Google to Charge Phone Makers for Android Apps in Europe
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Still not decoupled enough for my taste. Manufacturers should be able to get only the Google Play store.
They also don't say anything about decoupling and shrinking the hundreds of megabytes of mandatory Google Play services constantly tracking you. (for example: will you still be mandated to make all Location Services go through Google if you want Google Play on your phone?)
So more than likely, they'll pay OEMs to install Chrome and Search, and OEMs can cover the cost of licensing the others with it. So a wash for companies still shipping all Google apps. But OEMs can choose not to include some of Google's other pack-ins, and say, Firefox and DuckDuckGo, or Microsoft with Bing and Edge could make a competing bid to be the preinstalled search and browser, to provide revenue with which the OEM could then buy the license for the Play Store.
So this will probably be cost-neutral for phones packed with the status quo, but offers the chance for third parties to outbid Google on search and browser, or undercut Google's costs for their other apps, and OEMs will be able to leave Google's apps out of the image if they prefer to ship their own, like Samsung often does.
That's still a huge issue. I shouldn't have to pay for Google Books if I don't want to include it on my device.
Why? Google is a for-profit company that puts time and effort into developing the store. The play store may not actually be self-sustaining in terms of revenue. Perhaps it is paid for by things like Maps and YouTube.
Shouldn't Google be able to specify the terms of use for its closed-source products? It seems sane that those terms might specify a package deal with other products.
By mandating that companies should be able to only get the Play Store, you're asking that Google work for free for others, and that doesn't seem fair.
This is why monopoly rules exist, and why it's not quite so simple. Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti-competitive behavior.
My retort to your argument would be: why even do hardware / Android at all? Because it's a distribution mechanism for _their_ services. If you leverage market dominance to expand that distribution network with fewer / no alternatives for consumers, that's like anti-trust 101.
Is it less clear how monopoly rules work if the price is "free?" If a company can offer a service for free by supplementing the cost with bundling (in a market where the going rate is "free") vs. not offering it at all, I'm not sure that's considered the same by US monopoly law (I have no idea of EU monopoly law).
You have to ask: why is it free?
- A thousand engineers working on a non-revenue product for Google is like "pennies," when it might be a whole company anywhere else.
- How are you funding that negative profit? Using leverage and profit from strong market position elsewhere. Therefore: anti-competitive, as other companies in the space don't have similar leverage.
Now, a startup can, say, operate at negative profit and not count as "anti-competitive," because a startup most likely has fractional market share. But imagine you're building a startup in a brand new space, and Google decides to also enter that space. If you price your product at $10, and Google says "we're pricing at $0," you can imagine how no one could compete with that for the long-term. Hence why monopoly / anti-competitive rules are important.
Might is an understatement. Google destroyed the market leading to Navteq and Tele Atlas being aquired by Nokia and TomTom.
There was Mapquest, and to my memory, Google came out of the starting gate with something close to feature parity with them.
This was also when traffic spiked to Google Maps and away from MapQuest / other competitors. And when you look at the data, the change in traffic is not due to users searching for "Google Maps" in the query more - but rather Google just linking to its own results more. [2]
It was when I knew the whole "Don't be evil" motto was bullshit.
[1] https://searchengineland.com/google-no-longer-linking-to-yah...
[2] https://searchengineland.com/comscore-to-report-google-maps-...
Which is a good thing if it results in more people getting quality services. gcc and Apache destroyed the market for commercial compilers and web servers; should they have been prohibited?
The difference here is that Apache didn't shove you a PlayStore, maps app and a browser in order to use their libraries. I want the products to "win" on merit not on reach. You also forget that Apache is open source which is not the case with Maps/youtube where your access can be denied at any time.
>> Which is a good thing if it results in more people getting quality services.
This gives no guarantee that Google won't start to charge its users for these services at some point in time. And there really won't be any competition as all the competitors have been killed by the "free" price.
Actually it seems they already set the price. You may argue that the end user doesn't pay for Playstore etc but we both know they pay...just like they paid for Windows. "Google said it would sell a license for a package including its Google Play...."
