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Google Loses Anti-Monopoly Appeal In Russia Over Android Bundling (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an update on Google's ongoing battle with Russian regulators: Google suffered a major blow in Russia on Monday, after the Moscow Arbitration court sided with an earlier ruling that Google had violated the country's anti-trust rules by having its apps and services bundled on Android smartphones. Yandex, a Russia-based search engine, last year sued Google over "anti-competitive practices," saying that Google was abusing its dominant position in the market to hurt competition. In response, Google had noted that Android, which roughly owns 80 percent of the market, is a free and open source operating system. At the time, the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) ruled that Android users must not be catered with Google's homegrown apps and services. The Moscow's Arbitration Court ruling said on Monday that it fully supports the earlier FAS decision. According to an Ars Technica report, "Google will now be required to change its business practices with smartphone makers in Russia, or else face a fine if it fails to adhere to the ruling."
Agreed... while I think the court is correct (Android is a de facto monopoly in many countries and Google isn't shy about leveraging it to push their other services), this decision falls in the "even a stopped clock" category.
Of course, I'm sure the bribe..err..fine will be low enough that Google won't actually have to change anything.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Yep, seems like exactly what EU did to Microsoft, making it possible to pick your browser inst. of MSIE when installing Windows XP.
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Android is only "technically" open source, in reality the platform is tightly controlled by Google and its allies.
I think these quasi-monopolies should all be destroyed and every platform should be forced to be open and always let the user choose 3rd party application repositories out of the box.