Tim Green: Is KitKat the first 'real' Android OS?

Everything about the new version is designed to make you do one thing: search.
Back when Google first unveiled Android on October 22, 2008, I must admit I was a little confused.
Two reasons for this. One, I'm not too clever. Two, I'd launched ME to report on the simplistic world of premium rate services, ringtones and Java games.
You didn't have to be Sergei Brin to navigate the business fundamentals in that market.
From a content provider's perspective it was simple: make a product, get the content manager of O2 pissed, wait a month to get your product live on O2 Active, then sit back and wait for the £8.37 to roll in.
Then Apple came along and, although its content project was very different in execution, its fundamental offering was the same as the operators': give us your product and we'll host and sell it for you.
The differences being, everything worked, you could make tons of money and Apple execs don't drink.
Why did Apple want to do this? Ultimately, to sell $600 phones at a 40 per cent profit margin.
Simple.
And then suddenly, Google appeared with its mobile OS.
Why? It wasn't selling phones like Apple. Or data bundles like O2.
And it wasn't selling expensive software like Microsoft when MS was making Windows the default platform for PCs.
Of course, the answer was there all along in Google's own mantra about "organising the world's information".
Google had observed that phones were turning into handheld computers, and it foresaw the urgent need to bring its data gathering and indexing into that realm so it could keep selling ads.
Android was the answer.
In the intervening five years though, things got a little muddied. Google bought Motorola (which made people think it wanted to be a vertically integrated company like Apple – wrong in my opinion) and it supported an app store.
Now, in a way, you could see apps as the very antithesis of Google's search mission: apps take users away from the web, right?
But Android wouldn't have prospered without an app store – such is the pull of the concept for users. Google knew that. It had to have one.
Now, with KitKat, I think we're beginning to see Android as Google must have envisaged it back in 2008.
Why? Because search is embedded deep into so many facets of the new OS.
Here are four:
1. The voice dialler
Click on the phone icon in KitKat, and you don’t get a keypad, you get a search box. You see a list of recent calls and get an option to open up the dialler – but you also get a search option. This will help you find local businesses.
2. App Indexing
Make a search on your phone and the results will not only display web results, but also relevant results from within any app you have installed. Google gives the example of a recipe search that would link to a cookery app. Click on the link to open the app.
Developers are being encouraged to index their apps with Google search. I imagine they'll do so when they start to see their competitors' products come up in results. And Google will be able to add more behavioural data to sell back to advertisers.
3. Building Google Now into the launcher
For the unfamiliar, Google Now comprises widget-like cards that give you relevant information about nearby places of interest, traffic, currency, flight times and so on. Google tracks your behaviour to make these cards more relevant.
Google Now used to be an app, but now it's built right into the left of the home screen. Or you can swipe up to reveal it.
4. Turning all of the home screen into a search app
Well, kind of. The ArsTechnica site dug into the code and revealed that “the wallpaper, the icons, the widgets, and the app drawer — are all drawn by the Google Search app.”
It describes this as effectively 'doing a Facebook Home'.
And it concludes by saying that "Google wants to change the way you use your phone from an app-centric device to a device that revolves around its core product."
And there it is. For all the hundreds of thousands of apps in Google Play, what Brin and Page really want is for you to SEARCH SEARCH SEARCH.

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