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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a good thing for consumers and Android device makers, who will no longer be coerced by Google to install its apps "for free". It's a pretty bad thing for Google in the long term, whose apps will inevitably lose market share.

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.

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I'm pretty sure this will make things more expensive for consumers, in which case I doubt they will be all that happy about it. I could be wrong, but if the phone manufacturers need to pay more for these licenses, I'm pretty sure they'll just raise prices to compensate.

Phone manufacturers don't need to bundle Google apps, and we'd all be better off if they didn't.

If that were true, phone manufacturers would not be bundling google apps in the first place. Manufacturers choose to include the Google apps because it enhances the product

You keep bringing this up as if TFA is not a direct refutation of that point.

TFA doesn't actually refute this point. (not a lawyer) One of the differences between European and US monopoly law is that US law requires that consumers be harmed, while european law just requires a lack of competition.

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.

This is not right. The EU only outlaws monopolies which do illegal things, just like 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.

Let me clarify: the us, due to precedent, not statute, requires evidence of harm to consumers. The eu only requires evidence of abuse of market share (which could be read as either harm to businesses or actions which might harm consumers).

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.

Sorry but most consumers do want Google apps.

The point is, the many phone manufacturers who choose to do so will probably charge more now, no matter what people might be "better off with"

They can though auction for a good deal, there are other browsers,email clients and calendars around, maybe they will get behind some open source apps and use those.

Gmail, not so much. The Play store and Google Mobile Services are the critical ecosystem pieces.

> whose apps will inevitably lose market share

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.

Many attempts at decoupling Google & Android have failed in the marketplace. Billions have been poured into a viable third mobile OS (Windows phone, meego, tizen, sailfish ...).

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'.

Did they say what the charges will be? Maybe it is $1. It could just be a token amount to clear themselves of antitrust.

Being free wasn't the issue, it was the bundling.

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.

> This is horrible for Europe - where end users will eventually pay more for their preferred 'Google Android'.

It won't be "horrible for Europe." Those users have always paid for these apps in one way or another.

What am I missing here? Google isn't changing the data they gather via their apps. They're adding a $ cost for access to it.

You're basically paying twice - with your more expensive Android devices, and Google's regular data tracking. This is bad for Europe

Samsung may decide to use different apps not Google ones, they may decide to use a Chromium fork with Bing as search engine so your data will not go do Google, maybe Mozilla will manage to do a deal with a big manufacturer and put Firefox as default and nobody will have to pay.

What has stopped them from doing this all this while? A shell company by Samsung renders any deals with Google impotent - a strategy used by many Chinese OEMs who have Google Android for international markets and their own app stores within China.

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.

Actually I want Windows Phone, because I am not going to pay contracts for an iPhone and paying Google feels like supporting their torpedo against Sun.

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's not really true, though. Users never said, for example, that they didn't want Windows Phone. They said that they wanted access to service X, Y and Z or app 1, 2 or 3, and Windows Phone did not provide that access.

That isn't consumer rejection so much as consumer reaction to the duopoly they are presented with.

> The consumers have spoken - they want iOS or Google's Android.

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.

> Sounds like a good thing for consumers and Android device makers, who will no longer be coerced by Google to install its apps "for free". It's a pretty bad thing for Google in the long term, whose apps will inevitably lose market share.

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.

Wat. FF on Android has ad blocking, which alone results in huge bandwith savings, not to speak of privacy and general annoyingness.

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