00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Is Google’s delay in releasing source code a sign of AOSP’s impending doom?
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And could Google finally make Health Connect a true alternative to Apple Health?
00:09 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:11 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown and this is the Authority Insights podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:20 – Mishaal Rahman: So this week or actually last week, Google released Android 16 QPR1. For those of you Pixel users, this came in the form of the September 2025 Pixel Drop. And typically developers, you know, once Google pushes out the update for Pixel phones, they only have to wait about 24 to 48 hours maximum for Google to upload the source code. But this time, the source code is nowhere to be found and Google told us that developers might have to wait a couple of weeks for the source code to arrive. And to date, Health Connect has been a central hub for all your health and fitness data, but it currently doesn’t track any data of its own. But that could change in an upcoming update. And also this week, we got a threefer in terms of the updates that are coming to the Gemini app. We have a bunch of new features that are improving the experience of using the app and starting a chat, searching through your previous chats, and then finding key info about real world places in your chats. So let’s get started with the biggest story in my opinion. It’s the fact that Google has delayed the release of the source code for Android 16 QPR1. Now, for regular users, you probably won’t really care about this news because, I mean, you’re not going to be diving through Android source code anytime soon. It doesn’t really matter to you. But it does, it is a concerning trend considering, you know, for years now, Google has released a source code in a very timely manner following the release of an update for a Pixel device. So, just for a little bit of background knowledge, what is AOSP? AOSP is short for the Android Open Source Project. It is the open source version of the Android operating system that runs on all Android devices. It is licensed under the Apache license 2.0, which is a software license that is very permissive. It allows anyone, even you and me, to take the code, modify it, and redistribute it however we please without paying a fee to Google and without having to upload any changes we made. We don’t have to release the source code for anything we do. And, I mean, that’s why you have like One UI from Samsung, Hyper OS from Xiaomi. They have all these heavily customized versions of Android that are originally based on Google’s open source version. And the only reason why these various flavors of Android even kind of behave similarly to other devices is because Google tries to maintain some semblance of control through compatibility licensing requirements, through application distribution agreements, through its Google Mobile Services bundling. And Scott, I kind of want to ask you, you know, for many years now, Google has had this kind of dual layer approach where they have, you know, AOSP is open source, and then you have Google tacking on all these requirements to OEMs through Google Mobile Services, through the compatibility requirements. What did you think of this arrangement? Do you think it’s been effective for Google in making Android more popular? Or do you think it’s kind of been a bad approach for Google to grow Android?
03:31 – C. Scott Brown: Well, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Like as far as spreading Android around and making it become the dominant mobile operating system in the world, huge success, 100%, no question. You know, I mean, Android is in everything. It’s in cars, it’s in tablets from, you know, from Amazon, you know, that has, you know, quote unquote, its own operating system, Fire OS, but that’s just Android with, you know, heavily modified code. And then, you know, I think like the screens that you find on a plane when you’re riding on a plane and you see the screen, 99% of those are Android. Like Android is everywhere. So if all we’re thinking about is whether or not this system made Android popular, 100% yes, very big win. The question though is whether or not it’s been successful at doing what Google needs it to do, which is to be an operating system that it controls and makes money off of. And that is a little bit more of a shaky answer. There’s not a definitive yes there, which is the main reason why I think this new development with, you know, AOSP, the source code not being released in a timely manner, as well as a couple of other things that uh that have happened over the past few months and even a couple that we’ve already talked about even in the short history of this podcast, that lead to the concept that Google is trying to close down Android a little bit, you know. It’s an open source operating system. It’s never going to be closed source. Like Google would have to fundamentally change the entire core idea of what Android is. So it’s always going to be open source. It’s just that Google is sort of slimming down how much of it is actually accessible to the public in a very open manner. And the reason for that is because Google, you know, Google wants to have more control over it and it’s seeing pressure from outside sources to do different things with Android, most notably the EU. So depending on how you look at it, the AOSP system has been good or not so great. And it really just kind of goes with how you perceive the success of Android being.
05:46 – Mishaal Rahman: Yeah, I’ve always felt, you know, there’s a bit of an asterisk when you call AOSP or Android an open source operating system, like open source project because you know, when you think of open source, you think of like you have a public GitHub repository where a bunch of independent developers all contribute code and you all work together and you have like maintainers who like approve patches and approve code kind of like in the Linux kernel, which is like there’s a huge community of people volunteering and working on things like and and contributing to a single project. It’s quite a bit different when it comes to Android. Google is the sole maintainer of Android. They have final say in terms of what gets submitted to the code base. Not only that, earlier this year they actually shut down the ability for developers to contribute their own code. They now developed Android fully in private. And so, you know, if you’re not a Google engineer or you’re not an engineer that works at one of the OEMs, there’s a very low chance you’ll be able to contribute anything that ends up in Android’s codebase. And another thing is that Google has the final say on whether or not they release the Android source code at all. There is technically no legal obligation for them to do so. There’s nothing forcing them to release the source code for the Android that runs on your phones. And in fact, there are several versions of Android where they don’t release the source code at all. We don’t have the source code for Wear OS. There’s no source code for Android TV. We do have the source code for Android Automotive, but that’s actually a strategic move from Google because they are trying to convince car makers to actually adopt their platform and to do that, they kind of want to give car makers the ability to customize it to suit their needs. So they’re kind of forced into that position. Okay, we want to attract car makers and use we want them to build on the Android platform, but they won’t do it unless they have some level of control. So we’re going to release this as an open source platform so we can get better penetration in the car market, which is kind of like the reason why they did Android as an open source project from the in from the get go because when you’re when you’re growing a project, they needed to convince smartphone makers and tablet makers and way back then that okay, you’re going to use our you’re going to use our operating system as your base instead of another platform or develop your own. And to do that, we’re going to release it as an open source project so that, you know, if you ever grow tired of things that we’re doing, you can always fork it and start your own project. But kind of, we’re in this we’re in this position now where Android is so ubiquitous and it’s so well- developed that there’s really no benefit to companies shying away from it unless you’re you’re trying to like create some new form factor that Google themselves don’t support, kind of like you have Meta with Horizon OS for their XR devices, which Google is now actually trying to compete with their Android XR. And you also have this position where Google is so dominant with its GMS, Google Play services and Google Play Store that it would be a really bad idea for an OEM to release a mobile device without the Play Store. So they’re kind of like in a position where they’re going to go with Google’s version of Android, whether they like it or not, because if they want to have access to all the apps in the Play Store, they got to go with Google’s version of it.
