Google warns Android might not remain free because of EU decision
theverge.com
theverge.com
There might be 1'300 brands and 24'000 devices, but all are bound to the Google conditions. This is not choice.
Phone makers may be free to also pre-install competing apps alongside Googles, but they are not free to not install Googles app. This is not choice.
I'm using a Jolla phone. Its producer (afaik) is not allowed to support the Play Store without accepting the far reaching (now deemed illegal) conditions of Google. A severe hindrance of my choice.
What is this sentence about the rule "sends a troubling signal in favor of proprietary systems over open platforms"? The Google Play Services is closed source and required for quite some Android apps, is it?
Of course you intend to appeal. But from my point of view you deserve every cent of the fine!
Building and maintaining android costs money. It's your opinion that "following Google's conditions" is onerous, and "not choice." Clearly the situation is that the android business model is supported by Google's terms. The alternative is something maintained by whom?
> The Google Play Services is closed source and required for quite some Android apps, is it?
As someone who worked in abuse: if you provide an app store that doesn't have governance, it'll be full of spyware/malware and finding the app you actually want, well good luck. So yeah, the app store service is run by Google and it wouldn't make any sense for that to be open source.
The overall angry attitude that "this all should be free software and that there are unpure components is wrong" -- is kind of shameful. If you care so much then go build a free software alternative. And if you're mad about walled gardens then get mad at Apple. Google's trying for a middle ground to provide consumers more choice than iOS vs free-software-that-nobody-maintains-or-isn't-safe. Yelling at people to make everything free isn't a solution.
It's not the EU's responsibility to come up with a new business model for Android that isn't illegal. Just because the business model they chose is illegal doesn't mean that we have throw out the baby with the bathwater.
> As someone who worked in abuse: if you provide an app store that doesn't have governance, it'll be full of spyware/malware and finding the app you actually want, well good luck. So yeah, the app store service is run by Google and it wouldn't make any sense for that to be open source.
I think you're conflating two separate issues. Google Play services include much more than just the Play Store and could very well be open source or at least have publicly accessible APIs licensed on non-anticompetitive terms. The Play Store can keep out malware without requiring phone makers to swear undivided loyalty and submission to Google.
Actually it is. A regulatory body is supposed to give maximum freedom to business to help them come up with cheaper and better products while not violating other people's rights.
EU is equivalent of the white cop shooting an unarmed black kid and then have audacity to call himself the defender of law and justice.
But Google is simply pointing out that the people who will end up paying the $5B fine is not Google shareholders by the EU users. As a person who owns Google shares I think Google must modify their playstore policies to charge EU android users and extra fee to pay for this $5B fine.
Where did you manage to come up with that definition of regulatory bodies? Their job is to regulate actors under their jurisdiction based on goals set for them by their respective legislature. They don't all have an overarching goal of improving businesses. Some are(were) explicitly opposed to business interests like the EPA
Android has a huge market dominance and Google looses some scope in their terms. I do think for competitors "following Google's conditions" is "not choice", e.g. you have to have the Play Store or you loose bitterly. Most/many good apps are only available through the Play Store.
A choice for me would be when a competitor has access to Play Store (of course with a fair compensation) without enabling Google at the same time to install many other unwanted/data grabbing apps/services.
> Yelling at people to make everything free isn't a solution.
Regarding closed source you misunderstood or I didn't write well. I was not angrily critizising (or yelling even) that Google Play Services is closed source, I wanted to express that one major part of Android is _already_ closed source when Pichai said "sends a troubling signal in favor of proprietary systems over open platforms". -- (Besides, what good is open platforms when services come with heavy strings attached and, sometimes, are taken away in a blink because some algorithm decided...).
I don't see why you're equating "governance" with "open source". You can have either one without the other.
And governance driven by a open community is also possible.
Also, the spyware you describe is only possible because of the security model employed. It's also possible to completely secure a platform so as to make these sorts of problems a thing of the past.
Its as though Pichai thinks people actually want all of Google's shovelware on their devices. Why does Google try and sneakily update and re-enable their low quality Newsstand, Games and other apps that I literally do not want on my phone? Unbundling is the right move, even the Play Store should not be in the ROM itself, as when it gets updated you have no way to free the space that is used by the older version of the Play APK.
That is what infuriates me about bundled shovelware like <vendor specific apps>, Facebook, <carrier apps>, when those get updated or disabled, you still don't get to delete the original APK file. Your never getting that room on your storage back!
It's there for a reason - to get the device back to the same state as it left the factory. If you could remove random apks from there, that objective would be impossible.
So on Android devices, the /system partition is read-only intentionally. The space taken by it at least has a use during both runtime and recovery; traditionally the recovery is completely wasted space.
What I do mind thought, is the Android vendor's ability to prevent user disabling their apps, and abusing it. There's no reason why I should keep Samsung's (for example) showelware enabled.
Since the apps are all going to be updated shortly after unboxing anyway, it would be better for the user to just include a stub downloader for most things. Enough of google play services to update the services to current and offer (but not force) install the rest of the "essential" apps. Plus a small basic browser; Chrome is 177 MB on my phone.
Sony has been getting more and more aggressive shoveling garbage down my throat via the playstation 4 funnel. I can't imagine ever giving them another dime as a result. Hopefully they'll keep going until they cross most people's line so the door can swing the other way.
PC repartitioning only looks dangerous, because ordinary users are not aware where they put their data, and changing partitions and resizing filesystems is a nice way to loose at least some of them.
I don't own PS4, so I cannot comment on that. I do own Xperia phone thought, and I'm satisfied with it.
If you do not agree, get your stuff elsewhere, the carriers will get the memo eventually. Yes, I know that you would have to pay the full price, and with carriers you don't have to, but then the locked status and customized firmware comes as a part of the price for the convenience.
