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By most measures, the Android platform is an enormous success. It dominates the smartphone space in terms of market share, with over a quarter of a billion currently activated devices. It's on phones and tablets made by four of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world. And its reach isn't slowing. But with enormous growth comes problems, many of which Google knows quite well. App stores. Competitors. That dirty word: "fragmentation." All of this bogs down Android during a critical phase of its development, just a few years since its initial launch. Android needs a hero -- someone who can unify the platform and work on the many weaknesses that critics attack, and even supportive users grumble about. And Matias Duarte, Android's head of user experience, wants to take that role.