Has the EU even addressed the issue where Google bans all ad-blocking apps from its store? Seems like a pretty open and shut "we're doing this because we have near-monopoly on the smartphone market and ad-blocking hurts our business" anti-trust case.
They block applications that interfere with the operation of other applications.
This would include an ad blocker that blocks ads in, say, a free game, or the built in Chrome browser.
The common workaround was to run connections through a VPN and your ad blocking happens there. I'm not sure if they started cracking down on that as well.
Having apps that modify other apps can certainly be desired behavior, but it's clear why there would be legitimate concerns about customer security in allowing apps that can do so.
1. Create a browser with ad blocking builtin or possible with addons (like Firefox).
2. Create a local proxy that blocks ads, and make the user configure it as the system proxy.
3. Require root privileges and do whatever you want (2, or maybe change /etc/hosts, like AdAway does). Yes, there are tons of apps in the Play Store that only work with root. Google never cared much about them.
They do, yes. What you've linked is a browser with ad-blocking capabilities, which is treated a bit differently. What they remove are ad-blockers which block ads in other apps.
And you can still get them on Android, but not via the Play Store. You have to go through third-party stores such as F-Droid, Aptoide or Amazon (or just directly download the installer-file off of a webpage).
Google has majority share in the EU smartphone market. They are using that majority share to extend/maintain their dominance in the search space by forcing OEM to license their applications.
The EU regulators view the OS and Google apps as two seperate spheres.
Here in China I can get most of my apps from other sources but require play services for some. It's annoying because if my VPN isn't on or it isn't working well one day the battery usage kills me.
I was just trying to get rid of play music and play newsstand yesterday. Most of the stuff they include is wasted space. It's particularly frustrating since I'm always running out of internal storage and most apps are difficult to put on the SD card.
That's a good news. I wish there was an Android phone with, let's say, a Firefox set as a default browser, and a Google Play Store available.
But, although I'm usually for EU in cases like this, I'm more and more disgruntled about how ineffective all that after-the-fact fines and penalties are.
Maybe some more strict rules would be better? Like: any OS on sell in UE can not prohibit installing third party software and tinkering with the hardware, and the user should be asked about pre-installed software on the first launch. Something like that. We got browser choice screen in Windows for a while, and it was good. But it didn't affect iOS, nor Windows 10, nor Android.
He's saying preinstalled as the default browser. Not installed and set as default after the fact by the user. Let manufacturers freely decide what software they want to bundle.
You could make an Android phone that had things like that, and companies have done so (like Amazon). The downside is then you wouldn't be able to license the Google services on top.
Android is both open source and expensive to develop. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me, especially as Google keeps the fragmentation problem somewhat under control this way.
I said "somewhat under control". You aren't qualified to complain about Android fragmentation unless you've tried to write mobile apps before Android/iPhone came along. I have. Trust me - no matter how bad you think Android is, it's much better than the previous state. And a big part of that is the ecosystem of sticks and carrots Google set up around the open code base.
I wish Windows came with Firefox installed as the default browser as well and without Edge but I don't think it will happen. I believe if you build and deploy a platform you have the right to make your products the default as long as you don't block the freedom to change.
What about apple? Yes, they don't have the same market share but their product is completely closed and until recently all other browsers where crippled compared to the build in one.
All apps must come from the Apple App Store. No 3rd party allowed.
No, they "aren't" iOS, iOS is the operating system that manages them. You clearly don't know how this tech work, and should avoid commenting as if you do.
There's really no need to make assumptions about my technical capabilities from 6 words and ask me to stop commenting based on those assumptions. That character is unbecoming for this community.
Apple should really consider supporting the use of external email clients when clicking on a mailto: link. Reminding me of a deceitful lawyer, they allowed you to remove default email client, however even if you have Gmail.app installed and tap on a mailto: link it displays a popup telling you to install Mail.app instead of allowing you to choose Gmail or another Email client. Same for http/https links. I prefer to use 1Pasword instead of Safari.
I use Gmail but a common (and at the very least reasonable) complaint is that they must do at least some level of data collection to give personalized Gmail ads.
I thought they opened it up but maybe I am mistaken. I vaguely recall something about other browsers being slower than the built in one, maybe that was fixed?
