Google To Require As Many As 20 of Its Apps Preinstalled On Android Devices

schwit1 writes Google is looking to exert more pressure on device OEMs that wish to continue using the Android mobile operating system. Among the new requirements for many partners: increasing the number of Google apps that must be pre-installed on the device to as many as 20, placing more Google apps on the home screen or in a prominent icon folder and making Google Search more prominent. Earlier this year, Google laid its vision to reduce fragmentation by forcing OEMs to ship new devices with more recent version of Android. Those OEMs that choose not to comply lose access to Google Mobile Services (GMS) apps like Gmail, Google Play, and YouTube.

Comments

It's sad

[Anonymous Coward]

When a company moves from innovating to abusing its market share, it's usually not a good sign.

Re:It's sad

[TechyImmigrant]

When a company moves from innovating to abusing its market share, it's usually not a good sign.

Except when you get a phone with an old version of Android and loads of proprietary bloatware 'innovation' the phone sucks in ways it would not suck if it just had the up-to-date integrated Google app suite and android versions.

In this instance, the more Google succeeds, the better the products are.

Re:It's sad

[Noah Haders]

For certain values of "better". If this is truly better, why is CM so popular.

Re:It's sad

[gstoddart]

Well, some of the google apps are considered bloatware by some of us.

The constant nagging to sign up for Google+, the automatic creation of accounts and the like.

I prefer to use YouTube anonymously, if at all. Not so long ago on my Nexus 7 tablet, the app decided that I must have intended to sign up for a YouTube account and created one for me ... YouTube had its data cleared and was immediately disabled.

Google has been a little too pushy with some of their services. I don't want your damned Google+, I'm not interested in it ... stop telling me I need the damned thing.

I agree the proprietary bloatware is crap, and that's why I bought a Nexus branded tablet ... but don't think for a minute Google isn't also doing some annoying things.

Sometimes, just launching one of their own apps can change your account in ways you didn't expect, and don't get told about.

Re:It's sad

[ganjadude]

most people who use CM still sideload google apps, I know I do

Re:It's sad

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Remember when simply bundling IE was a monopoly abuse? Google is behaving in exactly the same way, only corporatism has grown so powerful over the last 15 years that the Overton window extends infinitely off in one direction;

2) There are loads of better options to Google's own apps. The first thing I do on an Android device reset is to install Link2SD and freeze most of the Android apps (and OEM apps, but there are fewer of them);

3) The usual problem is with the base OS not being updateable, and with many built-in apps therefore not being updated either (my Messaging and Browser and Phone apps on Android 2.3.7 have been updated... never).

Re:It's sad

[Noah Haders]

Yeah but you choose the ones you want to sideload.

Re:It's sad

[Andy Dodd]

Much of why CM and other AOSP-derivative projects are popular is to get rid of carrier and OEM bloatware. Very few people don't install gapps, and while some of the gapps packagers (such as PA) now offer "micro" gapps packages with most of the unnecessary Google apps installed, the package recommended by CM (as in, linked from their wiki) is a complete one.

This is effectively Google's response to OEMs (especially Samsung) putting on atrocious crapware that was ruining the Android experience for many users. e.g. "this is why OEMs can't have nice things".

One of the biggest issues is that sometimes the OEM crapware would constantly hound you to create an account with the OEMs own ecosystem. Google's stuff, at least, usually doesn't hound you if you click "no" during the initial Google account setup. Samsung, on the other hand, would constantly spam me with persistent notifications until I rooted and removed their crap. Also, OEM/carrier crapware was far more likely to do funky stuff in the background without the user's knowledge/approval than GMS.

Re:It's sad

[SourceFrog]

So you're saying it's a case of, "Google, products so good you need to be forced to use them?"

If they're so much better, manufacturers would simply choose them by default.

Sorry, but this is blatantly just a play out of Microsoft's old playbook ... by the day Google are behaving more and more like Microsoft used to, bullying everyone into using their products.