That's a completely independent complaint that has nothing to do with Android being available for free. You would have the same tying objection if Android cost money, right?
I think that densely populated areas and countries with public up to date cartography are easier to serve.
Those are fixed costs which can be amortized in other ways.
For example, Google could make both the OS and the hardware to sell together, like Apple. In fact, they do, with the Nexus/Pixel devices. Once they've done that, the OS development is a sunk cost. Giving it away to others or not has no effect on cost, or has negative cost if some of the others make contributions that you can use on your own devices without paying to develop them internally. And it grows the ecosystem your products are a part of, which is a valuable service the other vendors are providing for which some remuneration is appropriate, which could offset some or all of the cost of the software.
Moreover, software costs money to develop, but how much of the development cost should be apportioned to each unit? That depends how many units there will be. Not have been -- will ever be. This value is not known and can be arbitrarily large. For something like Android it is very large. If you amortize the development cost over the number of devices there are/will be, the cost per device is negligible -- small enough it would be eaten by transaction costs if you tried to collect it.
And claiming that companies can't give away software because they're large is clearly bad policy. It would imply that e.g. they can't contribute to Linux.
Using a large market share in one area (personal computer operating systems) as a weapon against competitors in another area (web browsers) was found to be illegal.
Much like Google would not allow OEMs to both build Google Android devices and non Google Android devices based solely on AOSP.
That being said, this announcement actually revealed the real moneymakers: Everything else Google offers is just what they feel they need to keep you locked into Search and Chrome, which drive Google's real market dominance. The only real reason they're making it hard to get the Play Store (despite it being self-sustainable) is to provide an incentive to let them put Chrome and Search on the phone, and that carries through with this announcement.
They'll charge for the Play Store, but they'll happily pay you more or less the same amount to install Chrome and Search.
Not to the extent that it is allowed to decimate competition.
Related: When IBM was trying to find software for the IBM-PC they went to Microsoft initially looking to buy just the languages (like BASIC) to run on it. They wound up buying DOS for pennies on the dollar because Microsoft valued contractual freedom to deal with other businesses over instant bottom-line. IBM low-balled Microsoft expecting them to come back higher, but instead they accepted on the condition that they be allowed to sell their OS to other vendors.
The result was nearly 40 years of market domination because for years nobody could decouple Microsoft Windows from the PC. Even after it slipped out of IBMs grasp; Microsoft held on. Microsoft commoditized the hardware and then strong-armed everyone into license agreements because they had unstoppable market share. It was almost a case of "Give them the razor for free but make them keep coming back for blades." Microsoft could, quite literally, give away their code for free without fear of financial loss because every PC running Windows was infinitely more valuable than that same PC running anything else. By running Windows instead, even a free one, Microsoft was strengthening it's market share.
With Android and mobile devices the hardware is already a commodity. Google has all the market share it needs. They don't need more reward for something that's already been paid off if it just means the rest of the market is limited in their ability to do business outside of Google. The entire market doesn't need to support Google on both sides. We're paying Google in data, in market share, and in advertising revenue. Bending Samsung's arm backwards to install the whole kit just breaks competition. It's triple dipping for Google to the detriment of the rest of us. For what? Just so Google can make sure they're the only Google forever?
They're licensing practices are disingenuous and anti-competitive for the sake of limiting advancement that could threaten Google's bottom line. That potential advancement would be a huge benefit for the rest of the world, but we may never see it if Google is allowed to completely own the tech sector in every conceivable way.
That doesn't mean that Google has to "work for free." Nothing prevents them from simply charging money for Android and the Play Store. But Google doesn't want to be Symbian, getting a $10-15 one-time license free per phone. Instead, it wants to use Android/GPE as a vehicle for getting people to use apps like YouTube, which generate recurring revenue. That's a great business strategy, but if you're too successful with it, you run into antitrust concerns. (Google's should've probably taken a page from Intel/Microsoft and paid off Symbian or Blackberry to keep working on an Android competitor.)
So what happens when they do just that, but the price for Android + Play Store sans Google Apps is ~$150, i.e. the same price as Microsoft Windows?
