People have been saying that the freedom of Android has basically meant that the carriers are free to screw the consumers.
If I were to release an operating system that I claimed was open and that forced everybody to make [phones] all look the same and all support very narrow features and functionality, the platform wouldn't win. It wouldn't win because the OEMs have a lot of value to bring and the carriers have a lot of value to bring, and they need a vehicle by which to put their interesting differentiating features on these things. Every phone shouldn't look like every other phone. If that was the case there would just be one SKU, right? The whole idea here is just to figure out what consumers want, build phones and tailor them to what consumers want.
But you guys do have minimum standards for Android devices. So why not say you can't build devices that don't accept non-market applications? Where do you draw the line?
Well, it's tough to draw the line, and we think about that a lot. First of all, we don't like drawing lines. We like making exceptions, and we learn a lot in the process. … The point of being open is that I've given up control of what can be put on phones, and put it in the hands of everybody in the community.
But when you say "you've put it in the hands of the community," what people in the U.S. frequently hear is "you've put it in the hands of the wireless carriers."
Yes and no. It's always going to be like that. I'm not trying to be a wireless carrier, I'm not trying to assert authority over the wireless operators, but I think it's kind of like that 1.5 and 1.6 versus 2.2 scenario. I think over time they'll learn what is good business and what is bad business. Google is a big believer in openness and openness means customization. There's a difference between customization and personalization. Personalization is something the consumer does, customization is something an OEM or operator does. And they have to find the right balance there.