(Also being able to factory reset the phone is worth losing 100mb imo.)
I'm struggling to articulate a concise way to describe why practices like this upsets me so much. When I fall victim to things like this, I feel like companies are forcing my head into a pile of shit.
With android, The only time it ever happened to me was when I got an HTC evo. I spent half a months rent on that thing and Sprint decided to bundle it with a ton of applications I absolutely did not want. Finding out I couldn't uninstall their ringtone store, whatever app blockbuster paid to have shit into my phone and all the other nonsense admittedly raised my blood pressure.
I did a lot of googling and was made even angrier to learn that the only way around it was to re-flash the firmware. At the time, the outcomes I was reading about seemed pretty mixed so this seemed awfully risky to do to my new phone.
Since then, I only buy unlocked phones so I can get at that /system folder if I need to.
Unfortunately, anything that has a socket back to the mothership eventually seems to decay into shit. My ps4 has been moving the streaming apps I use further and further down the UI so I have to go back to scroll past whatever company de jure they've sold me out to this week.
Their file system has tons of options to customize sorting / positioning / visibility of everything except their streaming section, because "fuck you, you're still revenue" despite having spent 400$ on the box. I hate how often I get reminded that Stallman was right.
What if every time you went to your closet to find a shirt, the company that built your house had hung a new multi million dollar company's representative on one of your hangers that screams "HEY GIVE ME MONEY, I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING THAT WILL FINALLY MAKE YOU HAPPY" as bright lights flash in your face and sirens spin. Every time one of your neighbors gives them a dollar you can hear the celebratory gong from your breakfast table. It's corporate panhandling, and once you make the mistake of buying a device their dicks are still inside you're now forced to suck it down.
Maybe it shouldn't make me so angry, but it does.
I have intentionally entered into plenty of relationships with companies to have cheap(er) product subsidized by advertising. It's a choice and I know what I'm getting.
But I feel like we're getting to the point where no amount of money is enough to opt out of ads in certain types of products:
* Physical copies of movies
* Non-libre operating systems [1]
* Gaming consoles
* Phones
* Most websites
* Most print media (excepting books)
* All television
In many of these cases, I've chosen to not participate at all, rather than enter into such an agreement. But that's kind of sad.
[1] I'm really just generalizing about consumer Windows here. Sweet monkey lord, when I open the "Start" menu on a nearby Windows 10 laptop, it's visually like walking into a Las Vegas casino! I assume the enterprise Windows situation is not like that? Also, I don't know if it's better or worse on Macs?
Sweet monkey lord indeed. I used to be one of those rare Windows evangelists who said C# was the best thing since sliced bread, Windows 7 was the best thing since Windows 2000, WPF was my favorite way to make apps, and the microsoft surface (the table sized one) was going to change computing forever. I even nearly bought a zune.
Now I turn my PC on in disgust just so my daughter can play Job Simulator. After my macbook dies, maybe I'll wind down the consulting business, move to South Dakota and start selling plasma.
Now, with a reasonable OS that should be enough. However, Android insists that it does not have enough storage for app updates, and keeps bugging me with a notification for this. I fail to understand how this is possible given that the app size itself is less than a 100 mb in many cases. Almost every week I am forced to clear the cache in order to perform updates. I believe this has something to do with the swap file - but am not sure.
As a consumer, I feel artificially pushed onto a useless upgrade train. The only reason I am merely annoyed and not infuriated is because I have finally found a legitimate reason (for my needs) to upgrade - a better camera.
If you go to the low budget market in other countries, finding phones with 2 and 4GB of internal memory is not rare, even common. The cameras are so potato that 100mb of video is a long recording time too.
Lots of people can't afford or don't want to afford the high end phones that Samsung or HTC have.
- Just like on WP, you cannot set some things to open in other browsers.
- No extension support, because they know perfectly well what many people would install first, an add blocker.
Everything else that follows is based off of your choice to use Android.
There are consequences to your choices. You don't have a line-item veto, after the fact, on contract terms.
If you want Google to stop open sourcing Android, this is how you do it.
Then you will lose the choice to have Android at all, unless Google is the provider, possibly with Samsung or Jolla as the OEM.
The law is currently written that a competitor, who gets twice as much revenue in their app store, and has far stricter controls, is not in trouble.
That's moronic.
The business model is not illegal but it is if abused to leverage market position against the competition.
Apple doesn't have a large market nor do they leverage their market position to force potential competition out of said market.
"And what about Google choosing anti-competitive (i.e. Illegal) business model?" I think the law should be re-written so its not illegal, or what Google's competitors are doing should also be considered illegal.
I made both of those points abundantly clear. Yes, I did answer their question.
If the OS was so good on it's own then google would not need these licensing terms to maintain market share.
A simple exchange of currency for a product is a fantastic business model. Google has been instrumental in undermining it, with "free" products, and I wouldn't be sad to see that stop.
> somehow Google has managed to bill Android as "free."
Unfortunately, Google got away with telling a whopper of a lie in that they were building a free and open platform when behind the scenes they were doing anything but. Maybe it was true in the first year or two but hasn't been the case this decade (i.e. the ODM agreements prohibiting non-Google flavors of Android which are pretty much the reason it's so difficult to find non-Google flavored devices based on the 'open' Android platform. IIRC, Amazon only managed to get it done by going to the few contract manufacturers who weren't already making any Google authorized devices for anyone else.)
These days I feel like that happens regardless of whether the "customer" is paying or not. Any compelling reason to believe otherwise?
They still can't bundle search with operating system. The same way Microsoft couldn't bundle IE with Windows.