It's completely fair to ask that they offer an a la carte version for full price, but then almost everyone would choose the free/discounted version that bundles the services.
It's also fair to ask that the user be able to uninstall them, but again most of them won't.
What the hardware vendors are really after is the ability to sell the default position to someone else. The profit from which disappears with the discount Google was giving them for exactly that.
In that case other companies, say, Micrsoft could then start to offer a $100 Android version containing Edge, Bing Maps, Hotmail as services.
Exactly what this anti-trust measure try to accomplish. Now, this is not possible since Google forces you to install Chrome if you want Play Store. Which basically leverages it's monopoly on mobile OS to get more market share in the browser game.
Just like Microsoft offers a $100 iOS the same way, right? All you're asking for is for Google to stop developing Android for free. Then Google's version becomes macOS to the legacy Android's FreeBSD, or WINE trying to keep up with every change to Windows.
It would make it harder to develop an alternative to Google Play than it currently is because then you would also have to produce an alternative to Android.
And it does nothing to solve the actual problem, which is that app stores have network effects, so users won't use one with no apps and developers won't use one with no users. Even ignoring Android, suppose the value of Google Play to the OEM is $50 and the value of being default to the highest bidder (e.g. Microsoft) is $20. Then the OEMs have been getting a discount of $30 to get both for net of zero.
Now suppose you price them separately and Google offers Google Play for $35 and pays $35 to be the default. The result is exactly the same. Google Play is worth $50 to the OEM over alternatives, costs $35, so they net $15 by choosing it. Google Apps pay $35 when the alternative pays $20, so they net $15 by choosing it. No change in behavior at all.
If you want to actually fix it you need to break the network effect, e.g. separate the Google Play service from the Google Play app, so that anyone can build a store app that can install apps from multiple stores (even if OEMs still have to pay for access to Google Play). Then explicitly allow app developers to pass the store fee onto customers using that store through differential pricing between stores, so that the same apps from stores with lower fees actually have lower prices. That's how you get more stores, which is how you break Google's leverage with the Play Store.
They already didn't play fair.
Really? 30% of every sale and in-app purchase in the entire android ecosystem of billions of users?
I think it's probably profitable. Just a bit.
More choices for end users, more choices for manufactures => happy people, less monopoly.
Side note: I'm not particularly happy with the dictatorships regimes(Google and Apple) in the native apps environment. It just doesn't feel right to have the whole world censored/guarded by two big corporations.
Oh, wait...
Who is actually the beneficiary of this action? It seems pretty dubious that it helps customers, after all, the whole thing stems from the fact that the customers want the Play Store.
It says that they would offer would be financial incentives for partnering with chrome and google. Is it just gonna be like "access to Google Play is $10, but if you bundle our services, we'll give you $10!"
Or is the effect that it increases the leverage of other handset makers to essentially extract rents of digital real estate from Google like Apple does?
The EU has competition law that places restrictions on how you can behave as soon as you have a 40% share of a given market.
Under EU competition law, once you have that 40% market share in one area, you may not use that market share as a weapon against competitors in other areas.
The intent is different too.
The EU is looking to protect a healthy level of competition in the marketplace, while we in the US have moved the goalposts to "can you prove this particular monopoly is doing consumers harm"?
America's "hands off" approach to regulation has allowed the country to produce companies that much of the world envies.
That is not what is illegal.
However, once you hit a certain market share (40% in the EU) you may no longer use that market share as a weapon against competitors in other areas.
I think Google has 90%+ market share in all of those, at least in Europe.
That's kind of a weird statement, of course they are dominant / monopolistic on Android, just like Apple has a monopoly on iOS.
As for the latter being a thing but Apple not getting into trouble for their iOS App Store monopoly, I guess that is because Apple isn't using that "dominant position" to prop up a dominant position in another market (like Google is propping up their dominance in search engines).
Or maybe the overall consumer harm is considered to be much smaller, considering that Android has 80% smart mobile device market share in Europe (according to the EC press release), and iOS has a much smaller share.
