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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.
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?
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.
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What I want is a phone with just one pre-installed app: Setup. This setup app would recommend apps for various things like: App store, email, web, texting, contacts, camera, music, ebooks, etc. It would have recommendations for each, of course, but you could decide what makes sense for you.
They could still recommend all the same junk that they pre-install today, but without annoying their customers as much, while still getting some revenue from the app pushers.
This would also mean they wouldn't get complaints about using up so much of the built-in storage for the OS.
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.
What should serve as a very easy counter claim is the millions of Android phones on the market in China without and Googlisation at all. Claiming a phone is less valuable due to a lack of Google apps is just flat out wrong when you look at the Chinese market. The existence of several products in the west which ship with alternate app stores, and even whole Android platforms without google stuff pre-installed (e.g. Amazon's devices) should make this an open and shut case.
To me, a reasonable solution is to:
1) Not allow all those ancillary apps to be a part of the OS image on the system partition. If they want them pre-installed, that is fine. But the user should be able to completely remove any app they want (not just "disable" them).
2) Allow as much 3rd party replacement as possible. And on this, Google already does a good job- it is easy in Android to use the launcher, browser, camera, app store, file manager, etc, of your choice.
3) Reduce dependencies- Don't require app or service X for app or service Y to work. This is a little complex and in some ways it is already pretty good in Android and in other ways not so much. I personally think Google went overboard with the Google+ crap. And they certainly are with Google NOW (which in some ways is the ultimate spyware). For example, I was recently being spammed by several Google apps about not having "NOW" turned on... to the point I actually had to block notifications from Google Play Services or something.
4) Don't have any agreements that prevent vendors from preinstalling whatever apps they want (as long as they are easily uninstallable). (Note- I detest bloatware, but understand why it exists).
This is an antitrust investigation, not a scumbaggery one. That is down the hall to the left.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If that's what you want, then there's nothing stopping you from doing it. Go grab the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) code, make your desired changes, and release it.
What's that? You want someone else to do this for you? Well unless you're paying that someone else, why should they have to do that for you? Google has already done 99.99% of the work by releasing Android as open source. You're complaining because they don't want to do the last 0.01% of work which you apparently don't want to do either?
The problem is Google's tying policy: "If you add Google Play Store, you also have to add all our other crap and make it non-removable."
Go grab the AOSP (Android Open Source Project) code, make your desired changes, and release it.
That would be copyright infringement if the desired changes include Google Play Store without other Google apps.
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.