Originally Posted by cyvros
Out of the box, depending on what you're expecting from Android, it can be really frustrating. For me, my first Android phone was also my first smartphone. I had no idea of its capabilities and I learnt along the way. That said, I have friends who picked up Android expecting something a lot different, and they got really frustrated and pissed off straight away.
Android was not designed to have a file manager available to users. By default, Android does not come with a file manager. If you want to manage files, you plug it into a computer and do it the old fashioned way. (Or you use something like Explorer or Root Explorer by Speed Software, which I prefer over Astro.)
In a way, this is because Android isn't a content creation platform, it's for content consumption. So the idea is that you don't need to worry about files. Apps should be taking care of your files for you. They can access your files, they can modify your files, and you don't have to go searching through all the device's directories.
There's also the fact that the Android team has tried to simplify things so that Android devices are easy to get started with. Ditching a file manager and having apps take care of all the file interactions was one of the earlier design decisions they made, I believe.
I think there's also the possible issue of not trusting the user to manage the files and directories. My current job is in consumer electronics, and I cannot tell you the number of times a customer has called up asking for advice on how to get Windows booting again after having deleted a system file or two.
Requiring root access and not having a file manager built-in sidesteps that entire problem. In some cases, just the lack of a file manager is fine by itself, because without root access, a user can still access and modify stored user data for apps.
The Google market is the primary Android market. It's the one built into every Android phone and most Android tablets. GetJar, AppBrain, Amazon and all the others were app markets built after the original Android market.
It's not that Yahoo wants you to go to Google. It's more that if Yahoo wants anyone to know about and use their app, they need to have it in the Android Market. Yahoo doesn't have its own Android market, and neither does Microsoft, but they both have official Ymail and Hotmail apps in the Android Market.
It also comes back to apps managing files on the user's behalf. Rather than downloading the APK and sideloading it (then using a file manager to open it), or rather than downloading the APK on the phone (then using a file manager to open it), the centralised Market takes care of all that for the user.
And yes, the Yahoo Mail app is free. It's not a paid app. The majority of apps in the Android Market are free. Some rely on advertising, some rely on users buying versions with newer features, some rely on users buying new content from within the app (like comiXology), but a lot of them are just plain old free.
Holy crap, I'm sorry that post was so long. Just wanted to try to explain some of the design decisions as fully as possible.
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