>In particular, Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
Sounds a lot how Microsoft abused licensing agreements with OEMs to discourage them from selling PCs not bundled with Windows.
Also Internet Explorer. This case seems almost a mirror of MS except in the phone space instead of PC. Only difference is that when the issue came up in Congress, MS was confrontational with regulators and Google cut some fat checks.
The other main difference it that the EU is punishing Google, while turning a blind eye to Microsoft's behavior. They were only fined for bundling IE and WMP with their OS. Locking customers out of competing operating systems is much more harmful in my opinion. The only EU mention of Windows bundling I can find is an Italian court ordering that customers should be able to get a refund for the Windows tax.
I'd say that, in this day and age, preventing vendors from using Android forks counts as a form of locking customers out of competing operating systems. Even more so now that Android forks represent the only serious alternative available to any phone manufacturer who isn't based in Cupertino.
Also, two wrongs don't make a right. Microsoft getting off way too easy does not mean that Google should get off easy, too.
Android already has a problem with fragmentation, which becomes a problem for customers when their phone becomes vulnerable due to a lack of security patches.
There are lots of cheap Chinese Android phones simply filled with malware from the factory.
If Google allowed phone makers to ship Android forks, this whole problem would become a lot worse. I think this Google policy is actually pro-consumer, and the EU is wrong on this point.
You’re talking of the eternal tension between security and freedom.
No, I don’t think that reducing choice and locking them in Google’s ecosystem is pro-consumer, even if done for the right reasons.
Let’s remember that Android was welcomed by many of us as a free (as in freedom) alternative to iOS.
If you want a locked-down, secure and polished OS, then Apple’s iOS is far better at this game. The only reason why Android is dominating the market right now is because it gave freedom to users and freedom to phone makers. And Google dialing that freedom down after becoming so popular is anti-competitive.
It’s essentially a bait and switch, which is why I believe Google deserves that fine.
> The only reason why Android is dominating the market right now is because it gave freedom to users and freedom to phone makers
I would say that the biggest reason it's dominating is because it's cheap. For most people I've talked to, they don't like Android, but prefer to pay 20% of the cost of an iPhone.
> It’s essentially a bait and switch, which is why I believe Google deserves that fine.
Seems like you're projecting your own expectations onto what Google has really been selling all along. Google doesn't advertise Android as "free as in freedom." OEMs comply with their conditions. It's how it works.
No, that was Android’s marketing from day 1 and as far as OEMs go, Google’s conditions have evolved, along with what they are shoving down on their users’ throats.
And as far as “free as in freedom” goes, the US law agrees with me via “estoppel”.
Those Chinese phone manufacturers often use Google Services without a license. So what Google does doesn't change anything for them. Also, Google's agreements do not prevent vendors from installing malware as long it is not competing with Google apps.
That's pretty much the entire argument behind security, in computers or otherwise. Security features reduce yout ability to do what you want on your device.
(And it's not just an abstract "what if I want to shoot my own foot off" issue. Consider e.g. sandboxing, which by its very nature kills interoperability. In a non-sandboxed environment, you can write code that forces two applications to interoperate, whether their authors like it or not. In a sandboxed environment, you're limited to what vendors allow you.)
For both Apple and Google's phones it wouldn't be hard to allow users to securely add keys of other stores or indivual software makers without requiring one to root his phone (aka destroy the security).
You'd just have to give several huge, clear warnings of what that means before allowing it.
And, by the way, security? Come on, if they really cared about the security/privacy of their users the permissions' systems would not be made of those huge blankets that are more like websites' cookie banners than real useable security controls.
The EU also required Microsoft to create the N editions, that came without the media player installed by default. I recall reading that very few copies were sold but I can't find a citation right now.
microsoft not forbids manufacturers to install OS other than windows, that's why you can buy computers with linux. There are always options, there is nothing to blame microsoft for this. If you don't want to buy Windows, you can choose a model without windows. If you cannot find a satisfied model without windows, go to blame your PC manufacturer
Microsoft used to threaten PC manufacturers that bundled any other OS other than Windows or no OS at all. They claimed that not bundling an OS was the express purpose of installing a pirated copy of Windows.
People tend to assume laws are right, fair, just, and moral. They're not. People also assume right equals fair equals just equals moral. Again, they're not.
There may or may not be overlap on many of these but there's never a 1:1 relationship between any of them.
Also Chrome. Chrome was the biggest shocker to many @ Goog. Even as a Noogler, people often sit down in cafeteria and talked about how Chrome got traction and so popular only because it got a main spot on Google's homepage; something noone, no company or individual advertiser can ever bid for. If that's not Google's "Microsoft Internet Explorer anti-trust" moment, then nothing is.
You're missing the massive point that it was also happened to be far superior to Firefox and IE when it came out... And it held the #1 spot (by far) for nearly a decade while Firefox fumbled around and IE remained IE.
It's crazy to say a product only succeeded because Google pushed it hard. Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) has a LONG list of failed products they pushed hard (Wave, Google Plus, etc).
Did it play a role? Sure. But prominent advertising is not the same as forcing hardware manufacturers to pre-install software. Nor does it suddenly make customers want a shitty product they wouldn't otherwise use.
Chrome basically got a fresh start and built on top of existing WebKit codebase with new ideas. They did well with the “second mover advantage”
Firefox and IE were riddled with code debt issues so they couldn’t move fast.
Chrome was a great example of software written by a company with resources to dominate a huge market segment relatively quickly. I’m guessing Chrome earned Sundar Picchai a lot of good karma within Google to later become CEO.
Excellent points. Chrome has the best development tools. I used the dev tools so much that I just launch Chrome out of habit when I want to browse the web.
While at the same time they've been stripping out vital features or outright disabling them on mobile. It's almost like gasp they don't care about the users but only their bottom line.
My point was Google didn't pay anything to gain the market share because they advertise Chrome on their frontpage, something neither Firefox, nor IE, nor Opera nor Safari, nor anyone else in that matter could do.
From an antitrust law point of view, using your monopoly status in one area as a weapon against the competition in other areas is something that likely gets you in trouble.
Although, it helps to remember that in the EU, you don't need nearly as big a market share before their competition law kicks in and places restrictions on your behavior, so things that you can still get away with in the US can be quite illegal in the EU.
The GP didn't make the claim that the "product only succeeded because Google pushed it hard". All they said was that Google used their search monopoly to give it a big advantage.
Chrome's quality was a necessary, but probably not sufficient condition for it to gain the market traction that it did.
Exactly, without Search pushing so hard the adoption rate would have been much slower and would have given Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft time to respond.
Firefox has rapidly improved since it's inception and was rapidly stealing IE market share prior to Chrome.
Had Chrome not been rammed down people's throats then we might have a more even landscape than we do today.
Search. And Gmail. And YouTube. And every other google-controlled site on the internet.
Plus email-SPAM(!!!) about installing Chrome when you signed in to your Google-account on a new computer using a non-Chrome browser.
It also used dubious wording: “You need to upgrade your browser. Click here”
And paying to have it bundled as a drive-by installation with other software.
And Chrome-only websites. And the list just goes on and on.
It was spyware tactics + SPAM all over the place. And the sheer amount of it was mind-blowing.
Even technical people who explicitly didn’t want Chrome had a hard time avoiding it. Imagine the effect on regular, non-technical users.
Saying it was all down to technical merit is just appoligist and delusional.
With Chrome’s dominance and semi-monoculture undeniably in place, Google is now using that position to force new things, like subverting open web-standards with DRM.
I can’t believe people are so non-chalantly allowing this to happen.
Its been a slow boil, and they employ experts to manipulate public opinion (HN fawns all over them still ... articles continually like "Ex-Googlers Do XYZ!". They won't get away with it long term.
Actually, the biggest thing in Chrome's favor was being an installer pack-in. People still get sometimes Chrome installed on them if they go download Adobe Reader without unchecking the box. (McAfee Security Scan Plus is Adobe's other paid pack-in, you might see that instead, depending on your location.) People seem to vastly forget that a large part of Chrome's dominance of the ordinary user is the fact that installing half a dozen plugins or tools on Windows has or still installs Chrome and sets it as your default browser.
When doing PC support for layusers, I've found that: Most people don't know what Chrome is, and don't know the difference between it, Edge, IE, and the malicious Chromium fork they have installed on their PCs. (Side note: May the soulless individuals behind the "WebDiscover Browser" suffer a life of misery and despair as punishment for their crimes.) They end up with Chrome (or a malicious fork thereof) due to a bundle installer.
What Chrome also did far better than everyone else was a user local install, ie an install that didn’t require admin on the PC. Shadow IT installs was a huge advantage over Firefox in Chrome’s first years.
I still have to fight this occasionally. :| In one instance, I ended up just telling the antivirus software at a company to flag Chrome as a virus and block it from executing. Software installation requiring admin rights is by design, and circumventing it is unethical as heck.
If you rely on the lack of admin rights to prevent unauthorised software from being run you’re doing it wrong. You should be using whitelisting (e.g. AppLocker in Windows) which also prevents “portable” applications (without an installer) from being used.
The eternal conflict between lowly workers trying to get their job done and the IT department trying to prevent them from doing their jobs to make their own life easier, based on the notion that if users can't use the infrastructure, they can't break it.
