OneMoreGoogle

há 9 anosdiscuss

This is the first I've heard of Copperhead. From their install page [1]:

"You can obtain the adb and fastboot tools from the Android SDK. Either install Android Studio or use the standalone SDK. Do not use distribution packages for adb and fastboot. Distribution packages are out-of-date and not compatible with the latest version of Android. An obsolete fastboot will result in corrupted installations and potentially bricked devices. Do not make the common mistake of assuming that everything will be fine and ignoring these instructions. Double check that the first fastboot in your PATH is indeed from an up-to-date SDK installation"

Great if it works for you, but this is clearly not a viable option for the great majority, nor is it an example of "polished UX."

[1] https://copperhead.co/android/docs/install

OneMoreGoogle

há 9 anosdiscuss

You're making the case that Android users choose out of resentment while iOS users choose what they like.

OneMoreGoogle

há 9 anosdiscuss

Xoogler here, worked there for 18 months circa 2015.

> And the first thing they told us at the orientation is that they put the users first.

This is the company line, but the truth is that Google no longer knows itself. The orientation was designed in an era where Google was growing rapidly. The fear was that the early company culture of mutual trust and so on was likely to be diluted by the influx of new hires, so let's administer a proactive cultural injection.

But the reality today (err, 2015) is that the Google culture is no longer monolithic. Even basic day-to-day processes are different between Chrome and Android and Google and X and probably other teams I wasn't exposed to. The orientation has now become counter-productive for a large subset of the engineers, because it sets expectations wrong.

Examples: "Every engineer has access to all the source code." Or "no company code may be stored locally on a laptop." Or "every change must be code reviewed." These were company policies that were routinely violated by individual teams, which I only learned after daring to ask "how the heck are you getting your JOB done?"

Does Google "put the users first?" Depends on the org. In my admittedly brief tenure there, the most important consideration was internal politics, followed by "partner" and "ecosystem" concerns. Users registered but only distantly, mainly because we didn't expect many of them.

I think Modern Google can be best summarized with a company-wide goal of "be the most." Google Search as the most-used search, Android as the most-used OS, Chrome as the most-used browser, etc. If your revenue is based on page-views, and page-views are based on click counts...

"Most" is different from "best."

Edit: I feel obligated to clarify how the "we didn't expect many users" comment meshed with the "be the most" principle. I was a software engineer in a hardware org (think Pixel). The point of high-end hardware like Pixel was not to dominate the market, but instead be a prestige product that moves expectations. By building a MBP-level laptop, Google could demonstrate that ChromeOS is not just for throwaway laptops, and thereby make ChromeOS viable on its partners high-end hardware. Being too successful was an anti-goal, because it risks scaring off Samsung and the like.

The hope was not to single-handedly dominate a la Apple, but rather to foster the "ecosystem." As to users, well...they'd be better served indirectly by a robust ecosystem. Or at least that was the hope.

You'll notice that Google does not build low-end hardware, with the notable exception of Chromecast, which is another story.

OneMoreGoogle

há 9 anosdiscuss

I spent ~18 months at Google, and one of the annoying aspects was the diversity of build systems. I built with Ninja, emerge, Blaze, and Android's Rube-Goldberg-shell-script system.

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