Editorial: is Engadget really that stupid? Or just corrupt? Or trolling us all?

Here is another "race to the bottom is bad" article, this time in the form of an "editorial" from Engadget. It's even more idiotic than usual.

The whole "race to the bottom" concept is odd to me: people complaining about how technology gets less outrageously expensive, and more available to everybody, and more commoditized.  Like that would be a bad thing? So the whole argument is fundamentally flawed to begin with - any time I see some pundit or CEO complaining about how the competition is making things cheaper, I go "Uhhuh, crybaby".

But when it comes to cellphones, it's not just a flawed argument, it's doubly stupid. Because in that market, particularly in the US, the alternative is the whole broken carrier subsidy model, with all that entails. None of which is good, and all of which is much worse than any (hypothetical) "race to the bottom" arguments.

And at no point did that deeply flawed editorial even mention carrier lock-in issues. What crock.

I have many reasons to like the google nexus phones: I just think that the plain android experience is generally cleaner than most of the skinned ones, and even when there is superior hardware (Samsung Galaxy SIII) I tend to prefer the Nexus model (honesty in advertizing: I've gotten free phones from both google and Samsung, but I actually bought my own Nexus One and Galaxy Nexus on google play store. And I installed CyanogenMod on the SIII Samsung gave me, because I wanted the JellyBean experience).

So I like the Nexus phones just because I think they have a nicer interface.

But I like the Nexus phones even more because they are clearly pushing the whole "no carrier lock-in" model. And price is absolutely part of it.