Obviously, Chrome is not needed to do their jobs. If it was, it'd be provided. Browsers, especially Chrome, are a massive malware ingress point, it makes zero sense for end users to install them.
IT actually exists to help ensure people can do their job, and do their job faster. As a general goal, I like to learn about people's business processes for the exact purpose of seeing how our IT environment can be improved to expedite their work.
And having five browsers on a PC doesn't make it easier for end users. I have no problem dealing with five browsers, but I get a lot of complaints from people when they open link A in browser B and link C in browser D and don't understand why things don't work.
You may have experienced poor IT departments in the past, or thought you experienced poor IT departments because you didn't understand the other considerations in play, but that's hardly an excuse to assume any given IT choice is some sort of attempt to prevent employees from doing their jobs.
That's a faulty assumption right there. Usually, people providing workers with their computers and software have limited idea what those workers actually need to work efficiently. This works out fine when workflows are defined so well a trained monkey could do the job, and fails miserably when the worker needs any sort of creative control over their workflow or work output (programmers, designers, all sorts of engineers and technicians, etc.). Most corporate work is probably closer to monkey level than to creative level, but enterprises love to do company-wide policy changes, making all work conform to lowest common denominator.
> You may have experienced poor IT departments in the past, or thought you experienced poor IT departments because you didn't understand the other considerations in play, but that's hardly an excuse to assume any given IT choice is some sort of attempt to prevent employees from doing their jobs.
I've experienced one competent IT department in my life, and their best quality was helping shield our programming team from policies like application whitelisting or limiting admin access, that they were forced to deploy company-wide. For other IT departments I dealt with, most of their actions were explainable if viewed through the lens of caring about the infrastructure to the extreme - that is, "if no one uses it, no one will break it" approach.
> That's a faulty assumption right there. Usually,...
You accuse me of making a "faulty assumption" about my own environment, and then proceed to assume that you can speak for most/all IT environments.
When I state "if you need Chrome, we'll provide Chrome", that's true of my environment. It's also true of my environment, if we don't provide Chrome, and you find a way to install it yourself, you'd be violating policy, and barring the casual mistake of not knowing that, potentially referred to HR. Obviously, in the ideal "don't need to involve HR" case, we just make sure you can't install it.
Now, what isn't just true of my environment, but true of all environments, is that users installing random web browsers is incredibly dangerous, and something every IT department should be preventing if they own the hardware. I don't think that's even a controversial statement, I'm confused why it's being treated like one.
Installation requirements are mostly a hangover from the days when Windows PCs weren’t locked down and anyone could write to the system folders and admin rights were just assumed.
Software developers often didn’t bother testing or ensuring that their software would install (or even run properly) without admin rights.
Not necessarily. Byod is commom. And quite frankly even if it is my employers box im not gonna put up with restrictions against installing a web browser. Or deal with some paperwork request, I'll work around it and just do it.
Who would bring their own equipment to work in software unless they are a founder? That's like paying to work. Especially when employers like to claim ownership rights to all data generated by their employees in the course of business.
Mechanics bring their own tools frequently but their employers don't try to repo their personal vehicles just because the mechanic used the same tools at home and at work
I don't have work slack on my personal phone on principle. If the company wants to require me to be available on their systems they need to provide the hardware
Are you running your personal hardware (without the security) on the internal network? Please tell me you don't have the same level of access with personal hardware as you do with the corporate equipment.
Even in a BYOD environment, an organization should be ensuring any devices granted access to resources are appropriately patched and secured.
I can understand that. I just don't want to have a reason why my employer could call me in off hours, nor for them to claim ownership of stuff I've done.
I don't see how partnering with a few other software companies to distribute software via installers is a bad thing or a sign of monopolistic practices (aka limiting competition and harming customers by forcing them to use a product they wouldn't otherwise)...
It's a bit shady to make it 'automatically the default browser'. But that is a problem with the OS. An installer shouldn't be able to make that choice for the user.
They fixed this with Windows 10, actually. Which of course, upset people because it defaults people to Edge, and asks people to give Edge a try when they change it.
True, I remember seeing that now on my moms laptop. I remember it was quite aggressive in warning you not to switch away from Edge.
Microsoft can never let the marketing people stop having control and ruining their products. They are trying to make it more useable and user friendlier, but it's funny seeing the push back within the product.
I've recently said that Microsoft is the most self-defeating company in history. They often take all of the goodwill they've earned, and then torch it on minor battles that aren't really making them any money. If someone's gotten into the settings screen to change their default, they probably have tried Edge, or at least know what it is and have some reason for switching.
Windows 10 telemetry is a great example: They shot themselves in the foot PR-wise on an otherwise excellent operating system, chasing a pile of metadata that won't really be significantly more useful than what they get from people who voluntarily agree to be Windows Insiders. There isn't a good business case for preventing people from shutting off error reporting, and it's had a huge impact on mitigating all of their other efforts to repair their image.
I'd say the forced update from 8 to 10, with all the UI dark patterns, was even worse. An OS "collecting telemetry" on you was mostly an abstract problem for non-technical users. An OS trying to annoy and trick you into updating to that scary "telemetry version" - that's another thing, and I know plenty of people who were pissed off about that. Hell, my own mother sticks to 8 and still refuses to entertain the thought of using 10 precisely because of those attempts at forced upgrade.
It's a shame, really, because Windows 10 is a decent OS, and it fixed most of the issues with 8.
> You're missing the massive point that it was also happened to be far superior to Firefox and IE when it came out
I mean, you really could have said the same thing about IE 4 when it came out. It was actually better than Communicator at the time, which was a bloated, unfocused, mess of a browser.
I was a www user at the time and that’s how I remember it. IE4 was clearly better than netscape’s comparable offering at the time, and IE5 and IE6 entrenched that lead to the point where I had to switch to IE. Much faster and much better standards support (ironically IE6 had by far the best standards support at the time of its release.)
It had little things like multi-process, omnibox, and something like a 10x faster JS engine than the competition, but the real killer feature was the auto-updating.
It did come with advantages, no doubt, but - as so often - its market share is not necessarily because it tried to push the web further, a large share is simply because of Google's aggressive marketing.
To this day Google is pushing their browser if you dare to use their services with Edge.
Why is that a shocker? They own google.com and they want to upsell another product, and aren't forcing it upon users or vendors. This seems like normal/standard business practice. Bundling IE with Windows was not the problem, but forcing PC vendors to only sell with Windows installed, and aggressively forcing IE to be the default browser was.
On the other hand, building "web" apps that only run on chrome, that was a shocker for me.
There was a solid half a year where google hangouts does not work on current versions of Firefox. It claims that Firefox support is in development, but the actuality of it is that hangouts was deprecated for hangouts meet, which does support firefox
Inbox, hangouts video calls, google earth, off the top of my head, spent 6months+ being chrome-only. H/o video calls over a year (just a few months ago became firefox compatible).
That is an important point; you might be ten times more talented than Google engineers but you won't get your browser promoted on the on of the most popular internet pages or preinstalled with Android. Google is using its dominance in one area to disrupt competition in other areas. I think that this is something that should not be allowed.
Does it not sound hypocritical to sue a corporation for pre-installing software (Microsoft installing IE on Windows) and also suing another corporation for not allowing software to be pre-installed?
I also wonder how they come up with the multi-billion dollar values? How does that massive amount of money actually help repair whatever "economical damage" that was inflicted by not having some sort of app pre-installed on a device?
> Massive fines discourage monopolistic behavior, if nothing else.
The problem is businesses may take it as a signal that the EU is against foreign businesses rather than against monopolistic practices, in which case the thing being deterred is doing business in the EU rather than monopolistic practices. To show otherwise they would have to levy equally large fines against local businesses engaged in the same sort of practices, which they haven't and likely won't.
If they really wanted to signal discouragement of monopolistic behavior rather than a cash grab they would be ordering specific conduct rather than excessive fines. For example, if the issue is that they promoted Google Chrome in an unacceptable way, prohibit them from distributing Google Chrome in the EU for five years. And then do the same thing to Microsoft just to be even-handed, because they're still bundling their browser with Windows. And likewise with Apple and Safari.
Let everyone use Firefox for five years and see how much browser bundling happens after that.
It's a matter of proportionality. A punishment that is the economic equivalent of the destruction of a small city is proportional to something on the order of mass murder, not the prominence of certain information on a company's web page.
the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from search advertising services on Android devices in the EEA.
In other words, Google had an unfair advantage for search on android devices and leveraged that into revenue. The fine is a percentage of that ill-gotten revenue.
> the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from search advertising services on Android devices in the EEA.
"They have a lot of money and we would like to have that."
The actual "damages" have nothing to do with their total revenue, only the revenue incident to the behavior in question, which is an independent value and not a percentage of total revenue.
For example, if they improve their search engine which causes more people to use it, it doesn't change the actual amount of damage from separate actions -- it may even reduce it by transitioning some of the defaulted users into users who would make an affirmative choice in their favor -- but it would have increased the amount of the fine when calculated as a percentage of revenue because it would have increased their total revenue.
