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Google Hit With Antitrust Lawsuit Over Default Search on Android Phones
itwbennett writes: "A class-action lawsuit filed Thursday (PDF) accuses Google of strong-arming device manufacturers into making its search engine the default on Android devices, driving up the cost of those devices and hurting consumers. The suit does not argue that device manufacturers entered Mobile Application Distribution Agreements involuntarily, but that the market power of Google compels them to. 'Because consumers want access to Google's products, and due to Google's power in the U.S. market for general handheld search, Google has unrivaled market power over smartphone and tablet manufacturers,' says the suit."
Is there a better search engine than Google?
I haven't heard a darn thing about the government getting out their government crow bar and prying Bing out of Windows 8. I am soooo sick of removing it manually in as many places as possible on my customers' new laptops!
Because there is demand for a thing, business are forced to deliver it. Quick, someone stop it!
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I'm old...
'Because consumers want access to Google's products, and due to Google's power in the U.S. market for general handheld search, Google has unrivaled market power over smartphone and tablet manufacturers,' says the suit."
So Google is strong-arming us into taking the products we actually want. I gotcha. Being strong-armed never felt so good!
This is frivolous, and they will not only lose, but have to pay Google's lawyers as well.
They can get whatever phone they want.
With or without Google services... And as I understand it, you can change the search engine if you want to.
Note that the plaintiffs are not the manufacturers, but two random owners of Android phones. This is nothing but lawyers abusing the U.S. legal system, trying to extort a settlement out of a big company.
When is the U.S. going to get around to tort reform?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I am really asking.
Class action suit admits that customers only want google for search and would not be willing to buy a phone that searched with Bing. How is following consumer demand anti-trust?
There is a reason that everyone uses google and only google. Yes I know there are a couple people out there who use something else, but you are a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the user base.
Also, I am not sure these guys know it, but Android is free to install.
Should google be forced to let you use their product to make money without getting anything in return?
The "DuckDuckGo Search and Stories" app for Android was also a crashy piece of $#!+ last time I checked.
Was it Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, or one of the device manufactures operating the hidden hand behind the two people who filed the lawsuit? Following the money to find out!
What this lawsuit requests is that operators of other search engines be allowed to pay phone makers and carriers to make a particular search provider the default on a particular make and model.
It's just a friggen *DEFAULT*... unless the consumer can do nothing to change it, there should be absolutely nothing wrong with google being a default for search.
Apple has *WAY* more lock-in than this, and they aren't being sued (or at least anytime anyone's ever tried, Apple never seems to lose).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
After all, it has happened before.
Am i missing the part about how setting google to the default has added costs? If they set the default is there some sort of "fee" i am required to pay?
This sure sounds like a lawsuit for lawyers where they get $100MM and we (the actual consumers) get a 5 cent coupon on our next google purchase.
OHA rules state that if a manufacturer makes one Android device with Google services, all its Android devices have to include Google services. This severely limits which manufacturers Amazon can use to make its Fire OS devices. See, for example, the article Google's Definition of 'Open'.
This is just further proof, as if more were required, that the US legal system is seriously broken.
And when you have Chicken stock on your phone, you are a messy cook.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The suite doesn't say people want to use Google for search, at least not according to the summary. They're talking about the other Google services. Which people want, which on the other hand binds the vendor to the "Mobile Application Distribution Agreements", which makes Android non-free.
You should install Bing, Yahoo or other search apps?
I seriously doubt you are going to change the *GOOGLE* Search bar away from Google... But I bet you that the other apps have Widgets for their search services.
Good! I'm generally a Google fan, but the default Google search on my phone that I can't remove is annoying to say the least. The voice search garbage that nobody uses makes it even worse. I don't think I'd mind if I could just remove it... but the fact that its locked onto my screen top center and I have no way to ever remove it makes it seem an awful lot like IE was in XP.
Presumably, the "added cost" is lost competition, fewer options and a worse experience.
Just like when IE was forced down our throats and Netscape Navigator got killed... it didn't "cost" anything to get IE, but we had a worse experience in the end (and only finally are we in the post IE6 era), had less competition (took much longer to get realistic alternatives to IE), less motivation for MS to improve IE, etc.
We didn't "pay"... but we sure paid in the long run.
Granted... I don't think Google is in near the monopoly position, nor abuses it to the level that MS did. You can get other phones (Apple, BB, MS, etc). You can change most of the defaults (Download other apps and replace the Google Widgets with Bing... if that's your thing...)