You may note that Apple only put Google as the default search because Google paid them a billion dollars to do so. And Google's super mad Oracle told everyone, because it shatters the illusion that people use Google because it's better.
People use Google because most people use the default, and Google pays to be the default.
But isn't the deal that you get it for free if you include the software? i.e. there's an exchange of value there?
I suspect the problem is that there's no "I'll pay you, but not include the software" option for Android, but couldn't it be applied to any FLOSS as in "there's no option to pay you, but not contribute back" in the case of the GPL or even "there's not an option to not buy a Mac with MacOS", or something like that?
EDIT: If the problem is using Android's dominant position to bundle Google Search, then I get the similarities to the MS lawsuit, the difference being that people actually want to use it, which is why I think Google should be confident about including a "Bing Search" or "Google Search" option, as 99.99% of people would go with Google, since in Google's case, Search is actually a product people want to use when compared to the alternatives, whereas Explorer wasn't in the MS case.
But couldn't this then also be extended to Chrome and Search on the desktop? i.e. Google used its dominant position in search to push Chrome, (try visiting google.com with Safari or Firefox, notice the top-right Chrome banner?) and once they got to a dominant position with Chrome, they used it to further the dominance of Search, by it being default in Chrome etc.
I don't think the Bing Search option would be sufficient to ward off anti-trust claims, unless you made Bing search the default or did something crazy like make phones flip a coin and then decide which search to default to.
Additionally, forcing a company to effectively hide, (many users never change the defaults), its own product by making the competing one the default, goes way beyond what a government body should be able to compel a company to do, in my opinion.
In current Windows 10 Bing is the only provider for Cortana, which is enabled by default, both for the conversational interface as well as all shell search features.
Microsoft's case was about Microsoft threatening OEMs to not sell Windows to them if they dared preinstall Netscape. The purpose was to keep a high barrier to entry for competing OS's, as they controlled the Win32 API but not the Java applets API.
I thoroughly enjoying reading Google's 2009 blog "The Meaning of Open". This was the company I was a fan of, back then, and it's so easy to see how different of a company it is today.
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win."
That's the answer, full stop. Like it or not, the rules are different for you when you have the majority of market share, and this has been true in both the EU and the US despite their different approaches to antitrust regulation.
But the EU charges are about Google's tactics within the Google run Android market. Google isn't leveraging it's monopoly outside of it's own brand either.
The argument hinges on Google not owning or operating Android. AOSP has been a dead dream for a while now due to carriers locking down phones and Google needing to circle the wagons.
Google can exert a large amount of control over device makers --- Android without Google Play Services and the Google Play Store is pretty useless. (Unless you have Amazon's scale and can clone all that.)
In China, apps Chinese citizens want are available in app stores available there. Everywhere else, Android apps people want are solely available through Google's store. And the only reason China has a competitive Android market: Google doesn't operate there. In fact, China proves what's so bad about the Play Store: We can definitively see how much more freedom exists if Google is axed from the equation.
iOS is a luxury brand (remember that carrier subsidies are smaller in the EU and are not allowed in some member states). So, realistically for a lot of people there is only one kind of affordable smartphone and that is an Android phone.
As you mention, AOSP alone does not give you much Android and Google is likely to dictate all kinds of terms to use the Play services, Play Store, etc. So, the question is indeed does AOSP give enough to argue that Google does not fully control the Android market.
Personally, I am not sure this is the most problematic aspect of Android though. If we assume for a moment that Android is a near-monopoly in the EU, the more troubling aspect is that people can only choose between having no smartphone (which is becoming harder) or letting Google suck all kinds of data out of them. In other words, only when you are rich enough, you can afford not to let a company suck up a lot of your private data.
Can't repeat this enough. My shitty Android tablet from Huawei that I got for free on contract cannot be rooted and is stuck on Android 4.1 forever, even though it has a modern ARM cpu and 1GB of RAM... :(
not sure that the argument that iOS is a luxury brand holds up in most european countries where you can just as well get an iOS or Android device with the same subsidization from the carrier (especially since Apple does not only sell its last generation high end devices).
There are still a couple of european countries where iOS devices sell extremely poorly. I am not sure if this is because of an absence of subsidies or another reason.
Even if Android is the only option, you can always choose to refuse all data sharing from google, you are not forced to create a google account or to use google play.
