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Comment by dmethvin | Hacker News Reader

> Google is stuck behind a rock and a hard place. If they don't try to create incentives for a unified experience, they get bashed for encouraging fragmentation, if they do assert a level of control, they get bashed for not being completely open.

This is exactly the position Microsoft was in during the mid-1990s, even before they went after Netscape. The article is saying that Google is even applying some of the same strong-arm tactics to keep OEMs in line. Fortunately, Google can point to Apple and say they're not a monopoly the way Microsoft was in its market. Plus, Android still looks really open compared to iOS.

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Android is open enough to replace all Google apps with your own (Samsung) and open your own appstore (Amazon). Also companies are completely free to not pick Android (Tizen / Firefox OS / ?) and they are free not to license the Google apps and put their own or (other) open source ones. It would be hard to make Google out to be a monopolist via that route.

MS was different; there weren't much alternatives and the alternatives which were there were squashed by MS. People currently want the apps in the appstore; they want to play clash of clans; they don't care about the Google gmail app. This being the same bubble world as the chromebook thread on HN yesterday; tech people think non tech people actually notice what they are running; they generally don't. If they can play the games their friends are playing and if they can use 'the software' they are used to they are happy. What brand it is is not important.

As an example; when I sit with any of my family members (they are all non tech), they will say 'I will open up Word now' or ' I will open up Excel now' to me when we need to organize something or go over numbers of one of the companies. What pops up definitely never is Word or Excel but rather Libre Office or Google Docs or some free Android/iPad variety. No-one I know actually has or uses MS Office; they use the terms because they don't know 'spreadsheet' and 'word processor' is a mouthful. They don't miss Windows and would even mostly hate it if they had to work with it now (after tablets or chromebooks and even Macs, Windows for non-tech people Windows seems incredibly hard and tech to use).

All these alternatives and Android being deployed by many different companies in different forms would make it hard to call Google a monopolist on that grounds. Samsung could turn into one though.

Did you even read the article?

And if you want to stay on the technical side.. then what about contributors? I've helped port android to a couple devices. I had no idea google had a contract obligation with hardware makers that my work should have to be used in one way or another. I feel dirty.

edit: the Acer example goes exactly against what you mention. They tried to ship a fork, with some of the substitutions you mention. google released the layers.

I read the article; if you want out of their grip you can. You just need to provide alternatives for the Google apps and appstore. That is not trivial, but for a company like Samsung that wouldn't be that big of an issue either.

Acer tried to release it while still wanting to be in the 'Android family' (Open Handset Alliance); they didn't have their own substitutes and didn't want to make a clean break with Google (OHA). If they wanted that and would have provided an appstore, they could've.

> This being the same bubble world as the chromebook thread on HN yesterday; tech people think non tech people actually notice what they are running; they generally don't. If they can play the games their friends are playing and if they can use 'the software' they are used to they are happy. What brand it is is not important.

At the same time, those people are first to complain about a single button located somewhere different from what remember. Unless all they are doing is the bare minimum that any of interface elements doesn't matter, they would continue caring about what operating system they would be running on. I guess problems are people between complete novices and experts -- they know more than some basics (to recognize what they are running) but not quite up there to mitigate the difference themselves. (And somewhat, this could be said true so far as there haven't been so much of UI functional changes happened up to 7 from the Windows 95 era. People around me haven't really exposed to themselves to Windows 8.x would do to them when they finally hit them...)

So how long have you been working for Google?

I read the article and kept hearing echos of the Microsoft strategy of the 90s as well.

History may not repeat, but it rhymes.

I think that you hear whatever you want to hear, but the truth is very different: Google's apps and APIs are just cloud endpoints and weaving them into AOSP doesn't make sense and just delays updates, as the same author previously scribbled: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-sl...

As for "strong-arm tactics", what is referred to is explained in this post: http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits-imp...

As Andy Rubin puts it, Google will not encourage non compatible forks, it is in their interest to have Android developed apps run on all Android devices. Anyone can still have a go but Google won't encourage it.

It's a very flawed and overwritten attack piece, seemingly coming out of nowhere.

I think the strongest argument the article makes is the claim about the new Location APIs. Location algorithms are not dependent on Google services and have always been part of the core APIs, but now Google is moving new location algorithms into their closed source app. It's an obvious power grab, they want AOSP to be less and less useful on its own.

