Microsoft and Google cut the crapware, but the odor lingers

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Google plans to sell Android 5 “Jelly Bean” smartphones made by various device makers this fall as part of its Nexus line — “Jelly Bean” being the unannounced but widely rumored successor to Android 4 “Ice Cream Sandwich,” the unified mobile OS released last November but still absent on most Android devices.

The reason: to push the Android market to a unified, simple platform specified by Google, both to reduce the junkware that carriers and device makers heap on their devices and to reverse the technical and UI fragmentation that bedevils Android today and makes Android look cheesy compared to Apple’s iOS.

On the PC side, Microsoft has quietly launched its Signature PC service at its 16 Microsoft Stores where, for $99, you can have your new PC cleaned of all junk apps, promo apps, and other crapware that Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and the rest install. You can also buy Signature PC versions of various vendors’ PCs at the Microsoft Store without that crapware for the same price as the PCs with it.

Again, the intent is to reduce the junkiness of the user experience and to improve performance by removing apps that, in the name of branding, replace Microsoft services such as Wi-Fi management with the vendors’ own services but do so in a performance-sapping way. The goal is a better out-of-the-box experience à la Apple’s Macintosh.

There are two major reasons for crapware:

• Vendors make extra money selling what are essentially ads in the guise of trialware. On the smartphone side, the carriers have long added their own apps for their high-priced services, such as games, messaging, and navigation. It’s an old model on the PC side for Dell, HP, et al., because it helped bolster the razor-thin margins on $600 PCs.
• Vendors try to differentiate each other on otherwise indistinguishable devices. A PC is a PC, and a stock Android is a stock Android. There may be some hardware differences, but within a price class, they’re basically the same from manufacturer to manufacturer. A different skin, such as in the case of Android smartphones, or a few “special” apps, as in the case of both Android devices and Windows PCs, are supposed to tip a buyer toward one manufacturer over the others.

Of course, the truth is that you don’t want or need most of the trialware, and in some cases (mainly antivirus apps) you already have it. The “differentiating” apps are usually poorly designed titles that offer little meaningful value. In both cases, they worsen the experience rather than improve it. A great example is the latest Android tablet from Samsung, the Galaxy Tab 2, which uses the poor AllShare and Peel apps to provide awful home entertainment controls.

Plus, ironically, the user only experiences the crapware — er, “differentiated” apps after purchasing the PC or smartphone; it really doesn’t help make the sale, which is allegedly the point of having it. In those cases where it is part of the sales pitch — such as the Galaxy Tab 2’s AllShare and Peel — the software’s poor quality will make the user less likely to buy from that vendor again. In the world of sales and marketing, that’s a problem for future sales, and all that matters is this quarter’s numbers.

Because Android and Windows devices rely on licensed software, the manufacturers get to alter the stock experience from Google or Microsoft as they see fit — a facet of Android’s pseudo-open-source nature and a consequence of Microsoft’s monopolist past. Most of the time, they pollute their offerings with cheap crapware, often made by software firms you never heard of solely for the purpose of being able to have a laundry list of capabilities on the box, in the description at Amazon.com, or on the placard at Best Buy.

Why are Microsoft and Google now finally taking tentative action? I can surmise there’s one basic reason: Apple is beating them in the market, and its deserved reputation for a quality experience is a big reason why. Ironically, Apple is quite good at adding software from which it can make even more money — such as iTunes, iCloud, and iPhoto — but users find real value from these apps, so they’re not crapware.

To be fair, Google has been uncomfortable with the Android crapware problem — including all the skins that mess up its UI — for some time. It used its Nexus brand to offer the pure Google experience as a model, first with the Nexus One, then with the Galaxy Nexus, both made by Samsung. But that high-road approach hasn’t done much to stop the crapware trend on the other models.

To be fair, Google’s laissez-faire approach has let both Motorola Mobility and Samsung deliver Android smartphones such as the Droid Razr Maxx and Galaxy Note that fill in many major business security gaps and let Samsung bring some meaningful innovation, such as the pen capabilities in the Galaxy Note. The ability for manufacturers to differentiate their Android devices from each other can lead to meaningful value — but it doesn’t happen often.

It happens even less on Windows PCs. Once you get past all the trialware for services you don’t need or already have, a PC is a PC is a PC almost all the time. Dell puts in its own network connection manager, which is a support nightmare when something goes wrong, as it fights to the death with the native Windows connection manager. On the positive side, both Lenovo and HP have offered PCs that add capabilities to let IT reduce energy usage centrally, yet without interfering with the user experience or with Windows itself.

There’s no easy answer to the crapware problem. Google can tighten the rules as to what is allowed only at the risk of alienating device makers who truly believe their smartphones need to be at least superficially different from the competition. After all, Microsoft has very tight rules for what is allowed on Windows Phones; device makers have only a few models for that platform — coincidence?

Microsoft has almost no way to restrict what’s on Windows 7 and earlier, but it may be able to assert more control in the Metro front end in Windows 8, as it is already doing for the Metro browser. We’ll see — a bad sign is Microsoft’s comment that it will offer the Signature PC crapware-cleanup service for Windows 8 when it ships, which means Win8 PCs and tablets will also have crapware.

Ultimately, if Google and Microsoft want the kind of control over the user experience that Apple has, it will need to do what Apple does: Contract out the device manufacturing and stop licensing the OS to others for their devices. It’s hard to see either Google or Microsoft make that leap, though the acquisition of Motorola Mobility gives Google a means to do so if it chooses.

Still, I applaud them both for at least offering “reference model” options that keep off the crapware and awkward UIs. I only wish they were more aggressive about doing so.

This article, “Microsoft and Google cut the crapware, but the odor lingers,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.