Re:good

[Reeznarch]

Don't be evil (tm)

Do no EViL(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

My ass, google behaves like any other monopolistic scumbag company out there, stomping their feet until they get their will.

Does anybody really see much difference between Apple, Microsoft and Google?

Re:Android version req - long time coming

[SuperKendall]

How is this not crapware that you are apologizing for? It was the scourge of the PC industry, we should not be welcoming it in mobile to a greater extent than it exists already.

I agree with you that the requirement to ship recent Android versions is absolutely needed, but 20 different applications sounds awfully overbearing.

The alternative is not a crapware-free phone

[langelgjm]

The alternative is a phone filled with either the OEM's additions, or the carrier's crappy branded apps.

The cleanest phone you can buy is probably the Nexus 5.

Those of us who want more control will be smart buyers and purchase hardware that is easy to load with custom ROMs, then we can decide exactly how much of gapps we want.

So when does GOOG get an EU lawsuit?

[YrWrstNtmr]

How is this different from Microsoft and bundling IE?

worse than crapware

[frovingslosh]

Actually, it is crapware, at least as I see it. I have no use for social media sites and I'm not a 13 year old girl, so I'm never going to use anything named "Hangouts". If I have to have it installed on my device and I'm never going to use it then it is crapware.

I'm also never going to buy DRM infested books and audio, and if I have to have DRM in my video at least I'm going to buy it on a real piece of physical media, not as a low bit rate crippled download that can go away or might even be taken away at a whim. So the apps that deal with Google selling me stuff that I'll never ever buy are crapware to me.

But it is worse than the crapware installed on a laptop. While the manufacturers think nothing of selling a laptop with an undersized hard disk ad then filling that disk space with crapware, at least I can uninstall the crapware on a laptop and recover the space. On Android, by Google's own design, you can't simply uninstall the crap that has been pre-loaded on your tablet. Significant amounts of very limited flash memory get taken up and are not recovered by a simple uninstall. Even worse, the crap runs, taking resources, and even gets updated, taking more resources and risking an update that might introduce a problem to the tablet, all for software that I didn't want in the first place.

If Google would simply allow this stuff to be easily removed from an Android system, then I could support their requiring the vendors to include it with a new system. But until that happens, it is another case of Google being evil.

Re:Why preinstall?

[JohnFen]

Because then most people would never install most of the apps, and Google needs as many people to install this stuff as possible in order to compile the most complete dossier on you that they can.

Re: Apples and Oranges

[Flytrap]

You couldn't be more wrong... the point made by Anonymous Coward (no, not you... the first Anonymous Coward) is valid and is informed by legal precedent set during the Microsoft anti trust case.

• 1. Apple has a less than 15% market share... they may be very influential, but I hardly doubt that anything that they do could be construed to be abuse of market share.
• 2. Apple can only dictate iOS requirements to itself since it is the only OEM using iOS. If they make decisions that are bad for the only iOS OEM, Apple are the only OEM to pay the price, not Samsung, HTC, Huawei, LG, Xiaomi or Motorola.
• 3. Google should be able to dictate how Android is configured for its Nexus line of handsets; but, just as Microsoft was accused of bulling tactics for insisting that Windows OEM licensees had to make Internet Explorer the default browser to maintain their most treasured partner statuses, Google finds itself in a similar position for insisting that OEMs must pre-install Google services (even when the OEM has its own competing alternatives) or risk losing access to high value Google services that are not easily substitutable. By having such an overwhelming market share such that OEM's have very few alternative options, Google could be attracting the same attention that Microsoft attracted when they did the same thing with their market share.

So, just to set the record straight... if Jonny Ive and Craig Federighi decide to screw Dan Riccio over by making onerous demands that the hardware engineering team much comply with in order to qualify to run the next version of iOS, the worst that could happen would be that Apple could have no new hardware to ship their fancy new operating system on next year. There would be howls of protest from investors, mobile network operators and customers... but Apple would be the biggest loser... not their competitors.