Admittedly, it makes things harder for a neophyte.
>AOSP has been a dead dream for a while now due to carriers locking down phones
That's only in the US.
Let's be honest here, AOSP is a dead dream because porting and maintaining AOSP for a device is kinda complicated. Many people do it for free, but you can't rely on that.
You can but a huge number of apps use Google Play Services and you can't use those. I suppose technically you couldn't get them anyway since you don't have Google Play, but anyway.
GPS includes stuff like location services, Firebase, Chromecast, analytics, Google account authentication, Google Drive APIs, all the game stuff, Android Pay, etc.
You can. But since almost nobody does, there's no viable use for a phone without it. Bear in mind, even Microsoft, who was part of starting this investigation against Google... Even Microsoft's apps like Outlook and Skype won't run without Play Services installed and enabled.
It's not a meaningful category. They are all mobile phones, or smartphones if need be to distinguish there.
Which practices a monopolistic company can do, but is not allowed to, is written clearly in the article: Forcing/Paying other companies to pre-install its proprietary apps. A non-monopolistic company is allowed to do that.
The same could be said about anything if you draw the 'market' boundaries narrowly enough.
My local corner shop has a market share of 100% of the places I can buy things if I walk 30 seconds but that's hardly relevant when I can drive 10-15 minutes and have 4 different supermarkets at my disposal.
If you bought bread from the corner store then you can still spread butter from the supermarket on it. Your two purchases were independent.
That's not relevant in the phone market, where you're stuck with a specific platform once you've made your initial phone purchase. You can't use it with applications from other platforms, and switching platforms means you need to purchase all the stuff you're using all over again.
So if I write any piece of software, even if only one person uses it, I can be forced by anti-trust regulation to make it compatible with any other software or at least release the source code? Do you really think that's what anti-trust regulation implies?
It seems incredibly hard for people to grasp how antitrust law works. It's very simple: Antitrust law only affects those with a massively dominant control over a market.
Exactly. If you're not a monopoly (or otherwise massively dominant in the market you compete in), antitrust law doesn't apply to you. Antitrust law is specifically to guard against the situation where one player in a market is so dominant, that the market itself becomes less competitive.
Although usually when I hear people misuse antitrust concepts on tech forums, they're not trying to understand complicated legal conflicts, rather they're grasping at straws to use as ammunition in dumb flamewars about platforms/companies/etc. that they don't like.
I really don't like it then.
So we could theoretically have 4 or 5 totally closed platforms with small market shares for each and that would be totally fine.
I guess that the issue is that I am not as much against Google using Android to distribute its services (I would be using most of them anyway and those that I don't use (newsstand, spaces, ..) can be replaced anyway) but against being unable to distribute/install whatever software I want on a general purpose computing device.
So much for the free market. All the EU socialists must have a hard on right now. In the end fine will be paid by the consumers anyway, and will have to click more to install Google apps and additionally pay for bandwidth. But hey, those lunatics will be happy they solved another "problem".
On the one hand you wonder whether Google will get in a huff and close AOSP (The Android Open Source Project) just to work with a few commercial vendors. They can leave the complainants to work together on an fork where they can do what they wish.
Or, which I hope they would do by now, actually run AOSP like a true open source project.
In the latter case I think the strategy that they've used so far "was" the right one (open source but not open for debate), however Android is now mature enough that I think developing a true open source community would benefit it.
I don't get this. Sure Android has a greater market share, but people use it _because_ Google services come with it (and phones tend to be less expensive). They aren't (at least to my knowledge) doing anything underhanded to keep me from installing alternatives. I can completely replace all of the default apps. There is another major platform that doesn't allow for that. Why aren't they at least being given a warning?
"EU antitrust regulators plan to order Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google to stop paying financial incentives to smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search exclusively on their devices and warned the company of a large fine, an EU document showed."
Actually, it is 100% the point. I never personally agreed with the Microsoft anti-trust scandal (and a lot of people on HN don't): nothing stopped you from installing another browser and making it the default for relevant URI schemes and file types.
Microsoft got nailed because they were popular, not because they forced people to not use Netscape. Now, everyone includes a default browser, and no one sues Apple over forcing all iOS users to use Safari no matter what, even "alternative browsers" must use Safari for their HTML canvas underneath.