At-least you can't do it when you have a dominating market position. (just dominating, monopoly is not necessary)
Okay then, but Google Search is what paid for Android development, so if you can't tie them together, Android needs to seek other sources of funding. The most obvious one is some sort of licensing fee.
(It could also possibly fund itself from search revenue (like Firefox) and App Store fees, although the second one could be broken up by the EU too on anti-tying grounds)
It's no different from when Windows was prevented from tying Windows to Internet Explorer. It opened competition in browsers (and we now have Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Brave, etc.), but it also forced browsers to find independent business models.
A licensing fee would be a valid and reasonable outcome. It probably can even work without making Android closed-source, by choosing the licenses accordingly or maybe have some kind of early-access or migration-support agreements (IANAL).
The main point is that Google is using a monopoly in one market to retain a monopoly in another market, and this is illegal. As far as I'm reading the press release, Google is not barred from developing and offering Android for free, if they wish so - they are only disallowed to abuse their monopoly.
but it also forced browsers to find independent business models
It stopped Microsoft from preventing independent business models for browsers; it was just too late already for the commercial browser vendors of the time. And the current EU ruling will hopefully allow other mobile OS developers (or startups) to compete on more equal grounds.
Of course we still have the network effect of Google Play, featuring a market dominance over Android apps and Android users. I wouldn't be too surprised to see another future EU ruling requiring Google to unbundle Google Play from all but technical requirements, possibly allowing users to legally get access to Google Play on AOSP-based devices, or using alternative clients.
I agree with this and it's a good thing, but where does it ends? When can we say this is another market, don't touch it?
Qualcomm is pretty much the standard on cellphone processor. Their processor include a GPU, called Adreno. I want to manufacture GPU for phone. By including it on their processor and not offering it without one, they essentially force their buyer to ignore my offering. Are they trying to illegally retain monopoly over GPU for phones? CPU and GPU are 2 different market (desktop PC prove this pretty clearly).
Absolutely. Something akin to https://licensezero.com might fit the bill. There’s plenty of innovation left to do in the space of source code licensing.
MS all but ceasing development on IE after version 6 is what opened competition in browsers, not any government action. Remember from IE4 to 6 before Firefox was released Internet Explorer really was the best browser out there. MS used their Windows monopoly to aid distribution and their huge piles of cash to make it free (vs paid-for Netscape), but it wasn't like it was crap software that was only being used because MS force-fed it to everybody. At least not until they (probably intentionally) let it wither and die and Firefox and then Chrome ate their lunch.
I'll still say the browser choice thing was a good thing as it spread the message, and helped get a critical mass of users to use other browser so that web developers had to design cross browser solutions for a while until they got lazy again and started only designing for Chrome.
It was intentional, the even disbanded the development team. Even in the mid 90s it was obvious to everyone that web apps would be the future. If web apps were the future then win32 didn't matter and their grip on computing would be lost. IMO the mistake they made was not doubling down and turning IE into the next windows. Instead they tried to bring win32 to the web.
I used other browsers on Windows before Internet Explorer ever existed, and even on Windows versions that came with IE in the box, either it was the age where we still used Netscape Navigator CDs to install it (and all your mime type handlers would change from IE to Navigator), or later or, I used IE to just download installers for other browsers.
It didn't open competition at all, it just made Microsoft pay for what every OS does today: it includes a browser by default. OSX, iOS, Android, multiple game consoles, and even some TVs.
They got punished for innovation, and no one else had to pay the fine for copying their behavior.
They were punished because they did that while IE and MS both had major market positions.
The game consoles are split between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, you have choice there. OSX and iOS are only shipped on Mac devices which don't have major marketshares either.
When you have a majority marketshare then you can't do what you want, there is rules. Especially when it comes to abusing your major position to leverage other positions (Sony and Nintendo are hardly pushing their browser products)
Apple abuses its market position as being the only vendor authorized to ship devices with iOS and OSX. I cannot buy, say, an LG or Samsung iPhone. They abuse their market position by not allowing third party core functionality on their phone at all, nor third party devices at all.
Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony abuse their market positions via exclusive AAA titles that will never come to other platforms, without a valid technological limitation being available (Nintendo owns emulators for tons of past systems, that can work on x86 and ARM fine; Switch internally is 100% the same SoC as the Shield TV; XBOne and PS4 are both AMD APUs and involve no Microsoft or Sony magic in the core hardware).
Phones nor game consoles are not equivalent: when I buy them, I am not buying a device, I am buying a member of an ecosystem. Apple 100% dominates the Apple ecosystem, Microsoft 100% the Xbox ecosystem, Sony 100% the Sony ecosystem, Nintendo 100% of the Nintendo ecosystem.
They have committed far more sins against their own customers than Google has for not dominating the Android ecosystem (as they do not make any Android devices (Pixel does not count, it is an LG and HTC product line)), and the EU has fined Google for an unrelated domination in the search market (of which, Google has no realistic competitors, and not because Google somehow prevented the development of other search engines magically).
In comparison to Microsoft /w MSIE, the MSIE team did not abuse their customers by including a browser by default. They allowed people in the Windows ecosystem to connect to the Internet (a much larger ecosystem) with no additional software for free.
MSIE-era Microsoft and Google were fined for allowing choice, and by allowing choice their platforms (and thus ecosystems) became popular.
DoJ vs Microsoft and EU vs Google both have illustrated that the governments prefer Equality of Outcome over Equality of Opportunity. This tells big business, don't bother innovating, don't bother taking advantage of first mover strategies, don't bother doing anything that might benefit your customers; just lock them into little walled gardens, because you'll make a lot of money but not risk becoming popular enough to get fined.
Apple certainly learned from this, iPhones aren't popular, iMacs and MBPs aren't popular, but Apple will probably be the first company ever with a $1T market cap.