I'm not sure if this is an outcome I want.
is unlikely to be different from "free" in the eyes of regulators. But it does clarify what particularly is the concern the regulators are interested in -- how much of discount is implied in the servicde-bundle placement.
Meanwhile, if they offer to pay too much, OEMs can replace the app store and the other apps with cheaper alternatives, and just profit off the high incentives to load Chrome and Search, and Google loses it's grip on the Play Store's market.
The license fee adds a lot of incentive for OEMs to consider alternative app markets: Imagine if Samsung offered developers an app market with a 10% cut instead of Play's 30% cut. Would that move the needle on getting developers on board with a competing app market? Sure, Samsung wouldn't pull as much in on it, but they'd be avoiding the license fee to pay Google too. Secondary effect of this that will also spur on competition another way: If this happens, Google might consider dropping it's own rates to compete.
On both sides of this kinda split-bundle arrangement, Google will need to maintain a competitive offer or else competitors will swoop in, whereas before, OEMs didn't have any choice in the matter because it was all or nothing.
Bear in mind, Google has to pay Apple and Firefox billions to keep Google as the default search, but Android OEMs were being forced to keep search as the default for free. So yeah, the Play Store will have a license fee, but Google now has to pay up to hold onto search dominance.
"What is the Standard for Determining Illegal Behavior?
"The United States and European Union have, at least since the Reagan Administration, differed on this point: the U.S. is primarily concerned with consumer welfare, and the primary proxy is price. In other words, as long as prices do not increase — or even better, decrease — there is, by definition, no illegal behavior.
"The European Commission, on the other hand, is explicitly focused on competition: monopolistic behavior is presumed to be illegal if it restricts competitors which, in the theoretical long run, hurts consumers by restricting innovation."
I always had a hard time with that notion. It feels too ripe for abuse to me.
Google is dumping prices for all products and by that it kills competition unfairly - google maps as a standalone product would not survive because it does not generate ad revenues and it’s free to use. Gmail was also unsustainable for really long time because it was free and without ads. So it’s not as simple as you are saying.
They want "The next Google" to be a European company.
https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-l...
Edit: some corrections
>Google allegedly ran afoul of EU rules by deterring manufacturers from using Android forks. Google "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," the commission said.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/eu-google-illega...
https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/14/3335204/google-statement-...
It's a double edged sword. Of course you want to avoid fragmentation and consumer frustration. But where do you draw a line and call it what it is: monopolistic behaviour that stifles competition.
I'm not sure how you arrived at this conclusion. This seems rational to me, and in line with the antitrust decision as the bundling of apps isn't any more mandatory for manufacturers.
More importantly was that Google were doing various forced things (like requiring installing all Google things on all devices, heavily limiting possible competition). Ending that is important, even if it shifts costs around.
Edit - a simple way of viewing this is if this makes more money for Google, why weren't they doing it anyway? If not, can it really be costing consumers more?
I wouldn't assume this. In simple terms, surely they realized punitive measures on a something consumers choose will harm the chooser. They might have some idealistic long-term consumer benefit goal in mind (e.g. magically growing competitors, magic corporate altruism, etc), but it is divorced from reality.
Once you are found guilty, you aren't operating in a vacuum anymore. We have yet to see what sorts of remedies the EU may require of Google if they do not agree with Google's decisions on how to resolve the situation.
For instance, Microsoft was forced to open up its Client/Server protocols as part of their antitrust action.
>Microsoft Wednesday attacked the most contentious part of the European Commission's 2004 antitrust ruling against it -- the decision to force the company to share details of server source code.
>The 2004 ruling ordered the company to open up source code for server communications protocols to rivals, in order to allow them to build server programs that work as smoothly with Windows as Microsoft's own software.
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2311190/software/ms-ant...
This is some sloppy reporting. The 'Android operating system' is licensed under the Apache 2.0 licence[0]. Nothing in that licence obligates handset manufacturers to 'load the free apps'.
This ruling finally forces Google to decouple at least some of its apps from the package, and to sell some devices (but not all of them) with or without Google apps.
