Google Apps, Android and Corporate Customization

An attorney was sitting in his office late one night, when Satan appeared before him. The Devil told the lawyer, "I have a proposition for you. You can win every case you try, for the rest of your life. Your clients will adore you, your colleagues will stand in awe of you, and you will make embarrassing sums of money. All I want in exchange is your soul, your wife's soul, your children's souls, the souls of your parents, grandparents, and parents-in-law, and the souls of all your friends and law partners." The lawyer thought about this for a moment, then asked, "So, what's the catch?"

A while ago I've had a tempting proposition: get myself a BlackBerry 8820 with employer paying for the device and the plan. The downside was (just like above) that the phone would be locked up, set up by the employer, and maintained by the entity known as Helpless Desk.

I chose to pass the opportunity.

When I had a chance to compare the corporate phone with mine a few months later, I blessed the moment I said no. One word to describe the corporate phone is "crippled". Nothing works as it should, nothing can be set straight because it's not you who can make things happen, but the Helpless Desk. From "the blessing and the curse" that a cell phone is it passed on to being a quintessential curse.

Enough about BlackBerry, let's talk about Android...

- Can a son of a colonel become a general?
- No, generals have sons too...

My earlier predictions about arrival of Microsoft and Lotus product gateways on Android notwithstanding, they will be mosty irrelevant in bigger picture, as far as Android is concerned.



We are at a break even point right now.

It is obvious that Google will be pushing Google Apps as the solution for Android (it is perfectly fir for it). The question is, how can they manage to make it work without crippling it in the process?

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<to be continued>