“Baidu, a company primarily known for its search engine in China, has announced that it is launching a new mobile operating system: Yi. The new OS is to be forked off of Android and Baidu will be providing its own apps and services in lieu of Google’s apps. Those apps should include Baidu-based maps, ebooks, downloadable music, cloud storage, and cloud backup. There will also apparently be a custom SDK and app store for the platform.”
At the beginning there was only the hardware platform fragmentation problem: “Oh, it doesn’t work on your HTC Desire? It works very good on my Samsung Galaxy. On Evo it works too, but crashes sometimes…”
Now also the software platform begins to diverge. Maybe Baidu will make their backup service even mandatory. 现在新的! The Gov Cloud — also available in your province!
I was thinking more along the lines of: Big Brother in your hand, at no extra cost. It’s sort of a catchy slogan, though it might not translate well.
I haven’t seen much Android powered phones in China, so I guess baidu will have a difficult task to win over customers from the far more popular nokia and iphone platforms.
Interesting how does it fare with China Telecom plans to utilize MeeGo? I don’t believe that these govt influenced entities doesn’t consult their strategic plans.
However, so far this is just another Chinese android fork, it certainly won’t help android ecosystem in China leaving opportunity for Nokia WP7 launch.
I doubt very much that it is a full fork (as much as I doubt that the Amazon Tablet is a full fork) … it is most likely Android with a new UI on top of it (just like HTC, Samsung etc.) an a whole lot of services, extra applications thrown into the mix (much like google apps) … it would be crazy to fork Android and not make use of the already existing user/developer base, and I doubt that developers will want to support yet another platform … (the same for Amazon, they would be shooting themselves in the foot , also note that the Amazon App Store contains regular Andorid Apps) … so I think the talk about Android forks lately is somewhat overhyped …
Edited 2011-09-07 13:06 UTC
They said they will develop it independently from the existing Android codebase and it won’t match Android version numbers so that really sounds like a classical definition of a fork.
They had to fork it because Google keeps the latest versions closed so they would always be seen as being behind. I am sure they will retroactively merge new Android stuff back in though.
This will be sort of like UNIX flavors. Mostly compatible at the ABI layer but with enough differences that you need some type of compatibility layer.
Note, that they don’t care much if devs outside China will ignore the platform.
The play here is to keep chineese market (and ecosystems) out of control by entities outside of China, which starts to become major consumer force.
The language barier causes the natural fragmentation in any platform anyway.
Edited 2011-09-07 17:07 UTC
I actually think this is more of a business decision for Baidu, rather then a politically motivated one.
No one but Google makes money from Android and Baidu had to pay telco’s to carry their apps. Now Baidu can do a deal with the OEM’s to provide their OS and there is no need to deal with the telco’s.
I guess they will make sure latest Android apps work on their platform but not the other way around not unlike clasic EEE MS approach.
If this was an event happening anywhere in the rest of the world, then I’d agree with you. However, you seem to be underestimating just how badly China wants to rely on itself & not the outside world for IT & general technology. Don’t forget that most computer tech is created with the Western world in mind. This has massive benefits for us, but massive downsides for Asian countries who communicate very differently than we do. For a better idea of how well this could turn out, look to the Chinese Linux based OSes, the Chinese MIPS processor, & other Chinese homegrown tech that mimics what’s available in the rest of the world. Lets face it, China’s a huge country, with tons & tons of people. Would you really want all of those people to think that their own country couldn’t compare to everyone else. For the most part, countries want their citizens using mostly homegrown products.
One of the largest companies in the world launches a new OS and a OSNews makes it a sidebar feature. Instead, we get news on the front page about some guys house getting searched by some cops and Apple security for 3 days.
Does this not strike you as sort of an odd, given what this site is supposed to be about?
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*sigh*
You obviously hate me and this site. Why are you even here?
He doesn’t want to start his own site, it’s easier to try to sway you to change your site (since it’s less work).
What makes this somewhat interesting is what baidu is doing is somewhat legal…as long as baidu also abides by the GPL for the linux kernel.
Edited 2011-09-07 16:20 UTC
And if they don’t, what can you (anyone) do? Sue chineese government (which is probably behind any large enterprise there)?
I don’t hate you and l like OSNews. I’ve been coming here for like 5 years and – for reasons unknown even to me – I virtually post nowhere else except here. I guess it’s some sort of habit. I give you a hard time because I loved OSNews in the past and more and more it’s drifting into the direction of being a soapbox on random legal issues.
I do think that your way too obsessed with patents and litigation and other shit. I get that it relates to computing and it’s future but is it really what this site is about?
If not, why not put more content about computing on the front page. What’s more salient to OSNews then news that a new OS has been launched?
Instead you put a lawsuit between AT&T and Sprint on the front page, really? How does it relate to computing and it’s future? (You could at least explain these things in the summary.)
They’re both on the front page. We don’t have two pages. We have only one page: the front page.
Your splitting hairs now. You know what I am saying.
‘OSNews, the future of computing’, right?
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PS. What is the deal with this fancyshop guy?
Aren’t lawsuits the future of computing ?
The lawsuits put Apple in a bad light. That’s why he doesn’t like those news items.
Because its most probably not a fork
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/no-android-forks-here/9485?ta…