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Europe Is Going After Google For Anti-Competitive Behavior With Android
Google now faces more competition charges in the European Union. The EU has accused Google of skewing the market against competitors with its Android mobile operating system. The 28-member state bloc's antitrust commissioner concluded in a preliminary decision that the search giant has abused its dominant position in the market by imposing restrictions on Android device makers. "What we found is that Google pursues an overall strategy on mobile devices to protect and expand its dominant position in internet search," said Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief. "The commission is concerned that Google's behaviour has harmed consumers by restricting competition and innovation," she added. "Rival search engines and mobile operating systems have not been able to compete on their merits. This is not good." Google has three months to respond to the aforementioned charges. The New York Times reports: Europe's antitrust charges might not necessarily lead to financial or other penalties against Google. If it is found to have broken the region's rules, though, the company may face fines of up to 10 percent of its global revenue, or roughly $7 billion, the maximum allowable amount. Google denies that it has broken European competition rules, saying that its dealings with cellphone manufacturers like Samsung and HTC, among others, are voluntary, and that rival mobile services are readily available on its Android software.According to EU, Google has breached antitrust rules by:1. requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps; 2. preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code; 3. giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices."The joke in Google's cafeteria today will be "let them use bing," said Andrew Parker, VC. "So disappointing that browser dominance on Android is the only thing that the EU can get worked up about," Blaine Cook, co-founder of Poetica noted. "The European Commission's statement of objections against Android lends further credibility to Oracle's $9B copyright claim," Florian Mueller, the founder of FOSS Patents blog wrote.
You know if the brits leave the EU, that's a good thing. They were the major stopgap hindering to get real work done against the banks in the late 00's banking crisis.
How on Earth does "The European Commission's statement of objections against Android lends further credibility to Oracle's $9B copyright claim,"?
This is a total non-sequitur.
Google's lock in system bases not on the google-owned apps (they are just a few, and yes they are very much used by users, but I guess people can come up with an alternative). The main reason to be locked in to Google is their proprietary APIs they offer to app developers. You can't simply take an apk and publish it on an alternative market, if there are no gapps installed on the device, most of the apps won't work.
So even if a competitor managed to replace all the gapps that are exposed to the user (maps, search, etc), they still would have a very hard time at building a competing app store. Most of the app developers don't want to port the app if the user count is low and nobody would install it if they couldn't install all the apps.
Its the same issue linux is facing. People don't care about operating systems. They want to install an application, and if it doesn't work, its not the fault of the application developers, its the fault of the operating system (at least for them).
Which part of "allows phone manufacturers/carriers to change the default search engine or browser" did you not understand?
Users on Android can change both the search engine and the browser if they like.
I don't care Google Play is the only app store. I don't care they impose restrictions on vendors. I don't care. What I do care about is the lack of innovation in mobile browsers. The sole reason native mobile app are and remain so popular is the lack of a proper web-based alternative, which is likely to be actively held back by Apple and Google, effectively creating a monopoly for native apps while we could have had proper web-based apps (with offline support, proper notifications, proper storage, proper integration with GPS/camera/*) that just work everywhere for ages. But we don't. Because of our friends at Google and Apple.
0x or or snor perron?!
Don't kid yourself: tools like Margrethe Vestager exist for two simple reasons. First, wounded European pride, namely the fact that Europe is far behind the US in innovation and high tech. Second, uncompetitive European corporations are trying to win through political machinations when they can't win in the market.
Ok, based off what I read, 1 & 3 are true but they are common business practices used in multiple areas. 2 is completely false but market forces make it look true.
A good example of 1 & 3 is Coke. If you decide to have Coke in your business, Coke will give you things as promotional considerations. Signs with you name on it plus the Coke logo, etc. But to get those you have to not carry Pepsi. That's the crux of 1 & 3. If you want to carry both, then you don't get the goodies that go along with them. You can preload Play with something else, but not Maps, Gmail and the other unless you agree to exclusivity for the preinstalled items. (The Play concession was made a while back to satisfy some anti-trust worries). More manufactures don't do that though because of the incentives plus market forces. People want Google's stuff there and ready. Google isn't holding a gun to people's head saying "Use Gmail or else". There are plenty of option and I use one myself in the form of AquaMail to my non-Gmail e-mail.
As for #2, hello, phones being sold running Cyanogen and others based on AOSP derivatives, but they don't have a big market share yet, or maybe ever. Market forces (people) aren't creating a demand for them. Thus the big guys don't make Cyanogen phones because people won't buy them en mass. And it's not for a lack of trying. Look at Samsung and all the times they've tried to do Tizen as an Android alternative. They never got anywhere. The mass market is happy with what they have. Phone OSs are a two horse race (Android and iOS). You're not going to force the market to accept more if they don't want it, but that's seems to be what the EU is angling for with #2.
This is just how I see it. I'm sure someone is going to come along with some conspiracy and collusion theory as to why I'm wrong, but this is a situation where the simple answer is the answer.