What if Google disappears

/e/OS Foundation & Community
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Hi,

I’m new to this project. As a long time LineageOS User I absolutely agree and support this idea to be free and independent.

But I have some philosophical theoretical questions.
While trying the best to avoid any Google connections in the OS, the AOSP is still a Google project. I don’t want to say, be thankful to the big G, but what would happen without Google?
Even if it won’t just disappear, what if Google closes AOSP or rejects any forms or something?
Afaik the e foundation would not have the manpower to continue all the development on its own, would it?
All major releases or security notices are still pulled from Google?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a real open operating system like Linux for mobile? I know there have been many ideas and projects in that direction, nothing really established today.
So as of today there is only Android established with the large app stores.
That means, /e/OS will stay dependent from Google AOSP while trying hard to stay independent from their services?

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Yes.

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:wink: Mobile Linux is established, and is available on several devices, such as Purism’s Librem 5. It runs a real Linux desktop OS (on a recent, mainline Linux kernel) that has been adapted to the small mobile touchscreen, with a modem capable of VoLTE calls, SMS, MMS, and mobile internet, as well as WiFi, bluetooth, ethernet, etc. Established Linux applications have been and are currently being adapted by developers to work as mobile applications. New applications are being created, thanks to the worldwide Linux community.

Is it a polished mobile experience like Android or iOS? No. Not yet. But the software is steadily improving, and issues are tracked and worked on. The most important point is that the Librem 5 and other Linux devices are built to protect our data, not exploit it.

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Highly interesting.
But the main disadvantage is the lack of well designed mobile apps, if they don’t succeed adapting the Android API to run Android apps.
But still interesting as second device.
So I can’t use old Android hardware for this Linux?

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You can with ubuntu touch

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Well, I wouldn’t put it past Samsung or Huawei or some consortium to carry the torch; these companies have incentive to keep it going…now, whether they simply keep the AOSP project up-and-running in its current state, or fork the code and make Android proprietary, is another matter entirely.

Probably not, but /e/OS is dependent on LineageOS already - as far as I’m aware, any phone that has an /e/OS build already has a LineageOS build, because /e/OS is a derivative of Lineage. Your concern is more likely to impact Lineage, which would have all sorts of downstream impacts on the modding community at large. What those would look like, I’m not entirely sure - it could look something like MariaDB (which is still drop-in compatible with MySQL despite being a fork), or it could look like MacOS - OSS underpinnings but not OSS itself. It depends on who carries the torch.

Well, they’re pulled from AOSP, so security updates would be pulled from whoever takes it over, depending on how the new ownership handles them. What would be interesting (in a depressing way) would be if Samsung took it over, made the security updates proprietary, then Google or OnePlus has to take them to court to get the updates to avoid a class action lawsuit for Pixel owners.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a real open operating system like Linux for mobile? I know there have been many ideas and projects in that direction, nothing really established today. So as of today there is only Android established with the large app stores.

Well, that sounds good on paper, but the devil is always in the details. Computing, in general, requires a level of pragmatism in order to get adoption. In Latin America, WhatsApp is so popular, that many storefronts ONLY list their WhatsApp number as a means of contact, lacking a traditional phone number or website. We can argue about how terrible Meta is all day long, but an OS that doesn’t run WhatsApp is an OS that will not get traction in that region of the world any more than a phone without calling or texting would work in yours. Venmo is popular in my region of the world, and Revolut is so popular in other regions that /e/OS has specific fixes to get it running. An operating system is an environment to run other software, and if a particular environment doesn’t run the desired software, it’s out of the running for most people. I can sum this problem up in that Microsoft spent a fortune trying to make Windows Phone happen, and couldn’t. If they couldn’t make a third OS happen, with all their money and infrastructure and integrations and established markets, it’s pretty clear that the barrier to entry is way higher than “are you tired of Google and Meta?”

That means, /e/OS will stay dependent from Google AOSP while trying hard to stay independent from their services?

This is largely addressed already; what happens to the AOSP project after Google is too difficult to meaningfully speculate since it is entirely contingent on who gets a hold of it, and how open they keep it.

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That is basically the fear I’ve always had with AOSP, which is why I was a Windows Phone user from 2012 through 2021 or so, before reluctantly buying a Surface Duo as my grudging transition to the Android ecosystem with a ton of Microsoft apps preloaded (though still trying hard to avoid Google apps, using alternative app stores, and refusing to store my passwords with Google or use Google Pay). I simply liked the idea of an established company like Microsoft maintaining (and bankrolling) an alternative to Android and iOS that had a chance of lasting rather than being a community-based project that would struggle to get off the ground, and knew Google could pull the rug out from under anything based on AOSP. So I get it.