If the EU get their way, you may not be able to change it anymore. Microsoft quite liked to pay companies to set Bing as the only search option and disable the setting to change it.
So it's going to end up just like with MS. Now when you start your new phone, you have to select what search engine to use, even though everyone will select Google anyway. The only victory here is the EU getting a big wad of cash...
Google is paying manufacturers to use Google search as the default search engine and to exclude other search engines. The EU sees Google's dominant position in mobile OSs being used to bundle their search engine.
It's hard to deny that there's a stinking parallel to Microsoft paying PC manufacturers to bundle IE and exclude other browsers, which resulted in the famous anti-trust suit.
A good parallel is the news that came out just yesterday about Google Home: Google will forbid anyone who wants to offer Google Cast/Home integrated devices from offering other digital assistants, like Alexa.
Its is however illegal, when a company uses its monopoly power, to gain an additional monopoly. In this case google using its 3. Party smarthphone os monopoly, to gain/reinforce an additonal monopoly on search and services.
I'm all for antitrust regulators being more active to spur competition, but this is an odd one. Microsoft certainly pays OEMs to configure Bing, Google & Yahoo have paid Mozilla to use their search engine. Yahoo pays for crapware to install their toolbar, often paying malware authors, and yet it's Android that gets them in a frenzy.
Google clearly has platform power here, but targeting the payments is such an odd one to me. I can't believe phone manufacturers will be happy about this either since competing search engines probably won't pay them as much in light of this.
Sorry, no references off the top of my head, just seen it first hand when investigating pay per install networks in desktop crapware. Saw Ask & Yahoo toolbars getting installed by them, pretty sure that indicated a kickback, but I didn't care to dig.
It's a very odd one. It'd leave Microsoft and possibly Yahoo the only companies willing and able to pay phone companies to install their search, and Microsoft's historically been a lot more obnoxious about it, paying them to prevent users from switching to alternative search engines.
Why is that being considered anti-competitive here ?
It seems like they are participating in a competitive marketplace by offering to pay and being awarded the coveted spot as an equal participant rather than using their position as the upstream to force their way in.
Certainly they have a valuable product and deep pockets making them better able to compete here, but it doesn't seem to exclude anyone from competing on the same field.
Unfortunately, Google's contracts with OEMs are secret, and the newest ones the public has seen are five years old. But Google has previously used terms that outright barred a manufacturer from having any Android devices without Google Play, if they dare partner with another company for even one model. And in order to get Google Play, the terms they must agree to also require preinstalling a large list of apps, and setting them as default.
I suggest you look up the Android MADA agreement (the ones on the Internet are from 2011), and then consider that by all rumor, they've gotten worse since then.
Maybe the biggest problem is the fact that these agreements are secret, and not subject to public review. I doubt Android's support would be so widespread if the public knew about these contracts from the start.
What does the EU want here, exactly? For Google to close Android and make all the phones itself, thus eliminating the problem of OEMs being paid by eliminating OEMs entirely?
This is yet another bizarre ruling by the EU - they're saying that a far more proprietary, less competition friendly approach (Apple) is OK, but you can literally give an entire OS away as open source and it's illegal? I don't think tech firms can win here. Nothing they do will ever appease the EU.
The problem isn't paying OEMs. The problem is what they're paying OEMs to do: shut out Google's competitors from the OEMs' products.
Anti-competitive actions are anti-competitive even if you're paying somebody to help you, even if you make a FOSS operating system, and even if Apple engage in their own anti-competitive activities.
> payments or discounts to mobile phone manufacturers in return for pre-installing Google's Play Store with Google Search
My read is that Google leverages its dominance in the Android app store market to protect its search business by some sort of deal that makes manufacturers install both. If I understand correctly, the problem is that, say, Bing may match the price Google is paying a manufacturer for search, but Google may then make the manufacturer pay for the Play Store somehow.
You can't have the Play Store if you don't abide by a set of rules. Having Google Search as default is part of those rules. If you have Bing as default, you don't get the Play Store or the rest of Google Android.
I tried Cyanogenmod for a while and wasn't pleased with the situation of Android in general, notably the arrangements with Google Play. I used Fdroid for a bit (which I appreciated), but soon ended up abandoning Android altogether, for a bundle of reasons.
