Before Google’s Android Ruled the World, It Had to Get Radical. I Had a Front-Row Seat

Before smartphones became ubiquitous, I got my hands on a device that would change the game. This wasn’t just any phone. It was the T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream outside the US, the first phone to run Google’s Android operating system. And I was lucky enough to witness its inception.

No, it wasn’t a revolutionary design, with a QWERTY keyboard or a groundbreaking touch screen. Instead, it was a chunky 3.2-inch device that wanted to be my new best friend.

I was at the Google Android launch event in 2009, coming from the CNET office in San Francisco, for one reason only. My job the next day as a reporter covering the emerging world of Android apps, pitted against Apple’s smash-hit iOS for the iPhone. And boy, did I need to see these apps up close.

The “app store” concept, as we know it today — “app store” being a term that would make Steve Jobs famously livid — was still far-off. The user interface was clunky. The graphics were pixelated, and everything felt a bit rough around the edges. But Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn’t seem to mind, strutting on rollerblades to take a first look at Android on Sept. 23, 2008, to a small group of reporters.

And let me tell you, it was a Google moment. On a Google phone. They were in their element.

Fast forward 15 years, and Android is now running on billions of devices worldwide. There are over 3 billion Android devices (not just phones), Google has told CNET. Five out of the top 10 phones globally are running Google’s Android operating system as of August 2023, according to StatCounter, at a commanding 70% of global market share. Android’s dominance worldwide not only demonstrates the enduring power of Google’s smartphone platform, but also the transformative impact on people’s lives: Over 4.6 billion people now have a pocket-sized camera, and in many cases, a computer, too. And anyone can put it to work.

(In the US, Android is second only to iPhone, with 46.5% of the US market as of March 2023, according to Statista.)

Today, there are over 2.5 million apps available on Google Play, according to Statista (Google no longer provides exact figures). From the Android Market beginnings with just around 35 apps, the earliest apps were basic and powerless compared with today’s apps. For example, you couldn’t even change the camera settings on the first Android phone.

But it wasn’t until Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS rewrote the smartphone rulebook that Google felt the need to change its hardware game. Google had to catch up to how Apple, whose iPhone debuted in 2007, was doing business.

Doing well wasn’t enough for Google. Android was reborn time and time again with code names like Cupcake (Android 1.5) and Lollipop (Android 5.0, 5.1), hardware partnerships with the likes of Samsung and Motorola, and driving a car-hailing service that could rival Apple’s giant leap — things like voice-activated search, turn-by-turn navigation, mobile payments and paying attention to a few other minor things. It helped make pocket-size computers accessible to everyone, even if we take them for granted today.

Google dove deeper, too. Android’s growth led to some machines that fold up like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 sandwich and current apps that can zoom in and out from a single fold. While others were fixated on being the dominant smartphone OS to rule all, I was an eager n00b looking to get a taste of everyone’s soup — whether that was Android or iOS. Especially, given the early competition from Symbian that at one point controlled 70% of the global market. BlackBerry and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile threw in their own entanglements, followed by the rise and fall of Palm’s WebOS tech media darling. Then came the true high-stakes battle of Android versus Apple.

Looking back, Google’s relentless rivalry with Apple and changing smartphone apps was what drove them to be so good at what they did. Did it start from the very beginning?

Context, as they say, is everything. Be here with me now. Take a look at me. And pick up that picture.

Google’s First “Phone” Took Center Stage

The Apple iPhone? That was a thing. Apple was already a cult and a pioneer, but it had a real moment of greatness with the iPod, its music player. The iPhone, well, it was like a really big iPod that could also make phone calls, and — get this — you could touch its screen. Then, you’d walk around with your head held high. But Google was an internet company that also sold things like ads. Google’s phone … did that catch on?

“No one answered this call before,” I wrote about the ambitious conference I attended on Sept. 21, 2008. “Should it be called the Google Phone, or G Phone?” Apparently, it couldn’t. It took another five and a half years, until October 2016, when the first “Android” phone named Pixel arrived, with no extra skins or bloatware on their phones. And Google seemed to be OK with that.

The next thing was to make sure I understood the language of their devices as well as they did. Top phones like the Samsung BlackJack, Palm Treo 650, Nokia N95, and BlackBerry 7100 were in widespread use, and I needed to be able to learn about and write about their devices.

I wanted to know their secret languages, the quirky, at times quirky handwriting recognition scripts like Palm Pilots’ Graffiti that powered pre-touch screen magical hardware (not phones!)

In my quest, I got to use the latest and greatest looking devices, chunky QWERTY’s that looked like they had extra pounds, and decipher the squiggles of hands that had much sharper fonts so that I too could learn about such devices from my colleagues in the industry. reading.

Alongside the iPhone and Android, these handheld devices often took their computing cues from larger computers. They had touchscreens as a point of pride, were powerful enough to display graphics in their time, and they also had the price and credit to borrow skeptical customers. It wasn’t a matter of the kind of computer your child or executive was supposed to have — don’t worry, we had both and were underwhelmed — it was whether a particular rendition could. make the make and model — don’t forget to buy and put it to work.

Those are the steps that put Android and iOS on very different trajectories from today’s top dogs. They were different because they weren’t afraid to tackle everything outside their sphere of the brain, or in some cases, the difficult to reach. Google, on the other hand, understood that the best apps aren’t always the fanciest. Like iPhone apps, they too saw the value in being simple. Unlike iPhone apps, they were considered open-source.

Another route Google didn’t take was to become a walled garden or pick sides, or to show up as a big-name competing clubby group. But from my perspective now, it seems obvious.

“Cool … but so what?”

Maybe so. Or maybe, Google’s ethos of leading with radical ideas was much harder.