Inside Mobile Apps:

Without a platform-wide offering from Google, the individual providers will have to continue to battle it out for domination. Hopefully, eventually one (or possibly two) will win and everyone will use that service for social connectivity. But until then, I think things will be messy.

Android advocates would have you believe that everything is better without Google in the way, and point derisively to iOS’ “walled garden” approach. Situations like this remind me that I’d rather be in a walled garden than an open sewer.