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

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.

Comments

How much does MicroG cost?

[emil]

And will Google take legal action?

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

Don't pay, ship without GApps...

[Athanasius]

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

Re:But ...

[Archangel Michael]

Freedom was never free. Everything has a price.

The price for liberty is quite messy and often uncontrollable. That is part of what freedom means.

On the other hand, if you like order, then suck up and welcome your new Fascist overlords. But at least the trains run on time huh?

Re:But ...

[darkmeridian]

No one is saying this. I mean, FDA meat inspectors cost money. So do airbags and seat belts that are required by law. But things just cost money. The funny question is how much other companies will be willing to pay phone manufacturers to put their browsers and search engines onto the phones.

So all good news then

[houghi]

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.

Re:So all good news then

[Voyager529]

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.

Re:Retaliation...

[squiggleslash]

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.

Not sure it's evil to do what you've been told to do. $40 is almost certainly fair market value for the Google suite, maybe even less than FMV.

The problem here is the EU hasn't been able to see the wood for the trees. It assumes the problem is the bundling of search and has gone overboard trying to prevent that, when in fact that's not what most people are concerned about. So a stupid decision has been made, Google has protested, they've been overruled, now they're doing what they've been ordered to do, and you're blaming them for it.

Back To The Future.....

[Zorro]

Smuggling things in to Europe from the UK.

It is like it is the 70s all over again!

Re:Retaliation...

[religionofpeas]

This is not retaliation, this is actually good news for EU consumers, because it allows competition with other app stores. It's hard to compete with free + hidden costs.

Opportunity

[nightfire-unique]

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.