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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.
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?
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.
Go ask Microsoft how that defense works out...
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.
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.
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.
There are scores of free alternative launchers, all available in the market.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
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
You can "remove" it by installing an aftermarket launcher screen like Nova.
Just about every "default" app and function can be overridden with aftermarket apps.
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.
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.
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.
Yea because MSs idea of default is tied to the OS at a level other browers cannot get to...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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.
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.
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.