Well you're making some assumptions about damages and maybe have opinions what constitutes damages. I think the other side you have to consider is if revenue related to wrong doing is in the billions and your fine is in the thousands, it's toothless. Companies will gladly pay a pittance in fines over and over again against billions in revenue. That's not ideal from and enforcement standpoint. It doesn't get companies to follow the law and play by the rules. There's consequences for that too, voters have opinions about their governments letting companies run amok without any real consequences or deterrents.
> I think the other side you have to consider is if revenue related to wrong doing is in the billions and your fine is in the thousands, it's toothless.
If the revenue related to wrong doing is in the billions and the harm is in the thousands, attempting to prohibit the conduct instead of imposing a small tax and using the money to compensate the victims is obviously a large dead-weight economic loss.
You do understand that nobody, including politicians and FF users want to remove Chrome, Edge or Safari?
You do understand that doing that would probably cost those companies (and everyone else) a lot more?
We only want a level playing field. Giving companies a real fine is just a way to make sure the board and the shareholders actually gets the message ;-)
> You do understand that nobody, including politicians and FF users want to remove Chrome, Edge or Safari?
It's punishment. If somebody wants it then somebody has a perverse incentive.
> You do understand that doing that would probably cost those companies (and everyone else) a lot more?
Exactly. You actually punish them, in the way directly contrary the the goal they were trying to achieve with their bad behavior, without suspiciously enriching yourselves in a way that calls your true motives into question.
> We only want a level playing field. Giving companies a real fine is just a way to make sure the board and the shareholders actually gets the message ;-)
But what message are they getting?
It's not as if there is a clear roadmap for how to avoid this sort of thing. Antitrust laws are super vague and prohibit a wide variety of common business practices, to make it effective to use them against powerful nefarious entities with many lawyers. The theory is that the government will only use them against bad actors. But if the government considers you a bad actor just because you're a foreign company, what are you supposed to do then?
> just because you're a foreign company, what are you supposed to do then?
Most foreign companies aren't considered bad actors.
We are talking about 1) the old Microsoft here - definitely a bad actor - getting rid of it seems to have been refreshing even for Microsoft shareholders.
- 2) Google, a company we many of us loved at some point but who might now be in need of some refreshing at least in some areas.
> Most foreign companies aren't considered bad actors.
Google wasn't considered a bad actor until then they were.
> the old Microsoft here - definitely a bad actor - getting rid of it seems to have been refreshing even for Microsoft shareholders.
The old Microsoft deserved everything they got and then some. But even then, it would have been nice for the penalties to be more "actually effective in increasing competition in PC desktop operating systems" and less "suspiciously convenient transfer of large sums of money."
> How does that massive amount of money actually help repair whatever "economical damage" that was inflicted by not having some sort of app pre-installed on a device?
By creating an incentive for Google (and other corporations) not to do it again.
Manufacturers have been notorious for not security patching their forks. Manufacturers have been notorious for altering OS compat APIs to lie about device capabilities. While I wish Google would have used their leverage for a more nuanced set of requirements, I can understand the motivation here.
I have been wondering when the USA would start fining Google, Facebook and other mega corporations. It seems that will not happen.
I am really glad that EU did this, been waiting years for this to happen. Other fines will surly come. You can’t eat and kill your competition too long before someone starts to sett the records straight.
This is a dangerous ruling that pushes the world further into the potential for trade wars by proxy.
Contrary to numerous posts-
-no, the law isn't "clear". This is an incredibly nuanced situation, and the notion that Google was just overtly flouting (ed: thx sjcsjc) the law is outright nonsense. Google has a huge litany of bad practices (I personally recently switched my daily driver to an iPhone for that reason), but simply saying "Surprise....enormous fine" is ridiculous.
-the fine is enormous. Various "well it's only a quarter's earnings across all of Google" are outrageous. Over 6 years Google spent a grand total of $1.1B in all expenses for Waymo, for instance. $5B is an enormous, enormous amount of money for any company.
I highly doubt this will be a "pay it and forget it" fine, but is going to ring across all multinationals as a warning.
>Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States.
>Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:
>b) limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers
>d)making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts
Ok, so, Google said "You can't use Google Play unless you force users to have Google Search installed".
How is that not clearly breaching d?
Then they said "You can't use Google Play if you try to help develop any android forks."
How is that not clearly breaching b?
>but simply saying "Surprise....enormous fine" is ridiculous
They've had at least two years notice, so could have reduced their fine by complying when they were first warned. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm The article literally warns about the exact things they're still doing.
They're a part of the same suite of apps that provide the "Android experience" (Google experience, whatever -- the thing that most consumers think of when they consider Android). They manifestly have a profound connection with each other.
And let's be clear here lest there be any confusion -- zero customers want a vendor to do anything different, and the only reason some vendors wanted to is because they could double dip: Pitch the Android experience and get the market inroads, while getting some Bing or whatever payola to "force" that on a consumer.
The same is true of the other claim-
Then they said "You can't use Google Play if you try to help develop any android forks."
Google's argument, whether honest or not, is that if you need a consistent representation of the Android experience that you're selling to consumers. If the GS8 has the full Android experience, but then the GS8P has the Android Fun Store and Bing Search, this can seriously dilute the market opinion of Android and cause consumer confusion.
This is absolutely not at all clear cut. It is incredibly nuanced. And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system? Why couldn't I choose Alpine at the dealer? An entertainment system is not an engine, right? I don't want to go down the road of absurd analogies, but if you're seriously presenting the notion that this is clear cut, you are not really thinking about it much.
As an aside, Google has had the same policies regard their suite of apps since day 1 of Android. Since the very beginning. When iOS absolutely dwarfed it. When Blackberry reigned supreme. When I was hefting around my sad little HTC Dream and listening to the John Gruber's tell us how doomed it was.
>They're a part of the same suite of apps that provide the "Android experience"
The thing they were fined for was
>[Google] has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);
How is the Play Store related to the Google Seach app or to Chrome? One is an app store, one is a seach bar and one is a browser. They have nothing in common and don't interact in any meaningful way (except perhaps the interaction between the Google Seach app and Chrome, but that relation isn't part of the ruling).
This is clearly Google using the dominance of the Play store to push other, completely unrelated apps.
>zero customers want a vendor to do anything different
The first thing I do with a new phone is to try to get rid of that google search bar on the home screen (I open a browser to seach the web ...), I don't use mobile chrome, and I prefer rooted CyanogenMod / LineageOS over stock Android. So I am clearly impacted by all three offenses Google was fined for. I suspect I am not the only one.
> How is the Play Store related to the Google Seach app or to Chrome?
- They're not, and the attempt to claim they are part of a mobile "suite" is the same sort of obfuscation Microsoft used when they argued a web browser (IE) was an essential part of a desktop OS. This ruling seems obvious to me.
"Essential" and "useful" are not the same thing. A web browser isn't an essential part of a desktop OS the same way a network card isn't an essential part of a computer. Even though network cards come with most computers due to frequently being useful, they're not essential to the computer being a computer... computers can very much come without them, which people occasionally also find useful. Also, times have changed, and the web has become a far bigger part of people's life than it used to be.
> A web browser isn't an essential part of a desktop OS
That's so 1997. I would argue that a desktop OS isn't essential to my web browser. All I want my phone or my desktop computer for is to browse the web (not me but that's true for the vast majority of people). All this nonsense that comes with the OS is peripheral. Not essential. The only thing my phone or desktop needs to do is turn on, connect to the web, and download facebook.com and any other website I want. That's it. That's essential. Network card: essential. Web browser: essential. Any so-called computer without a network card is as good as a brick to me.
I believe that this does not really address what "essential" means in this argument, and I find you're both arguing the same point but semantically disagreeing.
The idea of a Web Browser being "essential" to an OS is to mean that the OS itself would not be complete without this specific browser, which is in fact not true. Whatever combination of OS + browser you elect to use, or of you eschew the common OS parts in favor of it being entirely browser based is your choice.
That is the contention when Google, and also when Microsoft, try to claim that their respective browsers are essential to their OSes. (Before anyone tries to call me out, yes, Apple is just as silly with iOS, but at least they attempt to have some very fragile ground to stand on regarding performance)
So the argument isn't that a web browser isn't essential to modern day computing, it's that the OS itself does not need a built in one to be complete, or any specific browser to realize its goal of being an OS.
I don't know if you remember the 90s, but it actually, literally was with the integration of active desktop and other features that brought html and web scripting (and all their vulnerabilities, but that was a blessed time before XSS had been termed yet alone abused) directly into Windows explorer.
Internet Explorer and the Windows shell were the same code. There's a reason why until this day the Windows shell is `explorer.exe` - it and `iexplore.exe` (IE) were the one and the same. You could open a file explorer to C:\ and then type in `msn.com` in the address bar, and the PC wouldn't blink.
That's the moment your OS becomes a "mobile app platform", or a "software distribution". Or just the definition of OS changes. Or maybe not, because Windows was always more than the kernel. And it always included Notepad. But Notepad was never essential. And traditional UNIXes always came with a lot of user space programs. (And thre are essential user space apps for POSIX-y OSes, right? Things like the coreutils programs, ls, stat, cut, test, rm, [, sh, etc.)
And there's the WebView component, that's part of the SDK, that's essential, and it can be a dependency, or it can be bundled into the APK. (There's even https://crosswalk-project.org/ that is basically new WebView for old phones - Chromium built for old phones.)