Apple does not have a major position in smartphones or search engines.
Their only monopoly is to sell their own devices, which is totally okay. You can compete by making a YouPhone that's better than the iPhone.
>Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony abuse their market positions
Again, neither has a major market position over the other and it does not prevent any of the other from competing. As you mention, each is capable of putting out exclusives just fine.
>when I buy them, I am not buying a device, I am buying a member of an ecosystem
You seem under the false impression that this is about you. This is purely about competition. As long as any of those vendors do not prevent the others from fairly competing on the market, the EU won't lift a finger.
>They have committed far more sins against their own customers than Google has for not dominating the Android ecosystem
Google is dominating the mobile browser and internet search markets, which, if you check the EU ruling, is the markets this is about.
The android market itself is irrelevant.
>They allowed people in the Windows ecosystem to connect to the Internet (a much larger ecosystem) with no additional software for free.
And google allows vendors to ship phones that can connect to the internet with no additional software for free.
>MSIE-era Microsoft and Google were fined for allowing choice, and by allowing choice their platforms (and thus ecosystems) became popular.
Completely false, they were fined for disadvantaging competitors who would not be able to compete on a fair market.
>DoJ vs Microsoft and EU vs Google both have illustrated that the governments prefer Equality of Outcome over Equality of Opportunity.
Atleast in the EU case, false again. The EU favors a market in which everyone has a level playing field, primarly enforced by having additional rules for any major players in a market. This doesn't tell business to not innovate or first mover advantage, both are allowed.
It's not disallowed to have a major market position but it's disallowed to abuse it to either disadvantage other competitors in the same or other markets.
Otherwise MS would have been fined for producing windows and selling it in the EU, which has not been the case to my knowledge.
Having OEMs pay a licensing fee to Google seems better than having Google stiffle competition by bundling Google Play and Search and requiring OEMs to not ship alternative non-Google AOSP products.
And that’s a good thing. I prefer simple transactions. I give a company money and they give me stuff. It’s very transparent business model.
It'd also send a powerful signal to lots of other companies - don't create open platforms monetized through additional services. As so much open source code is funded by companies, that'd be a huge blow.
No one is saying that they want Android to become proprietary. There are plenty of open source projects supported by major corporations - Angular, React, NodeJS, WebKit, CUPS, Java, .Net Core, Swift, etc.
If a company only wants to license part of Google Play Services they should be able to pay for just that. If Android is so valuable, other companies should be willing to contribute to AOSP. How healthy is a piece of open source software if it completely dies once one corporate benefactor abandons it?
Would Java die the minute Oracle abandons it?
No manufacturer can build an Android device using just AOSP even with proprietary drivers and hope to be competitive in any western market.
That's how things were before IE came around in the first place.
> The Commission decision concludes that Google is dominant in the markets for general internet search services, licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system.
And the complaint isn't about choice of OSes or any "anti-FOSS" bullshit, but about choice of search on Android and abusing their position to stop use of Android forks:
In particular, Google:
• has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);
• made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed the Google Search app on their devices; and
• has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
So I have nothing against the EU decision, but Google's response is just common sense. They aren't a charity. If Google can't bundle their money makers with the phones, that kills the current business model and leaves them footing the Android development bill while getting nothing in return. So, they need a new business model; making Android proprietary is an obvious option.
But I find it weird when then people are shocked that google says it may make android proprietary. What exactly did people expect to happen? That Google would decide to develop Android as an act of charity to handset manufacturers and mobile carriers?
Interesting! What are these ways?
You cannot remove the pre-installed apps, in my experience, only the subsequent updates to those apps.
> Today, because of Android, a typical phone comes preloaded with as many as 40 apps from multiple developers, not just the company you bought the phone from. If you prefer other apps—or browsers, or search engines—to the preloaded ones, you can easily disable or delete them, and choose other apps instead, including apps made by some of the 1.6 million Europeans who make a living as app developers.
"Easily disable or delete"? Not to mention the lack of deletion on a lot of these (...any? I don't recall if I've seen any with deletion), I don't always even find a hard way to disable or delete preinstalled apps on phones... unless we're talking about booting custom bootloaders and wiping your phone etc.
[1] https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/andro...
Gear icon -> Apps -> select a preinstalled app, you have options to "Disable" and to "Force stop" the app.
What you can't is to remove the app and reclaim the storage it's taking.
At least so it looks on an un-rooted Sony phone running Android 7.0 that I have before me.
When these are "disabled" all that remains on the device is a pointer to the app store in a disabled state. It's a few KB of data, and in my opinion a fantastic trade-off to actually allowing deletion then not being able to "factory reset" since that data is no longer on the device.
I hate that this shovelware is on my phone in any form, and it makes me regret buying a non-ROMmable phone in the first place.
But I should have been more clear. not all preinstalled apps are like this, just a lot of the less important ones (at least on google-branded phones, I have no idea what samsung or lg are doing to facebook). I believe it does require the developer of the app to actually implement it though.
But either way there is literally no benefit to removing those apps from the system partition. You won't get the space back (different partition), and if they allow users to delete these things they can very easily get their phone into a state that you can't recover from (factory reset won't work because there's nothing to reset to).
I'm 100% with you that non-essential apps should be uninstallable as much as possible, and preferably I'd like them to not be installed at all, but that's an entirely different issue than what Google was just fined for.
At the end of the day, i MUCH prefer Android's handling of removing/disabling factory installed apps over something like MacOS where if you "factory reset" the device, you can't use it again until you connect to a network and re-download the entire image.
