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At Priceonomics, we firmly believe that resale value is the best objective indicator of product quality. If you wanted to figure out the best cell phone, you could look at all the reviews, test out all the phones, talk to all the experts, but still your assessment will be subjective. Or you could let the market tell you which phones are the highest quality by seeing which ones best retain their value over time.

Priceonomics phone pricing data strongly indicates that Apple phones are a better value than smartphones on other platforms. The market has spoken, and Android and Blackberrys do not age well.

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“Our firm’s reputation for providing quality service reflects the high standards we demand of ourselves. Our high standards, responsive service and specialized staff spell the difference between our firm and the rest.”

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We at Cato enjoy citing Frederic Bastiat’s 1845 classic of free-trade pamphleteering, the “Petition of the Candlemakers,” which addresses the French Parliament as follows:

…We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival… is none other than the sun…

The satire goes on to demand that the government banish the unfair competition and restore proper encouragement to domestic industry by requiring that owners exclude sunlight from all building windows.

Once again real life is making it hard to tell satire from reality — appropriately, in Bastiat’s France. According to an Agence France-Presse account, a French commercial court has ordered Google to pay 500,000 Euros to a local map company for unfair practices that constitute an abuse of the “dominant position of its Google Maps application.” In particular, Google provides its maps for free, unlike complainant Bottin Cartographes, which charges good money and has apparently run into trouble holding onto its customers on that basis.

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Preliminary results show users from Google IP address ranges in India deleting, moving and abusing OSM data including subtle edits like reversing one-way streets.

Two OpenStreetMap accounts have been vandalizing OSM in London, New York and elsewhere from Google’s IP address, the same address in India reported by Mocality.

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Update: Google sent the following statement to ReadWriteWeb on Tuesday morning. “The two people who made these changes were contractors acting on their own behalf while on the Google network. They are no longer working on Google projects.”

Well – that must have been an awkward conversation…

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Since October, Google’s GKBO appears to have been systematically accessing Mocality’s database and attempting to sell their competing product to our business owners. They have been telling untruths about their relationship with us, and about our business practices, in order to do so. As of January 11th, nearly 30% of our database has apparently been contacted.

Furthermore, they now seem to have outsourced this operation from Kenya to India.

“Do No Evil” apparently doesn’t apply to Africa?

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It’s one thing for Google to tightly integrate their own social network with their web search results, using their monopoly (or, if you prefer, monopsony) to give Google Plus a significant competitive advantage over Facebook and Twitter. Some see this as anticompetitive behavior; others see this as good clean competitive hardball. Are they unfairly abusing a monopoly, or fairly using their best strength to their own advantage? That’s up for debate.

But to deny that they’re doing it at all? It defies belief.

I honestly don’t know what’s worse: if Google is so institutionally delusional that they actually believe this isn’t giving Google Plus a tremendous advantage (fair or unfair) over every other social network in the world, or if Google thinks so poorly of everyone outside the company that they think anyone is actually going to buy this line of bullshit. The best case scenario for Google is that Eric Schmidt, in his new role as chairman, has turned into a loose cannon who should just shut the fuck up.

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“I can’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Screw the letter B,’” type designer Matthew Carter told me last year when I interviewed him for the Economist, just after he had received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship. Carter, arguably the leading living creator and adapter of fonts in the Western world, was talking about the limits of pushing legibility and readability.

I thought of his comment when a recent furor erupted over the new “house” font for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), called Roboto. Roboto is a bespoke sans-serif font, created by a Google employee and used throughout Android’s user interface (UI) as part of the larger user experience (UX) overhaul. The intent is to make Android more intuitive, cohesive, and fluid, and work better on a variety of screen sizes, especially tablets.

Roboto was almost immediately branded a Frankenfont, a multi-headed hydra, and many other names by font purists and tyros alike, because of what seems to be a borrowing of identifiable features of several well-known fonts, including Helvetica. Stephen Coles at Typographica singled out characters he felt quite similar in form from Helvetica, Myriad, Universe, FF DIN, and Ronnia.

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Everyone has their bullshit. You can simply decide whose you’re willing to tolerate.

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A few minutes ago, Android chief Andy Rubin sent out his 6th tweet. A milestone. Never mind that they’re all self-serving promotion with Rubin never responding to anything or really giving anything in the way of context. They’re all awesome. Kudos.

But wait. I thought this was his 7th tweet…

That was the response I kept getting after noting Rubin’s milestone. But I counted and counted again. Six.

Not so fast.

Turns out, the people are right. This was actually Rubin’s 7th tweet, but he deleted one of them… 

Interesting. Okay, so which one? One Twitter follower, MentionOnly noticed it and appropriately, Google cache confirms:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

Yes, Rubin for some reason has deleted his most famous tweet. His first tweet! One that led to stories by myself and others. 

