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Comment by dirtyid | Hacker News Reader

If true, this is certainly a nuclear move. There's a variety of first party app stores in China, though I doubt they'll see much success convincing Western users to switch. Curious if there's going to be antitrust fallout from markets outside the US for unilaterally crippling vendors at behest of US foreign policy. Is Microsoft or Apple going to pull their app stores as well? What happened to project Dragon Fly?

On the other hand, I wonder how Huawei / China will retaliate. Wouldn't be surprised if this kills all Google manufacturing prospects in China which pretty much kills Google hardware.

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The biggest threat to Google in my opinion would be the possibility that Huawei and China could try to "steal" Android from them.

Imagine in 2021 the Chinese government mandates that every Chinese smartphone manufacturer needs to switch to ChAndroid for all of their product lines, with a single unified app store, whether they sell the phones inside or outside of China. Well, fully half of the top smartphone companies in the world are Chinese. So all of a sudden Google would lose the ability to monetize on almost half of the ecosystem.

And if it were open and successful, other Android manufacturers could move over. Samsung would LOVE the ability to get a piece of the search and app revenue on every one of their phones. Right now they're locked out because of Google's licensing agreement for Android, but they must look at how much money Google pays Apple every year to be the default search provider very longingly.

> And if it were open...

An OS mandated by the Chinese government. That’s pretty much the opposite open in multiple ways.

Open in this case meaning open source and open to other people to modify/build upon, like Android is currently. But you're right that the Chinese bureaucracy may not be nimble enough for this kind of move, and might stillborn it by mucking it up with poor decisions.

Europe forced Google into a consent degree. It isn’t allow to forbid manufacturers from selling non Google versions of Android.

Correct. So manufacturers should be allowed to sell Android and "Android-compatible" phones simultaneously, whereas before Google forced manufacturers to choose either/or. But that decision is still under appeal as far as I can tell. It also doesn't remove the technical/marketing/user hurdles of getting everyone to port their software over to new APIs, a new app store, and getting the users to get comfortable with a whole new app store and none of the Google apps they expect (like Google Maps, GMail, etc.)

This is already the case, economically.

Android is open source, these vendors are free to fork and do whatever.

The lion's haul for Google is not 'app store sales' in China , it's search.

Android is not about App Store, that's just a marginal thing - it's about owning and controlling search everywhere. It's a means to extend their primary product.

Samsung can make it's own app store tomorrow, but they're not going to get 'Google Search' - which is what people want - so they'll have to do for now.

As far as Huawei ... well, open trade can only be had by like economies. If one economy can externalize pollution, labour costs, healthcare, and the other can't - then there cannot be open trade. Same thing for more contentious issues such as IP theft, foreign ownership rules, capital controls, state control of enterprises.

Huawei is the example, the tip of the spear. It hardly even matters what the degree of materiality is, that said, there should be not question that there's existential risk with Huawei. The CCP can require Huawei to do whatever, at any time, and Huawei will happily comply.

China can't enjoy the advantages of a 'developing economy' while trying to put 1st tier industries form advanced economies out of business, it's not going to sit well.

So we saw the big rise of China, now they're slowing down to 'nice growth' instead of crazy growth, they're grabbing land and industry so the West is wary. Meaning the trade rules will change.

This is the new normal.

> Samsung can make its own app store tomorrow

What do you mean, tomorrow? Go to http://samsungapps.com/ and start to sell all your apps on Samsung Galaxy Store!

The internet, at least as we knew it, is dead. What we have now is a highly segemented, highly federated, highly monitored, centralized communication network. The walls and the controls around access are getting more intricate every day, we've long ago left the idea of an open network in the trash can.

It sure seems like the future is more and more walls, more and more reactionary defensive measures. Nobody seems to have any inclination to resist this trend.

Seemingly more and more people want internet regulation. Nobody cares about things like free speech anymore, and actively campaign that it’s harmful.

It goes beyond freedom of speech.

For instance gdpr, copyright directive, tax laws (was a story the other day about you having to comply with a lot of local tax laws - consider what happens if you are unable or unwilling to comply with 1000s of special snowflake tax rules, presumably the authority rests on blocking).

These examples are not quite freedom of speech, but will lead to a breaking apart of the internet all the same.

Of course, that's China's goal for their 2025 project right? It seems Americans are underestimating the long-term plans and strategies of countries that deny liberal democratic principles.