I forgot to mention that I was really disappointed (even sad) to see the Jolla (with Sailfish OS) fail. I kind of gave up on "smart devices" after that. Sure would have been dandy had YC backed them.
I don't use a smartphone presently, but I also don't need one. I consider both options equally undesirable and will hold out until a worthy competitor arrives, or necessity imposes itself. I'm a bit curmudgeonly regarding technology that sits in my pocket, following me everywhere, handling my data, and prefer it be subordinate to me - not autonomous, closed and teeming with third-party interests.
First, it would be nice if the currently closed parts of a the Google-logo Android most OEMs ship were more open. Google's IoT OS is developed in the open, while AOSP has periodic updates. Parts of Google's suite of services and apps that are currently for Google-logo OEMs could also be opened without weakening Google's position with OEMs.
Secondly, it would be nice if there were more smartphone OS choices, like Jolla, that could prosper alongside the two main choices.
But Google doesn't deserve to get fined for anti-competitive practices. Amazon's mobile OS drafts off of Google's work on AOSP, and nobody is whining about that. Yandex announced they would do something similar. Chinese OEMs have long had their own app stores on Android. In many ways Android is the basis for open competition in mobile OSs.
If you want something other than the Google ecosystem, you can have it on an Android OS with all the latest OS technologies. But you have to have your own credible ecosystem and customer base for it. I'm not sure what the EU wants that hasn't already been demonstrated can be done in the US, Russia, and China.
Yandex is behind the Russian case against Google , because OEMs told Yandex that Google forbid them from working with Yandex. In Russia, Google's already been ordered to make the changes the EU is demanding here, though there's no signs Google has complied yet. China only has competition because Google doesn't operate there. Amazon's Fire Phone shows how successful one can compete with an international monopoly. None of these are good examples to defend Google, and in fact, demonstrate why it's so crucial Google be taken down a peg.
Honestly, they don't deserve a fine, because they can afford it, and it's no big deal. Google needs to be forcibly broken up into smaller parts, and banned from colluding with each other. It's time to do to El Goog what the US did to Ma Bell.
Regarding "because OEMs told Yandex that Google forbid them from working with Yandex" that appears to be true. Google forbids OEMs from selling both Google-logo and other-ecosystem devices. Google's excuse is "anti-fragmentation." They do this to make OEMs accept Google's decisions about Android, and either you are in or you are out.
But that's not a high barrier. Amazon's tablets are made by some CM/ODM who most likely manufactures Android devices for a number of OEMs. Yandex could have private label phones much the same way. Or they could get phones from China OEMs that don't care about making Google-logo devices.
The Amazon Fire phone was as much a turkey as Echo is a hit. It wasn't Google's fault.
As for China, Google does operate there now, and Lenovo sells Google-logo Androids in China. But the non-Google ecosystems continue.
The Fire Phone was definitely hugely impacted by not having access to the apps which only the Play Store has (most of them), and the fact that, specifically, Google's own apps are only available through them. Who's going to buy a phone without YouTube? Similarly, if you look at reviews of Windows Phone, most are very positive, with one exception: Without Google providing good support for the platform, people don't want to use it. Google's monopolies span far and wide, and it's difficult for anyone in the tech industry Google refuses to work with.
As far as the Echo... Google hasn't even released Google Home yet, and they're already telling manufacturers they're going to have to choose between supporting Alexa and supporting Google Home.
If China has Google now, it's still not a huge problem: Lenovo is only a small part of the market share there, and most importantly: All of the apps popular in China are already available in other stores. Maybe we should ban the Play Store for a few years in the US until the same situation happens here?
I bought a Fire tablet without YouTube. Amazon has their own media ecosystem. Almost all the mass-market apps I use are available on the Amazon app store. Even Netflix.
I would, however, agree that it is petty, pointless, and possibly counterproductive for Google not to put apps that use the Google ecosystem on Amazon's app store.
As far as what the Fire phone was missing? I'd say maps and navigation. They should have gotten HERE on board at launch.
I completely disagree with this. Google is too lax about what it allows and doesn't allow on Android. It could easily restrict 3rd party companies like AT&T and EE etc from pre-loading their bloatware as system apps, but it doesn't. Google's apps are, in my opinion, excellent, and it's their operating system. They should be able to put whatever they want on it, just like apple can put whatever they want on iPhones and Microsoft can put whatever they want on theirs.