A) not selling non OHA approved Android devices
B) installing Apps X,Y,Z
Amazon is one of the few Companies thats not a member of the OHA and can ship their own modified FireOS.
If you do, you want to have access to the Google ecosystem. You will fail without PlayStore access. See Amazon phones.
I'm not convinced this is the case. Depends on definitions of successful. The absence of competition is not the same as the absence of the ability to compete, and regulating the latter under that assumption improperly assumes it will fix the former. There is more to success than the playing field.
Does it make more sense put this way ?
MicroG is a project aimed at developing open source alternatives to those android components. https://microg.org/
Arguably many of Android's core APIs now flow through Play Store Services (e.g. Location Services).
[0] PDF warning: http://www.benedelman.org/docs/htc-mada.pdf
In Europe and the US. Worldwide, the majority do (cf. Xiaomi)
> By obligating handset makers to load the free apps along with the Android operating system
"Along with." It was enforced bundling.
The person above mistakenly claimed the article was wrong due to Android's license which is both a misreading of the NYT's story and also wrong in the larger sense.
No, I'm not.
"in order to bundle the Play Store and associated Google services you have to agree to MADA"
But "the Play Store and associated Google services" aren't part of Android. So you can ship Android devices without them.
"No major manufacturer, except Amazon, ships an AOSP variant without Google's Services."
Yup. Amazon shows that you can ship Android devices without the Play Store and Google services.
> By obligating handset makers to load the free apps along with the Android operating system
The NYC article said google was compelling handset makers to bundle free apps ALONG WITH the Android OS, they didn't say that Android OS's license required said bundling.
Google obligated handset makers via the MADA linked above. If you want the Play Store, Play Services, and all of Android's APIs to work, you have to agree to MADA which means bundling Google's apps with the Android OS.
Handset makers obligated _themselves_ by (voluntarily) signing up to the MADA.
Handset makers didn't really have much of a choice, they weren't big enough to compete directly with Google.
I find it hard to believe that they were too small in comparison with Google to compete with their own mobile OS and app market.
They already tried, more than once, and all their attempts failed.
I thought the case was about bundling (i) some set of Google services/apps and (ii) some other set of Google services/apps.
You can either ship every Android device with the Play store, or none. As a manufacturer, you don't get to pick and choose, thanks to the newspeak-ish Open Hardware Alliance (OHA).
Amazon could not get Foxconn to manufacture their Android phone for example because Foxconn would lose their license to MADA.
Bundling has two senses, one "physical" (Android OS and Google apps are part of the same disk image) and one business (like bundled pricing).
We're talking about economic tying[1], and they suddenly switched the physical definition of bundling. The reader would be justified in expecting them to use the word bundling in its business sense.
"Which Android experience do you want? Google, Tencent, Baidu, Microsoft, or EFF?"
The Play Store is not included in that license. And given the stranglehold it has on the app distribution scene in the US and Europe, shipping a phone without it is suicide.
Google allows 3rd parties to use their OS, allows 3rd party app stores, etc but gets a huge fine for bundling their own native app store.
Apple doesn't allow 3rd parties to do anything and you need to use their app store but they're totally fine here.
Good job Europe.
The carriers have iPhones at roughly the same price as a half-decent Android phone, and those that can't afford to do that, get them second hand (usually older models..).
I have an Android, and I know several techie friends with Androids, but "normal people" have iPhones.
Really - It's almost a surprise to see someone with an Android here..
As I said, I've no data.. I'd love to see some though!
That said the rest of Europe is definitely android
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/ireland
Current stats show Android in the lead. As it is almost everywhere.
Not according to this.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/apples-app-store-revenue-n...
The issue here is where the anti-trust line is drawn. Why people in the tech side never seem to understand this is beyond me, but the line is clear.
It has everything to do with your marketshare. Google could make zero dollars off Android, if they still own & control it and it reaches a vast majority marketshare, as it has in Europe, then they are pressured to open it up and increase competition within the platform.