Please allow me to explain. When I first got an Android phone some years back, I was appalled when my service provider told me that I could not update any firmware unless I had Widows. At the time, I was only running GNU/Linux on my desk and latop. My phone would be howling for updates and experienced all sorts of glitches, while I looked for someone with Windows. I wondered, 'how the hell is this a GNU/Linux OS when I need freaking Windows to update it?' Could the service provider not have released a tar ball update? How hard would that be? Then I learned that Android comes loaded with proprietary software blobs. That you have to do pretty much what the service provider wants you to do, and not what you want to do. Also, the Android phone howls for a gmail account or it gets very moody. That is why Replicant is around, but my understanding is that most of the features re disabled (like mobile internet--not wifi) once you install. So I figure, you really have to do what companies say if you want the fraking thing to work, which does not look/feel like GNU/Linux to me. I might as well get any number of other phone OS', like a Windows, Blackberry, or whatever. I am still waiting for a GNU/Linux tablet, phone, and the like. It will happen...any day now...yes..any day...one day...I hope...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Note that the plaintiffs are not the manufacturers, but two random owners of Android phones.
The legal system requires the plaintiff to be the party who has been harmed. If something mostly harms end users, then end users need to be named as plaintiffs. This is why Righthaven's lawsuits failed: the company refused to add the actual copyright owner to the lawsuit.
Which I solved by creating a new gmail account on the phone, and never using it.
Note that if you should ever feel the urge to email to plokjuy.gmail (I think that's how I spelled the account name), you won't get a response. Ever.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
If I install GNU/Linux in a virtual machine, I still get Bing when I tab back to Windows. If I install GNU/Linux on the bare hardware, I lose access to applications on which I depend that aren't usable in Wine.
There are at least two AOSP flavours that offer nightly updates, Cyanogenmod and Omnirom. The slow updates on android are usually because the carriers want to lock you in to their set of apps/restrictions/spyware and insist on vetting updates. My t-Mobile Galaxy Note 2 has been running KitKat 4.4.2 for months, no thanks to T-Mobile. I would love to see a good GNU/Linux phone option. Maybe OpenBSD, where you make calls with a CLI...
I too am curious as to whether Microsoft still holds monopoly market share. Can someone dig up figures for Microsoft's market share and installed base among computer operating systems with multi-window window managers in the United States? This market includes Windows, Windows RT, OS X, X11/Linux, and Samsung's recent versions of Android with multi-window mode. I chose multi-window multitasking as a rough metric for whether an OS is intended for focused activity or for play. I'm no Windows fanboy, but I do know that Windows RT, unlike iOS and stock Android, lets the user "snap" an application to a strip at the side of the monitor as wide as a smartphone.
Which I solved by creating a new gmail account on the phone, and never using it.
Note that if you should ever feel the urge to email to plokjuy.gmail (I think that's how I spelled the account name), you won't get a response. Ever.
The whole point is why should you have to get an email account? Yes you have limited options, you could buy a Apple, Windows phone or whatever. Speaking of Windows and Apple since their in bed with one another, this suit smells like an MS or Apple ploy. It will hit the public's eyes and they'll get anal over Google being a bad company [all three a bad].
If I have to buy the phone I should be able to do whatever I want with it. When they give them out for free, then they can do whatever THEY want, I'll either say f**k it, or find a way to hack the phone. I'll just say someone found it, when I got it back it was like that..
"It argues device manufacturers enter such secret pacts with Google, called Mobile Application Distribution Agreements (MADA), because they know consumers expect to see a full suite of Google apps when they buy a device.
The suit does not argue that device manufacturers entered MADAs involuntarily, but that the market power of Google compels them to."
I've seen several Android devices without the play store. So obviously some manufacturers choose not to enter the agreement.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Was that plain android or was that some custom system that samsung or motorolla put out? A lot of those firmwares were pretty awful, some still are.
I really don't understand why they even bother. Approximately NO ONE EVER has said "Oh, I'm going to get a samsung phone, because touchwiz is so much better than regular android!" People who know one custom OS from another generally seem to rip it out as soon as possible and put in a different system, and the vast majority of customers only know it's not an iphone. People don't seem to be upgrading phones because their old phones don't get updates anymore, and if their phone artificially can't update, that's not really good for brand loyalty.
Anyway, as far as GNU/linux phone, I think that will have the same problems that you cite for android: whatever the motivation for manufacturers putting their own crap on top and making it only windows compatible will be true of any phone system UNLESS the manufacturers ARE the people making the OS, like apple or windows.
Still, it's nice that you know the name of the account under which Google is storing all the information it's spied from your searches, browsing and physical movements.
So... you buy an GOOGLE Android phone. You buy one that has GOOGLE apps preloaded, because you wanted them. But then you're upset that GOOGLE search is the default, and it requires effort to change that? .....what?
Nah, it's ok that Google is strongarming manufacturers to not include 3rd party apps that compete with Google's.