But of course to an Android buyer, it is all a part of the experience with the device. They know what to expect and what is there.
"he same sort of obfuscation Microsoft used when they argued a web browser"
And Microsoft was right. Windows has Explorer or Edge. It still does. The EU giant fine did absolutely nothing but made them realize that cashing in big on American companies is essentially free. Of course I still download Firefox, just as you can do on Android.
“But of course to an Android buyer, it is all a part of the experience with the device. They know what to expect and what is there.”
The problem is that by not giving the choice makes this anti-competitive behaviour. What’s wrong with giving Samsung the ability to make a deal with Yahoo to install Yahoo as the default in their Android phones?
If they claim it’s all part of their integrated experience, then they should provide the necessary APIs/SDKs for other search providers to integrate properly.
We’ve been over this before, it’s anti-competitive behaviour, and it lacks choice.
> But of course to an Android buyer, it is all a part of the experience with the device.
Only if the device is advertised as being an Android, which is a trademark that you cannot use without Google’s agreement. You can’t use anything Google related actually, besides AOSP, so I don’t see how Google can make that argument with a straight face.
And on Microsoft... they could easily block any competition just like Apple is doing on iOS. That you are able to install Firefox on it, be thankful to previous antitrust fines they got ;-)
> How is the Play Store related to the Google Seach app or to Chrome?
“Related to” does not mean that they are the literally same thing. They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”.
The law doesn’t say that if it is technically possible to unbundle a set of options from a product offering to be sold al la carte that companies must do that.
These are all essential components of one product — a mobile OS. Mixing and matching, for the vast majority of users, is neither practical or expected, and absolutely negatively impacts the brand.
> Mixing and matching, for the vast majority of users, is neither practical or expected, and absolutely negatively impacts the brand.
Microsoft should be delighted then that they can force Internet Explorer on everyone again.
> They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”.
That argument doesn't hold for Chrome. The core experience of Android is the AOSP browser (aka Android Browser). Later Google started to use their monopoly to force the inclusion of Chrome alongside Android Browser, followed by the removal of Android Browser in Android 4.4.
And even now, the only reason Chrome is part of the "core android experience" is because Google pushes hard to make it that way. There are plenty of other good mobile browsers.
>These are all essential components of one product — a mobile OS
But Google doesn't licence the OS. They donated the OS to Open Source, and use their licencing agreement for the App store to control unrelated parts of the OS experience
Microsoft should be delighted then that they can force Internet Explorer on everyone again.
Microsoft does force Internet Explorer cum Edge on everyone. They never stopped. When the EU forced them to offer a trivial "justify a giant fine" selection tool it did essentially nothing in regards to browser share. It keeps getting cited as the precedent, and while it is in the "EU makes some fat bank" way, it did absolutely nothing for consumers. And that's for an OS that was tremendously more entrenched, whereas I recently swapped out my GS8 for an iPhone 8 with nary a hiccup (and as an aside still enjoy all those Google services).
There is so much bullshit happening throughout this discussion.
Elsewhere people are claiming that Chrome became popular because Google pushed it on their homepage, which is just ridiculous, revisionist nonsense. Chrome became popular because it earned word of mouth as a lighter, faster browser. It exploded. The same happened with Firefox. Because the platform was open and allowed you to choose whatever you want to run. Just as I can and do run Firefox on Android.
Further, vendors/carriers only abuse the right to put in alternatives. It is traditionally called crapware.
> They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”.
I'm using Android every day and never once opened Chrome (instead I'm using the Lightning browser) or used the Google app to search (I'm just searching directly in my browser). So IMHO that's definitely NOT the core experience of Android, while the Play Store is.
Neat. So the OS allowed you to choose alternatives and to avoid Chrome wholly. So you're fully of the opinion that the EU argument has no merit then, right?
Of course, saying it's a part of the Android/Google Experience is from the average consumer. You know that you have the Chrome browser if you so choose. Yes, you can go to the Play Store and install Firefox. Unlike on iOS where the browser alternatives are facades.
I'm pretty sure that an important part of the Microsoft argument was that you couldn't uninstall ie and it was used by certain system functions even if you set a different default. That's an important distinction.
(Im a Googler, but that's not particularly relevant to this comment)
That is certainly not the equivalent as it still occupies storage.
Also, you could actually uninstall IE. That only uninstalled the shell, not the libraries (as there were dependencies) but it was gone in terms of the application.
An "app" on Android is not a traditional executable. It's really a library and a collection of OS hooks that execute code from that library on various events.
The home screen icon is one of those hooks but by far not the only one. If I hide it or never press it, that implies exactly nothing about whether or not code from the app gets executed while I use the phone.
Play store shows Chrome installed 1b+ times, with 9M ratings, Firefox has 3M ratings and 100m+ installs. So it can easily mean 950 million installs for Firefox.
> I prefer rooted CyanogenMod / LineageOS over stock Android
Well then, that's your choice, and with that you admit to belong to some 0.0001% of Android users who are willing to open up their phones to all kinds of security exploits, and reduce its value to some laughable percentile, as is known, with CyanogenMod / LineageOS most of the good part go to hell, camera goes to hell, performance goes, ... and you get what? Glowing aura of open source user
>with CyanogenMod / LineageOS most of the good part go to hell, camera goes to hell, performance goes
All that goes to hell because Google prevents almost all first party support for LinageOS (or any other forks), which is why Google gets fined now. In a theoretical world where Google didn't do the things they are fined for, LineageOS might work much better on a wider range of hardware and thus have much more mainstream appeal.
And I get a phone that's six years old and still works as designed, despite bloat pouring in from app vendors. I understand that I should have dumped that as a brick of e-waste to a landfill, seven years ago. Imagine a very uncivil rant starting from here, on where you should stuff your privileged SV advice.
>And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system
Because BMW don't have market dominance in either the car industry or the entertainment system industry. If they used dominance in one to affect the other, they would be in breach of that legislation.
>This is absolutely not at all clear cut. It is incredibly nuanced
So how do you explain Google's non-compliance when explicitly and clearly informed that they were in breach over two years ago?
So it's only against the law once the company becomes big enough?
If, for example, BMW _did_ become an extremely successful car manufacturer to the point where they were capturing >80% of the market, would they suddenly no longer be allowed to bundle their own entertainment system with their cars?
No, they would be able to bundle their own entertainment system with their cars, but they would not be able to force anyone else who wants to use their engines in their cars to bundle the entertainment system as well, as a contractual precondition to be able to use those engines.
Of course the size of the company and the market dominance comes into play here. It's not a monopoly if people can go elsewhere to get their engines, it is if there is only one realistic choice of supplier (Android).
I don't love this ruling (and I probably disagree with it, but I haven't read the whole decision or the laws in question yet, and as an American, am not 100% clear on EU precedent so I'm somewhat withholding judgment), but yes, in most cases, anti-monopoly laws only apply when a company becomes large enough. In the US, it's actually explicit - monopolies can actually only exist if they are using their status to impact pricing/consumer choice, which necessitates size.
Yes? When you’re in a dominant position in a market you’re subjected to a different set of rules. This is to help keep even a captured market competitive.
> They're a part of the same suite of apps that provide the "Android experience". They manifestly have a profound connection with each other.
Fire OS and my personal phone which is running a Google-free version of LineageOS would like to have a word.
> And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system?
BMW doesn't have a dominant market position it could abuse. Neither does Apple or any other company that Google is commonly compared to in these discussions.
Somehow these false-equivalences seem to be most common among people trying to push the "unfair fine" narrative.
On top of that you claim that because there are other companies/products that are in breach of the law - at least according to your misreading of it - this somehow makes the word of the law less clear cut in this case. Which just doesn't make any sense.
Let me throw your own words back at you: "you are not really thinking about it [your arguments] much."
> Fire OS and my personal phone which is running a Google-free version of LineageOS would like to have a word.
Hilariously, you just made the parent's point for them - you yourself said you aren't running Android but Fire OS or LineageOS. Android, the product, comes with Chrome, Google Search, and the Google Play Store. If you want Android, you have to take all of Android. If you want to run something else, go for it, but then it isn't Android.
Android is a separate software project that is developed separately from Google Play Services. The Android OS works perfectly without those installed.
There's no "Chrome, Google Search, and the Google Play Store" in the Android repository. Especially since Android is open source, and most of the latter APKs are not.
I suggest to actually have a look at the a android project before making claims like these. This page is a good place to start: https://source.android.com/setup/
Android the project is open source and lacks those apps, but Android the consumer branded product without those apps is not very appealing to customers.
I doubt that. Play store and maps are important. Having a specific browser and search, on top of hangouts, google+, slides, photos... not so important.
And yet, Google is preventing vendors from selling phones with FireOS or LineageOS on them. How would those phones "fragment the Android experience" if they don't have anything to do with Android?
"They're a part of the same suite of apps that provide the "Android experience". They manifestly have a profound connection with each other."
Google has worked very hard to integrate their app suite at such a deep level with Android to the point that they can steer what can be done with the OS just by using that one lever.
Anyone paying attention in the past decade will remember plenty of complaints about the GApps infesting Android.
But yes, if just looks at the situation as it is today, they could be excused for thinking that everything is normal.
