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Google Agrees To Open Android To Other Search Engines In Russia (bgr.com)
Google has reached a $7.8 million antitrust settlement with Russian watchdog group FAS. According to BGR, the company will loosen restrictions on Android's built-in search engines to allow for Russian competitors to take a share of the pie. From the report: Android's heavy reliance on Google services is to be expected, but in 2015 the Russian antitrust group -- officially the Federal Antimonopoly Service -- ruled that Google was breaking the law by forcing users to lean on Google for search. The ruling was the result of a complaint filed by Yandex, a Russian competitor to Google that runs the largest search engine in the country as well as web mail, news, maps, and other services. Google's settlement of the issue comes with the condition that Android will no longer lock down the search engine to Google, and must allow users the ability to change it if they want from within the Chrome web browser. Google will also loosen its exclusivity of the default apps on Android devices sold in Russia, potentially allowing for Yandex and other regional competitors to muscle in and replace the built-in apps with their own versions, depending on user preference.
For exactly the same reasons and logic as Yandex in Russia, it is only natural the same thing to happen with Baidu in China as well.
And hopefully this is good news for real, proper, untainted, diversity and choice.
Darn commies. Always trying to create a free market and competition. Don't they know what is good for the mega-Corporations is good for the People?
What a sham this Android thing is. All of these "mobile" computers (oh, excuse me, "devices").
When will we again have freedom to compute?
In Soviet Russia, Google searches you!
What I need is a search engine capable to search and find where I left my Android smartphone. I left it somewhere in my home a week ago, and it is still missing...
And Windows is built by Microsoft, but I doubt you would support them only allowing one to use IE and Bing.
Google had always said that their goal was to do no evil, but in locking Russian (or any country's) users to their tools alone, they are in the same realms of evil as Microsoft and Apple. It's ironic it takes a country with an Iron Hand to get Google to play fair. A warning to us all: any company they gets too big is going to get abusive without government or large scale public intervention.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Last time I checked the Google search bar couldn't be removed on the official Google launcher (whatever it's called). I think that's what people are referring to.
Btw, I don't know about other phones but the Samsung launcher doesn't have that limitation on my Galaxy s4.
The Android product I work on can not have Play Store as we are not allow to include it because we use our own mapping software, not Google Maps. It is ironical that Russian companies can now complete with USA companies with an advantage when producing Android products. Maybe we should shift software development from the USA to Russia so we can offer a better product. Yes, I realise that last statement is flame bait, but how long until some people in management actually start thinking that way?