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Google App Suite Costs as Much as $40 Per Phone Under New EU Android Deal (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Android manufacturers will have to pay Google a surprisingly high cost in Europe in order to include Google's Play Store and other mobile apps on their devices, according to documents obtained by The Verge. From the report: A confidential fee schedule shows costs as high as $40 per device to install the "Google Mobile Services" suite of apps, which includes the Google Play Store. The new fees vary depending on country and device type, and it would apply to devices activated on or after February 1st, 2019. But phone manufacturers may not actually have to shoulder that cost: Google is also offering separate agreements to cover some or all of the licensing costs for companies that choose to install Chrome and Google search on their devices as well, according to a person familiar with the terms. Google declined to comment.

10 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. How much does MicroG cost? by emil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And will Google take legal action?

    I will be wiping Google from my phone next month with MicroG. They have worn out their welcome.

  2. Don't pay, ship without GApps... by Athanasius · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... and quietly point users at third party resources for installing such themselves? Sure works for third party ROMs like LineageOS.

  3. Retaliation... by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sounds to me like Google really didn't like the EU hampering their vertical integration plans and are retaliating by raising the costs of smartphones to people living in the EU area. Then again if you are a company with a motto as benign as "Don't be evil" only to get rid of it then retaliation is probably going to be your standard response to consumer protection laws being enforced.

    The specific number seems to be based on the idea that they're going to be losing all revenue from advertising and datamining operations and are simply pulling in that revenue directly from users as a single up-front payment. For comparison's sake Facebook's per-user revenues were about $20 in 2017 so that's probably two year's revenue from datamining and in-app advertising trough Google APIs.

    --
    "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
  4. Re:But ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I guess they didn't expect Google to act like petulant little children trying to get revenge.

    Carriers should just tell Google to fuck off and start including F-Droid and/or Amazon on their devices. Google services are privacy invading jokes anyway and all of my devices run very smoothly without any Google apps polluting them.

  5. So all good news then by houghi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It means we will get phones without all the forced Google stuff. Great!

    I am already happy.

    I rather have a price on something that I will not buy than having to pay with my privacy for something I do not want in the first place.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    1. Re:So all good news then by Voyager529 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You already have a few OSS Android-based firmwares. Seems like without Google Services these are, well, not necessarily useless - you still could make calls and browse the web with firefox and what not - but rather nothing special, so nothing that it is silly to compare them with even stock Android One.

      Google services are not just tracking, it is integration of several specialized the services into an overall experience in the first place.

      The issue with the OSS firmwares as an excuse is that you're right, they usually aren't comparable...but not for the reason you think.

      Try using one. I can't think of a currently-sold-in-the-US Android handset that doesn't ship with a locked bootloader. I think HTC will provide a first party unlock, and I think possibly Motorola, but even those OEMs will require you surrender your warranty. So, most people end up hoping someone on XDA has managed to hack the security of the handset in order to force the bootloader open...and even if they have, it's common for OTA updates to patch those exploits, so you have to
      avoid updates to ensure you have the correct bootloader version, and that's a best case scenario.

      So, you've got your bootloader unlocked. You've voided your warranty, you're hoping the random root tool you downloaded isn't a trojan, and you've expressed a willingness to give up some of the hardware advantages. AOSP ROMs can't use Wi-Fi calling, and they don't ship with the extensions that make the S-Pen on Note series phones do anything useful, and so forth. You've backed up all your data with Titanium Backup, and then you flash in TWRP...and you load everything, hoping the ROM works well on your particular phone, which you can't be sure of, because Android's HAL is good, but most phones have people who customize ROMs on a per-model basis, sometimes even requiring different ROMs between different carriers to deal with the different baseband modems.

      So now you flash, and you decide to put up with whatever random quirks your ROM has. You're doing the same thing again next time your ROM has an update....did I mention all of this is a best case scenario?

      In summary, if you can find me a phone that has both a Google-blessed ROM and an AOSP-based ROM, where users can flash either one of them with a tool direct from the OEM and still have support and their warranty, with the ONLY difference being the lack of Google services, then it's possible you can make the 'overal experience' claim. Otherwise, you're ignoring gigantic swaths of technical reasons why end users don't have much of a choice on this topic in the first place.

  6. Opportunity by nightfire-unique · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This, right here, is what the Cyanogenmod team could have used before they got crushed.

    There's a hell of an opportunity for one of Google's competitors (Amazon, perhaps?) to jam their foot in the very-slightly-opened door, and kick like hell.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  7. Re:But ... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was never meant to be free, this was the intended outcome. Google gives manufacturers the option to pay for it or to ship Chrome/Google Search as the defaults. Having a choice is the point.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  8. Re:But ... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Guess what - consumers have always been the product! Ever since Ogg realized Thag wanted his sharp flint. He could get Thag to not only give him stuff (which took Thag's time), but he learned that people like Thag wanted sharp flints. And what kinds of flints different Thags wanted. Marketing was born then, back at the beginning. People are always the product.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  9. Re:But ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The intended outcome was that GMS was an all-or-nothing package. Google's approach to Android was, "If you want this critical piece of Android that actually makes the phone worth using, you need to license the proprietary GMS package, and to do that you need to ship us as default." Note how all the new licensing terms only apply for phones sold in the EU. If you want to sell a phone outside of the EU, you aren't allowed to drop default Google, and you aren't allowed to ship forks. This is bare-minimum compliance, and the EU should take them to task for that.