09:03 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, I think I think the core idea here is that times have changed. You know, when Android first came out, Google was trying to like you said, trying to build these relationships, trying to make it so like, no, don’t use your own proprietary operating system. We tried that, you know, with the Palm and BlackBerry and all these different operating systems on all these different smartphones. And Google was kind of like, okay, we’re all collectively fighting against iOS or at the time, iPhone OS. You know, we’re all collectively fighting against that. So let’s band together. Here’s an operating system. It’s free to use, do whatever you want with it, you know, we Google just gifted it to them. Things are different now. Like you said, now it’s like if you don’t use Android and you’re not, you know, Apple, then you’re basically signing your own death certificate. You’re never going to survive in the wide world of smartphones. Unless you’re Huawei in China specifically, but that’s a very distinct difference because, you know, Huawei is basically like the national brand of China. So, of course, they can succeed there. But for everybody else, if you don’t use Android, you’re done. So, yeah, Google’s now at the position where it has all the power and it’s like, well, you know, what’s the what benefit, you know, what what benefit is there to us if we do all the stuff that we’ve been doing for the past, whatever it’s been, 20 years. It’s just not there anymore. So it’s like, yeah, times have changed. and I think Google is starting to realize that, you know, it can change the way it does things and people don’t really have anything that they can say about it. I mean, what’s going to happen is Samsung going to start releasing, you know, Samsung OS on their phones? No, of course not. Like it’s just that’s just not happening.
10:52 – Mishaal Rahman: I mean it’s not just that there’s no benefit now. It’s actually arguably actively detrimental to them to to continue going the way they’ve been going because we’ve seen with the EU coming after Google and the Epic v. Google trial that the way Google’s been doing its business where they kind of dangle AOSP is an open source platform, but then, you know, they kind of enforce their own requirements through trying to force GMS on OEMs and through the licensing agreements that governments really don’t like this arrangement. They really don’t like how Google is promoting AOSP as an open platform while at the same time trying to get companies to bundle all of its services and abide by all of its rules. They kind of see this as like a bait and switch and a way for Google to exert monopolistic pressure. Ironically enough, you know, Apple iOS has been closed from the very beginning, but they didn’t get the same scrutiny in the epic fee Apple trial and a large reason was because since they were closed from the very beginning, there was never an argument that they were having to use any monopolistic practices to kind of close off access to its platform because the platform was never open in the first place. So if Google were to close off Android hypothetically, then OEMs would have to work with Google. There would be no, oh, we’re we have the option of using AOSP, but Google’s forcing us to use GMS. If they were to close off Android, it would only be if you want the latest version of Android and all the security fixes, then you have to have GMS. And that forced bundling would kind of ironically take away from the arguments that, you know, the governments have had against Google and what I feel kind of contributed to their losses in these anti-trust cases.
12:34 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, so I mean, Google’s kind of in a tough situation now. It’s got to slowly migrate Android to being less open source while still, of course, maintaining it as a de facto open source system because like I said earlier, unless Google completely changes what Android is, it will always have to be on a on a certain level an open source platform because of Apache 2.0 and all the things that entails. So it’s like, I don’t know, Google’s in a tough position. But I think that the core issue here for this particular bit of news with the operating system or sorry, with Google not releasing the source code for these big changes that have happened. I think it’s just going to be growing pains, you know, and developers are just going to have to sort of adjust every month as Google decides like, oh, here’s a new thing that we’re going to take away that we’ve done before in the past. And that’s going to be rough on developers, but I think in the end, it’s going to continue to make Android be the dominant player. Like that’s all Google wants. Like Google does not want Android to get worse and it doesn’t want it to lose market share. It wants it to be the number one operating system for mobile devices in the world, which it is right now, and it wants it to stay that way. So this is all very strategic. It’s just that, you know, change is hard for developers. Change is hard for Android users and we’re just going through a lot of changes over the next few years and we’re just going to have to see how it goes at the end. But yeah, I don’t know. I think a lot of people would view this as being bad. They’d be like, oh, this is bad. Like Google is doing bad things to Android. But it’s not really bad. It’s just things have changed. It’s been a long time since Android first came around and things can’t stay the same forever, you know?
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