Whining about Apple and whataboutism is ridiculous. They are not the majority of devices in any major region (NA/Europe/Asia/Worldwide). Some isolated countries are majority iOS, but they all exist within the EU and the EU is 75% Android.
I don't understand why people keep trying to use the Internet Explorer precedent as an example of good antitrust maneuvers. It's literally the exact opposite.
I would have to dig around for the source of the original story, but the suit is the only reason Google was able to topple Microsoft's dominance. The antitrust case gave Google and companies like it room to grow, and an antitrust case against Google may be the only thing can launch the next wave of innovation that surpasses it.
nobody would've changed ie6 as their default browser because of the anti trust ruling. they changed because internet explorer was developed way slower than other competitors that slowly took over the market.
"But Google tied the use of its popular Play app store, where customers can download more than 1 million apps made by outside developers, to requirements that companies feature other services like Google’s search engine and web browser that drive advertising revenue."
"Android phone makers wishing to distribute Google apps may now also build noncompatible, or forked, smartphones and tablets."
You don't think there's any bad faith in Google saying, "if you want to use our app store, and for all practical purposes you have to use our app store, then you must include our apps for other services -- and by the way if you sell one phone with Gapps, all of your phones must have them too?"
Google doesn't make money on the devices themselves. Being able to enforce rules like this is their motivation for developing Android in the first place.
Android was created in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, before Google bought it in 2005
> "because they did not want Apple to win all the market"
Actual purpose was: "The early intentions of the company were to develop an advanced operating system for digital cameras, and this was the basis of its pitch to investors in April 2004. The company then decided that the market for cameras was not large enough for its goals, and by five months later it had diverted its efforts and was pitching Android as a handset operating system that would rival Symbian and Microsoft Windows Mobile."
If Apple actually had any kind of comparable market share to Google over here, they would equally be fined.
Smartphone manufacturers are in the smartphone business because of Google. If those manufacturers don't like Google's terms, they're free to go Microsoft's route and build their own OS.
Nobody is forcing these companies to do anything.
Google and its smartphone partners are both in the business because of each other. If Google had kept Android closed and limited to its own phones, it would not have become the #1 mobile OS -- we'd be using Palm or Microsoft or Nokia or someone else's product.
It's about the dominance in the search engine/advertising market in europe, not about "giving away apps for free". If Apple would have a similar dominant position, they would face the same problems.
However, I don't think that Apple has the market share in the EU to be compared to Google in this case.
I stand by my whataboutism callout.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_legal_systems
As far as I know this is not true.
Google draws scrutiny from antitrust regulators in regard to phone software because Google is separate from the phone makers.
> phone software because Google is separate from the phone makers
What if pixel phones become the only way to use Android?
These are just semi-rhetorical (and unlikely scenarios) questions.
Yes, why not? Or that rule only applies to Google?
With Apple the OS maker, the store maker, and the phone maker are all the same entity so it doesn't even make sense to say that the OS vendor is trying to force their store on the phone vendor.
If Apple draws antitrust scrutiny, it will be for something different that what is drawing attention to Google, such as for not letting third party stores on their phone.
Result: Google meets its legal obligations to unbundle their software but in practice the handset manufacturers don't have a choice.
Imagine if you could buy a "Windows" Android, with Office 365 + bing preloaded and optimized like a Windows Phone 2.0 sold next to a Google Android phone. As a consumer, I love having that type of option, and the manufacturer can also add their own software / services.
> The decision also requires Google to refrain from any measure that has the same or an equivalent object or effect as these practices.
Monopolies are good, they create lasting value (see google). All companies should strive to build monopolies and own their market.
Peter Thiel - 0 to 1
Probably the biggest question I have is that they still appear to be selling "bundles" according to the article, which seems contrary to the European decision. Is a phone manufacturer who licenses "the bundle" allowed to omit apps from the bundles? Or have the bundles been narrowly defined around the EU's current ruling of which bundles aren't allowed, and they're still going to force OEMs to carry specific sets of Google apps?
1. App bundling.
2. Selling Android forks.
3. Payments for exclusive installation of Google Search.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm
https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/compl...