There are plenty of android devices that are sold in emerging markets that do not come with the Play store.
Africa, China and India are doing it.
Nothing prevents vendors from selling devices without the Play store, and some devices like Samsung ones come with their own App Store in addition to Google Play.
Nokia also had a close store.
Also you can side load apps on android devices without rooting them.
So, take your phone without the Play Store, and get the apps that people in the US or the EU want. You'll find almost none of the apps users want are available without Google Play. And most of them won't even run without Play Services even if you sideload them.
Basically, what Google did gradually over the last few years, is fork Android. The APIs developers are encouraged to build their apps on are all proprietary, to ensure that their apps are also tied to the Google ecosystem.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadhttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.adblockplu...
I don't use Android (nor any Google product besides search) but I'm pretty sure you can get ad blockers on Android.
This would include an ad blocker that blocks ads in, say, a free game, or the built in Chrome browser.
The common workaround was to run connections through a VPN and your ad blocking happens there. I'm not sure if they started cracking down on that as well.
Having apps that modify other apps can certainly be desired behavior, but it's clear why there would be legitimate concerns about customer security in allowing apps that can do so.
1. Create a browser with ad blocking builtin or possible with addons (like Firefox).
2. Create a local proxy that blocks ads, and make the user configure it as the system proxy.
3. Require root privileges and do whatever you want (2, or maybe change /etc/hosts, like AdAway does). Yes, there are tons of apps in the Play Store that only work with root. Google never cared much about them.
On iOS I use Focus and Safari and that has been pretty good for me. Obviously that's not something that would work on Android.
And you can still get them on Android, but not via the Play Store. You have to go through third-party stores such as F-Droid, Aptoide or Amazon (or just directly download the installer-file off of a webpage).
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/03/13/breaking-google-has-...
The EU regulators view the OS and Google apps as two seperate spheres.
- be available on other app stores,
- apps wouldn't require Google Play Services?
Most manufacturers would still pre-load it, those who don't no longer have a cost disadvantage.
Maybe some more strict rules would be better? Like: any OS on sell in UE can not prohibit installing third party software and tinkering with the hardware, and the user should be asked about pre-installed software on the first launch. Something like that. We got browser choice screen in Windows for a while, and it was good. But it didn't affect iOS, nor Windows 10, nor Android.
Android is both open source and expensive to develop. It seems like a reasonable compromise to me, especially as Google keeps the fragmentation problem somewhat under control this way.
The single highest installed version according to Google is 3 major versions behind and 3 years old.
Give me a fragmented Android any day, 1 build will run across all OEMs 99.9% of the time, rather than 15%
All apps must come from the Apple App Store. No 3rd party allowed.
Problem solved it would seem. Even so, as you mentioned you can get other browsers.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iosapps/best-iphone-web-br...
There's really no need to make assumptions about my technical capabilities from 6 words and ask me to stop commenting based on those assumptions. That character is unbecoming for this community.
There are still various ways in which third-party browsers are penalized, such as links from other applications being hardwired to open in Safari.
People use Google because most people use the default, and Google pays to be the default.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-22/google-pai...
This reads very much like the EU vs. MS for the exact same reasons.
I suspect the problem is that there's no "I'll pay you, but not include the software" option for Android, but couldn't it be applied to any FLOSS as in "there's no option to pay you, but not contribute back" in the case of the GPL or even "there's not an option to not buy a Mac with MacOS", or something like that?
EDIT: If the problem is using Android's dominant position to bundle Google Search, then I get the similarities to the MS lawsuit, the difference being that people actually want to use it, which is why I think Google should be confident about including a "Bing Search" or "Google Search" option, as 99.99% of people would go with Google, since in Google's case, Search is actually a product people want to use when compared to the alternatives, whereas Explorer wasn't in the MS case.
But couldn't this then also be extended to Chrome and Search on the desktop? i.e. Google used its dominant position in search to push Chrome, (try visiting google.com with Safari or Firefox, notice the top-right Chrome banner?) and once they got to a dominant position with Chrome, they used it to further the dominance of Search, by it being default in Chrome etc.
https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2009/02/browsers-powered...
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win."
