We once thought, after reading a discussion on net neutrality in the US, that such a crisis would never arrive to our shores.

But it did.

Thanks to Bharti Airtel, thanks to lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), thanks to Google and Facebook being members of such an organisation, thanks to TRAI betraying the Indian people by willingly giving in to pressure from the COAI, and thanks to the weak attitude of the giants of the Indian industries to fully divest themselves from such plans.

On the contrary, Flipkart initially supported Airtel Zero, media conglomerates Times Group, NDTV and ClearTrip initially supported Facebook’s Internet.org in partnership with RCOM. Initially plans for VOIP packs were going to become reality (and they still are). And there were many misguided individuals who believed these telecoms were doing the right thing.

Even those who saw their trickery, ended up being fooled.

You see, it was the old petition trick again. There’s a petition. It might just be that it will get enough signatures, it will reach the attention of the company / organisation, and they will change their mind. Yeah, right.

Did it happen with Google and the Galaxy Nexus KitKat update? Did it happen with Google and the whole new Privacy Policy thing? Did it happen with Samsung and the Exynos SoC issues?

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There are few major strategic partnerships that have potential to cause a substantial effect on the working of several projects. As you can tell, the Cyanogen and Microsoft strategic partnership announced on April 16 belongs to this category.

Cyanogen: Referred to as Cyngn, the company was formed in 2013 by people originally working on the popular CyanogenMod project, an aftermarket firmware distribution for Android devices.

Cyanogen offers Cyanogen OS, a proprietary version of the latest version of CyanogenMod (12, as of writing) to its partners, which include OnePlus (formerly with the OnePlus One internationally) and Micromax’s Yu (with the Yu Yureka in India) as well as Alcatel (with the upcoming One Touch Hero 2+ for North America).

Microsoft: Microsoft is the global giant struggling since the onset of the mobile era to get traction after its failures against the duopoly of Google and Apple. The PC era has now been superseded by the mobile era, but Microsoft didn’t move on with the times.

Windows Mobile failed after the launch of the iPhone, its successor Windows Phone launched in 2010 but has failed to get significant popularity – currently has 3% market share globally – and compete with Android and iOS. Microsoft bought Nokia’s Devices & Services division in 2014, but after the acquisition, has yet to launch a new Windows flagship.

Windows 10 for mobile is due to launch later in 2015, however long-standing problems of app availability as well as platform maturity in terms of features have yet to be solved.

Both of these companies are facing significant problems of their own. But here’s the thing: they can partner with each other to solve their problems by mutual help and with their combined strength, pose as a capable competitor to Google Android, fulfilling aims that seemed far-fetched before – and in the process, alienate consumers as well. Can they actually succeed?

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