However, there are one or two things I know about from that (fairly painful) experience that make me think there’s still a better shot for an AOSP fork even if Google closes the code or goes out of business.

The first one is that an operating system needs killer apps or no one will use it. Even if I myself didn’t need apps back then, most people were hungry to make themselves dependent on iOS and Android-exclusive apps almost as soon as smartphones were a thing, locking themselves in and turning iOS and Android into the mobile world’s equivalent of Mac and Windows/DOS, leaving Windows Phone to pretty much become OS/2. A handful of early adopters and developers catering to them built up a critical mass that left us stuck on a less-than-optimal path that most of us never got to pick regardless of whether we saw trouble ahead or not. A Linux phone would, at this point, unfortunately be in exactly the same boat as Linux on desktop. Stuck simulating Android with something similar to WINE in order to have a shot.

The second thing I’ve learned is that there’s something of a network effect with open source developers, and that they all tend to adopt one popular thing en masse and work very hard to promote and protect their chosen stack, and are more likely to put extra work into keeping that thing going because of how much has been built on top of it. If you don’t make the same choice as the average open source developer, this network effect hurts you badly. But if you build on the same foundation, you benefit from it. So even if AOSP source dries up, we still have the existing source code for AOSP to use as a foundation.

The place the network effect stands to benefit /e/OS here is that even if AOSP were to be shut down and Google decided to make future versions of Android mostly proprietary, there are a ton of other players with an incentive to help maintain an open fork. There’s the LineageOS team, there’s several forks of AOSP that would probably work together to try and keep that open fork of AOSP relevant. All the fans of those forks and associated developers could in theory work towards keeping the project alive, whereas when Microsoft decided Windows Phone wasn’t commercially viable, there was literally nothing fans of it could do, even if they had development experience and drive. Also, there really isn’t anything else as complete to use as a base besides older versions of AOSP (at the time the source drops cease), and Linux phones are basically starting from scratch on principle without even really offering a different kernel, since Android already uses the Linux kernel.

So the most realistic possibility is that AOSP dries up, the last version of it becomes an open fork that perhaps slowly evolves into something more like a Linux phone over time as the open fork of AOSP diverges from official Android, unless it keeps chasing Android compatibility and trying to reverse engineer whatever Google did going forwards and keep AOSP alive.

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if you got AOSP Angst (or think it’s bloated :slight_smile: ) , I’d pickup a Oneplus 6 or 6T with lots of ram and install mobile linux, it made considerable progress, has polaroid quality photos already.

There’s also Furilabs who sells mediateks with linux and lots of ram too, but more expensive. It took early adopters buying pinephones or Librem5 to get the ecosystem going, but as of today you’ll have more fun when the hardware is more current or an older powerful qualcomm SoC.

The target group is still the enthusiast, but I think most casual users would be surprised too. All that said, mobile linux sure is primitive from an architectural view compared to Android, but who cares

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Adroid APKs can run on Linux by using Anbox. Is it working well? Well …

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Waydroid is what’s currently working to run (some, many) Android apps on Linux mobile phones.

I don’t use it on my Librem 5, but from what I’ve read in the Purism forums, not all proprietary Android apps will work. But the likely reason is that many, if not most, proprietary apps exist solely to extract data from you for purposes of monetization, and Waydroid might prevent that due to sandboxing.

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Totally agree, our best friends here are actually Huawei and Amazon who have app stores and have big interests in maintaining an open AOSP. Even Microsoft will invest in maintaining an open AOSP if Google stops maintaining it because it is in Microsoft interests.

It will be interesting to observe if Huawei and Amazon will legally be able to stop Google from preventing the installation of unsigned apps in the future. In the European Union, Apple lost big lawsuits for the very same reason.

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See this: Exclusive: Amazon looks to ditch homegrown software for Android in Fire tablet revamp, sources say | Reuters and/or this: Amazon Fire TV devices expected to ditch Android for Linux in 2025 - Ars Technica

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This is an excellent news for /e/ OS, Murena and LineageOS !!

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I believe that if Google eventually decides to stops supporting AOSP that will only pave the way for a new global order in Open Source collaboration. Remember when Cyanogenmod closed LineageOS started and is going strong with a huge base. Today there are a large number of custom ROMs which are in turn used by millions around the world. I would assume the next logical step would be they will all band together and carry the torch. There definitely will be a bit of friction between the participants but the continuation of open source smartphone OS is a common interest they all share. Progress cannot be stopped by the few.

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Honestly, I think this is what needs to happen regardless. Spread more awareness online, try and have every open source project band together, even if we do have disagreements with individual distributions and give people a true alternative to the Apple/Google duopoly.

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