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

Re:Android without Google

[oobayly]

Is anyone surprised that a cloud based note system needs you to log in? If you don't want to sign in to google, don't use keep - it's not like it's the only way to store notes - there are hundreds of alternative note apps out there on 3rd party market places.

You don't need a google account to use android, you do if you want to use google's services. A bit like you need a Live account to use Microsoft's cloud services, and an iTunes account to use Apple's cloud services.

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.

Re:Android without Google

[linearZ]

I don't think the point was this app specifically. The point is that Google tries their hardest to make all apps depend on Google's "services".

Keep was a FREE app written by Google. What do you expect? The shit is free.

Keep is less than 1% of the note apps available for Android. Almost all of those apps don't depend on any Google service. Some are adware. Some will phone home to someone other than Google with info gathered from your phone. Some you have to pay a small fee for. Some come with a degree of privacy and security. It takes time to sort out which is the best app, but if you don't like Google's services in your apps, don't install the apps that use these services.

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:Android without Google

[LordLimecat]

The same is true for a lot of other banks. Google has intentionally made sure that they control the app distribution channel,

* WinPhone: Apps MUST be downloaded from the Microsoft Store
  * iPhone: Apps MUST be downloaded from the App Store
  * Android / AOSP: Alternative stores are explicitly allowed, though off by default. Apps may be sideloaded through a bootloader, through USB, through the official play store, or through third party app stores like Amazon's or F-Droid.

How, exactly, is Google the bad guy here?

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.

Re:Android without Google

[LordLimecat]

Google's additions are no more or less restrictive than their counterparts.

They are SIGNIFICANTLY less restrictive than their counterparts. I just got a corporate issued iDevice, and coming from android it is infuriating just how much Apple forces you to play with their ecosystem. You can install google maps, but it wont give you lock screen integration, and it cant be made the default for instructions, and it cant prevent screen lock. You can install SwiftKey, but you cant disable the Apple keyboard, nor prevent its mandatory use for password fields. You can install chrome, but cannot force links to open in it.

It is quite obnoxious to see people holding Google up as the bad guy here. Can you imagine if Apple was dominant? Oh wait, they were for a while and it WAS obnoxious, because it WAS horrendously locked down. Google offers an alternative that people have hacked to pieces and done wonderful things with (like Samsung, XIaoMi, OnePlus, Oppo, etc's take on AOSP) and the EU feels the need to crap on them because they hate google for some reason.

Google isnt perfect but theyre the best internet company we've had in a LONG time. Everyone else is worse in just about every category.