Why Cyanogen wants Google to leave Android alone

Cyanogen’s CEO Kirt Mcmaster has plans to take over Android from Google so that OEM and third party developers can integrate their services better. Cyanogen has plans to do so in the next 3 to 5 years.

Cyanogen, one of the biggest custom ROM maker for Android was recently in the news for removing support for OnePlus One in India due to their exclusive deal with Micromax. This caused Cyanogen to receive a lot of flak from not only Indian OnePlus One customers but from the international press as well.

OnePlus One Indian version on the left and OnePlus One International version on the right

These unfortunate developments and voiced revelations made by Cyanogen’s CEO Kirt McMaster are very contradictory. On one hand Cyanogen shortened its support for community favorite OnePlus due to the fact that they signed an exclusive deal with Micromax and on other hand they want to help third party developers to build better apps if and when they part ways with Google.

It wouldn’t be a big jump to say that in next five years or so Cyanogen may take a different path than Google and may take the Android development to a more forked and developer oriented level. The developer community of Android is concerned over the fact that since Cyanogen is a venture funded company, it may deviate from the original ethos of this community project. Also according to various forums, developers are concerned that Cyanogen’s long term plan could be to sell software licenses of its forked Android version to OEMs.

Google meanwhile has not commented on the matter but looking at past instances, if and when Cyanogen tries to introduce a new app store of its own, Google will likely shun Cyanogen.

Whatever the future holds for Cyanogen and its vision of Android, we believe that it needs to regain the community’s trust after the OnePlus One debacle.