Android: Going, Going, Gone (Premium)

Just as Microsoft did with Windows, Surface, and other brands, Google is now quietly deemphasizing the term “Android” in favor of its corporate brand.

This shift is the branding equivalent of sweeping some dust under a rug before the guests arrive. And as was the case with Microsoft’s shift, this is all about consolidating under a single, cohesive, and well-respected brand that has fewer ties to a questionable and sometimes embarrassing past.

That is, while Android is dominant in smartphones, the Android brand has not helped the platform move successfully to related markets for tablets, wearables, or Internet of Things (IoT) and smart home devices. Likewise, adding “Android” to its software and services brands has been equally unsuccessful, and likely to instantly turn off those using, say, an iOS device. Users trust Google in the cloud. Android? Eh.

I’m reminded of Microsoft’s cross-platform nadir, when it released something with the bone-headed name Windows Media Player for Mac. You can imagine how well that product fared. And how much Google wants to avoid alienating its users in a similar fashion.

How serious is Google about removing the “Android” brand? It has entirely recast its tablet efforts around Chrome OS, which can now run Android apps. It has renamed Android Pay to Google Pay, and it has likewise renamed various apps, like Messages, that once had the word Android in their names. It renamed the Android Wear platform to Wear OS. And it is using the Google brand, and not Android, on virtually all of its new product and offerings.

But the most amazing example of this Pravda-like rewriting of history is something I missed: As 9to5Google points out, Google’s presenters did not utter the word “Android”—even once—at this past week’s Made By Google hardware event.

Folks, that is astonishing.

Even Microsoft, in its current mad bid to push Microsoft 365, frequently uses the word “Windows” when it discusses this offering publicly. One would have to try hard not to do so. And Android today is far more popular than Windows, on far more devices, and used far more throughout the day. It’s not something one can ignore. And yet Google, that platform’s maker, did just that.

And it did just that despite the fact that one of the newly-announced products, the Pixel Slate, is Google’s first Chrome OS tablet, a device that exists in part to run Android apps on a tablet form factor. And despite the fact that it announced two new flagship smartphones which run, wait for it, Android.

So why would Google do this?

Perhaps there is some parallel in history. Google, after all, is obsessed with a fear of turning into the next Microsoft. And Android’s lack of success outside of smartphones does mirror Windows’ lack of success outside of the desktop PC, at least on the client side. It is desperate for Android to avoid Windows’ fate as a one-platform wonder.

On that note, Google is known to be plotting its way to a post-Android world in which its future platforms—like Fuchsia—will be able to run Android apps, making some future transition from Android seamless for users. Today’s work bringing Android apps to Chrome OS is pretty obviously the first step towards this future. A test run of sorts.

(Microsoft doesn’t have such a plan. Its attempts to take Windows to smartphones failed, and its attempts to make Windows simpler, safer, and more streamlined—via S mode and the Universal Windows Platform—have likewise failed. Microsoft is stuck. There’s no NT waiting in the wings to pull the customer base forward, as there was 20 years ago.)

But I also think that Google has other reasons to dump Android like a bad habit.

First, Android is generally considered to be insecure. And it has performance issues that I believe to be endemic to the platform, where devices experience a Windows-like “performance rot” over time. This never happens to iOS devices. And it never happens to Chrome OS, for that matter.

With Android out of the picture, Google can push its platforms to new technologies without freaking out its users. Future Pixel phones, for example, may simply be “Google-powered” in the same way that Windows 2000 was “based on NT technology.” Users don’t care what’s under the hood. Just that everything works.

And Android, despite its heady successes, is clearly not working. And I suspect that whatever Android-based brands that do still exist—like Android Things and Android Auto—will be renamed within the next year, as Google continues its cold march to a future in which this past never happened.

Grab the popcorn, folks. This is going to make for some entertaining viewing.