Few Android users will ever experience a Google branded phone, mainly due to price and availability. I personally will never buy one after my friend's Pixel 2 XL started smoking, though that is her third failed Google phone. I joked that she should put it on the stack next to her Nexus 5X (defective solder joints) and OG Pixel (died of another hardware defect), but she shipped it back and is on week 3 of waiting to get the sucker back.
Comparatively, I've only ever seen one LG phone smoke that way, and an RMA request later I had an overnight shipping label and a new phone 2 days later. Wireless charging still worked in the meantime :P
I've never seen this. Just about every preinstalled app on the phones I've had are the actual app.
Also, even when I try disabling some of these built-in Google apps that I supposedly can disable, I get a prompt warning me that "If you disable a built-in app, other apps may misbehave"... you can't keep a straight face telling a user "oh but you can easily disable this!" when you yourself are telling them the consequence is that it might break other things on their phone. (!)
You basically have to root the phone to remove a lot of the Google/vendor bloatware.
So factory reset should show a view of select your appstore (Google, F-Droid, etc). Once that's installed you're ready to go.
You could remove the app from the system while keeping it in the restoration image. Same way as how you can uninstall PC crapware when you buy a new one but it's still in the image in the recovery partition should you choose to factory reset.
Removing that app from the system partition won't give you more usable space without repartitioning, and it will now mean that you can't factory reset the phone.
They even (ab)use this to make seamless updates by creating a second /system partition, writing the update to that, then swapping over on next restart. If something goes wrong, they swap back to the first system partition.
In this manner, the /system partition is NEVER written to outside of creation.
Rooting is literally sidestepping this entire process to take full control over the system and mount /system as writable. Sure, you could probably make a /recovery, /system, and /data all different partitions, but now you are roughly doubling the amount of system data on the disk for not much of a reason.
Rooting is very much using the system as designed. Google supports it and provides tools to enable it. Some apps on the Play Store require it. Does that mean everyone should root? No. Does this have any bearing on the fact that the recovery image should not be modified when rooting? No.
> They even (ab)use this to make seamless updates by creating a second /system partition, writing the update to that, then swapping over on next restart. If something goes wrong, they swap back to the first system partition.
If Google could provide a better way to root then this wouldn't be an issue. That they provide a suboptimal method isn't a defense here.
> In a normal Android system /system is read only unless mounted otherwise (which only really happens during updates).
I like how you contradict yourself in the span of 2 comments. First you said "Removing that app from the system partition won't give you more usable space without repartitioning", now you say that space is usable for installing updates. You just refuted your own point.
> In this manner, the /system partition is NEVER written to outside of creation.
In other manners, it IS written to outside of creation, and this is clearly due to the way they designed the system, not because modifying /system should actually alter the recovery image.
> Rooting is literally sidestepping this entire process to take full control over the system and mount /system as writable.
Yes, that's what it is, because it's necessary for some apps to be able to do what they do. The fact that they don't provide a better mechanism isn't a defense for the consequences of providing a poor mechanism.
> Sure, you could probably make a /recovery, /system, and /data all different partitions, but now you are roughly doubling the amount of data on the disk for not much of a reason.
That it's "not much of a reason" is very much your quite-subjective opinion. And there are better solutions than what you proposed here. And PCs already do this. But at this point you're changing the subject -- a reduction in space usage would not make your claim that "that's literally what disabling it does" any more true. It's simply false.
The vast majority of the Android market, in the US at least I can assure you, has google or carrier based spyware that you can't delete or disable.
[1]https://www.recode.net/2017/10/4/16418170/google-pixel-marke...
But sure, in a mass market setting, I don't find it at all surprising that you wouldn't be allowed to disable Settings.
FWIW, I too hate that there isn't a replacement for those Play Services. I'm so frustrated - Pixel launcher will not show temperature in Celsius unless I give it "Web and App Activity" permission.
Isn't that literally the point? When the complaint is that Google is tying itself to the OS and leaving few viable alternative options, the fact that Google is tying itself to the OS and leaving fewer alternative options is more like an admission rather than a defense...
- Youtube
- Hacker News
- XDA-Developers
- Amazon
- My banking app
Pretty much all of those could just be a tab in my browser, but the convenience of properly-formatted text, easy searching, replying, etc pulls one towards the native app.
You can change defaults and sideload apps on android, which makes it much more permissible than the rest of maker i.e iOS.
Maybe there are bots who install and then uninstall many apps. Those used to be fairly prevalent.
I just counted, and I have 128 apps on my Android phone (none are games). Some of those were pre-installed, but I installed the vast majority of them.
It wouldn't surprise me if this is something where iOS & Android users are opposite one another: iPhones are smart phones, whereas Android phones are computers with calling capabilities. The whole point of iOS is to communicate; the whole point of Android is to be a computer which fits in your pocket.
Did they object to my thought on iOS versus Android? Why? Do they think that an iPhone is a computer with calling capabilities? Do they think that Android phones are smart phones?
I'd really like to know what offended folks so much that three folks (at least) downvoted, and offended them so much they didn't even bother posting.
I'm not complaining about the downvotes, just genuinely curious what could possibly have been controversial.
Google should outright stop licensing Android to manufacturers in the EU (like Apple), make the OS closed source (like Apple), disable side-loading apps (like Apple), purposefully make the mobile browser incompatible with W3C standards (like Apple) in an effort to drive developers & consumers to the app store, and slap a minimum price tag of $1000 on Pixel phones (like Apple).
Maybe then, the true value of choice will sink in.
> Apple never licensed out iOS to the EU or anywhere else: I never implied it did.
> The kernel of iOS is open source. Please link a ROM to load on my iPhone. I can give you a hundred for any popular Android device.
> I think it’s a stretch to conclude that Apple purposefully makes their browser incompatible with web standards in any meaningful way to drive App Store revenue. There's ample evidence to the contrary, and statements from within Apple
> They start at $350 retail. No - you can't confuse carrier subsidies and contracts with price.