Is it really that obvious? What power are they grabbing? By this reasoning, Google may not augment any 'traditional' AOSP service with improved functionality. That's obviously ridiculous, so what solution would you envisage?

The article was pointing out how Google is moving more and more functionality from open source to closed source. So, one way to counter that would be to augment the "traditional AOSP service with improved functionality", but license the code as open source. The service endpoints can certainly be closed, but the code to access those endpoints could be open. And the license to use those endpoints could be open source friendly.

Now, that may not be a good business decision, but it certainly counters the argument of the post.

An aside: I appreciate what google is doing to fight Android fragmentation, but also see some of the tactics as anti-competitive.

Actually location APIs do use core Google backend services (the wifi geolocation database). Even Keyboard does (spelling). In a way they are doing the opposite, building their services into everything, which is a natural googly thing to do to add features/improve them. At that point they close source them as they dont want other people using the services without signing up.

The way to compete is either to make standalone apps that dont require services (ie like the old unmaintained ones) or to build your own services, either open or closed.

I think the location APIs may also use system-level facilities that aren't open to normal applications, such as the ability to detect nearby access points even when WiFi is off and the device is in standby. So it's not clear that apps can implement it themselves without relying on Google. Also, the APIs for newer stuff like geofencing are Google-proprietary and don't support alternative providers, so mobile phone makers that don't want to rely on Google's services can't substitute a different backend without breaking existing apps.

It does not use system-level facilities that aren't open to normal applications. People love to hate on Google; if they ever embed features into the OS only they are allowed to use you will hear about it very quickly.

There is a class called WifiManager[1] which lets you ask the user to allow background scans. It also lets you see the results of the last scan.

It is unfortunate that the Geofencing APIs are not part of the android platform, but I suppose it's possible they use Google services.

1: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/Wifi...

If they rolled the improvements out as part of the platform, it would inherit the slow rollout weakness as any other platform API (it would take months/years to become viable and unavailable on existing versions). If they went the static library route, it would balloon the size of of the apps and they wouldn't be able to do the same sort power/efficiency call coalescing as they would by having an always updated client on the device.

I'm interested in how you think it works well for Google if they do nothing and allow Alibaba's Aliyun OS to market themselves as android. When issues do arise and incompatibilities in apps occur.. is this not the fragmentation that Google already is looked down upon ?

Saying 'iOS is more closed' doesn't make Android meaningfully open.

What about the fact that competitors are using the OS without so much as asking Google?

The fact that I can download and build Android is what makes it meaningfully open.

You can't download and build what consumers think of as Android.

Can you sent me a link to the current HEAD?

Right. Being able to fork the OS and release devices like the Kindle Fire do make Android meangingfully open.

Saying 'iOS is more closed' is just obvious.

I don't think Apple will be a good defense if Android's market share is 80%.

That depends on how the market share of revenue looks as well, and to my knowledge the percentage of revenue Apple receives is not dropping nearly as fast (and Google's not the main competitor there, Samsung is, even if it's using Google software).

80% does not a monopoly make. Microsoft was in an entirely different position at the time.

Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly. From what I could find, 50% is typically the bare minimum to warrant consideration, and 70 - 75% will get more serious scrutiny. Also, it differs from country to country. In the UK, Tesco was investigated even though it had a market share of only 30%.

I also recall reading one of the EU's regulators (was it Joaquin Almunia?) say that (paraphrasing) "we start sniffing around when any one party gets a market share north of 60%." Unfortunately, I cannot find that article.

>Percentage of market share is not a clear indication of monopoly

True, and the reason is that a 30% UK-wide or a 50% Europe-wide market share can easily turn out to be a 100% market share in many local markets. Tesco defended itself by saying that 98% of consumers have access to five different super market chains within a drive time radius of 30 minutes. Make that a more realistic 10 minutes and the picture changes dramatically.

How can anything other that 99% market share even be considered a monopoly? If it's 80% or 90% then there is obviously choice and thus no monopoly.

Anti trust is such bunk...

Here's an example:

Let's imagine a hypothetical world where Company A owns 80% of the smartphone market and the rest is divided between the also-rans.

