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Comment by distances | Hacker News Reader

> Well, that seems to have completely backfired on the EU.

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.

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I'm saying the premise as a whole backfired. I assume the end goal was to benefit end consumers. Now, end consumers will have to pay more for something that was previously free, since my gut says that most device companies will choose to pay the licensing agreement and just pass the costs along by increasing the sticker price.

If there's an actual cost to the items it now means other providers could actually compete, which is the goal. It would now be possible to sell cheaper than Google if you can make something the consumer wants at a lower cost. Competition benefits consumers.

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 assume the end goal was to benefit end consumers

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.

It's going to benefit consumers in the long run because manufacturers have more freedom. If MS gives away Bing and Edge, then manufacturers probably won't pay for Chrome and Google search.

EU antitrust legislation isn't about the end user (as discussed elsewhere in the thread) so much as about keeping fair market conditions. The EU formed as a common market of multiple old nations with country-specific state monopolies and rules for telecommunication, public transport, alcohol, tobacco, an other things. Regulating this common market has been simply a prerequisite for getting countries to evolve state monopolies into publicly traded companies.

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