Well it’s a good thing I’m not talking about subsidizing pricing, then. An SE out of contract is $349. An iPhone 8 - a flagship phone - is $699, just a little more than a Pixel.
BTW - the suggested response is indeed a logical reaction to EU's illogical charges. True choice is allowing phones @ $150 - $1500 to exist, customized for every customer segment in the marketplace. True choice is the ability to tinker with the underlying OS and ROM. True choice is the ability to side-load apps despite __insert_agency_here__ not blessing it. And Android empowers those choices.
they're already doing a hell of a lot to drive consumers and developers to their app store. how much worse can that get?
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm
Googles behaviour is indefensible
This passage is an example:
Market dominance is, as such, not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However,
dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful
market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they
are dominant or in separate markets.
Google has engaged in three separate types of practices, which all had the aim
of cementing Google's dominant position in general internet search.
1. Illegal tying of Google's search and browser apps.
2. Illegal payments conditional on exclusive pre-installation of Google Search.
3. Illegal obstruction of distribution of competing Android OS forks.For a long time I've been hoping to be able to pay for Google products so I can use them without being the product myself. And so this statement is sort of an answer to those prayers.
If the EU gets its way here, all that'll happen is that:
a) New releases of Android won't be open source anymore.
b) The cost of Android may well skyrocket, making smartphones suddenly an elite luxury rather than something everyone can have.
c) Android devices will still come with lots of Google services that will work in largely the same way, because most users actually want them.
d) Cyanogen and other variants of Android designed for people who care an unusual amount about data and privacy will cease to exist.
It'd be a classic case of regulatory own goals: nothing would get better, it'd get worse for everyone.
This is pessimism bordering on FUD.
Google is far and away the worst OSS maintainer, a lot of their allegedly OSS work is really just a code dump with all the real work being done behind closed doors.
In my personal opinion Android is abused by Chinese OEMs who want the cheapest free thing they can put together. They buy SoC solutions from Mediatek, Allwinner, etc. and the end user never get OS updates or security patches anyhow. The OEMs need to be forced to support what they have shipped.
It was such a great mobile OS for basic and not so basic functions. Unfortunately MS had no strategy and no independent serious developers spent their limited resources on it and it withered.
They should just have migrated Siverligth and XNA, with addition of new C++ APIs, instead of rebooting everything a couple of times.
However I bet that the platform suffered from Sinofsky effect and the usual DevTools/WinDev issues as well.
Still I loved my WP and even with the downfall on the horizon ended up getting a 650 that I still use.
By the time they closed shop on WP, the EU market was reaching about 10%.
(Disclaimer : I use iOS and Android equally, so not cheerleading for either)
The fact that major economies are taking diametrically opposed viewpoints is going to continue to cause chaos for the foreseeable future...
Apple is doing a lot of bad things too and I hope the right for repair will become a reality and Apple is forced to let people fix their devices.
> Ubuntu is also bundling Firefox
Canonical != Mozilla?
Apple already does many things that could be considered "abusive behavior". They just "don't count" as much right now because you can't argue it has a "dominant position" in smartphones in the US. iOS and Android have about 50-50.
When Apple starts reaching 60-70%, however, that antitrust case could (and should) be made.
YouTube, WhatsApp, Reddit - all examples of services that would have disappeared or rotted away if they hadn't been swallowed up.
Apps are more clearly aimed at the consumer, ie., people who aren't going to get into the technical details of connecting to a particular service and learning the commands.
I doubt we'd have the overwhelming plethora of services if the app market hadn't been created.
But the rest of your point stands.
To acquire most or all of (a commodity); monopolize (a market).
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/engrossment
The meaning is much the same as an engrossing thought or conversation: one that fully occupies your attention.
It is as engrossment rather than monopoly that Adam Smith discusses exclusive control.
Of trade with a region:
The moderate capital of the [Hudson Bay] company, which, it is said, does not exceed one hundred and ten thousand pounds, may besides be sufficient to enable them to engross the whole, or almost the whole, trade and surplus produce of the miserable, though extensive country, comprehended within their charter. No private adventurers, accordingly, have ever attempted to trade to that country in competition with them. This company, therefore, have always enjoyed an exclusive trade in fact, though they may have no right to it in law....
Of skilled labour:
Half a dozen wool-combers, perhaps, are necessary to keep a thousand spinners and weavers at work. By combining not to take apprentices they can not only engross the employment, but reduce the whole manufacture into a sort of slavery to themselves....
Of grain:
[I]t is scarce possible, even by the violence of law, to establish such an extensive monopoly with regard to corn; and, wherever the law leaves the trade free, it is of all commodities the least liable to be engrossed or monopolized by the force of a few large capitals, which buy up the greater part of it. Not only its value far exceeds what the capitals of a few private men are capable of purchasing, but, supposing they were capable of purchasing it, the manner in which it is produced renders this purchase practicable....
Of land:
Great tracts of uncultivated land were, in this manner, not only engrossed by particular families, but the possibility of their being divided again was as much as possible precluded for ever. It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver. In the disorderly times which gave birth to those barbarous institutions, the great proprietor was sufficiently employed in defending his own territories, or in extending his jurisdiction and authority over those of his neighbours. He had no leisure to attend to the cultivation and improvement of land....
And more.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Engro...
Microsoft would have no problem vertically integrating thier surface computers with whatever product they wanted on it.
I’ve owned 5 Android phones thus far from LG, Motorola and Samsung and the preinstalled apps could not be uninstalled on either of them.
I've owned multitude devices since original G1 till today, and every single of them allowed to disable Google apps. In fact, I have disabled most of them.
