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Google May Have To Make Major Changes To Android in Response To a Forthcoming Fine in Europe (washingtonpost.com)
Google could face a new record penalty this month from European regulators for forcing its search and Web-browsing tools on the makers of Android-equipped smartphones and other devices, potentially resulting in major changes to the world's most widely deployed mobile operating system. From a report: The punishment from Margrethe Vestager, the European Union's competition chief, is expected to include a fine raging into the billions of dollars, according to people familiar with her thinking, marking the second time in as many years that the region's antitrust authorities have found that Google threatens corporate rivals and consumers. At the heart of the E.U.'s looming decision are Google's policies that pressure smartphone and tablet manufacturers that use Google's Android operating system to pre-install the tech giant's own apps. In the E.U.'s eyes, device makers such as HTC and Samsung face an anti-competitive choice: Set Google Search as the default search service and offer Google's Chrome browser, or lose access to Android's popular app store. Lacking that portal, owners of Android smartphones or tablets can't easily download games or other apps -- or services from Google's competitors offered by third-party developers.
Nothing.
The EU are trying to avoid a Microsoft Windows situation on mobile phones.
With Android being the only realistic OS available outside of Apple, it seems like a smart move to avoid another monopoly.
So let me get this straight. Google provides a free as in beer OS (some of it is OSS but not all) for mobile and strong-arms OEM's to included ALL of Google services or else no app store and THAT is bad because even though there are competing app stores they suck. While Apple doesn't even allow competing app stores, browsers (a wrapper called chrome on Apples engine is not a competing browser), or scripting languages and that is OK? I welcome the scrutiny on Google but lets get real.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Apple is not "far bigger". Kind of hard to be "biggest" offernder when 4 Androids are sold for every iPhone. And all those Androids have one common theme - all the manufacturers have to obey Google's rules to put Google's stuff on it.
And the reality of life is, if you don't have the Play Store, you don't have crap.
You have to remember this probably came out of a long-simmering debate when Nokia tried to release their phone with their maps instead of Google's...
And Apple may be a monopoly, but it's only one phone out of a sea of phones. Just like you don't complain when you buy a Ford Mustang and it has a Ford motor inside of it, or that Ford dealerships only provide Ford options even if you wanted that JVC headunit.
The problem is that Android is (as I wrote) now the only realistic alternative for mobile phone manufacturers.
Is it in the interest of consumers that Google gets more power than they already have?
Was it good that Microsoft ruled the PC platform for 20 years?
In practice there's no difference - their stuff is so bloated there's no space left for anything else.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because Android keeps forcing you to use Chrome despite installing Firefox and making it the default browser. Even if you do get Firefox to be the default browser everywhere on every app, Google intentionally makes certain aspects Chrome only. Locked in experiences in general need to be curtailed.
Windows is still a monopoly in regard to x86 desktop hardware. Windows has so many limitations and obligations, Android pales in comparison. When was the last lawsuit against Microsoft? Or they are regularly paying billions of dollars in fines to EU each year? Enlighten me please.
Due to the network effect that is hardly possible today.
Amazon is big enough to have a limited amount of Android fork for its own devices, that are kind of dedicated to accessing Amazon services. Other manufacturers are not in that position.
Just like it was 100% feasible to create a windows API clone (remember reactos?), it just wasn't practical, and MSFT had (and still has) a damanging monopoly for office software.
Now Google has gained an almost monopoly for the mobile market, which might be even more significant than any monopoly MSFT ever had. It is trying very hard to cement and even expand it.
It is clear that something must be done. People should not be so short sighted and believe that a Google monopoly won't be a problem.
Monopolies always lead to problems, too much concentration of power, and all the other problems that flow from that.
A free market economy can only function with healthy competition. For that reason, authorities in market econoies have always tried to prevent, or otherwise dissolve, monopolies.
If this would not be done, the company will become more powerful than the state, than the democratically chosen government, and corrupt it. It will end in fascism.
The point of antitrust law is that if you have a (near) monopoly in one area, you are not allowed to (ab)use that to also gain a monopoly in another area. Antitrust law always removes freedom of enterprise for the (assumed) benefits of consumers. The justification for this is that free markets work well iff there is healthy competition; and that if left alone companies tend to concentrate by merger or natural growth and then get monopoly pricing power (see e.g. the history of US railways). If there is only two companies left, they have a very strong incentive to merge because as monopolists they can make much more profit than when they are in competition with each other. So, in reaction to the abuses of (especially) 19th century capitalism the government stepped in to break up companies, prevent mergers, and restrict the freedom of (near) monopolists if break up is not sensible or not needed.
Concretely, it is fine if a random linux distro would by default install its own browser. However, if MS by default installs its own browser on its (near) monopoly desktop OS, it is abusing its OS market power to increase its market share in the browser market.
So, yes, if android didn't have a (near) monopoly there would be no problem. However, now that it is a near monopoly they lose the freedom to use their mobile OS market share to effectively push their other services onto users.
This is exactly it. It's not the underlying Android OS, it's the Google Play Services -- the middleware that enables smartphone ecosystem functionality -- that's the key issue. Google's been moving more and more functionality into that, and then locks manufacturers down in the exact same way Microsoft used to do with various hardware manufacturers vis-a-vis Windows licenses.
Frankly, we would be a in a much healthier place if Android OS was strong and it was forced to allow a choice of various middleware systems. Don't like Google Services? Use something else. True freedom even if you're not compiling your own smartphone OS yourself.
To do this will require serious anti-trust work, DOJ oversight, demands that non-Google-Inc functions be placed in the OS layer, and a removal of restrictions on hardware makers by Google.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
"I have a 32GB Android phone and Google apps consume less than 500MB of space"
You lying sack of shit.
Fact #1: GOOGLE PLAY SERVICES ALONE is 538 MB.
Fact #2: Chrome is 203 MB.
Fact #3: "Google" itself is 214 MB.
Fact #4: Google Maps is 181 MB.
With 4 facts we're more than double your '500MB' bullshit claim. All that took was sorting by fucking size in the app manager.
Fact #5: You have no fucking clue what you're talking about.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We are quite happy to have our governments fine Google for raping our privacy and stuffing our phones with bloatware, thanks very much. You can have your school massacres.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII