Nokia, the world’s largest cellular phone maker by revenues, criticized Google’s Android system is not an open system despite Google launched Android’s source code last year.

Symbian Foundation director Lee Williams claimed the Linux-based Google OS merely wears a big ‘open’ badge to disguise its underlying ‘closed shop’ ethos.
“Android is not open,” told ZDNet Asia’s sister site Silicon.com. “It’s a marketing label. It’s controlled by Google.”

“It’s a pretty label but I don’t think the use of Linux is synonymous with open and they may have made that mistake of assuming it is,” he added.

“If you’re talking about a platform and the source code isn’t completely available for that platform, I would say it’s misleading to call that platform open,” he said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show last week. “Because that platform can’t be adapted, changed and shaped by the people who are consuming that platform–the handset OEMs or the carriers. I’d say that if you need to join some sort of a club in order to get access to the source code–so membership in some consortium or some other group–then it really truly isn’t open.”

Google’s vice president of mobile, Rich Mine denied the criticism. He said “”there is no Google technology built into it that we haven’t made available to others. So we’re enabling our competitors as much as ourselves,” adding: “We think that when somebody controls an entire platform like that it’s bad for the industry. They have huge leverage and this is why Google invests so much in open platforms and technologies.”

Do you think that Android is merely a marketing label of Google? Please leave your opinions here.

via: ZDnet