It's perfectly acceptable that Google is stripping away privacy features from their phones.
BUT DAMN IT I WANT MY CHOICE OF INTERNET SEARCH!!111eleventy!
*facepalm*
The stupid... it burns!
So as I understand this thread, the process would involve shrinking the existing Windows partition, installing Linux, and using the Windows partition as a virtual machine's VHD. This would appear to Windows as a drastic hardware change, forcing either reactivation or cessation of use of Windows-exclusive applications. Someone said that it would even use up an activation credit every time the VM restarts, forcing the user to either explain the situation daily to someone with a heavy accent or cease use of Windows-exclusive applications.
Also, the Android phone howls for a gmail account or it gets very moody
I've made hundreds of gmail accounts to deal with this problem. Every time a new phone comes in, new account with random letters.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're still being mined for your data even if you never use that account. Thanks for paying into Google's plan. (pun intended)
Why should I care about Google spying on me? If they don't get the info direct, they can get it from the NSA, after all.
Or GCHQ, I suppose....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Do no evil my ass. Never, EVER trust ANYBODY.
Probably bbecause the Sherman Antitrust Act begins its primary list of prohibitions with ..." can't do the following things.
"Every person who shall monopolize
Section 1 has some restraint of trade stuff, but mostly it is about a) abusing monopoly power and b) improper actions in pursuit of monopoly power.
You might wish the law were different, but the law is in fact "every person who shall monopolize ...".
Man, you'd think history would not repeat itself so soon, but it has! I never agreed with that Netscape/MS lawsuit as it did nothing for the consumer, nothing. Don't understand how it's "wrong" that when using a a MS or Apple or Google product yields the default use of another bundled product from the same manufacturer. Just install your own software already and be done with it!
NOTE: I'm not saying it's the best. I'm not saying it's the only one that incorporates functionality xyz. Just that it's so popular that any Android manufacturer that doesn't provide at least a way to add Google functionality is committing market suicide.
What a crock! It's not like Google is telling manufacturers "include our functionality or we'll bankrupt you". They're simply saying "Oh, you want to include our functionality because it's necessary to your marketing? This is what you have to do." It's not at all like the Microsoft Tax, which is what the class action lawsuit seems to be implying.
I would hope that the suit is thrown out and the plaintiffs forced to pay Google for the inconvenience. In essence they are saying that Google is very desirable and therefore it is harder for competitors to make a living. So what! If people can't compete maybe they should develop products that really can compete.
"Driving up the cost" must mean Google is frustrating deals carriers and manufacturers would like to make with Bing to sell them unwilling eyeballs. The Google agreement is basically, "the eyeball already belongs to us and is not yours to sell." That's why it says cost, not choice.
It's pretty backwards. Consumer protection is going to be hard in this age of "mobile" where consumers "experience" products instead of shopping for them. blithering sheeple, this is why we can't have nice things.
If you google the law firm behind the complaint, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, you'll find that one of its partners is "an active member of the firm's Microsoft defense team." Coincidence?
One wonders where Hagens Berman found the time and money to engage in such public service on behalf of the consumer.
.. was lead counsel for Microsoft during part of its defense against antitrust claims .. In 2006 he sued Apple Computer, alleging that iPod music players could cause hearing loss if the volume were too high" ref
"Steve Berman
ROFL FFS, write your own OS yourself fucking lazy manufacturers.
So let me sum up: Slashmydots wanted to figure out how to extricate Bing services from Windows. Anonymous Coward recommended installing SUSE, and ShanghaiBill recommended running Windows in a virtual machine. But it turns out that this will probably require buying another copy of Windows. So if I know I'm going to have to buy a retail Windows license to replace the OEM Windows license that shipped on the machine, how do I go about getting a refund on the OEM license that is useless to me?
A class-action lawsuit filed Thursday (PDF) accuses Google of strong-arming device manufacturers into making its search engine the default on Android devices...
How is this any different than Microsoft using it's marketing muscle to force IE as the default web browser in the 90's? The Europeans were able to get concessions out of MS, but all the US anti-trust lawsuits failed.
There is no "monopoly market share". Monopoly is legally defined by the Sherman Act as "I know it when I see it".
The power of Google compels you! The power of Google compels you!
There are altenate search engines built specifically for mobile. One example is: Search GUI: http://www.searchgui.com/ The mobile apps for Search GUI: https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap... https://play.google.com/store/... http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ... Search GUI also have better privacy in that they don't track any user information unlike Google/Microsoft.
So the manufacturers will install some other search, and users will replace it with Google. It'll be just like Windows! We all know IE is just a horribly bloated download manager for the Firefox installer.