwhile, Google has made ominous common cause with Verizon in the policy arena, saying that it's OK to toss out network neutrality -- the idea that carriers shouldn't discriminate on the basis of content -- on mobile networks. Add it all up, and Google's retreat is distressing.

The emboldened carriers have started loading all kinds of "crapware" -- apps from partner companies that can't be removed in standard configurations and that can slow down the devices. (For that matter, Google itself has done this with the Nexus One and Android, by putting unremovable apps into the operating system updates.)

(More here. TM comment: My Droid X has the unremovable crapware...very annoying.)

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