#1 is right up the alley that busted Microsoft, though.
To be clear, I have not read the original agreements to confirm this is the case, it's just my interpretation of #2.
I think that would have been acceptable - my reading of #2 is that if you sold phones with a fork of Android, even if that phone did not have Google branding, Google would not allow you to sell *any* phones with Google branding. That does seem very similar to the Microsoft example.
Requiring that someone cannot use Google branding on any device they manufacture or sell, if they also manufacture or sell devices without Google branding that use ancient versions of Android, is entirely illegal in the EU.
Then the rule was overly broad, since it also prevented them from selling Android phones without Google branding. I think Amazon was involved in that lawsuit after it had issues finding a manufacturer that wasn't bound by that rule.
That could include deprecated versions and any forks.
Judging only by gp's message, it also targets any would-be competitor's fork of Android.
(I see the full 11 hour deposition is also on YouTube, but I think I'll save that for another day.)
So far, being 10 minutes in, I see a little bit of what you mean, but I haven't gotten to anything "unhinged" yet. He just seems like a bit of a smug nerd who's clearly enjoying going toe-to-toe with one of the country's top lawyers.
Do you remember anything that jumped out for you from the deposition? I'd love to see more of what you're getting at.
From what I understand, AOSP is not dead, but it's definitely far behind the latest versions of Android. The default apps are not updated, the UI toolkit is behind, most of the new services used by everything in Android are the proprietary bits.
It's basically Darwin at this point, yeah, open source, but in no way shape or form if you build Darwin, do you get Mac OS.
But despite that, let's not gloss over about what MS did. If they had been successful there wouldn't have been one web, there would have been two: One for MS (ActiveX and proprietary MS extensions) and one for MacOS/Linux/Netscape/Mozilla/Opera etc. This would have been part of their "Embrace/Extend/Extinguish" strategy they were known for at the time.
i woudl have agreed with you in the past but when I was curous and went back through all the cases I was surprised to see that I think (from a technical perspective) MSFT was completely right to do what they want, and the main issue was that they simply didn't understand how to win a case in court.
Microsoft insisted that the OS needed the internet explorer executable, not only the rendering engine components. You couldn't even run windows update without it opening IE - in order to load a native ActiveX component that then performed the work. They where desperate to make everything depend on IE without a plan of how to make good use of it, which shouldn't be surprising, back then any complex use of IE would have blue screened the entire system.
> vindicating Microsoft's technical decision.
Imagine a ChromeOS based on IE5 and tell me why I shouldn't break down in hysterical laughter just thinking about it.
I said it vindicating their decision- not that IE was a good foundation to build a presentation layer on.
> then insisting the OS
Arguing that a change that had no technical merit made IE necessary, when you are under scrunity for abusing your market position to push IE, seems kinda counterproductive.
> I said it vindicating their decision- not that IE was a good foundation to build a presentation layer on.
Then how does chrome OS vindicate them? You obviously agree that IE was not fit for that purpose.
Even, rumors says that a future doz update may brick _your_ hardware...