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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.
Given that Android is the only mobile OS that actually allows phone manufacturers/carriers to change the default search engine or browser.
Google has a browser? That can't possibly be true, because Microsoft's market dominance in the 90s ensured that their default Internet Explorer browser did not face any competition and is now the only browser that exists (at least according to the logic of EU regulators).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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).
In all honesty I've tried to use other search engines but none of them come close to Google results, especially when searching on development terms, error messages and the like. Don't even get me started on Bing, it clearly steers the results towards something it can sell you. There seems to be a funny philosophy that Bing was made with.. it seems to be orientated to people, places, and things rather than point me to the actual answer to a development question that is buried in an internet comment somewhere.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
If you have any respect at all for your own credibility, do not quote Florian Mueller. I'd say he's an ass, but that would be disrespectful to the Donkey.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
There's also the thing that web apps suck. The web is a hypertext platform, not an app platform.
Can't we make a deal? We push over the UK to the US and we get Canada in return. We are used to multi-lingual countries.
That way everybody will be happy.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
claiming that low prices were predatory
Low predatory pricing is *the* tool against destroying competition that's smaller than you. You are the big one, you have the capital to keep the price low (even if it's not profitable for you!), for as long as you want. You just wait until your small competition either gets no customers because their prices aren't competing with your's or they go bankrupt because they used up their much smaller capital much faster than you.
Then, after all small competition is ruled out, you can rise prices again and make much more money than you spent on the aggressive predatory pricing.
How did the UK ever bail out the rest of the EU? You seem to be confusing the UK and Germany.
"Rival search engines and mobile operating systems have not been able to compete on their merits. This is not good." I don't even know what to say about this! If you can't compete on your own merits then where is the problem? Give me something better and maybe I'll try it. WebOS was pretty good, but it couldn't compete on it's merits either. We all see where it is. Make a better product. Google and Apple did and they are winning. On their own merits.
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.
Sadly, this may well be the case. To all those in UK who are for brexit because 'EU limits the sovereign power of Parliament': is that really such a bad thing, when you think about it? Would it really be sensible to put more power into the hands of the likes of Osbourne, Cameron, ...? And they are actually at the more decent end of the spectrum, as Tories go. EU has brought a lot of benefits to UK, quite apart from the economic gains.
Don't get me wrong - I am very much a Eurosceptic, as most sensible people would be, but I think even in its current configuration, it is still the right thing to stay in EU and work to change it from within. I don't buy into the 'passionate' arguments for or against, I have much more respect for level-headed reasoning and balanced views. So far in the debate, the leave side sound far more emotional in their arguments than the remain side - and especially Jeremy Corbin's pragmatic views ring true, exactly because he so clearly doesn't like EU much, but on balance has to concede that it is in fact better to stay in. That's how I feel, and I think a lot of people agree.
You mean the uncompetitive companies like BP, Shell, Philips, Siemens, AB Inbev, Heineken, Mercedes, Volvo, Volkswagen, Nestle, Unilever, ... (You might even figure out why they are grouped like they are)
And through political machinations where e.g. the US companies just poor NO money into politics and lobbying and what not, right?
And many of these companies have been caught attention of the EU laws. Mosy learned to play nice.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yes, your internet and TV services are some of the cheapest in the world. Oh, wait... Healthcare? Insurance? As they said, Breaking Bad would have been a very short series in the rest of the developed world...