Can you think of any technical advantages why Google would do this? Any functionality that becomes possible when the full suite of apps and APIs and services are all present together at once on the phone?
I honestly think that it was a reaction to update issues. The more of the OS which is updateable by Google, the easier it is to patch these. Additionally, i remember people saying at the time that it made it much easier to incrementally add features to Android between major releases.
I don't really mind about the Google Play Services thing (as it probably benefited people overall), but the contracts with OEM's were always wack, and I'm pretty happy that the EU has (eventually) fined them for this literally textbook anti-EU competition law behaviour.
> And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system?
BMW is not forcing BMW to install a BMW entertainment system.
BMW can install whatever entertainment system BMW likes.
Google is forcing other phone makers to install certain Google apps. The issue is not with what Google does for their own products, but what they force other phone makers to do. That is the key point—this ruling wouldn't (or shouldn't) apply to Google's own Pixel products.
Now if Bosch was forcing BMW to install Bosch windscreen wipers as a requirement on any car with Bosch collision avoidance systems, there you might have a valid analogy.
They're a part of the same suite of apps that provide the "Android experience" (Google experience, whatever -- the thing that most consumers think of when they consider Android). They manifestly have a profound connection with each other.
Google also claimed that this ruling would hurt open source projects in favor of “proprietary platforms”, but everything that provides the “Android experience” - Google Play Services and the binary drivers - are closed sourced.
Of course there aren't because BMW absolutely squashed the possibility of that at the outset. But Google, apparently, deserves a $5B fine because they made a mistake of powering AOSP phones, the Amazon products, countless variations in China, set top boxes, etc.
It is incredible seeing Google being seriously attacked on here for have an open source path as well. I feel like this is some sort of alternative universe.
> But Google, apparently, deserves a $5B fine because they made a mistake of powering AOSP phones
This is incredibly (deliberately?) misrepresentative. They are being punished for having a monopoly and (ab)using that. If Apple/iPhone had an 80% market share in EU the commission would be gunning for them instead, e.g. because of their closed ecosystem preventing competition.
Why isn’t the EU gunning for Airbus, Safran and Arianespace? Airbus and Safran had a joint venture to build rockets, then the EU approved the sale of Arianespace to Airbus for a tiny $166 million. Now in space vehicles and launches, Airbus practically owns all of it in Europe. It effectively shuts out competing rocket makers. If you buy an Airbus rocket, you are forced to hire their Arianespace wholy owned subsidiary to launch it.
And this deal was approved by the EU and it specifically grants a monopoly to Airbus for European rocket manufacturing and launch.
The point is that the EU doesn’t care that much about monopolies— they care that much about American tech monopolies. It’s economic populism. I am not saying anything about the merits of the Android case, only pointing out that the EU doesn’t pursue EU companies with as much vigor. €5 billion is a significant payday for the EU — especially when that money comes from an American company.
If Google had gone the open source route out of the goodness of their hearts, you'd have an argument. Google went the open source route to bootstrap on top of a well known operating system (Linux), as well as to accelerate adoption and catch up to Apple as fast as they could. Then once they got market dominance, they abused their position to stifle competition.
Are you suggesting that to interpret the law correctly here, a court has to judge Google's motivation of releasing the Android code as Open Source?
Further, if Apple were to decide, tomorrow, to release iOS as open source, would they also be in violation of the law (possibly depending on their motivation?)
It owes to being free not open source. OEMs really only had three choices. Create their own OS (horrible choice), use Windows Mobile or use Android. The deciding factor was free. Phone manufacturers no more cared about open source than Windows anufacturers.
It is incredible seeing Google being seriously attacked on here for have an open source path as well. I feel like this is some sort of alternative universe.
Exactly. The takeaway from this seems to be to not open up your system a little bit, because then you'll need to go all the way. Whereas e.g. Apple, which built a completely closed phone system from the start, doesn't get any trouble (even when it dominated the smartphone market). Really backwards ruling. And I say this as someone who happily switched to an iPhone to escape Google's data collection.
No its not. There are a lot of Americans being obtusely dense on this. There is nothing wrong with open source. There is nothing wrong with opening the source of a product.
"Google has used Android as a vehicle to cement the dominance of its search engine. These practices have denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete on the merits. They have denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in the important mobile sphere," Ms Vestager said.
> Google being seriously attacked on here for have an open source path as well
It's not because Google has open sourced Android (which they _had_ to because of the GPL used by Linux). The fine is for protecting their own marker by blocking others from using that open source software.
Minor nit: Google didn't have to Open Source the whole Android because of Linux; Linux is just one of many components, and Linux' license doesn't apply to the rest of the software there.
This is always an interesting problem of definition and separation. If all the things google claims are absolutely essential and inseparable as part of 'Android' the license could well be interpreted as requiring them to open source all of it. If, on the other hand, these are all separate pieces of software and not totally dependent to deliver the end 'experience' then that contradicts some of Google's legal arguments.
I don't consider that part up to Google's discretion. It simply doesn't function without the kernel. The question is whether the Google apps are also essential and inseparable which would tie them to the kernel as part of a derivative work (according to this interpretation which may or may not hold up in court).
It won't function without a kernel, but will it not function without the Linux kernel? Since the Solaris days with lxrun all the way through present time with Windows 10's linux subsystem and SmartOS's lx-branded zones, you could run Linux binaries (and entire distros) on a system without the Linux kernel, with various amounts of support/breakage. Still, no GPL2 kernel needed.
I suspect that when a lawyer uses "essential and inseparable" they do not mean the same thing a technologist would mean. The GPL itself doesn't use that language, and anyway it's trivial to argue that a full OS distro isn't "based on" (the language of the GPL) the kernel itself.
Not really, no. There's the FSF interpretation on one hand, but on the other there are companies like VMWare which happily put binary blobs into the Linux kernel and don't consider it a "derived work".
There are disagreements, but let's put it this way: If even the FSF would call it okay, then it's almost certainly okay. And the FSF will tell you that the kernel license doesn't infect user space.
What? I can't open a car dealership and sell BMWs and put custom audio equipment into them? (And to take the analogy further, what if I buy BMWs from a different dealership, not from BMW? Because with software that's basically zero-cost.)
> why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system?
Because BMW has not entered an abusive relationship with a dominant player in the car entertainment system market who would only license the popular system to BMW on the condition that 1) BMW won't develop their own version, and 2) will bundle other software packages also developed by the dominant player.
> why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system?
BMW is the manufacturer, not a licensor, so it's a slightly different scenario, but let's say that dealers are somewhat equivalent to manufacturers. You raise a good question or two:
1. Does BMW forbid dealers from replacing the factory entertainment system with an Alpine system? Or do they just assume nobody will, since it's already bundled in the car?
2. What is BMW's share of the automobile market? (i.e. how close to a monopoly are they?)
In the EU, Android has about 75-80% market share if you look at the whole market, or nearly 100% if you look at the lower end of the market where iOS isn't available.
> They're a part of the same suite of apps that provide the "Android experience"
Offering the open source Gallery app is the "Android experience". Offering Google Photos is not the Android experience, but the "Google experience". It's different.
> zero customers want a vendor to do anything different
Citation needed. I mean I don't want the vendors to add bloatware to a smartphone, just like I don't want Google to add bloatware (like the search bar or the News app). But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like actually innovative features. And even if I as a "stock Android" fan, that doesn't mean everyone is.
- Google had an operating income of 32.9 billion in 2017 [0]. $5B fine for anti-trust practices is 15.2% (5 / 32.9) of that.
- HSBC had an operating income of 63.8 billion in 2017 [1]. In 2017, HSBC suffered a $1.9B fine for _willfully_ relaxing it's anti-money laundering filters in order to profit from the illegal drug industry, regimes that are embargoed, and entities or individuals who are suspected of financing terrorism [2]. That's a 1.9 / 63.8 = 0.29% fine for helping finance murderers.
That puts the Google fine into perspective, but it probably says more about the HSBC case than it does about Google's.
It should be noted that HSBC broke a deal to avoid prosecution, thanks to then Attorney General Eric Holder who overruled prosecutors' recommendation to pursue criminal charges. As part of the deal, HSBC confessed to above allegations, which was just a theory at the time.
It's not a ruling. It's an administrative decision. And it's not dangerous. It has nothing to do with trade wars. Even insinuating that this is somehow a corrupt decision that takes aim at American companies is just way off. This decision has been several years in the making, and Google was told to stop their illegal conduct in April 2016.
EU treaty article 102 is about as clear as it gets. Google even had precedence to look at. And finally, they were warned by the EU commission more than 2 years ago but chose not to comply. This is a company with hundreds of lawyers on staff, and with the best law firms on retainer.
What Google was doing was extremely similar to what got Microsoft in trouble for bundling Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player back in the day, and there have been rumblings that the EU was looking at them for it for years. I don't know how you could argue this is a surprise.
> This is a dangerous ruling that pushes the world further into the potential for trade wars by proxy.
Don't think trade wars applies. The reasons were given and I think they are correct. Personally I'm glad that the EU has the power to (at least a bit) influence such huge corporations.
Is this yet another case of trying to apply an American interpretation to a European law? I thought we all had a similar discussion when GDPR came into effect.
