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Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

> How is the Play Store related to the Google Seach app or to Chrome?

“Related to” does not mean that they are the literally same thing. They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”.

The law doesn’t say that if it is technically possible to unbundle a set of options from a product offering to be sold al la carte that companies must do that.

These are all essential components of one product — a mobile OS. Mixing and matching, for the vast majority of users, is neither practical or expected, and absolutely negatively impacts the brand.

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> Mixing and matching, for the vast majority of users, is neither practical or expected, and absolutely negatively impacts the brand.

Microsoft should be delighted then that they can force Internet Explorer on everyone again.

> They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”.

That argument doesn't hold for Chrome. The core experience of Android is the AOSP browser (aka Android Browser). Later Google started to use their monopoly to force the inclusion of Chrome alongside Android Browser, followed by the removal of Android Browser in Android 4.4.

And even now, the only reason Chrome is part of the "core android experience" is because Google pushes hard to make it that way. There are plenty of other good mobile browsers.

>These are all essential components of one product — a mobile OS

But Google doesn't licence the OS. They donated the OS to Open Source, and use their licencing agreement for the App store to control unrelated parts of the OS experience

Microsoft should be delighted then that they can force Internet Explorer on everyone again.

Microsoft does force Internet Explorer cum Edge on everyone. They never stopped. When the EU forced them to offer a trivial "justify a giant fine" selection tool it did essentially nothing in regards to browser share. It keeps getting cited as the precedent, and while it is in the "EU makes some fat bank" way, it did absolutely nothing for consumers. And that's for an OS that was tremendously more entrenched, whereas I recently swapped out my GS8 for an iPhone 8 with nary a hiccup (and as an aside still enjoy all those Google services).

There is so much bullshit happening throughout this discussion.

Elsewhere people are claiming that Chrome became popular because Google pushed it on their homepage, which is just ridiculous, revisionist nonsense. Chrome became popular because it earned word of mouth as a lighter, faster browser. It exploded. The same happened with Firefox. Because the platform was open and allowed you to choose whatever you want to run. Just as I can and do run Firefox on Android.

Further, vendors/carriers only abuse the right to put in alternatives. It is traditionally called crapware.

> …which is just ridiculous, revisionist nonsense.

As is your version of events. As with all extreme points of view, the truth lies somewhere towards the middle.

> They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”.

I'm using Android every day and never once opened Chrome (instead I'm using the Lightning browser) or used the Google app to search (I'm just searching directly in my browser). So IMHO that's definitely NOT the core experience of Android, while the Play Store is.

Same. The Android experience is being able to choose your own browser, media player, email app etcetera.

I know ecosystems make corporations a lot of money and some people prefer them. And they can choose an iPhone or Pixel.

Neat. So the OS allowed you to choose alternatives and to avoid Chrome wholly. So you're fully of the opinion that the EU argument has no merit then, right?

Of course, saying it's a part of the Android/Google Experience is from the average consumer. You know that you have the Chrome browser if you so choose. Yes, you can go to the Play Store and install Firefox. Unlike on iOS where the browser alternatives are facades.

It's the same argument as with Microsoft vs. the EU regarding IE: Defaults are important when you have a monopoly.

I'm pretty sure that an important part of the Microsoft argument was that you couldn't uninstall ie and it was used by certain system functions even if you set a different default. That's an important distinction.

(Im a Googler, but that's not particularly relevant to this comment)

I can't uninstall Chrome on my LG Android phone either.

No, but you can fully disable it (and that's equivalent to uninstalling, and wasn't possible on windows).

That is certainly not the equivalent as it still occupies storage.

Also, you could actually uninstall IE. That only uninstalled the shell, not the libraries (as there were dependencies) but it was gone in terms of the application.

An "app" on Android is not a traditional executable. It's really a library and a collection of OS hooks that execute code from that library on various events.

The home screen icon is one of those hooks but by far not the only one. If I hide it or never press it, that implies exactly nothing about whether or not code from the app gets executed while I use the phone.

I've never gone into the Bluetooth settings on my phone, that doesnt mean it's abusive that it was already there on my phone when I bought it.

OEMs can change the Bluetooth settings though.

> Mixing and matching, for the vast majority of users, is neither practical or expected, and absolutely negatively impacts the brand.

Firefox has over a 100 million downloads according to the Play Store, so that argument at least doesn't work for bundling Chrome.

But that is 100 million out of over 6 billion Android phones shipped [1] which means around 2% of users install Firefox.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263445/global-smartphone...

Play store shows Chrome installed 1b+ times, with 9M ratings, Firefox has 3M ratings and 100m+ installs. So it can easily mean 950 million installs for Firefox.

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