The Truth Behind Facebook's Android Apathy
Why doesn't Facebook make a better Android app?
Simple question. But when Michael Arrington put it to Facebook VP Chris Cox at TechCrunch's New York event yesterday, Cox didn't parry. Instead, he deferred, and later said this:
It's hard to know what to invest in -- a better Android app or Facebook Zero. It's a tough question.Facebook Zero is that site's low-bandwidth version, aimed at developing countries. Given Facebook's virtually unlimited resources, why is there any dichotomy between a third-world service and the comparatively high-stakes mobile platform battle? Why does it have to be either/or?
It doesn't. Cox's comments are a tacit admission that Facebook simply isn't prioritizing Android. That's a major concession considering that Android's market-share is growing aggressively, and Facebook's own mobile developers expect most of its traffic to come from mobile phones in five years.
It's not that the Facebook team is too distracted by the iPhone; in fact, the programmer that built touch.facebook.com and the Facebook iPhone app (as well as all of its custom frameworks) swore off the Apple (AAPL) platform due to philosophical differences.
Perhaps Facebook's reticence follows Google's (GOOG) own neglect. Despite Android's popularity, Google still hasn't given the Android Market much love; even its most recent update, which came in mid-May, didn't add a basic search feature to its app store. No search? Isn't this a Google product?
Sitting next to Cox on the TechCrunch was Vic Gundotra, Google's VP of developer products, whose attitude towards Android might be part of the problem. Gundotra is a frequent and vocal advocate of the "open Web," at least as Google defines it, and has been known to champion Google's Web apps as being just as good as any native smartphone app. At last year's Google I/O, the primacy of Google's Web apps was the recurring theme in Gundotra's keynote address. Reported O'Reilly:
"Never underestimate the web," says Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra in his keynote at Google I/O this morning. He goes on to tell the story of a meeting he remembers when he was VP of Platform Evangelism at Microsoft five years ago. "We believed that web apps would never rival desktop apps. There was this small company called Keyhole, which made this most fantastic geo-visualization software for Windows. This was the kind of software we always used to prove to ourselves that there were things that could never be done on the web." A few months later, Google acquired Keyhole, and shortly thereafter released Google Maps with satellite view. "We knew then that the web had won," he said. "What was once thought impossible is now commonplace."Granted, Gundotra is talking desktop apps here. But these aren't heartening sentiments if you're an Android developer hoping to make money in Google's app store. Google's "open Web" push is heavily yoked to its advocacy of HTML5, which is the same technology it uses to make its excellent mobile sites, like Google Voice mobile. If the Web has "won," it means native apps -- desktop or mobile -- have lost.
Of course, Web apps can't be bought or sold for money; they have to be free -- since users won't want to launch a Web app to find a paywall -- or they can be monetized via advertising. Putting ad units inside a Web app can drastically alter (even ruin) an app's user interface and performance, so this puts developers between a rock and a very unprofitable hard place.
This isn't Facebook's problem, since it's not exactly a team of bedroom developers looking to pay the rent with their apps. Plus, they have their own mobile site, touch.facebook.com, to fall back on. But if Google isn't committed to giving its mobile developers a profitable space to play in, then that doesn't say much for its enthusiasm for the platform in general. That's a problem consider that a smartphone platform lives and dies by the quality of its apps (sorry, Palm (HPQ)) and quality apps are begotten only by the opportunity for profit. Right now, nearly all the best Android apps -- Shazam, Evernote -- are cross-platform jobs written by developers simply looking for market-share. But that can only last so long.
All this is enough to make any technologist cynical about Google's intentions for Android. And the company's hardware strategy isn't much more inspiring. By partnering with a group of handset-makers and carriers, instead of just one or two, Google has forced its OEMs to drive down the prices of their devices as compared to the iPhone and RIM (RIMM) Blackberry. Witness the killer HTC Evo 4G, a top-notch device that goes for only $199 on Sprint (S), $100 less than the top of the line iPhone.
Google's priority seems to be, simply enough, to make sure people aren't buying iPhones or Blackberries. Since those devices have native apps, they tend to take users right to the Web content they want, obviating the need for search. (If you can go straight to the NYTimes app to look for that article everyone's talking about, then you don't need to Google it, and that means Google can't serve you ads in the process.) No wonder the search giant isn't prioritizing its app store; it wants you sticking to the "open Web," where 65% of Americans will use its search engine to find what they want.