Andy Rubin, Vice President, Mobile Platforms at Google lobs a diss at AT&T

Cleve Nettles
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August 21, 2009
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In his clarification of yesterday's USA Today article, Google's Vice President, Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin said: "We look forward to the day when consumers can access any application, including VoIP apps, from any device, on any network."

In case you are wondeering who Andy Rubin is and why you should care:

  • He's a former Apple Engineer that worked with their first attempted mobile spinoff, Magic Cap in 1994.
  • He founded Danger which built the Sidekick and developed the first app store which was later turned into something pretty special by Apple.
  • When Microsoft bought Danger last year he founded Android which later got taken in by Google to be the basis of their mobile efforts

To say he's an innovator in the field is a huge understatement, he's responsible directly or indirectly for a great deal of the advances in mobile technology over the past 10 years. That being said, it is refreshing to hear this type of communication from someone in the mobile industry with some authority.  It will be even nicer to see it put into action.

 

Comments (10)

Oflife (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 2:26pm

As per the death of b'oil by solar energy in the coming decades, the telcos across the globe are terrified of the inevitable P2P broadband wireless future that shall render them (almost) obsolete. The great changes that are going to bring down the nefarious industries of old will soon be upon us as consumers world-wide grow tired and increasingly angry at being exploited and sat upon.

Soon is coming. God speed Google.

knubs (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 8:25pm

About the funniest post I have read in a long time.
- Death of ...
- Terrified of ...
- Great changes ...
- Consumers grow ...

and then "God speed Google." LOL, you are kidding, right?

BTW, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft and Google all have ~$25 billion in cash. ~$25 billion is what the Federal Government makes off of 'just their portion of the gasoline tax' every year. Where do that money go? Come to think of it, where do that '$1.5 trillion in 6 months' money come from? Better start the press ;)

AND, Google has 11 plus years of information on stuff, including people, their searches, email, friends, networks, friends of friends of friends (those forwarded messages that get...), 2.8% of the smart phone market, tracking your every move... You should be more concerned about why you say death to the oil companies and nefarious industries yet leave google out of if and say god speed. Take it a bit further and try to figure out why technologies exist from pre-crude-oil (think of all the whales that have been saved ;) ) that are not in wide spread use today, i.e. roof over hangs, house orientation, lot grade, landscaping, etc. Solution to global warming is not getting rid of Big Oil, it's painting the roads white. It's the AssFault. ;)

ALSO, if you truly believe global warming is a CO2 problem, then invest in diamond manufacturing facilities next to Coal burning plants and you can Solve 3 problems at once: Carbon dioxide pollution, Low Oxygen levels, and Blood Diamonds. Wow, what a genius you are. :D

Oflife (not verified) | August 22, 2009 - 10:15am

...No, they are not perfect, Streetview being an example, but their corporate ethics are way better than: Facebook, Yahoo and a few others. (Microsoft are not actually that bad when it comes to privacy.) Google have refused to reveal sensitive information to foreign regimes, unlike some other companies. They also attract a specific type of employee and user, often people of fairly sound ethic who put holistic ideology over absolute greed or duplicity. Hopefully, Google will remain this way. (I base this on my own observation, I have no connection with the company.)

Re oil, it is a horrible discovery. Our worst, almost. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, we did what we did with good intent driven by our industrious nature. However, time is proving that we may have taken the wrong path. We looked down, not up towards the sun. We have polluted cities across the globe - have you been to the poor areas of Northern California close to oil refineries, Nigeria and other smog bound living spaces? And we must not forget the huge amount of plastics collecting in the Pacific ocean and the effect of PCBs and other endocrine disruptors on life from the polar regions to closer to home.

We are in a fine mess and it is only forward looking (intelligent) individuals and businesses that will undo this mess. The old way is about to be thrust under the wheels of change. And you better believe it, because it will soon become unstoppable.

