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This article was taken from the December 2011 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
A year ago at Google HQ in Mountain View, Andy Rubin built a mechanical robot arm. "I put a hammer in its hand and connected it to a big Chinese gong. Whenever Android sells 10,000 units, the gong sounds and you can hear it through the whole building. When I designed it, it sounded three times a day: now it does it every three minutes. I really have to reprogram it..."
Rubin is Google's head of mobile and the creator of the Android operating system. He's also a DIY robotics fanatic, in case you hadn't guessed. At home, he has several remote-controlled helicopters, a retina-scanning entry system ("a great way of managing relations with ex-girlfriends -- no problem giving keys back, just an update to the database"), a laser-controlled Segway, and a home cinema where the lights dim when the titles run -- all designed and built by him. So naturally, he built another robot to celebrate the success of his most famous creation, Android.
It's an unusual way to boast, but Rubin is allowed some bombast.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this spring, the most important trade show worldwide for tablets and smartphones, 90 per cent of the devices unveiled ran Android. In August this year, tech analysis firm Canalys reported that 48 per cent of all smartphones sold in the second quarter of 2011 were Android devices. The nearest competitor was Apple, on 19 per cent. Android overtook Apple's iOS in 2010 -- according to Google, 500,000 Android devices are currently activated every day.
Rubin is tall -- skin and bones, really -- and looks younger than his 48 years, dressing casually even by Google standards. He grew up in Chappaqua, 60km from New York. His father gave up psychology to start a direct-marketing business selling electronic products. Soon, the Rubin home was full of technology. "After the products had been photographed for the catalogue, they ended up in my room," says Rubin. "I was always the first of my friends to have the coolest gadgets. That's where my passion was born."
Apart from a short time in Switzerland as a designer of optical systems at Carl Zeiss's labs, Rubin has spent his career in the US, working for three IT giants: Apple, Microsoft and now Google. In 1989, on holiday in the Cayman Islands, he was walking along the beach at dawn and saw a man sleeping out for the night. It was Bill Caswell, a senior engineer at Apple, fresh from a row with his girlfriend. Rubin gave him a bed; Caswell reciprocated by offering him a job just as the company was about to launch the Macintosh.
During his time there, Rubin worked on Magic Cap, a light mobile operating system that simulated the interface of a computer desktop, but which never took off.
In 1995 he joined Microsoft and was nearly fired for fitting a mobile robot with a web-cam and microphone, and sending it roaming the offices. Microsoft saw it as a security breach; Rubin doesn't have many kind words for the Seattle-based company. "Microsoft is more a traditional software business, whose first priority is to release the next update,rather than to create something new. The result is that Apple and Google are agile and they can shift rapidly. Microsoft is slow."
Google was certainly quick to acquire Android, which Rubin founded in 2003. In 2005, he explained to Sergey Brin and Larry Page that the era of desktop PCs was ending and that phones would replace them as a means of going online. Within weeks, they bought it for an undisclosed sum, not even telling then-CEO Eric Schmidt.
And although Rubin praises Apple, he's getting under its skin too.
Last October, Steve Jobs interrupted a call to investors to enumerate the faults of Android. Rubin points out the functions where Android is ahead, such as turn-by-turn navigation: "I don't think we're following them or that we're looking to close the gap. Rather, we want to innovate in different directions."
At its core, though, the argument isn't about features, but approach. Apple controls every element of its products. Android, by contrast, prides itself on openness. Google gives away the OS, leaves manufacturers to determine its look and the functions, and doesn't review apps, although it will remove one if there are enough complaints.
Open is an obsession for Rubin: "The principal attraction of Android is that it's an open system. This makes life easier for developers and producers." When Steve Jobs complained last year that Android wasn't truly open, Rubin countered like a Silicon Valley Oscar Wilde, tweeting: "The definition of open: 'mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make'". The line is the command to compile the Android kernel, the most fundamental part of the OS, which anyone can modify. "Android is my creation, my baby," Rubin says. "When I was an engineer was always a fan of open source, and now our whole commercial strategy is based upon open source. You can imagine how passionate I am about this."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