1. They represent a constant security risk, since the disabled version does not get updated
2. Other apps can rely on Google’s components; they actually warn that by disabling them you can run into misbehavior of other apps
Also, last I tried you can’t disable Google Play Services, which is actually the most important piece.
They cannot be uninstalled, because they are part of a partition that is read-only. It is read-only, because it doubles as a recovery/factory reset.
They do not represent security risk, because system ignores them. They do not get loaded, no process is ever created for them and they are not considered when broadcasting intents.
You cannot disable Google Play Services, because it is actually a framework, not app. Your only reasonable way to have it disabled is only after you persuade all the app authors not to use it. Good luck with that.
So Google is lying in its press release, proving my point?
Also, I do not care on what partition they are installed. That’s a technical detail which cannot serve as justification for locking in users.
What isn’t a technical detail however is the fact that regular users do not know how to disable apps, because that option is hidden in the Settings menu and comes with scary warnings.
Also, there is no app uploaded on https://f-droid.org/ that depends on Google Play Services, so the point on persuading all app authors is obviously stretching it, since some of them have been persuaded already. Also this being about choice it’s pretty obvious that if I want to disable Google Play Services then I also want to avoid any app that depends on it.
On the security risk, I don’t know if those components get loaded or not. As long as that code is on my phone, I cannot trust it not to be executed at some point in time.
What if I enable that app by mistake? What if it gets enabled via the dozens of exploits that happen every year? Do you promise that it won’t ever be executed again? That’s not how security works.
Please point out where in the PR they are lying. To make it easier for you:
> you can easily disable or delete them,
Note the "disable or". Which is exactly the FIRST line of my first comment in this thread.
The /system partition is also not about locking in users. It has a specific technical reason. But I get it, you are not interesting in constructive debate, you want to "win".
Find someone else to discuss then, I'm interested only in rational discussion.
1. Was it illegal for apple to force install apple maps on iOS users, stiffling competing maps apps? 2. Is it illegal for apple to not provide other browsers JIT capabilities, effectively forcing them to be a skin on top of Safari?
I understand that iOS has no market dominance. But if iOS reaches 60% shares in a country, can the country demand substantial changes to iOS to encourage competitors? 70%? 80%?. Does a company need to make its product more open as it starts dominating the market.
Also, how would such market segments be defined for market domination? Phones? Smart phones? Phones with a particular characteristics? Phones with a particular OS(as phone inter operability is widely within OSes only)
Not defending any side here, but would love to hear what I am missing here.
Edit: As the press release of the commission says "market for .... licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system.". It seems using this vocabulary even Apple can be branded a monopoly, dominant in "unlicensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the iOS mobile operating system". Then isn't even apple using their dominance of "app store for iOS" to dominate other market segments?
Free commercial software and hardware is the strongest competition to open source software and hardware.
If Google charged money then a more open source oriented competitor would have more chances to compete.
On the other hand, even though Apple definitely is tracking users to some extent and has a large database of users, including their real names, addresses and other personal data, they don't have the technical means to build such a complex profile of each person as Google. Based just on your search and visit history Google knows more about us, our fears and secrets more than our partners. So it's in our best interests not to strengthen their position further.
Part of me wonders if the EU just has a problem with google, as they have charged them time and time again, when other platforms engaging in anti-competitive practices get away with it.
Also, I'm guessing a complaint has to be brought to the EU before they'll investigate.
Are there any official complaints against Apple?
What's next?
Me no likey.
If they wanted to do something actually useful, they should take a look at privacy issues surrounding Android. It's like the damn thing was architected for maximum spreading of personal and behavioral data across apps.
Bundled user-space software means nothing compared to the bundled OS.
We should have a phone without OS, install the OS of our choice, just like ordinary computer.
The non-free smartphone ecosystem doesn't allow me to do that.
So, I refuse to own or use the phone.
I lost all the hope on the smartphone ecosystem.
Tizen? Windows Phone?
So fuck it. I'd rather pay more for an Android phones that give me more control over what is included with it and what can be removed.
Ideally let me run an Android phone with NO Google applications whatsoever, without having to root it and mess around with community ROMs.
EU has become a parking lot for unelectable politicians who meddle with other people's life while themselves living at other people's expenses and this just another example of how EU will eventually simply break up.
Sorry, Sundar, but this signal was sent by you. Android users receive it in multiple ways when our phones nag us to turn on tracking options and your company builds a complex profile about all aspects of our lives. Yes, a proprietary non-tracking alternative starts to look more attractive.
Android devices getting more expensive, better market share for apple?
The same drivers that are used on Android are not available on Linux. Linux is running on your phone but you can install or use it. The Arm-Google partnership pretend to be open but for all effective practical purposes are closed and this is just clever theatre masquerading as open.
Companies like Google have become experts at lulling people into a sense of complacency about open source and open platforms.
And what are they actually doing. They are using open source software to build global surveillance spyware platforms with pervasively misleading language and dark patterns. Perhaps it's time open source licenses consider a condition that they can't be used for surveillance and spyware.
This puts a real price tag on the OS. I hope more policies do the same to email and other things. The hidden advertising cost is shitty because it is highly hidden.
it's not like the world was clamoring for Google to produce Android in the first place. Google is good at search and advertising. they weren't a mobile OS and dev tool company in 2006 and they're still not.
Android isn't all that good.
It's quite likely if these conditions were removed from the Android licenses that nothing would immediately change because there is no latent demand for Android devices with DuckDuckGo or Bing or OSM map apps. At least not in Europe. However, the principle remains that Google has no incentive to build Android if it gets used to funnel traffic to its own competitors, and especially it would be disastrous for developers if Android forked into many incompatible versions.