That tweet no longer exists. His first one listed is now from December 2010, trumpeting, what else: Android activations!!!!

Where did the initial tweet go? Who knows. But it sure looks like he deleted it. Deleted it in an “open” way, I’m sure.

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Samsung has just distributed the worst news of this Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade cycle: the popular Galaxy S smartphone that sold 10 million units last year and the 7-inch Galaxy Tab tablet won’t be upgraded to Android 4.0.

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it’s a development platform, not a computing platform. That’s why tech commentators can’t see the difference.

iOS for iPhone and iPad is a platform. Android is not. Android is something companies use to develop products. Anything done on Android after release of a product that has no relation whatsoever to the product. This is no different from iOS, except the company who developed iOS and the product is one and the same, and that has effects on what they think customers may expect from them. No wonder people are more loyal to Apple.

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The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.

It’s a good thing Firefox is “open”, just like Android.

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After Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and eBay, British Telecommunications plc (commonly referred to as "British Telecom" or simply "BT") has just become the fifth large publicly-traded company to bring patent infringement litigation against Android.

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Here’s the under-appreciated reality of all this: HP, RIM and Amazon have all moved millions of touch tablets into the market at below cost. This has caused two problems for the market. First, it’s created a domino effect. HP’s fire sale on the TouchPad cut demand for the BlackBerry PlayBook, reducing unit sales. That contributed to RIM’s need for a fire sale of its own. (Plus, Amazon has probably long intended to sell below cost.)

All this crazy, unexpected discounting has both artificially taken market share away from the various Android tablets, and re-set consumer expectations about how much a touch tablet is supposed to cost.

Now, the only way to sell a non-iPad tablet in any significant quantity is to sell it below cost.

Android tablet makers are faced with the choice between making a little money on each tablet but selling few, or losing money on each tablet and selling many.

It’s a horrible state of affairs for the tablet industry, unless you’re Apple or Amazon. And it’s almost entirely the fault of the iPad.

The iPad’s reception convinced the industry that they could succeed, too. The success of the iPad made HP and RIM vastly over-estimate demand. And the success of the iPad made it impossible to compete against the iPad in the market, forcing companies to ultimately dump inventory at below cost and, in doing so, nearly destroy the Android tablet market.

That’s why the consumer tablet industry hates the iPad. But they’re not the only ones.

You may want to do a Google Search for “let it snow” right now…

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It looks like a human was involved in choosing what went where,” Marissa told them. “It looks too editorialized. Google products are machine-driven. They’re created by machines. And that is what makes us powerful. That’s what makes our products great.

– Marissa Mayer addressing Google designers, as quoted in “In The Plex” by Steven Levy

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Microsoft is offering free Windows phones to Android malware victims, providing they are prepared to tell world+dog about their problems.

The marketing stunt – already given the hashtag #droidrage on Twitter – follows a run of publicity about android malware.

And in related news:

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A security flaw has been discovered in Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS which allows hackers to disable a handset’s messaging system by SMS.

A malicious text can be sent which stops the SMS service from working, WinRumours reports. A factory reset is the only way to remedy the issue.

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One way we can measure a company’s “evilness” is by how important litigation is to corporate strategy. We’ll open this series by comparing today’s three tech giants: Microsoft, Google, and Apple. Which company gets sued the most? And more importantly, which company sues others the most?

Very accurate

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The Galaxy Nexus headed to Verizon Wireless in the next week or so won’t feature Google Wallet, even though it has the NFC chip to do so, we have learned. The app won’t be available in the Android Market for Verizon Galaxy Nexus users. Big Red simply blocked it.

Blasphemy you say? ”Pure Google Android?” Nope. The Verizon Galaxy Nexus will receive its updates directly from Google, not a carrier. But Google caved to Verizon and blocked Wallet from the device.

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But they’re blocking it in an open way, not a closed way.

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Computer scientists have discovered a weakness in smartphones running Google’s Android operating system that allows attackers to secretly record phone conversations, monitor geographic location data, and access other sensitive resources without permission.

Handsets sold by HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and Google contain code that exposes powerful capabilities to untrusted apps, scientists from North Carolina State University said. These “explicit capability leaks” bypass key security defenses built into Android that require users to clearly grant permission before an app gets access to personal information and functions such as text messaging. The code making the circumvention possible is contained in interfaces and services the device manufactures add to enhance the stock firmware supplied by Google.

[..]

Unlike out-of-the-box iPhones, which allow users to install only apps that have been approved by Apple, the official Android Market performs no security checks on the wares it offers. To compensate, Google built the permission-based security model into the mobile OS to give users control over the personal information apps get to access. Before a new program runs for the first time, it lists the sensitive resources it will access. Users who are uncomfortable with the permissions then have an opportunity to cancel the installation.

The researchers found that the manufacturer-supplied enhancements offer a way to circumvent this permissions-based model.

