Google Responds To EU Antitrust Claims In Android Blog Post

An anonymous reader writes Earlier today the European Union released a Statement of Objection against Google, asserting that the search giant's dominance violating antitrust rules and Android products hindering equal opportunities for market access among its rivals. Google has now released an official blog post in response to the Commission's proposed investigation. Regarding its Android devices, Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of Engineering at Android writes: "The European Commission has asked questions about our partner agreements. It's important to remember that these are voluntary—again, you can use Android without Google—but provide real benefits to Android users, developers and the broader ecosystem." He continues: "We are thankful for Android's success and we understand that with success comes scrutiny. But it's not just Google that has benefited from Android's success. The Android model has let manufacturers compete on their unique innovations [...] We look forward to discussing these issues in more detail with the European Commission over the months ahead."

Comments

Technically right

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use Android without Google services. But being technically right isn't enough when it comes to antitrust. Google uses its position to make using Android without Google services increasingly more difficult. More and more essential features are moved from Android OSP to the proprietary Google apps package (or added there without first showing up in AOSP), and the OS makes no provisions to use other services as drop-in replacements (i.e. transparently to other apps). For example, almost all apps which provide location based services depend on the Google apps package for the simple task of showing locations on a map, even though there are several other map services which could do the same thing, but have no chance of getting the necessary OS integration.

Re:Technically right

[IamTheRealMike]

We wish you luck, but if it breaks, dont come crying to us over it.

The history of mobile operating systems shows that your preferred strategy is a losing strategy. Users DO come crying over it, and developers cry twice as much. J2ME was basically Android 0.1 and took this approach - it was just a bunch of API specs and then phone vendors could license different implementations, write their own, etc.

J2ME sucked. I know this because I tried to write apps for it. Literally every freaking phone had its own unique combination of stupid, obvious bugs that rendered key APIs unusable without enormous piles of hacks. J2ME developers theoretically wrote Java, but often used a C style macro preprocessor because so many hacks required different source code to handle.

Android learned from J2ME and took a different approach - one single reference implementation that everyone builds off and is not pluggable except in very small, tightly controlled ways. You can modify the reference implementation to your hearts content unless you want access to the Play Store, in which case you have to pass the "Compatibility Test Suite" for core OS functionality, and for some other kinds of things that are impossible to unit test (e.g. Maps quality), agree to ship the Google implementation. This saves developers from J2ME hell making users and developers happy, and still lets manufacturers tweak things that aren't covered by the CTS, like reskinning things.

I see no evidence the EU has any understanding of the delicate balancing act Android represents, or the history of mobile phone operating systems. I fear this will be yet another bull-in-china-shop scenario. On the other hand, if Google are doing things like what Microsoft used to do by saying "if you sell any Google-services phone you cannot sell any non-Google-services phone" then that'd be a problem that is correctable without hurting developers.

Missing tag for this story: CYANOGEN

[storkus]

I couldn't figure out why Google wasn't getting pissy AT ALL over Cyanogen forking and talking smack about them.. Now the other shoe has dropped: Cyanogen's fork (and the company's very existance) is Google's main anti-trust defense, at least at the OS level.

Now Google's ad business, that's a whole 'nother matter...

Open Source implementation of Play Services

[aikawa]

Google is moving more and more utilities to Play Services, which is not open source.
Play Services is not only about Google-related services, it is also about OAuth for instance.
Unknowing developers rely on Play Services, making their apps incompatible with pure-Android devices.

To solve this problem, an Open Source implementation of Google Play Services is being developed:
http://softwarerecs.stackexcha...

Re:This will be interesting,

[silentcoder]

Companies have no rights at all. Only human beings have rights. Companies have such privileges as society deems fit to grant them for the benefit of society. Benefit to the companies is purely coincidental and only needed when that benefit happens to benefit society as well.
Those who feel otherwise (and think what they are saying is free-market thinking) REALLY need to go brush up on their Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith.

Now, having said that, over-regulation is NOT to the benefit of society (but neither is under-regulation) the trick is to find the right balance, regulate against harmful behavior, regulate against the guy who would rather lock the fire escape than hire a security guard and ends up killing 103 people who otherwise almost certainly would have all survived the accidental fire (real case example).
In the case of anti-trust, take your cue from the greatest trust-buster of them all - President Rooseveldt, look at what the guy with the monpoly is actually DOING with that monopoly. Is he harming consumers ? Is he harming workers ? Is he jacking up prices ? Then destroy his monopoly with extreme prejudice. But if he isn't abusing that position, not actively trying to prevent competition from arising, not jacking prices up (but indeed his market shows a continous price-per-value drop over time), not harming consumers in a significant manner, treating workers well and fairly ? Then leave him alone in time the market will bring competitors - and we can AFFORD to wait when he isn't doing bad things.

I am always amazed when people call Obama a liberal president - his policies are center-right at best, Teddy Rooseveldt - now THAT was a Liberal. Probably the most liberal president America ever had. Conservationist, union-defender, workers-rights defender, opposed inequality and lack of social mobility (as he correctly realized: sufficient inequality can and always WILL lead to violent revolution, an outcome he believed ought ot be avoided by preventing that level of inequality from arising in the first place), the man behind some of the strictest anti-trust laws the US ever had - and willing to go to bat personally to get them enforced (as in - he personally had meetings with the CEO's of the companies he targetted - and when push came to shove showed up at the supreme court and took the stand himself).

So on balance ? There are areas where Google is due for some scrutiny, data protection and privacy laws are near the top of the list. They may have a monopoly in advertising and it may indeed be harmful (I'm not convinced but I recognize this as possible) - but android ? Nah, Android is an area where Google has been very well behaved, I don't care if their market share is monopoly level or not because even if they HAVE A monopoly what they've been DOING with it is not significantly harmful in any way.

Re:Nokia

[TheRaven64]

Simple example: I want to sell an Android phone. Not a problem, I can download AOSP and run it. Except that a lot of apps (e.g. almost all mobile banking apps) are only available via Google Play. Okay, so I'll license Google Play for my device. Here's where the problems start: I can only license Google Play if I also preinstall a load of other Google apps (and don't install any competing apps in a few categories and in a way that allows the user to hide them from the UI, but not actually remove them and reclaim the space).

Google is using the fact that they effectively have a monopoly on application distribution (yes, I know about F-Droid and the Amazon store. Most apps I want come from F-Droid, but I'm hardly a typical user and the rest come from Play because they're not in the Amazon store) to gain market share in other areas.