Hopefully it isn't yet another case of smug Europeans preening and going "Oh, you stupid Americans, our regulators are different and would never levy gigantic fines. Instead, they come give you a hug and have a cup of tea and politely ask you to please stop, and they would never ever in a billion years abuse this extremely wide-ranging law for political ends!"
Every time a US company is fined there are people that claim it is all protectionism and punishment with nothing to back it up (ironic, considering the degree of protectionism the US engages in).
They are just sour that their precious tech companies are being brought to task for behaving like shitty house guests by not following the rules.
These companies might be able to get away with whatever the hell they please back home but get this; the American Way isn't the only way.
It's just a very shitty dismissal of the very real concerns of US tech companies and their disregard for the laws and regulations in the countries in which they operate. Laws and regulations that EU companies have to follow too.
The only real upset here comes from companies like Google, and their rabid supporters at the prospect of them not being able to implement their shitty consumer-hostile, ring-fencing business model in other countries.
Google were given two year's notice before this fine. TWO YEARS.
It's their own damn fault and the fine is punitive, as it should be.
I have no problem with the result, or the punitive nature of it. I do think that basing fine calculations for violations of EU law on global revenue is a problematic precedent (though if it was based on EU revenue it would absolutely have to have a fair amount of latitude in calculation to avoid all the same tax dodges already in use).
Yeah, I have no problem with the specific number. I just think if it should be that high, it should be a higher percentage and based on EU revenue. That would seem much less legally dubious in a world where I would like global trade to continue to function.
Its largest shareholders are all American, they were founded in America, by Americans, headquartered in America, and almost all it's employees live in America and are American.
My guess is that Google considers itself American.
though I'm an American who lives in California, i feel zero loyalty to Google.
and that absence of loyalty is reciprocated. Google isn't doing me any favors.
if Google disappeared tomorrow someone else would step into replace them. and i wouldn't care if they headquartered in Buffalo or Barcelona or Beijing.
I agree. I am sick of the self-righteousness of some Americans. I remember them howling when Valve was fined by the Australian Government for anti-competitive things. They kept stating about how pro-consumer Valve was. But as an Australian valve is not pro-consumer. Valve has an Australian store, with higher prices than the US store and charges us in USD.
> simply saying "Surprise....enormous fine" is ridiculous.
The case started in 2015. So Google had enough time to appeal and provide info to regulators. So, it wasn't a surprise. Yes the law might not be clear but I think the deliberations took time because of the same reason. If laws were clearer Google fines might have happened back in 2015.
the fine is enormous. Various "well it's only a quarter's earnings across all of Google" are outrageous.
Why? It's meant to be a meaningful penalty that shareholders will feel in their pockets. If fines are just a small cost of doing business, all the evidence is that firms shrug and pay them, because the producer surplus they reap is usually much larger than the fine.
Android is free; Google Play Services and Google Play are proprietary Google software and they can be replaced, for example, with F-Droid store or Yandex store.
People use windows for the GUI/experience. If manufacturers started to use nongoogle version of android the GUI/experience would not change much. Also many people buy windows license separate from their device. Google surely does not want situation where people buy google services license... they want mass adoption for data collection.
If google starts to charge for android then i am sure there will be manufactures selling phone without OS. I would be 100% up for it.
People use Windows to run Windows applications. They use Android to run Android applications. Whether they would use it for the GUI and experience or not is secondary, they don't have much of a choice anyway. If an OS cannot run Android applications -- and AOSP cannot do that since many applications rely on the proprietary Play Services -- it is not Android.
That Android would be free if you replaced the non-free parts by free ones is obvious and does not make it actually free.
> Also many people buy windows license separate from their device. Google surely does not want situation where people buy google services license... they want mass adoption for data collection.
> If google starts to charge for android then i am sure there will be manufactures selling phone without OS.
None of this matters for the question at hand which is if Android is free.
This is good point. But there is possibility of not running play services. And i dont only mean lineagelineageos without play services and apps from fdroid. I am sure Amazon or Microsoft would hop in to provide competitive google alternative. I mean amazon already has android store and if microG can do it - they can do it.
People using also Android for GUI/experience. Google controls the Android system. They have a large say how Android Apps should look like and are consisted of.
At 2018, talking about yet another Mobile OS beyond Android/iOS is just pure nonsensical fantasy. The game is over, if Google going to charge Android, the manufacturers will not be happy, but they will pay and pass the cost to consumers.
>I personally recently switched my daily driver to an iPhone for that reason
Thats funny you think Apple doesnt have bad practices... They are seemingly the worst when it comes to IP and giving customers and developers what they want.
The net outcome of this decision will be that nobody will create significant open platforms of this type anymore, because once you are successful you will no longer be able to have any control over the experience. Someone will always be able to find a market that you are hurting.
If you actually read the decision that's essentially their underlying complaint. They dress it up in terms about search market blah blah blah, but in the end it's really about whether Google is allowed to control the experience of Android phones that want to use the Google apps and app store or not.
Android being open at all was already a fight inside Google, this decision will essentially make it impossible for anybody win that fight in the future. I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again. Success only has downsides versus Apple's model.
I expect the next major player here will either sell the operating system or sell the phones, and keep the other stuff closed
Having worked for so many years at Google, you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices. No Android logo, no app store, no GApps, still forbidden if that company happens to sell an unrelated Android device.
So in fact it is not about "whether Google is allowed to control the experience of Android phones that want to use the Google apps and app store or not".
Regarding open source, Android v1 was an underpowered and underfeatured newcomer in a market dominated by Symbian and Blackberry where Windows was at a few percent and iOS was making inroads.
There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. Let's not rewrite history and make it look like Android was a clear winner from the beginning, back then even iPhone was pretty crap, and Android was that times two.
(The rest we are going to disagree on. I know the specifics of these agreements and advised on some of them, so i can't talk about them for rea)
"There's a very good chance that without it being open source it would have went precisely nowhere. "
Why?
You say a lot of things, but none seem to related to why this is true. As far as i can tell, it is definitively not true.
The app developers were happy to go where there was money, and the users certainly didn't care.
Again, i'm a huge supporter of open source projects, i donate to the FSF, etc. I would love for it to be the case to say that Android was a success/failure because of open source.
It's just i've seen exactly zero data that supports this notion, and a lot that doesn't.
The real history rewrite here is the rewrite that Android didn't enable choice or competition. Before Android all of the systems you're talking about had user interfaces that were tightly controlled by the carriers right down to the Verizon internet browser. Your best case scenario would be apple winning. Your worst case scenario is you still have Verizon deciding what your phone user interface should be like.
Developers and users generally won't care whether it's open source, I agree. Manufacturers like Samsung or Sony would though, especially after their experiences with Symbian. Not because they care about freedom, but because they want to have some form of control over their own destiny.
The US market was always an anomaly and under tight carrier control. There the iPhone and Android enabled choice.
This is however mostly irrelevant for the EU and especially for this verdict. It's undeniable that there are now fewer choices and competitors available, and that most of the ones that are gone have been killed by Android: Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian, Meego, FirefoxOS, etc.
I must say that the whole situation is very disappointing. While western companies have been folding, China has a very active smartphone ecosystem with multiple manufacturers of phones and many different providers of services, including app stores. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?
Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good. If Google didn't share ad revenue with carriers and OEMs or tried to extract a license fee ala Windows, Google would not be sitting on 80% global market share today.
> Android got market share because it was free, not because it was good.
If free was all that mattered then one of the other smattering of "free" open source mobile OSes would have taken off. You can perhaps say that free is a necessary condition but it clearly isn't sufficient. Something else matters and to a first approximation that can be thought of as "goodness".
The world has changed. Today what determines the success of a mobile platform is availability if applications. If Ubuntu's thing could run WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram apps (especially the first b/c it has to be an app), it would have a completely different fate. If I was Mark Shuttleworth, I'd go to Facebook and offer porting WhatsApp for free. IDK the US, but for most of the world, it's an essential means of communication.
Mozilla was so eager to get WhatsApp on Firefox OS that it wrote a proof of concept J2ME.js interrupter [1] (repurposing Shumway's Flash-to-JS JIT) to run WhatsApp's Java applet. But WhatsApp was not interested. This was a big blow because lack of WhatsApp support was one of the top complaints or deal breakers for Firefox OS users in its initial markets.
> If I was Mark Shuttleworth, I'd go to Facebook and offer porting WhatsApp for free
Microsoft tried buying app support and it didn't save their mobile platform. It generally resulted in crappy apps that were never an ongoing priority for their creators. If anything it cemented the status of the OS as a second class citizen.
You can try every way you like, but nothing completes the picture than to say that there were good things about Android that made it survive as the competition to iOS where everything else failed. The OS being "good" (on a relative scale, there were obviously some bad things about it) is, like everything else, necessary but not sufficient.
In my view, the real reason Android succeeded is because it was customisable by the OEMs. They were staring at a future where they were completely locked out of doing any customisation of operating system and totally at the mercy of Apple. They would do anything to prevent that future and Google gave them a lifeline to do so. That customisability was a byproduct of Android being open source, but obviously Google could have made it closed source to the public but licensed it to OEMs with a proprietary license allowing customisation too. I think the latter wasn't viable because it would have required too much trust in Google.
