Competitors Complain To EC That Free Android Is a 'Trojan Horse'

First time accepted submitter DW100 writes "Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle have taken it upon themselves to moan to the European Commission about Google's Android dominance, which they say is an underhand bid to control the entire mobile market. The firms are part of the FairSearch group, which has just filed a complaint that Google is using Android as a 'Trojan Horse' to take control of the mobile market and all the related advertising revenue. Microsoft would of course know all about this, being at the end of several similar anti-competitive complaints in the past."

Comments

ZERO FUCKS...

[Anonymous Coward]

...zero fucks were given

Re:ZERO FUCKS...

[ilsaloving]

There's a huge difference actually. Microsoft forced their OS onto computers with predatory contracts that penalized computer manufacturers who wanted to sell competing OSes. Thus they created their first monopoly, and then used that to create another one using Web Browsers.

Unless you know of evidence that Google is forcing manufacturers to use Android at the expense of other systems, then no it's not even close to the same thing. Manufacturers are choosing to user Android. That's not Google's fault.

I find it funny that they are claiming Android is all this and that, but it somehow doesn't occur to them at all that maybe, just maybe, manufacturers would be more interested in using Microsoft and Oracle products if they didn't act like predatory douchebags that abuse their partners and their customers.

Re:what is stopping them from doing the same thing

[mrquagmire]

Whoa, slow down there. Nobody wants competition here. They want to manipulate the government into giving them an advantage through preferential legislation. You know, capitalism.

Re:News Flash!

[bfandreas]

The complaint isn't retarded even if it is a bit of a strawman.

Google ist THE search engine and THE advertising agency and THE data harvester(shared with Facebook which is easily avoidable) on the internet.
If you combine this with being THE supplier fro mobile computing then you get a stiuation where even better competitors would not be able to compete.

The European Model(excluding that detached insular bit in the most polluted part of the North Sea which insists on confusing everybody including themselves) is having private enterprise with regulation to ensure fair competition. So this is quite up their alley. Rightfully so. Google is becoming a bit terrifying.

This is thugs complaining of unhelpfully having their nose broken for them which might seem silly at first but they do have a point.

Re:NOT capitalism

[miletus]

By your standard, capitalism has never existed then, because governments have always interfered in labor markets to make capitalism work. The English state forced peasants off their land and to the point of starvation to make them work in factories, and conquered India to crush local cotton manufacturing make markets for its cotton mills, forced China to allow imports of opium, etc. Early American capitalism required slavery to produce the raw materials for export and English cotton mills that were the foundation for northern industry and banking, as well as constant western land grabs through the state's military to be viable. Tell me when capitalism has ever prospered without a strong state to do its dirty work?

Re:News Flash!

[knorthern knight]

> Google has threatened phone manufacturers over forks of the code.
> Amazon doesn't use Android to describe Kindle's OS, though it is a fork,
> because Google won't allow it.

This is identical to the situation where Sun (now part of Oracle) successfully sued Microsoft for forking Java, while still calling it Java. If you want to create a new different product, fine, but don't stomp over somebody else's trademarks in the process.