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Comment by incosta | Hacker News Reader

Google says so. Microsoft was also making a lot of money with its Windows OS back in 1990s, when it packaged a free IE in order to kill Netscape (which was not free). Microsoft was making money on the whole OS and packaged IE with all new distributions. Netscape as commercial company was killed, eventually. A lot of developers were sympathetic with Netscape back then: they pioneered graphical browsers, and were truly innovative.

Google today with Android is a lot like Microsoft back then. Yet for some reason, today offering free (deeply discounted, more precisely) stuff to kill competition is considered perfectly OK. I find this quite interesting.

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Not really. With IE vs. Netscape, Microsoft tied IE into an existing monopoly (its Windows 95 OS). There is no smartphone monopoly or mobile advertising monopoly. Even if you consider Google's search and/or ad positions a monopoly, Google isn't giving Android away for free in association with its monopoly, it's giving Android away for free independent of its monopoly (as evidenced by Android phones that don't use Google services by default, instead using Baidu, Yahoo, etc.). IE was tied into the Windows 95 OS, so customers had little choice in using it. This doesn't even consider the various agreements Microsoft made with OEMs.

Also, behavior that is illegal or unethical for a company with a significant monopoly (e.g. Microsoft in the 1990s) may be legal or ethical for a non-monopoly company (e.g. Google's smartphone business in the 2010s).

Edit: I will add that Netscape's business model was probably unsustainable regardless of IE being free. Web browsers are better off being free.

So Google gives away Android for free because of a great heart, right?

Google essentially gives Android for free. Just yesterday I saw Nexus S "free" (with 2-year contract) on main Google page!

You can argue that any kind of software is better off free. More people will use it sooner if it's free. But I don't think this model fits everyone. What if you don't want to get outside investors right away and don't have deep pockets?

I did not know about Android phones not tied to Google search. I understand that you can switch your default search engine to something other than Google, but most people use the defaults. Windows users could have also deleted IE and installed Netscape. But with free IE pre-installed and working, most did not bother. Netscape got killed.

Google essentially gives Android for free. Just yesterday I saw Nexus S "free" (with 2-year contract) on main Google page!

You can get similar contracts with the iPhone. That has absolutely nothing to do with Google, and everything to do with carrier subsidies for phones.

I understand that you can switch your default search engine to something other than Google, but most people use the defaults.

The default search engine for Windows phones is Bing. The solution, if there is a problem, isn't to make Google charge manufacturers for Android. It's to make all phones ask which search engine should be used when you first power up the phone, just as the EU did with web browsers. I still don't see how that relates to the patent issues at hand.

Windows users could have also deleted IE and installed Netscape. But with free IE pre-installed and working, most did not bother. Netscape got killed.

This isn't very relevant, but with the level of integration between Windows and IE, it was not possible for the average user to delete IE.

Of course it has nothing to do with Google. And the fact the "get free Nexus S today" ended up on Googe's main page was just complete coincidence! Google did not even know about it:)

Here's the main question: we both agree that G gives away Android to phone manufactures for very little. Below the actual cost. You even pointed out it's not always tied to Google search and services. So why, why Google does this? Out of their great heart? Think about it - and perhaps you will see their motives are not that idealistic.

I look at Android as I do any other open source project. I believe in the right to give something away for free, for whatever motive. Telling Google they can't give Android away for free is like telling me I can't give away whatever I've uploaded to GitHub for free. It's just a different, but accepted, way of releasing software. RedHat makes money by selling support and proprietary utilities for use with its Linux distribution. Google makes money on Android in much the same way.

Many of these same arguments came up when Microsoft was complaining about Linux being Free. My reasoning is the same now as it was then.

Google is making money by providing support and utilities for Android? This is something new to me. They never told anyone except you?

As I understand it there are some closed source Google apps that cell carriers or manufacturers can license. They also make money from mobile advertising. It's similar to RedHat in the sense that they make their money on services related to the product they give away for free.

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