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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."
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
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.
duckduckgo. (ok, it's a meta search engine)
Google is not as good as it was. I'm obliged to ask verbatim nearly every search, when it was the default.
Seriously. google actually makes it fairly easy to switch the default search provider, what should they do not include any search functionality and leave it up the the user to find a search functionality? I mean, how will they find it if they cant search!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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'
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'.
How do you change the default search functionality in Android?
There is a google search bar in my phone (Android 4.4.2), which, if i tap, long tap, tap and tap menu button, and any other combos, won't offer me an option to change it.
There is also the Android browser, which defaults to google search AND google.com as the home, for which you have to go into "advanced settings" to change the default search provider (IE will ask you on first run).
There is also Google Hangouts now wanting to be the default SMS app.
And there's Google+ claiming to have over 500M users when nobody uses (save for a few developers too cool for facebook). That's because google decided you had to be in Google+ if you had Gmail.
Google is still the best search engine and email provider out there. They are dominant in that area, and they use this to promote their other "platforms", most of the making it opt-out for you. So let's not defend google. They're just another company.
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.
Is there a better search engine than Google?
That depends on what your goals are. If you find anonimity important at all, then the answer is "all of them"
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.
How do you change the default search functionality in Android?
Have you tried Googling for that information? :)
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Apparently, going into your browser's settings to change the search engine is hard..? And the Google search bar is simply a widget. Just remove it and get a new one from the Play store. Don't like Hangouts or Google+..? Remove them. No one's forcing you to keep this stuff.
How do you change the default search functionality in Android?
There is a google search bar in my phone (Android 4.4.2), which, if i tap, long tap, tap and tap menu button, and any other combos, won't offer me an option to change it.
I have a Google search bar on my phone too. It is a gizmo/widget app, and I can delete it if I want to. In fact, I just checked, and can slide to another page, and add a second one there. Then I can delete it. Because it is just another app.
Go find an app for your favorite search engine, install it, and put that gizmo on your phone's desktop. If such an app doesn't exist, that is not Google's fault.
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.
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
How is that question even relevant to the legal matter at hand? Or, put it another way: How will Google be motivated to maintain or improve their search engine if they are able to abuse their monopolistic position?
Yeah same here. Just because it is bundled by default it doesn't mean it cannot be removed from the desktop.
Maybe you should ask the EU about their solution for Microsoft. In 2009, IE was easily removed from Windows, and for years prior it had been easy to set the default search engine to anything else. Yet the EU still wanted a browser ballot on first boot.
How is bing and the others batter at anonymity?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So what exactly makes Google search less "anonymous" than all the others?
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"
The "added cost" is bullshit. What they mean is they couldn't milk revenue from the search provider. But the thing is Google is banking on the OS development which is certainly not cheap. If it was the smartphone vendors would have forked it by now.
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.
How does it make Android non-free?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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...
Bing!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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.
"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.
Also, the fact that it gives a different set of results to everyone based on what information they've spied about you is a big problem. No longer can you give a search term to someone else with the knowledge that if they do the search they will get pretty much the same results.
Duck Duck Go is useful for that reason too.
I'm sure bing or yahoo would gladly pay moto or HTC $$$$$ to be the default provider. this would lower costs to consumers
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!
I don't know about Bing. But duckduckgo is very anonymous.
https://duckduckgo.com/
If you follow the links on the right side of the screen, they'll show you the many ways in which Google breach your privacy and they don't.
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."
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.
Not only can you go to Duck Duck Go's website, they also host a hidden service on the tor network. So, if you want to search the internet without big business looking over your shoulder, they're a great choice... I like startpage.com, too.
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!
Google is like a palantir, you use it to search the internet but they track everything you do online.
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 can't comment on the reactivate every boot, OEM's do strange things with preinstall images so I guess it is possible. Personally, I'd just reinstall Windows in a VM, it be easier than trying to put an existing install in a VM. Install .iso's are not difficult to come by and MD5/SHA1 can be verified against TechNet's published values.
But that was not the statement. He said all were better.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
So none of the VM providers really support using a VM directly from a hard disk partition. Yes, I looked into it when I wanted to convert my Thinkpad T61p over to Linux and try to keep the Windows License. They all kinda support it, but they also tell you "Don't do this".
Some VM providers will allow enough to pass through from the host for the Windows system to continue using the OEM license; but it is far easier and more reliable to just get another Windows License Key and use that instead - then you just reinstall into a standard VM environment, use the license, and you're done. And really, that's the only place that Windows belongs.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
For a company who's core business (advertising) is based around search, their search app is pretty shitty. It does little more than just having a bookmark to the page and requires many, very intrusive permissions and takes up four icon spaces on the screen for no good purpose.
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
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?
I should be more precise. Its windows 8.1.
There is NO manual way for me adding my custom (or any for that matter) app to the M$ list of "default programs". All I can do in
Control Panel\Programs\Default Programs\Set Default Programs
is select some metro bullshit programs already on my computer. I cant even unselect IEs association with HTTP.
Control Panel\Programs\Default Programs\Set Associations .txt as "not selected".
simply ignores whatever I do and keeps
For protocols on the bottom I have whole range of options, from 'Use IE" to "look for metro garbage app".
Cherry on the top is inability to install ONLY update I am interested in - Browser Choice update. It crashes every single time.
Microsoft was fined by EU, and their answer is to obscure whole thing even deeper and take away options for good. Its Metro apps or pound sand.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
well disregard above, turns out there is registry hack that lets you add custom programs manually after all
http://server-support.co/blog/...
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
theres always a reg hack, but the point is you shouldnt need to touch the reg
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
Bing won't send you ads in your gmail based on your searches on bing.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Actually, you can't remove the apps that are installed in ROM.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
sorry, but this is the silliest thread I have read about VMs for a while.
Step 1: Install solid reliable Linux Distro (any 1 of a gazillion, whatever floats your boat) into a medium good computer: strip the computer to the bones and dump all the windows crap partitions
Step 2: Install virt-manager or qemu or virtual box or vmware or any of the many other vm creation and then install windows as a vm.
Step 3: when the windows install freaks contact MS, tell them what you are doing and open the desktop management from a distance software, let them fix it.
Step 4: install whatever you want in the windows, I don't care. You can probably setup the virt machine to start automagically with the computer, too, since you seem to really need it.
Notes: extra RAM is often helpful, as is an SSD of course. I did this with a Win7 install disk, and while the windows activation part was a pain, it is the price MS wants you to pay to use windows. The software I needed was Adobe Digital Editions, and I probably should have used WINE, but I had a $15 copy of WIN7 so I figured what the hell. actually it was just the usual Windows waste of time.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.