I think much of that hardware is rebranded OEM anyways, which should be safe. It also isn’t clear China would blame google for this, or if its any worse than how google has pissed the Chinese government off in the past. Maybe they’ll just block google websites...wait no, they’ve done that already.

Surely it doesn't matter if China blame Google. USA have gone after Huawei based on Huawei being Chinese, so the response of China to stop manufacturing stuff for USA companies would seem reasonable, no?

Is this a "force people to buy USA manufactured goods; but blame it on the Chinese" attempt?

People used to blame Toyota for Japan actions, but that kind of sentiment lasts for 5 minutes, and anyways, those Toyotas were mostly made in China anyways.

Likewise, Google has almost zero consumer exposure in China, so all they can do is interrupt their ability to give Chinese companies money for goods and services, which seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

The Chinese government doesn't want the west to grow new supply chains and find new manufacturing centers just because of one trade war, it wouldn't be according to their goals.

> though I doubt they'll see much success convincing Western users to switch.

Are any of these stores near the quality levels that Western audiences expect? My experience with software from China was consistently bad. Even the AliExpress web site looks like a cobbled together, barely working mess that people only put up with because of the low prices of the goods you can buy there, which won't work for app stores.

I like AliExpress, but you're right, the site (the English site at least) looks like it was cobbled together in 1998.

I doubt that China will throw Google out.

It's a bit of a reminder that Google is under US jurisdiction and there's a point to be made that, no matter what they promise you, if the US wants their data, they get their data.

More competition can only be good, if this leads to the Chinese creating a third major platform, I welcome it. If they open source it, they may even have success outside of China.

If you’re Chinese, having another domestic platform is a good and important thing towards self determination. Not so great if you’re American, as they’re playing for winner-takes-all.

"is a good and important thing towards self determination"

This is a lark?

The only thing the CPC is interested in is total and absolute control of the citizenry.

They'd love to have a platform for which they didn't have to monitor with gazillions of staff, and have police on corners to ensure 'government monitoring' is properly installed.

Imagine if the CPC could ensure total thought control without all the overhead?

That is exactly the objective.

There's nothing stopping 1 billion people from developing a mobile platform - or any kind of platform for that matter in 2019.

They can do it now. Or yesterday.

And the 'whole world' could be using it.

Consider for a moment why it's not happening?

Why isn't the entire world using software or hosted solutions for all of our SaaS needs in India and China?

Given that the existential nature of the Chinese economy is intertwined with the CPC, I don't think any good will come of this.

A lot of the comments and thinking abound 'trade with China' are centered around a view that it's a normal economy, but it isn't, so the regular rules don't quite apply.

In the grand grand scheme of things, Huawei is a small thing, we're seeing a realignment of forces given the new reality of China's competitive powers, irrespective of anything else.

It's hard to say where the new equilibrium will land.

> Why isn't the entire world using software or hosted solutions for all of our SaaS needs in India and China?

Because the tech has been developed in the US, and the US has lead in it ever since.

> Given that the existential nature of the Chinese economy is intertwined with the CPC, I don't think any good will come of this.

I mean, the article being discussed here shows that US corporations are tools of US foreign policy. Yes, it's a different style of control, but it's control nonetheless.

And before the notorious flaggers run wild: I don't like the Chinese model. I don't particularly like the US model either though. I'm not judging those that profit from it for also liking it. I'm sure I would, too.

As a non-American I'd much rather the USA has my data than China has it.

Maybe. I'd prefer that neither of them have my data.

I do believe that competition limits the exploits. If there's an alternative, you have to fear losing your customers (and their money), so you limit what you do to them. If there isn't any, why would you? Right now, the competition is basically only Apple vs Google. Both USA, both from California. A bit more diversity would be nice.

I agree with that. I'm proud to have worked on FirefoxOS as part of an effort to create such competition! (Which is still going on with KaiOS.)

Yeah, too bad FirefoxOS never made it too far. Unfortunately, it would still be only "kind of" competition: still US-based, still in California, still financed & owned by the same (group of) people.

I'd love some real competition. Chinese, Russian, European alternatives. I would have a hard time trusting Chinese or Russian systems, maybe rightfully, maybe because decades of Propaganda have taken their toll. I'd still like to see them.

Not sure why.

As non-American (and non-Chinese I assume), the Chinese do not care about you, but the Americans very much do.

Nobody is good enough to own your data.

I'd prefer neither had it.

Neither can be trusted to retain a glass of water, let alone personally identifying information that can spur advertising campaigns and sway elections in countries around the world.

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