Andy Rubin: After rough start, Android goes viral

Java choice

The team briefly had toyed with the idea of developing its own programming language, before it chose Java.

“What would make people bet their livelihood on our platform would not be having marginally better technology, but factors like having a payment system and other things surrounding the platform,” said Rubin. “At that Aha moment we realized we didn’t want to write a programming language, we wanted to catch the next wave, so we chose Java because all the major universities were teaching it,” he said.

Archrival Apple gets some credit for Android’s success. Its iPhone broke the carriers’ hold over handsets, giving phones access to the open Web and third-party developers. And Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T created powerful demand at rival Verizon for an alternative.

Motorola made a big bet on Android as part of its turnaround in handsets, winning Verizon’s backing, a huge win for Google. Hungry for a broadly supported mobile Linux variant, handset makers such as HTC, LG and Samsung were early Android adopters. A broad group of embedded systems companies were quick to adapt the code to their needs for everything from glucose pumps to rice cookers.

In a June interview, Rubin crowed Android hit a new milestone with 1.17 million handset activations a day and 400 million devices shipped to date. Today, “Android is in a good position to drive” interoperability across an ecosystem that includes handsets, laptops and TVs, said Rubin.


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Android’s flexibility is something of a curse, Perlman noted. For example, he spent three days debugging problems on a tablet using a Samsung application processor that never occurred on a handset using the same chip.

Aside from such “inherent problems” of an open platform, he praised Rubin’s rapid rise “from an individual contributor [at Apple, General Magic and Web TV] to a team leader.

“To do what he is doing at Google, he’s got to manage people, partner relationships, be a good witness on the stand, and a bunch of things I’m sure never dawned on him in the early days,” said Perlman. “He’s been part of the reinvention of Google, and risen in prominence at the company to become more central to what they are doing,” he said.

For Rubin, the open mobile world is like a return to his roots as a computer science student in 1976, tinkering with his first microcomputer hobbyist kit. “Teams of one could do a lot then, and that was empowering,” he said.

Likewise today, Rubin finds himself surprised with what companies are doing with Android. “All that’s happening without me, I don’t need to be in any business negotiation, they are just running fast and the last thing I want to do is slow anyone down,” he said.

Android’s future is as unpredictable as was its genesis, he added. “You know you are at the right place and time when everything aligns—better batteries, mobile processors, capacitive touch screens, 3G--everything fell into place and no one could have expected it,” he said.