Gimme a break Google! Android sells out
In 2004, Major League Baseball announced a Spiderman 2 promotion. The first, second and third bases would display the superhero's logo. As expected, baseball fans were livid and, as a result, the promotion was cancelled -- they did not want to cheapen the sport that they love. However, baseball is not just a game. It is an identity. Yes, people actually identify with the pastime, and the same can be said for Android. Sure, some may view it as just a mobile operating system, however, many geeks and nerds actually identify with the mobile OS. It is not just an operating system to them. Android is their stance against the establishment and a way to bond with other Google OS users.
Today, the search giant announces that the next version of Android will be named KitKat, after the iconic Nestlé candy bar. Much like the way that candy bar can be broken into 4 pieces, the hearts of many geeks and nerds are broken too. You see, this is the first time that the operating system is named after a corporation's product. It is signaling that Android has "jumped the shark" and is no longer cool. What's next? L'Oréal? M&Ms? Nike?
While I am surprised by today's announcement, I probably shouldn't be. Most everything Google does is funded by advertisements. Heck, the company even scans the email of Gmail users so that they can better target them with ads. The fact that its operating system is named after a corporate product is in line with its apparent strategy.
Let us not forget that Android is Linux. Naming a Linux distribution after a corporate product is a slap in the face to the open source community as a whole. However, the bastardization of Linux has a precedent -- Ubuntu has been selling search results to Amazon.
Whether money was exchanged between Google and Nestlé is inconsequential -- a dangerous precedent isn set for Android and Pandora's box cannot be closed. I fear that this may only be the beginning of Android's eventual corporate demise.
What are your thoughts? Has Google "sold out" or "jumped the shark"? Tell me below.