I hope there will be some way to get a refund like when not accepting Windows licenses on computers.
- ASOP Vanilla or their forked version [Free]
- Include Play Store and Google Services [Pay up]
- Add-on Chrome with Google Search on top of Play Store [Free]
Prices of flagship phones are already higher than they are in US, now they will be increased again.
> Google said it would sell a license for a package including its Google Play app store, Gmail, YouTube and Maps. Another license will be available for companies that want to pre-install Google Search and the Chrome browser, allowing handset makers to team up with rival services. The company did not say how much it would charge for the licenses.
This is wrong. One of the three major pieces of this case is the allegation that Google has hindered those who wish to fork by preventing them from making phones with any of the major phone OEMs:
"In particular, Google ... 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')."
The allegation is that because of this, anyone looking to fork Android had a very hard time finding good OEMs to make their phones. E.g., maybe the Amazon fire phones would have worked if they could have gotten a Tier 1 OEM to make the phones so they could have put out a better product. But nobody would agree to stop making all of their current Android phones to see (I assume; there is no public version of the decision yet so I'm making up the example).
I guess looking forward the writing is on the wall that Samsung will eventually move to its own OS. An the 'anti-fork' attempts will eventually get beaten down by litigation.
So really a proprietary OS on your own hardware like Apple would be the way to go. No surprise that Android apps will work on ChromeOS going forward, I'm sure they'd work seamlessly on Fuchsia too (don't they already?).
Maybe in a few years this comment will look quite prescient. Or I'll look like a dumbass. I'd say 25/75
Brave it's superior to Chrome
Nine/Aquamail is superior to Gmail
Poweramp/Retro etc it's superior to whatever Google has
just for categories you mentioned
It sounds like a very good thing to me to prevent companies like Google from having such terms, which allow them to use dominance on one area to fuel dominance in many others. Each product should stand on it's own, and the idea that the entire ecosystem is one big product is frankly BS.
"They will also be able to license Google Play separately from search and chrome, will full freedom to install rival apps" Hogwash.
Look at Amazon phones preloaded with bloatware and lockscreen ads and stupid quality fork. Or the MIUI Chinese crap, Huawei local market and how can we forget that VLC banned Huawei for their aggressive background killing ? This puts more corporate companies to turn their rubbish grade services and ruin Android UX further, add more fragmentation due to no Google involvement in the Gplay app Targeting or the security scanning from Gplayprotect.
I don't use assistant and all the background services and logging are stopped, search tracking is off, location history is off. I can set the permissions with every app and they stick. Unlike the rubbish iOS asking for each and every app for location for eg - settings needs location for what ? And need of iTunes BS for using the phone itself. And unable to sideload, or basic copying of music ? Add the HW ecosystem lockdown, planned obsolescence with their trash book pros - sealed batteries to the chassis, BGA soldered chips, prone to fail KB, flawed VRMs, Proprietary chips for EC HW from Basic I/O to Encryption.
Google is already dying due to the scale of them and trying to being innovative (stocks) and comply with US GOVT (NSA) but this EU incapable of delivering something substantial on the same grounds is relegated to these stupid political policies (controversial Article 13/14).
Brainwash of Apple and their walled garden is so fruitful ever, $1Bn no one cards about Android because they think its cheap but the fundamental aspect of offering choice - Bootloader unlock. Running GPL v2 code, Linux kernel, side load, root and tons of control in your hand, no worries Google is already chasing the same path with ChromeOS trash with rehashed Ubuntu/Gentoo running a containerized OS, running Android apps blown up, but ashamed to name Android at the event ! Fuschia OS another MIT license, to make Google sole controller over the OS unlike Android with GPL which enforces the changes to be Open sourced as well unlike the former which doesn't stipulate anything like that, once you make the changes behind the closed source you don't need to push them.
