FTC Begins Investigating Google For Antitrust Violations Over "Home Screen Advantage"

The New York Times reports that the regulators of the Federal Trade Commission have a new target at Google: Android. Specifically, according to "two people involved in the [preliminary] inquiry," the FTC is looking askance at how Google treats its other software products and services (like Maps) in relation to the mobile OS. While Android itself can be bundled on phones, tablets, and other devices without charge, Google insists on a trade-off when it comes to its own services, like its app store, Google Play: to include access to those services, without which a typical Android device is far less valuable, hardware manufacturers must also include Google's designated apps (Gmail, Google Maps, and the Google search engine interface). Says the article: In recent months, a number of mobile application makers have complained to the Justice Department that this requirement — the “home-screen advantage” — makes it all but impossible for them to compete in a world where people are spending less time on desktop computers and more time on mobile phones. ... Since then, the F.T.C. has worked out an agreement with the Justice Department to investigate the claims, the people involved in the inquiry said.

Comments

All of them are doing this...

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I wish I could uninstall several apps that come pre-installed with a cellphone/handy, which other major player in the industry does not do the same thing?

Non-removable apps

[crow]

The problem isn't the requirement to include Google's other apps. The problem is that they're non-removable. If new phones came with just as much junk pre-installed, but if it were installed as if the user had downloaded and installed the apps themselves, then it wouldn't be a big deal.

Re:Non-removable apps

[msobkow]

The simple bottom line is that no one is "forced" to use Android. Apple wrote iOS. Blackberry used QNX. Microsoft wrote WinPhone. There are Mozilla's efforts, Ubuntu's, and another Linux-based project whose name I forget at the moment.

Unless and until you are "forced" to use Android for your phone's OS, you can't claim Google has a monopoly and therefore you have no right to complain about them having licensing terms of their choice for their products.

This whole situation is just a bunch of greedy bastards who want everything for free so they can leech profit off the work of others.

Fuck them.

Re:Non-removable apps

[msobkow]

Going after Google alone for doing the same kind of thing the other vendors do is "selectively enforced justice", bud.

Re:Non-removable apps

[Anonymous Coward]

No one was "forced" to use IE on Windows either, you could freely use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and many others. Still the bundling was hit with a EU anti-trust ruling as an unfair advantage for Microsoft (and to pre-empt; no, the "integration" of IE in Windows was not in any way part of the EU ruling, only the unfair bundling advantage, just like this case).

What people don't seem to realize is that anti-trust regulation doesn't require the absolute monopoly situation you argue they don't have, it is a straw man. Anti-trust regulation says that a company is not allowed to use a dominant position (not monopoly) in one market to gain an unfair competitive advantage in other markets. So are Google (and MS and others) being penalized for being too successful? In a way they can be, yes, the rules are different if you are a market leader.

Re:Non-removable apps

[Zumbs]

If I pay for a phone, I *expect* to have the ability to remove any single program on it, and that is what crow was writing about. Phone manufacturers have choices, but it reeks of strong arming when wanting to include the largest Android app store results in a requirement that the manufacturer include a number of other apps *and* prohibits users from removing them. And yes, like it or not, while there are other choices, Android is in the same dominant position on the phone/tablet market as Windows is on the desktop market, and lack of access to Google Play is a deal breaker for many looking for a new phone.

Re:Non-removable apps

[Kjella]

Unless and until you are "forced" to use Android for your phone's OS, you can't claim Google has a monopoly and therefore you have no right to complain about them having licensing terms of their choice for their products.

The focus on monopolies and anti-trust is an American thing, in the rest of the world it's usually called competition law. I don't know the US legislation but here in Norway they simply say "dominating position" and with a 40% market share as a typical minimum before they will intervene against anti-competitive practices. And in this case you're not even looking at the right market, Android users can't shop in iOS or WP stores. The alternatives are the Play store and a few third party stores that are well hidden behind warning signs that 99% of the market won't use. One of the practices that may be considered anti-competitive is:

"d) making the conclusion of contracts subject to the other parties accepting additional obligations which, by their nature or according to customary commercial usage have no connection with the subject of such contracts."

You want the app store? Well you also need to install our browser, mail app, map app etc. is exactly the kind of bundling this is supposed to prevent. Say there's one dominating supplier of fresh milk to your grocery store, the rest would have to ship from far away at great expense and not all that fresh. And the supplier says if you want our milk, you'll also have to exclusively sell our bread, fruit and vegetables even though there's plenty competition there. That's illegal. Then again, they have no problems with a McDonald's franchise regulating that you exclusively sell McD food under the McD brand. It's the context you do it in that determines if it's an anti-competitive practice or not.

Personally I think it's a close call, but if IE and WMP were anti-competitive enough to intervene at least here in Europe then I wouldn't be surprised if they could win. I'm kinda surprised they're testing this on Android and not the iPhone/iPad though, where Apple has a much more blatant anti-competition policy.

Apple does the same thing

[davidwr]

Only Apple does it whole-hog: They control the whole ecosystem (ignoring jailbreakers).

At least Google lets phone-vendors ship "just" the OS if they want to.

While I appreciate this investigation, the government shouldn't single out just Google.

Having your cake and eating it?

[Crowd Computing]

I find this confusing. Competitors are complaining that Google has an unfair home screen advantage, but they still want branded Android? Why can't they just do what Amazon and the Chinese gadget manufacturers have been doing, create their own Android fork? I've seen Chinese tablets and smartphones themed to look iPhones, WinPhones or some even more horrible hybrid of both, and some of them are even exported with the internationally useless Chinese apps still intact.

FWIW I'm running Cyangogenmod 12.1 without any Google web-based apps. So it's possible to have a fully functional Android device without the Google imprimatur.

Re:Google needs to be kept in line

[thegarbz]

Not quite. You're free to distribute the phone with any app store that you want, but it must also include the Google Play Store. What Amazon wanted to do was ship Android with the Amazon app store as their ONLY store. And quite frankly screw em. You can't go to a competitor, strip their primary money maker, and then cry foul when they won't freely give you access to their apps.

I also see it as a good thing to force Google Play store to exist when preloading Google apps. At least that way there's a simple and clean update path for the individual apps. It's bad enough Android itself doesn't get updated when a new version comes out, the last thing we need is individual apps left behind in some buggy exploitable state.