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
That's the answer, full stop. Like it or not, the rules are different for you when you have the majority of market share, and this has been true in both the EU and the US despite their different approaches to antitrust regulation.
The argument hinges on Google not owning or operating Android. AOSP has been a dead dream for a while now due to carriers locking down phones and Google needing to circle the wagons.
As you mention, AOSP alone does not give you much Android and Google is likely to dictate all kinds of terms to use the Play services, Play Store, etc. So, the question is indeed does AOSP give enough to argue that Google does not fully control the Android market.
Personally, I am not sure this is the most problematic aspect of Android though. If we assume for a moment that Android is a near-monopoly in the EU, the more troubling aspect is that people can only choose between having no smartphone (which is becoming harder) or letting Google suck all kinds of data out of them. In other words, only when you are rich enough, you can afford not to let a company suck up a lot of your private data.
There are still a couple of european countries where iOS devices sell extremely poorly. I am not sure if this is because of an absence of subsidies or another reason.
Even if Android is the only option, you can always choose to refuse all data sharing from google, you are not forced to create a google account or to use google play.
Admittedly, it makes things harder for a neophyte.
That's only in the US.
Let's be honest here, AOSP is a dead dream because porting and maintaining AOSP for a device is kinda complicated. Many people do it for free, but you can't rely on that.
GPS includes stuff like location services, Firebase, Chromecast, analytics, Google account authentication, Google Drive APIs, all the game stuff, Android Pay, etc.
Or which things can monopolistic companies do that non-monopolistic companies can't do? Can or do Apple do those things?
Which practices a monopolistic company can do, but is not allowed to, is written clearly in the article: Forcing/Paying other companies to pre-install its proprietary apps. A non-monopolistic company is allowed to do that.
My local corner shop has a market share of 100% of the places I can buy things if I walk 30 seconds but that's hardly relevant when I can drive 10-15 minutes and have 4 different supermarkets at my disposal.
That's not relevant in the phone market, where you're stuck with a specific platform once you've made your initial phone purchase. You can't use it with applications from other platforms, and switching platforms means you need to purchase all the stuff you're using all over again.
Although usually when I hear people misuse antitrust concepts on tech forums, they're not trying to understand complicated legal conflicts, rather they're grasping at straws to use as ammunition in dumb flamewars about platforms/companies/etc. that they don't like.
I guess that the issue is that I am not as much against Google using Android to distribute its services (I would be using most of them anyway and those that I don't use (newsstand, spaces, ..) can be replaced anyway) but against being unable to distribute/install whatever software I want on a general purpose computing device.
And AFAIK, sadly there is no law governing this.
There are no laws against closed products per se.
Antitrust regulations apply only for products with dominant market share (Android has 87.6% market share 2016Q2 according to IDC).
You seem confused. The free market is that where monopolies don't bully to limit choice (and thus freedom).
>Google to stop paying financial incentives to smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search
Is Firefox bullying other search engines by having a default search engine on their browser?
The only thing limiting choice and freedom is the EU decision.
Firefox is not a monopoly, so that's a moot point.
On the one hand you wonder whether Google will get in a huff and close AOSP (The Android Open Source Project) just to work with a few commercial vendors. They can leave the complainants to work together on an fork where they can do what they wish.
Or, which I hope they would do by now, actually run AOSP like a true open source project.
In the latter case I think the strategy that they've used so far "was" the right one (open source but not open for debate), however Android is now mature enough that I think developing a true open source community would benefit it.
Edit: Disclosure, I use both major platforms.
(Also, I want to write $14.5G like I would $14.5M or $14.5k, but I don't think it would be understood very well)
"EU antitrust regulators plan to order Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google to stop paying financial incentives to smartphone makers to pre-install Google Search exclusively on their devices and warned the company of a large fine, an EU document showed."
Microsoft got nailed because they were popular, not because they forced people to not use Netscape. Now, everyone includes a default browser, and no one sues Apple over forcing all iOS users to use Safari no matter what, even "alternative browsers" must use Safari for their HTML canvas underneath.
It's hard to deny that there's a stinking parallel to Microsoft paying PC manufacturers to bundle IE and exclude other browsers, which resulted in the famous anti-trust suit.
http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/google-home-amazon-echo...
