Tsahi, you are probably right. They anticipated skinning. I think they were primarily thinking of the device manufacturers and operators. Amazon certainly was a first awakening, but they realized that Amazon had a limited reach, after all, they would never be on more than 25% of the devices. Facebook, as a global, huge reach, pure net player, is yet another matter. I think this is the biggest risk to-date on the benefit Google can hope to achieve with Android.

Someone told me last night, but wait, the fact that Facebook has a skinned front end – why does it have such an impact, even if everybody adopt it. After all, they still have search, maps, gmail, etc… well – who says people continue to use Google’s search, maps, or gmail once Facebook takes over the lockscreen. They can replace the search with their own or Bing, they can incorporate a competing maps. Mail? Of course they could help there…

You are point on – Android is being threatened by those who wish to skin it – you can call Amazon’s Kindle tablets a skinning on Android as well – and the Chinese’ own version of Android the same.

That said, I think that’s Google’s price of making business. They couldn’t build such an ecosystem without sacrificing their OS as open source – and open it to the extreme in the process.

They probably expected such attempts from competitors of different kinds – I am not sure they accounted for Amazon and Facebook to do it…

Google will need to step up their innovation, which at the end of the day is a good thing for consumers.

Tsahi

I find some irony here in that Google has been driving the net neutrality bus, and so it seems what goes around has come back in the form of home screen/search engine neutrality. It also seems that Google is stuck because to the extent that they undermine the FB front-end, then FB will go the device route.

I think of so many folks (my wife, for example) who use their phone solely for FB — with text, email and voice as convenience apps. I think it will be fun to watch this play out.

- Matt.

Stoyan, thanks! Don’t know how surprised Google was. Unhappy, almost for sure. I am still very skeptical about Facebook’s ability to succeed with search vs. Google. Even by the virtue of integrating the social graph. However, overtaking the front-end could give them the ability to mediate, even the search… (partner with Bing for back-end search, etc.).

I think Google might choose to take a more aggressive approach here. For instance, changing the front-end radically and often enough so that it would be difficult for others to “hang on” to any front-end traction they gain.

I think Google was caught by surprise by Facebook’s strategy and will have to mount a response. Their primary reason for giving Android away for free is that with every new user activation they can get the mobile searches and associated revenue scale up.

Once FB declared that it will make the machine made information indexing obsolete and replace it with man-made indexes (your friends likes and shares) Google has been on high alert. Whether or not the one form of information retrieval is better than the other is an open question .(who sais that my cousin’s likes on FB for articles on organic food are than the top-search results that Google today generats based on > 250 signals per information unit) But Google is carefully watching for signs that people are now starting to browse the web more based on their following of friends posts and less on Google searches.

The trends is very alarming for Google. FB is now the most used “browser” in the world. Users spend more time with it than with any browser.
Will they soon perform more searches inside FB including for things they want to buy?
If yes, and Fb thinks so, then having a FB front-end experience on the Android phones deprives Google of a mobile monetization strategy.

What I especially like in FB’s take on the phone personalization is that they did not produce an Android fork, or a phone -> which would have minimized user acquisition for FB home, but rather made it into downloadable thing that everyone can install on their own on any existing Android phone.

I am extremely curious to see if FB home will take off with users, and if yes, what will Google do to stop and reverse the trend. Will they release an Android version that comes with a Google Now front-end experience that searched in FB and in Google better than FB searches in FB?
I bet they will have to.

Stoyan

There is always a delta between the press release and the actual user experience.

1) The user experience doesn’t stack up to the press conference smoke and mirrors
Go ahead and install Facebook Home – you will see it’s no great shakes as a launcher. You’ll be back to Go Launcher in no time.

2) Believe it or not – most Android users do other things besides looking at their Facebook feed. Having a FB feed in your face instead of WhatsApp, Gmail or Music is a PITA

This leads me to believe that it will have a modest PR upside for FB and little to no downside for Google Mobile search/ads.

Danny

In mobile, Ubuntu for phones has just been announced and will be shown off more at CES. How do you think it will fit into the market?

As for games, what do you think of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 successors that will likely launch later this year (or at least be announced)?