incosta

You are being naive, by thinking that if Google says it's "open source" it has no leverage with it. "Open source" is a very misleading label Google also uses here. Google owns Android, they make Android - how can anyone break this by modifying it?

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.

I know exact definition of dumping involves international trade and all that. I used this word not literally, but because it's the closest term to what's happening.

Good example on newspapers: what is happening to them (they are dying) is one consequence of the web-ads model propagated by Google. Are you better off now with them dying and thousands of people being laid off, while Google's pockets get fatter and fatter?

Free newspapers don't offer quite the same content as subscriptions. However if they started reprinting materials from subscription-based ones and offering the same material for free, along with their ads, they should probably be restricted from this - for copyright violation. This example is much closer to what's happening with Google. And this is also the reason why some newspapers and authors don't want to be on Google.

We can argue about what is fair forever. Some people at Sun (Oracle) can say it's unfair to take Java language they developed and offer it in Android without paying anything to them. And Steve Jobs can say it's unfair to use ideas from iPhone Apple spent years working on in Android without even asking them.

The original post was about MS & Apple being anti-competitive by using patents. To me, using a dominant position in search/ads market to crush competition everywhere else is no better. This is exactly what Google is doing.

You should ask yourself a question: will you be better off when Google one day dominates web, search, mobile, browser, possibly even desktop OS markets and desktop software and there will be no Apple or Microsoft and everyone will be forced to play the same game as Google? Will it be better off for everyone to make revenue on ads and pay Google a 50% share? I don't think it's going to be very good. This is why I would like both Apple and even MS also be players in the mobile if they offer good products. Competition, not domination by a single company is what actually drives innovation. Whose ideas will Google steal next when Apple is out of mobile business?

With Dell you have a choice of buying a PC with Ubuntu, or Windows, or whatever. Other manufacturers can also do this. Will you be able to use Android phones without Android? No. I don't think your example fits well here.

Android OS is the most essential part to make Android phones operate. It does cost Google a lot of money to make, yet it gives phone manufacturers licenses for cheap, just to make phones cheap enough so that users chose them over iPhones. Google wants it so bad they are willing to lose a lot of money now hoping it will pay off in future when everyone has Androids. Apple (and Microsoft) who cannot use this model (they don't dominate in ads or search markets) obviously don't like this. How would you feel if you were Apple? So they will try to use patents to make Android licenses more expensive. I hope I explained it well this time.

P.S. I don't know what is the right response to dumping. With physical goods it's easy to prove. With software much harder. This does not mean dumping prices on phone OS software to kill competition is nice. Apple and MS are just using what they can within legal means. Google did not play it nice with them - why they should be nice to Google?

Dumping just means you sell something below the actual cost to kill competition. I don't know what Google plans are, as I said their source of revenue is ads. They want to become the largest player in the mobile market - because they will be in control of mobile ads then - just like they are in search, controlling 80+ percent of it. Do you want to see this happen? I don't particularly like this prospect.

Phones are not free, but Google offers Android licenses to phone makers for cheap. This leads to lower prices for phones. Yes, it's dumping because many of these phones are sold below what they actually cost to make if you take software development costs into account. This is classic definition of dumping.

I have to admit I don't know much about Apple vs Samsung lawsuit. But some Samsung Android phones sure look just like copies of iPhone to me. I am not surprised Apple has been irritated by this.

So Apple and MS are anticompetitive?

Isn't Google being anticompetitive by effectively dumping the Android phones to the world markets (and then boasting how many copies are activated each day?) Google has played this game of offering "free" services and this worked for them well in terms of crushing smaller companies who just did not have resources to fire back. But this is not the case with big guys like Apple and Microsoft. Google was very naive thinking it will flood the market with cheap Android phones and Apple will just sit and watch. Google can expect to make money off ads, but Apple cannot. So they use patents to make it more difficult for Google to do what they want. Very simple.

In other industries there are anti-dumping laws and regulations, because dumping is considered an illegal way to kill competition. Google has been doing this for years, because their primary source of revenue is ads. To be honest, I don't have much sympathy to Google, not in this case.

People in your team may not ask this question, but people who are in charge of them do. All the time.

Let me ask you a specific question. Google navigation. It's web-based only, right? It requires Internet. It does not work in a rural area where your phone has no Internet. Why not make this application a standalone, to enhance user experience? To make user "happier"? So that it works even without Internet? Don't tell me it's not possible: many companies have done this, well before Google, so Google can do this too. The answer: Google intends to serve ads, and for this Internet is the key. You don't have an Internet connected phone? Google does not care about you: you will not see ads.

I actually had a similar situation more recently (but with mobile apps, not games). Also asked a user to enter program-generated key when making a purchase. I don't think it's a huge problem if you explain where this key is shown inside the app. Speaking of distraction-free "buy now" webpage a reasonable solution I came up with the following solution: just ask for user e-mail (it's already provided by systems like PayPal anyway). Generate a random "user id" (better make it numeric) and send it to the user's e-mail along with activation instructions. Then user must go to another webpage on your site and enter 3 pieces of information: e-mail, id and the program key (the last one must be shown by the application). This page, if all goes well (the info is checked against the database records), generates an activation key to be entered to activate the program, which is also e-mailed (not just displayed on the webpage). This way you can control the piracy issue (because everything goes via e-mail, and also know/conrtol # of activations per user, since last step can be performed multiple times).

These predictions come since as long ago as 30 or 40 years ago (check 'The End of Oil' on Amazon: in 2004 when this book was printed, the 'end of oil' was predicted (once again) to happen... in just few years! Did it?) The thing is every time such prediction is made, new and new oil fields are discovered, technology of oil extraction improved and these folks have to revise their forecast again. Don't be scared:) It's all printed by folks who want to speculate on oil prices.

Since you're (presumably) driving off the highway into an unknown town, my guess is that the first station or two will have more expensive gas, because these stations know there are people coming the same way from the highway who need gas asap (and don't mind paying a premium price). This is confirmed by the example in your post.

Not everyone is bursting with ideas all the time. Make enough contacts and meet people. Some travel may help, just like you said, it takes some effort.

Don't get me wrong but a relationship can help to get rid of the 'nothing excites me' mood.