Hence the most likely outcome is that Android simply becomes closed source, and to access it you either have to agree to today's terms and bundle their services, or pay to cover the revenue Google feels like they might not get if you don't.
I disagree. Android market share is highly relevant to Google. Android is the platform where Google exerts its strongest ability to nudge/influence/cajole/incentivize users to use its money making services (e.g. search). If Android loses market share, Google loses money.
What's more, Android market share keeps Google in the game. Google pays Apple 3 billion each year to be included as the default search engine on iOS.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/google-paying-apple-3-billio...
What would happen if Google did not have Android at all? What alternative would it have to paying Apple (and any other company with a competitive mobile OS) an ever-growing share of its search revenue? How would Google compete against Bing and others if, instead, Windows Mobile had Android's market share? Google would be in a weaker, less profitable, position.
The driving reason Google bothered to create Android in the first place was to stay relevant in an economy which was transitioning away from desktop and toward mobile.
What's most likely to happen for users in EU?
Google doesn't want to see a fractured ecosystem they can't control, so I agree with the article that it's an empty bluff.
They sheer developer power Google has at hand to throw at Android development, including out-of-tree-kernel patchsets, means that it is a very significant effort to just keep pace with them, and the AOSP "code drops" come late and require major integration work.
If they wanted to switch to a closed-source model, they could have adopted that for the runtime a long time ago, still keeping the closed-source blob on top of the Linux kernel.
Maybe the EU decision will change the benefit balance of Android "being open source", and Google will go on with forking off / replacing the whole middleware, but I think that with their speed of Android development most commercially viable OEMs only have a chance to follow by subscribing to Google contracts (and maybe getting early access to new releases) anyway.
Edit Also they will probably try to replace Java with Dart to get around the Java/Oracle problem
However, it might mean that they have to re-implement big parts of the Android runtime, or even do clean-room implementations by people not previously involved in those projects, to prevent legal attacks on the inevitably-similar code that results.
one may view Google's current emphasis on Kotlin in the same light
- GCC is no longer supported on Android, as of Android P
- Linux kernel is compilable with clang, but AFAIK not all changes have been upstreamed
- Project Treble made Linux into a kind of micro-kernel, with drivers using Android IPC to talk to it
- Fuschia doesn't use anything GPL related
Plus, I think the 5-year agreement it made with China to keep Android open when it purchased Motorola expired last year.
So I think Google was already planning to close Android. It was just looking for a good public excuse to do it.
AND perhaps users should be given choice in all matters not OS core functionalities / search and others/
I wish these bloggers would keep their biases and unsubstantiated commentary to themselves.
This fine is an assault on open source, the fact linux didn't attain mainstream appeal on the desktop was largely due to the lack of condition and harmonization across distros.
In any other context fining an open source project for antitrust violations is absurd.
I don't see how telling Google not to force itself as the default preinstalled option on phones is an "assault on open source".
> the fact the linux didn't attaint mainstream appeal on the desktop was largely due to the lack of condition and harmonization across distros
Not sure what "condition and harmonization is", but if you mean the poor UI for normal people, then yes. I don't see the relevance of this to Google forcing itself onto people's phones.
> and the EU wants to doom android to the same fate.
It was literally a few days ago when I was wondering to myself how people were cool with Google search etc. coming preinstalled. I had no idea the EU was looking into this. As a result I don't have any reason to believe their goal is anything but fair competition.
Considering the cause of the fine is all of the non-open source bits Google adds on, I don't see how one can make a statement like that with a straight face.
"In any other context fining an open source project for antitrust violations is absurd."
They didn't fine the Android Open Source Project. They fined Google.
Or sell a device using only some of the things Google wants to make mandatory, but replacing others with their own.
That way they keep AOSP-based products on the fringe, since only niche manufacturers can afford to make them, and stop manufacturers trying to make/integrate better replacements for Google services. That's anti-competitive, that's the problem.
Probably what Pichai is talking about is charging a fee for Google Play Services, not AOSP. Although if they did decide to proprietize all future development work on AOSP, it would be interesting to see how the community would respond. It's possible we'd see a major fork and a revitalization of community work a la Linux, instead of the little garage forks we mostly have today.
The core of Android may be open source, but between so many API's being shoved into Google Play Services and AOSP apps being all but abandoned the writing is on the wall.
Hah! You basically want to destroy the blogosphere (oh, how I detest that term).
They're not fining ASOP, and Android is a nonfree OS.
And if we were to take the existence of AOSP into consideration then this fine seems even more ridicules and unwarranted.
Charging manufacturers for using the operating system you built is a healthy business practice. "Giving it away" and building in dozens of tracking mechanisms is hardly ethical.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on...
due to a permission, that used to be defined by Sony in pre-Android 7 and now is defined by Facebook, i.e. by app with different signature. The old permission definition still lingers on the phone and the only way to get rid of it is to reset the phone to factory settings. Which I'm obviously not going to do.
The argument is so ill worded its mindbugling. When did "open platforms" become synonymous with bundling?
What the EU has done is call the bs in Google's speak.
@Pichai - if you and all your high concentration of PhDs can't come up with a better business model than tracking and mind-controlling people, then yes, charge. Charge what you think Android is worth. We will evaluate the offering against our liberty.
Well done EU!!
You'll see that they consistently say that iOS updates are always free. There is a reason they say that, it's not be accident or idle words.
It's because the idea of a free OS upgrade for non FOSS is non-standard. Android moving to paid, means they would be like the overwhelming majority of business models for OS updates (Windows, MacOS).
It also means that they were unable to successfully monetize/subsidize their OS over the long term - arguably the crowning achievement of Google - whereas Apple has been able to eat their own dogfood and make it more or less a singular product.
The costs would get passed to the consumer no matter what though.