Android was developed via billions of dollars of investment by Google. Google has no obligation to provide a free OSS variant, other than for the parts that are GPL'ed.
If all Google is offering is the complete Android experience (including the App store and all the Google apps,) and not any OSS variant, how are manufacturers limited exactly ? They can either use Android, that is being offered to them for free, or roll their own OS.
Google has no obligation to provide the OSS version, but they can't really afford to close Android either, it would be a major PR blow and Samsung would basically immediately ship their own fork, perhaps with the Amazon store and a couple extra apps to replace the Google maps, Chrome, etc.
Manufacturers are limited contractually. This is detailed in the EU press release linked to this thread. Alas, one still has to actually read it or alternatively have some knowledge about how Android is licensed.
> you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices
This is true but is not relevant to the situation at hand and Google has very reasonable arguments for insisting on this. As far as I understand it, there is no requirement for a manufacturer to ship Google search or the Play Store on an Android device they manufacture. They only require that manufacturers not fragment the ecosystem by breaking compatibility. If you are going to build on the back of the ecosystem, don't break that same ecosystem, and that is quite reasonable. I am sure Microsoft would not tolerate OEMs licensing windows then modifying the Windows APIs on the installed system to break compatibility with apps made by Microsoft and 3rd parties. I am quite sure they would refuse to continue to license Windows to OEMs that did that.
The issue at hand is around what Google requires once somebody wants to license the Play Store. At that point they are required to also ship Google Search as the default which is the problem.
I cannot agree. The main problem is that Google has proprietary Google Play Services and instead of just selling it Google sets additional terms that prevent competition, like preinstalling competitors' search engines, or competitors' software. It is difficult to earn large profits in a competing market; but this is benefecial for consumers and their interests should be put before Google's.
I'm really unsure what your first sentence about the main problem is supposed to mean, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me as written, so i'm having trouble responding.
Would you mind rephrasing it a bit, and i'd be happy to try to respond?
I can't see why anyone would ever not follow Apple's model. It effectively immunizes them from antitrust concerns due to low market share, but they still make an ungodly amount of money.
I am sorry if I didn't write it clearly. What I wanted to say is that Google required phone manufacturers not to make agreements with Google's competitors (e.g. not to preinstall competitors's apps or search engine as default) as a condition for obtaining a license for Google Play Services or Google Play. And this is bad for competition in mobile software market and bad for consumers. Instead Google should just sell their software to manufacturers without such conditions.
For example, several years ago a Russian software company, Yandex, wanted to make its own build of Android with Yandex browser and Yandex app store. But after they have talked to smartphone vendors, they learned that in order to obtain licenses for Google software the vendors have signed an agreement with Google forbidding them to make phones with alternative ROMs or replace Google software with competitors' software [1].
Ah. So this goes to the question i ask:
If Google had to do as you say (sell the software with no restrictions), why would google ever sell the software in the first place?
Microsoft tried that and was fairly unsuccessful.
Future folks would likely just choose the Apple model - don't sell the software at all.
There are not any future folks who can adopt Apple's model.
The only viable mobile OSes for the foreseeable future are Android and iOS, unless Android can be trust-busted. Even Microsoft couldn't do it. And they really tried.
If Android can be de-bundled, then Samsung can pursue Tizen, because Google will not be allowed to prevent it. They're the only ones with sufficient resources and market share to have a shot.
Edit: Or, ironically, Google—who are the only ones not bound by Android OEM agreements—with Fuchsia.
> why would google ever sell the software in the first place?
To earn money. But of course (without restrictions) there would be more competition, there would be alternative Android builds and, as a result, more software not depending on Google Play Services.
If Google could choose Apple model and be profitable, they would choose it from the start. But there is a big difference. Apple makes their own hardware and is good at it. Google doesn't and maybe they didn't want to take a risk so instead they have chosen to make only the software. Also we should remember that Google came to the smartphone market late when it was already conquered by Apple.
For example, Google has tried to enter laptop market with Chromebooks but without noticeable success.
Even if Google makes Android closed source, it doesn't mean that there would be no open platform. Maybe someone will continue developing Android, or some other OS, maybe someone will make a Linux distribution for smartphones.
> Android being open at all was already a fight inside Google, this decision will essentially make it impossible for anybody win that fight in the future. I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again.
It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several handset manufacturers via the OHA [0].
Remember, the context surrounding the need for Android to use an open source model at launch was that they were the underdog, iOS was still nascent but steadily gaining serious market share. The incumbents -- whom Google was hoping to disrupt using the OHA as a trojan horse was Nokia (they enjoyed 73% market share [1] with their Symbian "smartphone" OS) and Blackberry. Nokia would eventually start the process to make Symbian fully open source in 2008 [2], so they could compete better against the OHA [3], but the process didn't complete until 2010[4], which by then was already too late.
IOW, making Android open source was a core part of Google's strategic play to gain market share, there is no point in crying uncle.
"It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several handset manufacturers via the OHA [0]."
This is actually not why it was done (I was there :P), and didn't really factor very much into the calculation at all. So your perspective, while interesting, was not the one used.
In fact, the business folks mostly thought it would be a downside (given all the FUD/etc around the time period).
Your perspective is also interesting because Apple did not go this route and still were wildly successful. So i disagree it "had to be open source or it would not have taken off".
I'd like to believe that (really!), but there is an existence proof that this was not true (Apple), and in the end, i just can't bring myself to think what you say is true.
It was open because Andy thought it was best for the world (really. I realize how cliche that sounds, but if you've ever met the guy, you'd realize it was true. He gave pretty much not a shit about the business side of it, it's not what he enjoyed).
As mentioned, the business folks argued that this model would just lead to a shitty experience (among other things) over time.
(This was pre-iphone, so apple was not a consideration at the time).
The compromise was "great, let's figure out how we can make sure that doesn't happen through branding guidelines/etc".
Later, after Apple was successful, the business folks all said "look, this model was a mistake, look at Apple". You could still push back and say "we are doing fine".
I don't see how, in the future, the business folks don't win every argument here.
Apple's model is giving them all the money, with none of the downsides.
This seems like a "business school case study" they would teach in the future.
Thanks for giving us a peek at the early development of Android.
It's interesting that Andy was pushing open-source for altruistic reasons, but I'm tempted to think that it happened to also be the best business strategy - despite what the suits thought at the time.
Every business school teaches that IBM made one of the worst business decisions of all time when it licenced the software for its new personal computers from Microsoft. Samsung certainly didn't want to make the same mistake, and an open-source operating system can always be forked so Samsung had a guarantee it wouldn't end up paying the 'Windows tax'.
If Android was closed-source it would have found it much more difficult to get that critical early install base. But with a successful open-source platform it could then develop its closed-source Play service.
To me this one-two punch would make a great business school case study in favour of Android's open/closed-source hybrid approach
I could have sworn that the the open-source thing was a big part of the incentive to develop for Android rather than Apple with its walled garden and arbitrary app store policies. Now development and commitment to the open source track may have begun much earlier. And it was a way for Google to differentiate itself from Apple by having a different business model. My recall of the first couple of years on the market was that everyone knew Android apps were not as fast or as fancy as iOS ones, but 'at least it's an open platform.'
How does the business model relate to the source-code being published under a Free Software license?
I don't see how the license of the software relates to it it giving you a shitty experience or not.
The shitty experiences I had on Android were largely due to carrier and OEM spyware and bloatware preinstalled on devices -- deals Google struck.
I had always attributed the security problems to Google having inadequate terms with handset manufacturers, to keep handsets up to date. Specifically, that handsets could automatically fall back to stock Android if the OEM/carrier didn't want to continue to develop their proprietary fork for that line of handsets. Maybe this is wrong. Maybe it was planned obsolescence with unintended consequences.
But there's no saying that future versions of stock Android will work on a specific device. Because it's open source, many OEMs just take the OS and don't upstream the drivers they write. And because Linux has no driver ABI, they need to be recompiled from source for every new version of the OS (and modified accordingly too, because there's no stable driver API either).
Very interesting, thank you for the post! I will say that from our perspective on the outside, we (as in techies, app developers, etc) were pretty damned excited for open source. Its why I ditched my iphone and have been android ever since. Pure android is a much better experience, imho, than iphone will ever be or has been in the past.. the problem with android is that you get a nice new android phone and its riddled with crap ware you can't get rid of unless you know how to root and install a nice AOSP rom and the phone is even popular enough to warrant someone figuring out how to root it... which is great for me but not for a lot of other people who don't even know what root is.
I also don't understand why the nexus phone line got cut. I guess it wasn't selling well? I can't understand why though. My wife has a nexus 6p and its a great phone that was well priced.
>It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff,
Yes, it payed off in marketshare, but severely limited the profitability of Android and being another major revenue stream for Google. I hope this decision makes them think twice about their strategy for Fuchsia because they seem to be using the Android model all over again. Google really needs to start operating like Apple for better or worse.
That is really the sad thing about this EU decision. There are many benefits to open source, but it is extremely hard to find ways to monetise it. Google's strategy of using their investment in Android to secure Google Search on mobile was one way of monetising it. Whether you agree with it or not, the EU is shutting the door on that, and it will affect people's view of monetising open source far more generally than this specific case.