Yeah, Slate doesn't have a headphone jack, Pixel 3XL ugly imitation, Android P's downgrade from draw over other apps, killing accessibility APIs hard SDK targeting, closure of the hidden APIs loss of the QS settings in P, aggressive sand boxing like removal of app mah level battery consumption with packages in the name of security. Not just Android. windows too with their WDDM2.x and UWP walled garden over Win32 and 6 Month EOL perpetual alpha mining Guinea pig OS called Win10 Home. Its a shame how massive Apple impacts due to their market cap. Add the Intel BGA push to the mobile laptops from inspired by Apple because until Has well Intel HM class chipsets all had rPGA sockets and MXM GPUs with modular batteries. All is past since Apple started their MacBooks they all used BGA.
Kudos to everyone who made this Orwellian era possible, all the Apple fans. Its inevitable that liberty and choice will be drained soon than expected and we will start living in world like the movie "Equilibrium"
I hope we see Google Play vanish. Their pricing and the way it's ran are cancerous.
Competition would be good, even if it's from Amazon or another major company. Phones with Amazon Apps and Firefox instead of the whole Google software package? Yes, please.
Although some OEMs will initially "freak out" because they'll think people will stop buying their phones if Gmail doesn't come pre-installed (I find it extremely hard to believe, but I guess anything is possible with some people), eventually they'll likely end-up pre-installing Microsoft or Amazon or whoever else' apps instead - and they will get paid to do it.
The consumers have spoken - they want iOS or Google's Android.
This is horrible for Europe - where end users will eventually pay more for their preferred 'Google Android'.
So if Google doesn't want to charge anything, they could still offer them for free (just unbundled).
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the license fee ends up at around $1 anyway. My personal guess is that it will be less than $10.
It won't be "horrible for Europe." Those users have always paid for these apps in one way or another.
You're basically paying twice - with your more expensive Android devices, and Google's regular data tracking. This is bad for Europe
This is not my opinion. If you go to a VC or even YC with these claims, they will counter with the widely available data pointing towards the high probability of a third ecosystem failing.
And yes, I will keep using my Lumia as 2nd phone until it dies.
A phone that has received more updates than all my Android devices together.
That isn't consumer rejection so much as consumer reaction to the duopoly they are presented with.
Consumers haven't said shit, nobody asks them. All the general population cares about is that they can buy a phone that can handle calls, texts, and apps for popular services.
I miss Windows phone, even though I also hated it. Microsoft had a decent UX paradigm for touch devices, way better than Google and Apple had. But you can't just "lean-startup" yourself into this market using your own brand. They should've waited a year longer, should've used that time to polish the OS instead of releasing a barely-functional version. We could've had a decent competitor with a refreshing mobile experience.
Thus, in the Europe, a "benevolent monopoly", so to speak, would still be regulated, even if it provided optimal outcomes to consumers. This is not the case in the US.
In other words, people bundling the apps because they feel it enhances the product may still be illegal in Europe, if regulators feel that competition is stifled.
For TFA to be a refutation of this point, it would need to be the same ruling in the US.
"Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position ... shall be prohibited...."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_102_of_the_Treaty_on_t...
There is a difference in terms of how you go about proving "abuse," but it's a difference of degree, not of kind; in the US, there is more weight placed on "effects" analysis where you see if you can prove something bad actually happened, while in the EU it is often sufficient to show that the actions are the kind that are likely to result in bad things. But this is a generalization and both kinds of proof are considered in both places.
In other words, if chrome were the objectively best browser, requiring it be bundled could be illegal in the eu and legal in the us.
This is I think very similar to what you say in your second paragraph, but flavored a bit differently.
In any case, it does mean the article isn't clear evidence of harm to consumers or that concerned would pick differently.
Google apps don't come standard on PCs, yet Chrome and Gmail have majority market share and Google Drive/Docs is widely used (in university everyone used it to collaborate, even profs). And that's on MS' own platform...
I really doubt Microsoft or Amazon apps are going to supplant Google apps on Android anytime soon, nor do I think Firefox/Opera/other browsers have a chance against Chrome on Android.
Remains to be seen. Google will keep making the best android apps for the rest of the world, which means they 're very unlikely to be outcompeted by EU startups. Prepare for "europhones" with crappy maps that display half your city. People will simply prefer Google phones and they 'll keep making their profits.