Now imagine that app developers can't profitably make a 1st rate app without getting the income from company A's app store (But can port the app to other OSes for extra income). If company A starts to use this situation to make it harder to port apps to other companies OSes via strongarm tactics, then company A is abusing its monopoly position of being the only profitable way to make an app.

Today's world is nothing like that, but it's an example of how near-total marketshare is not necessary for anti-trust to come into play. There is a certain point at which you have a large enough market share, that certain other players in the market must deal with you to get the volume needed to compete, particularly in high-volume, high-upfront cost industries (which many types of software qualify as).

Monopoly is not antitrust. Abusing control of a market is. A monopoly (which is usually considered to be dominance if a market place) is not itself unlawful.

Anti trust is the legislation policing monopolies, at least in the US, and it is such legislation which I consider bunk.

Antitrust laws exist to enable greater competition by stopping businesses behaving in an anticompetative manner. They don't necessarily exist for "policing monoploies" anywhere in the world.

>"and it is such legislation which I consider bunk"

Why? Don't you think that Microsoft should have been reprimanded over their abuse of the OS market to gain control of the browser market?

Or is it because it's being held over $favorite_faceless_corp like the proverbial sword of Damocles?

To be fair, Microsoft also created a browser that, for its time, is pretty widely accepted (even around here!) as being much better than the Netscape counterpart. So while they did throw their weight around, it's not clear that their browser dominance was purely because of their OS monopoly. There were many other ways that Microsoft was leveraging its monopoly which deserved antitrust scrutiny, but I think bundling a browser was the wrong thing to be prosecuted for.

I agree totally that IE 4 was a browser ahead of it's time, however Microsoft were shown to have needlesly integrated it into their OS and then told OEMs that their Windows licenses would be revoked if they sold PC with Navigator pre-installed. I'd say they were lucky not to be broken up!

The problem there was that Microsoft had already signed a consent decree with Janet Reno's DoJ which specifically allowed them to expand the OS but forbade them from tying.

However, Microsoft also rewrote IE into componentized form, so that components (eg the rendering engine) could be used by other applications, including third-party programs. This was considered a Good Thing at the time (it won the deal with AOL, for example) and made integration (as opposed to tying) a reasonable claim. This is, of course, independent of the way Microsoft handled the argument in court, which was very, very badly.

In sum, whatever Microsoft did was not independent of the actions of the US government, whose interference had extremely bad results for consumers. This includes the crapware explosion that resulted from the DoJ's removal of Microsoft's power over OEMs.

>Don't you think that Microsoft should have been reprimanded over their abuse of the OS market to gain control of the browser market?

Absolutely not!

Why?

It's their OS, they can do as they please.

As history showed, there wasn't even an MS monopoly in existence. OSX became viable in the early oughts, Linux was always around, and now people write of the death of the PC.

Regardless, abuse of market dominance (note I don't use the overused 'M' word) increases incentives for competitors to enter the marketplace.

It's got nothing to do with monopoly!!! Apple or Linux have nothing to do with it; the ruling being for behaviour in the period that preceded 2000. Microsoft were in a dominant position in one market and leveraged this dominace to gain dominance in another. This is anti-competative. for the final time; a monopoly is not illeagal in and of itself, neither is it antitrust.

Looks like someone didn't read my post :)

Looks like someone isn't reading anything!

There's actually no evidence that your claim about leverage is true. Microsoft simply built a better browser and marketed it better than Netscape.

It's also a fact that the DoJ lost the browser case: it was overturned 2-1 on appeal.

This sounds like an antitrust issue:

"This makes life extremely difficult for the only company brazen enough to sell an Android fork in the west: Amazon. Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list. Currently, Amazon contracts Kindle manufacturing out to Quanta Computer, a company primarily known for making laptops. Amazon probably doesn't have many other choices"

Yeah, that's a serious problem for me, essentially using their leverage with the Google platform to keep competitors out of the market. Not cool Google.

I once saw an economics paper finding that if the top four players in a given market have more than 60% marketshare between them, they'll naturally act as a cartel. Ergo preserving an effective free market for consumers requires preventing that circumstance.

Assuming the consequent...

Hasn't that always been the relationship between Microsoft and Apple in the desktop world?

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