Its is however illegal, when a company uses its monopoly power, to gain an additional monopoly. In this case google using its 3. Party smarthphone os monopoly, to gain/reinforce an additonal monopoly on search and services.
Google clearly has platform power here, but targeting the payments is such an odd one to me. I can't believe phone manufacturers will be happy about this either since competing search engines probably won't pay them as much in light of this.
Microsoft has little market share.
Btw, can you point towards Yahoo paying for crapware to be installed?
It seems like they are participating in a competitive marketplace by offering to pay and being awarded the coveted spot as an equal participant rather than using their position as the upstream to force their way in.
Certainly they have a valuable product and deep pockets making them better able to compete here, but it doesn't seem to exclude anyone from competing on the same field.
I suggest you look up the Android MADA agreement (the ones on the Internet are from 2011), and then consider that by all rumor, they've gotten worse since then.
Maybe the biggest problem is the fact that these agreements are secret, and not subject to public review. I doubt Android's support would be so widespread if the public knew about these contracts from the start.
This is yet another bizarre ruling by the EU - they're saying that a far more proprietary, less competition friendly approach (Apple) is OK, but you can literally give an entire OS away as open source and it's illegal? I don't think tech firms can win here. Nothing they do will ever appease the EU.
Anti-competitive actions are anti-competitive even if you're paying somebody to help you, even if you make a FOSS operating system, and even if Apple engage in their own anti-competitive activities.
(1) = Go to the download page for adobe flash or adobe reader for example and they have preselected the optional download of google chrome.
My read is that Google leverages its dominance in the Android app store market to protect its search business by some sort of deal that makes manufacturers install both. If I understand correctly, the problem is that, say, Bing may match the price Google is paying a manufacturer for search, but Google may then make the manufacturer pay for the Play Store somehow.
Though the article is too vague to be sure.
It works like traffic law, you receive a fine and if you disagree then you can go to court.
Here's one of the most relevant perspectives on Google's Android I've read, titled Google's Iron Grip on Android: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolla
Secondly, it would be nice if there were more smartphone OS choices, like Jolla, that could prosper alongside the two main choices.
But Google doesn't deserve to get fined for anti-competitive practices. Amazon's mobile OS drafts off of Google's work on AOSP, and nobody is whining about that. Yandex announced they would do something similar. Chinese OEMs have long had their own app stores on Android. In many ways Android is the basis for open competition in mobile OSs.
If you want something other than the Google ecosystem, you can have it on an Android OS with all the latest OS technologies. But you have to have your own credible ecosystem and customer base for it. I'm not sure what the EU wants that hasn't already been demonstrated can be done in the US, Russia, and China.
Honestly, they don't deserve a fine, because they can afford it, and it's no big deal. Google needs to be forcibly broken up into smaller parts, and banned from colluding with each other. It's time to do to El Goog what the US did to Ma Bell.
But that's not a high barrier. Amazon's tablets are made by some CM/ODM who most likely manufactures Android devices for a number of OEMs. Yandex could have private label phones much the same way. Or they could get phones from China OEMs that don't care about making Google-logo devices.
The Amazon Fire phone was as much a turkey as Echo is a hit. It wasn't Google's fault.
As for China, Google does operate there now, and Lenovo sells Google-logo Androids in China. But the non-Google ecosystems continue.
As far as the Echo... Google hasn't even released Google Home yet, and they're already telling manufacturers they're going to have to choose between supporting Alexa and supporting Google Home.
If China has Google now, it's still not a huge problem: Lenovo is only a small part of the market share there, and most importantly: All of the apps popular in China are already available in other stores. Maybe we should ban the Play Store for a few years in the US until the same situation happens here?
I would, however, agree that it is petty, pointless, and possibly counterproductive for Google not to put apps that use the Google ecosystem on Amazon's app store.
As far as what the Fire phone was missing? I'd say maps and navigation. They should have gotten HERE on board at launch.
Africa, China and India are doing it.
Nothing prevents vendors from selling devices without the Play store, and some devices like Samsung ones come with their own App Store in addition to Google Play.
Nokia also had a close store.
Also you can side load apps on android devices without rooting them.
Basically, what Google did gradually over the last few years, is fork Android. The APIs developers are encouraged to build their apps on are all proprietary, to ensure that their apps are also tied to the Google ecosystem.