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With API services outside of the core operating system, Google is taking back control of Android

We didn't get a new version of Android this year at Google I/O. You can read all the lamenting and gnashing of teeth over this across the web, so I'll spare you the play by play of how it was supposed to happen (a proverbial lock), but didn't.

Instead, I'll tell you a little bit about what we did get — a huge updated version of Google's service APIs, which turns out is much better.

Wait. Better? How can an app I never wanted that got magically pushed to my phone be better than a newer, higher number in my about phone screen? That's crazy talk, right?.

Turns out, that little app is a powerful beast. Read on.

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Using some early numbers from both StatCounter and Net Applications, Mozilla’s noisiest hominid, Asa Dotzler, has illustrated Firefox 4′s meteoric rise to around 5% of Web browser global usage share. Internet Explorer 9, which launched two weeks ago, seems to be enjoying a much more casual stroll in the park with just 1.5% of the global Web usage share.

Interestingly, we can see IE9 dipping between March 20 and 21, just before the ‘Important’ Windows Update rolled out. It’s hard to say whether IE9 is only growing because of the installed-by-default Windows Update, but that small dip definitely sticks out — did excitement peter out? Did people download IE9, try it out, and summarily uninstall it? Perhaps, given their close proximity, the stats show an attention shift from Microsoft to Mozilla?

Numbers-wise, if the bottom left corner of the graph shows 2.3 million downloads for IE9, we can guesstimate that that it has now been downloaded 5 million times. Firefox is clocking in at 37 million downloads after five days of public availability.

We wonder whether Microsoft knew its release schedule would coincide so closely with Firefox 4. Internet Explorer 9 — a great browser by almost every metric — was never going to do well against anything emanating from the maws of Mozilla. The main thing, though, is that Microsoft has now shown that it’s serious when it comes to the Open Web. If Internet Explorer 10 is good, and 11 and 12, then we might finally see it compete with the zealous Mozillan horde.

Firefox 4 rockets to 5% global usage share, IE9 wallows at 1.5% originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 28 Mar 2011 05:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google, in an interesting but not entirely unexpected twist, will not be open-sourcing Android 3.0 Honeycomb for the foreseeable future.

Historically, Android is usually open-sourced via the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) a few days or weeks after the code is finalized. While this departure from the norm won’t affect OEMs like HTC and Motorola that have access to internal builds of Android, small-time developers will likely have to wait months before rolling their own distributions.

As to why Google is holding back Honeycomb, its reasons are actually rather rational. Honeycomb, while originally intended to run on all mobile form factors, is only ready for deployment on tablets. “To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs,” says Andy Rubin, the head of Google’s Android group. “We didn’t want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut.”

In other words, Google wants to prevent OEMs and homebrew developers like Cyanogen from rolling their own smartphone versions of Honeycomb — it doesn’t want to see the same bitter-tasting tabletified bastardization that occurred with Android 2.1 and 2.2 last year.

Continue reading Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android

Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Going forward, you’ll still be able to get the best tech news coverage from Engadget, HuffingtonPost Tech, Joystiq and TUAW. While we’re still working out some of the details, Switched and DownloadSquad will continue to live on the Web and be fully accessible via search. Understandably, our Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr presences will quiet down, but you can still follow the Switched and DownloadSquad writers on their personal accounts. Thanks for reading.

Farewell, Internet originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A game and a couple of tools highlight this abbreviated list of picks

The combination of Google I/O going on in San Francisco and BlackBerry Live in Orlando this week has our team a little sparse, but we think there are a few great picks to be seen this week regardless. Whether its just four apps or ten, we do our best every weekend to bring you apps that each of the Android Central writers have been using regularly the previous week.

Stick around after the break and see how this week's picks stack up against the rest.

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