Again, not Google’s fault - unless you count allowing others to modify your software before release.

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Prediction: within 2 weeks, all US carriers will ditch Carrier IQ. Within 2 months, Carrier IQ will change its name.

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Don’t sue us, sue them.

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Microsoft has pieced together an HTML 5-based demo of its Windows Phone OS’ Metro user interface, giving iOS and Android users a taste of what life’s like on the other side.

[..]

If you’re an Android or iPhone user and fancy giving it a go, visit http://aka.ms/wpdemo from your handset’s browser. Let us know how you get on.

Very nice – first time I get to see bits of Metro. Looks like Microsoft came up with something good!

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CarrierIQ, a data-logging software present on most new Android, Blackberry and Nokia phones, secretly records keystrokes, dialed numbers and text messages. It also can’t be turned off. Trevor Eckhart, the Android user who discovered and recorded it, labelled CarrierIQ a rootkit (you can read Eckhart’s further analysis here). CarrierIQ sent Eckhart a cease-and-desist letter (PDF here), but has since backed off. Eckhart’s findings confirm earlier rumors.

Don’t shake your fist at Google or Android for this one, blame the carriers instead.

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Microsoft has long been one of the most ardent proponents of expanding U.S. copyright law. But that enthusiasm doesn’t extend to the new Stop Online Piracy Act, which its lobbyists are quietly working to alter, CNET has learned.

It’s little surprise that Web-based companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter oppose SOPA, which is designed to make allegedly piratical Web sites virtually disappear from the Internet. They, and many civil liberties and human rights groups, worry that SOPA could jeopardize legitimate Web sites too.

Sad that the only reason this bill is going to die is because powerful corporations decided to “voice their displeasure”. The public doesn’t matter any more for law makers.

Purple monkey dishwasher. Lemon bags scooter pocket.

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As we have repeatedly noted, there are many metrics with which to pass some kind of arbitrary judgement on who is beating whom in the smartphone market, but the reality is that Apple is playing a different game than OEMs like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola Mobility. The company’s goals are also far, far different from Google’s when it comes to that company’s Android platform.

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Michael DeGusta:

I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United
States up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down
every update that was released for each device – be it a major OS
upgrade or a minor support patch — as well as prices and release
and discontinuation dates. I compared these dates and versions to
the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The
resulting picture isn’t pretty — well, not for Android users.

This took a lot of effort, and his resulting infographic is striking. Many Android phones ship on day one with an old version of the OS and never catch up at any point. Fantastic work. Pretty good analysis too:

In other words, Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is
to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently
Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by
making you really unhappy with your current one. Then again, all
of this may be ascribing motives and intent where none exist —
it’s entirely possible that the root cause of the problem is
just flat-out bad management (and/or the aforementioned
spectacular dumbness).

Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence.

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There is an allowance for small sites – the first 25,000 map-loads a day are free. The toll has been on the way since Google updated the Maps API’s Terms of Service in April and was scheduled to kick in at the beginning of October. It could be significant cost for developers: an app using the JavaScript Maps API for mobile and clocking in 100,000 users will now have to shell out $300 a day.

The visitor allowance is lower for those with styled maps (visually customised ones), who will have to pay $4 per 1,000 map loads after the first 2,500 – this goes up to $8 per 1,000 loads after 25,000 loads.

A "map load" counts as a user opening a page with the app on it. The degree to which a user interacts with a map once it has been loaded has no impact on the usage limits.

Developers who use the Maps API have three options: either bring their usage numbers down below the threshold, pay the overuse fees or cough up $10,000+ for a Google Maps API Premier licence.

I guess there’s that fairly easy way to bring down usage numbers that a lot of sites follow…

Funny how Google follows the business model of crack dealers…

1) Free sample.
2) Bigger free sample.
3) When customer is hopelessly hooked to product, charge for it.

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Siri doesn’t replace search, but in many cases it circumvents it by directing users straight to integrated partner services. When you ask for the nearest Indian restaurant there’s still a search taking place, but it’s through Yelp, not a generic search engine that would include Yelp plus various other results.

By skipping the search engine and going straight to a designated source there is no place to insert advertising. If the results are embedded in Siri’s response, as Yelp recommendations are now, the only way for advertising to appear as part of the process is if the user manually goes to the partner site.

The model changes. For the subset of services it supports, Siri could deliver more value to the user by more quickly getting them to the information they need, or by completing a task for them. It creates more value for Apple by selling more devices. The value to the partner sites is an increase in traffic without having to pay the per-click fees of a search engine, and potentially in licensing fees, although the sites may lose out on their own advertising opportunities, depending on how they were integrated.

Search engines are hurt by reduced traffic, reduced user tracking, and reduced opportunities to deliver advertising.

When Steve said he was going to kill Google, he was Siri-ous.