Think this is idealistic clap trap? Study what America achieved with the Manhattan project in the 1940s (from horse bound military to the atomic bomb - in less than 5 years!), and then, in the 1960s, from antiquated valve computers to the moon in even less time!

Rock-n-roll.

OK, back to work. Much to do.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 10:07pm

Personally, I see the future of Cellular networks as pretty much data-only entities, with you're choice of which wireless ISP, data plans charged by GB of monthly transfer, and VoIP plans offered at a low additional monthly fee. We're starting to see a convergence of data networks, as VZW makes the move to LTE, following the rest of the world. Qualcomm's CDMA path has no future, and the world will pretty much be using 4GSM/LTE moving forward. The other competition is WiMAX which Sprint/ClearChannel are pushing. I see the big winner as whichever technology can provide the fastest throughput while using the least amount of power.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 2:53pm

Folks...Wireless network is from your handset to the antenna. Everything after that is this so-called "obsolete" wireline. I guess all the packet-switching that gets your data from Point A to Point B is just magic.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 3:28pm

The wireless carriers will not become obsolete, as they own the hardware, wires and towers that transmit your "wireless signal". (as the user stated above). The thing that the carriers will need to do is figure out a new shift in how they bill for Data, after all that's all it is. Voice, video, music, MMS etc.. it's all 1's and 0's simple as that. Data plans vs "minutes" will be the next wave of pricing. Sprint, even for all it's issues, has the "everything" plan for 99 bucks. That is the start of a new "data" plan, in 5 years that same "everything plan" will probably be $59.99 with 4g networks in place or LTE by then. Laptops will have built in mobile chipsets and phone will evolve to where video conferencing is the norm on a handheld.

Think back just 5 years ago, no iPhone, no real smart phone. The data speeds were slow enough you could drive to your friends house with a photo faster than send a file of any size from a phone. If AT&T actually rolls out 7.2 HSPDA by the end of 2009/early 2010 it will be a huge leap in speed from just June 2007 with the 2g iPhone. The future imo holds cheaper data, faster speeds and great new devices to take advantage of it all.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 4:07pm

Good luck with Big Oil disappearing to solar. All those plastics used to make cars, medical instruments, and household items don't fall from the sun.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 10:15pm

There's increasing consciousness to the never-biodegrading plastics in the environment. Plastic will have decreased importance as alternatives, such as corn-limestone based materials and other plastic-like bio-degradable alternative materials come to market. Plastic will still have it's place, but don't expect it to be the future, and instead become decreasingly important. Ultimately, it's a source we'll eventually use up and need to replace. In generally, we need to stop relying on materials we need to dig up and which take hundreds of millions of years to replace and start thinking of the bigger picture and smarter alternatives, and that shift is already starting to occur.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | August 21, 2009 - 8:25pm

"The dinosaurs will slowly die , And I do believe no one will cry, I'm just fucking glad I'm gonna be, There to watch the fall"
-NOFX

Mikey (not verified) | August 22, 2009 - 7:02am

You know, I REALLY used to like coming to this website, but as of late your opinions are pissing me the hell off.

What AT&T and Apple do is perfectly acceptable. I LIKE the fact that the handset is locked to it's carrier here. Cell phone carriers aren't the first and only people to do this? If you wanted to play Final Fantasy VII back in 1997, you had to have a Playstation. You couldn't play it on your Nintendo 64. No matter how much you complained, guess what? It was still only playable on the PSX and eventually they made a port to Windows.

But going back to my original complaint. The writers for this website, as well as everyone else complaining about the exclusivity and the VoIP shit, need to shut the hell up about it already. Neither Apple nor AT&T care that you are upset about it.

It MAKES SENSE for them NOT to allow it. If they do, then AT&T looses money. If that were your company, you wouldn't stand for it either.

Try thinking outside of your closed box once in a while and maybe write a bit more objectively. Since when is it nice to see VPs acting like children taking shots at other companies? Especially companies that we specifically come here to read about? Go find a Google news site and write there Cleve.