I'm waiting for the day Alphabet removes Android from Google's umbrella and is expected to contribute to the bottom line. I wonder what they'll do to make that happen... You can either licence Android for a fee or a percentage of the cost of your device. If you would like to use GMS we can also include that for an additional cost.
Which I have to agree. EU basically kills the Android model, and makes monetization based on it impossible, because once you reach the scale of Android, for which it is necessary for such model to be profitable, you will be targeted. So why make things free at all, at least you won't be called as hypocrites.
As the adage goes, if a for-profit corporation gives something away for free, you're not the customer, you're the product. This applies to OEM's, in this case. The "product" is a Google-controlled mobile landscape; the OEM's aren't customers, they're a means to that end.
These days I actually feel more comfortable when things aren't free. It means the company's motives aren't (completely) obfuscated.
Err, no, they controlled only the people who chose to use their apps or play store.
That's still open, you can do whatever you want, it's just if you want their stuff, you play by their rules.
I think you are twisting the definitions pretty hard. Android isn't open for anyone who also wants access to the dominant app store. If you want that and sign that agreement you can no longer effectively enjoy the right you have under e.g. the GPL and distribute devices with modified versions of the code. As I understand this is legal under the GPL, but certainly very shady towards the developers who made the code available with the intention for it be used openly, rather than being leveraged by Google for their anti-competitive means. Also those practices is preventing other developers, who has as much right to the code under the license, from using those manufacturers. This is a clear attempt of trying to use their dominant position to control the market and shut out the competition from those manufacturers, not just controlling the manufacturers themselves which would be bad enough in the first place. And that is exactly why they are being and should be fined.
Google has abandoned most AOSP apps. It has moved large parts of the API into Play Services. Android is not open, what is open is merely an incompatible fragment of an OS.
Google Apps Agreement prohibits you from enjoying the openness of that everything else.
And now the EU Commission thinks that this is an unfair (due to market share) agreement, because it prevents competition. (Which is trivially does, since no OEM can start making and marketing and selling a competitor.)
Im glad, the openness of Android led to incredibly terrible phones with all kinds of crapware, Samsung being the worst. I wish Google would have just sold the os to oems with tight restrictions.
This is a case of breaking a law where there was clear precedent set by the Microsoft case. Google decided it could get away with it or the cost was worth it. I'm glad the EU stands up to monopolistic practices and doesn't capitulate like in the US. Without large companies suppressing competition who knows how many other choices and products we would have?
They are penalizing US companies for tax avoidance, that is the root of all problems. EU as an entity, benefits very little from internet technology boom. The US companies take the revenue, disrupt traditional industries and except perhaps Amazon, they don't offer oppurtunties of employment that could give them a voice in local politics.
So all in all, the US internet companies are the pinnacle of globalist creation, or the biggest beneficiaries of such policy, and in the looming protectionist era, they will become the first sacrifice.
It was sarcasm, as the monopolies that the USA have shielded for so long, have basically killed off the IT market everywhere. There obviously are European tech companies, but even those are often owned by those US-American megacorps.
Can anyone concisely explain what this fine is for, and also why the same wouldn't apply to Apple for iOS?
It seems to be a rehash of the issue that Microsoft faced when it only gave you Internet Explorer on install. But iOS comes with only Safari on install, and forces you to use Apple's various apps - how is this any different?
> The European Commission has accused Google of abusing its Android market dominance by bundling its search engine and Chrome apps into the operating system. Google has also allegedly blocked phone makers from creating devices that run forked versions of Android.
Apple doesn’t have a dominent search engine to push down the throat of device makers.
They also don’t have an iOS consortium nor do work with other makers, so there is no bullying makers into doing what they want “or else”.
As others pointed out Apple is not in a majority position in the first place, but this fine is mainly bound to how the search engine and google suitr services come in the picture, and not on android on its own.
Thanks for this. Anyone who has tried to compile a forked version of AOSP knows that Google makes it extremely hard to do so.
Android being an open source OS is nowhere near as easy to install as a regular linux open source OS.
I've been trying to get my own android / androidTV box working on popular hardware like rPi and other Amlogic, Allwinner, Mali based boards without much success. Even devices manufacturers have troubles with the same (talking about SBCs here).
Android is open source only for name sake. Google's deliberate control over the entire Android ecosystem is undeniable.
I'm not buying your first point. Within a month of OEMs releasing the Kernel sources, you can find builds of AOSP over at XDA, Lineage OS and other forums. And with the project Trebble in P, we have builds within a week. I don't think it is hard or Google is making it hard to compile.
As for your problems installing it on other boards, where are the drivers for them? Your classic desktop installation comes with drivers for almost every laptop/desktop board. Android doesn't because the vendors don't contribute. A snapdragon SoC requires a binary blob from Qualcomm. There is nothing you can do without it. It has nothing to do with AOSP being opensource or Google controlling it (Google controls other aspects, AKA the Play Services).
AOSP does not include proprietary apps like the Play Store, etc.
In order for device manufacturers to get the Play Store on their phone, they have to give in to Google's demands to add the Google search box on the home screen of the phones.
Apart from this, Qualcomm doesn't release open source drivers for GPUs etc, making it even harder to use pure AOSP on flagship devices.
Qualcomm blocked Google from using Proprietary Android on its devices! One of the Nexus phones couldn't upgrade the OS to the next version due to Qualcomm drivers.
> In order for device manufacturers to get the Play Store on their phone, they have to give in to Google's demands to add the Google search box on the home screen of the phones.
What's wrong with this? The Play Store is subsidized by search revenue, it makes sense to tie them together.
Android forks in China are not undermined by the lacking open driver support for Android.
There's a bunch of SBC manufacturers (pine64, odroid, orangepi, etc) worldwide that have managed to compile AOSP for questionable hardware. However, it is noteworthy that almost none have been able to compile images for Android 7.1 and above that work without hiccups.
Are you saying that simply because a multi-billion dollar company with top engineering talent is able to compile a version of Android that this disprove the comment you're replying to?
The logic is that you're not allowed to use your position in one marked to gain influence in another.
Google knows that most manufacturer needs their devices to ship with the Play Store, because that's where the apps are and smartphone without apps are useless. But they use the Play Store as leverage, forcing manufactures to also ship Chrome, rather than Opera, Firefox or their own browser and that's the bit that is illegal.
Imagine that Apple forced telcos to block Spotify, to force users to iTunes, and if they didn't then no iPhones on that carriers network.
That being said I don't think Google is using the Play Store to force installations of Chrome or the Google search app, that's just weird. People would install Chrome anyway and they already dominate search, so why bother. I think the reason is technical, but the end result is still illegal.
Based on what I see around me, people just use the first browser they see. Until someone with technical know-how comes along, people will use Edge on Windows (and usually complain about how the internet is acting up, but that's another story).
The same goes for Samsung and its own browser, simply called "Internet": people often have heard of Google Chrome but won't go looking if there's a working "internet button" right in front of them. Other vendors use the same trick.
Personally, I would think this is a good thing as it takes away some of the monopoly Google has, if Samsung etc. would just give their browsers regular updates through the Play Store/their own app store (latest version I can find on the Play Store still uses Chrome 59).
There is no technical reason to install the Google app or to install Chrome. Vendors can easily install their own WebKit/Blink engines for all the WebView/technical requirements (as seen by alternative ROMs) and the Google app can be deleted without affecting the other Play Services.
I think this is a ploy to prevent companies like Microsoft from coming with their own ROMs that focuses on Microsoft applications (Cortana, Bing, Edge mobile, Outlook, Microsoft Office etc., MS have a near complete stack of applications for Android) without offering any pre-installed competition like Google does.
Which only serves as strengthening Chrome's position (Chrome being a I/O vector for Google's ad market).
> and they already dominate search, so why bother.
Which obliterates any chance of a remotely widespread alternative emerging. The homescreen search bar is technically a widget like any other yet it is the only one that cannot even be removed from any stock launcher!
Imagine a manufacturer whose part of its proposition (whether through deals or genuine customer interest) is for whatever reason to sell a phone that comes loaded up with Firefox (or Opera) and has Bing (or DuckDuckGo, or Qwant) as a search widget. This is currently impossible and the decision aims to change that. The fact that Google uses its Android - because there is no viable alternative platform - and Play Store - because without the apps the platform is useless to the general public - dominance in the phone market to strong-arm manufacturers into preloading extensions of its search and ad market is a huge issue, turning the "Google experience" on Android into an all-or-nothing proposition.
But there is a related yet more subtle issue that isn't addressed: log into the Play Store, and you're helpfully logged into all other Google services such as Gmail, Chrome, Calendar, Photos... The only thing you can subsequently prevent is automatic syncing, but cannot disable each one of those services at all (unless you disable the whole app). So basically you log in to download whatever app on the Play Store and you turn on a huge firehose aimed at Google's datacenters. As an Android user the feeling I have of the "Google experience" is one of coercion, not freedom.
BTW your iTunes/Apple Music example is interesting, although it could be developed further to better match the situation.
>Imagine that Apple forced telcos to block Spotify, to force users to iTunes, and if they didn't then no iPhones on that carriers network.
Doesn't Apple already do this with the App Store? You can't buy an iPhone with Spotify pre-installed and Apple Music can leverage its position of not having to give another company a 30% cut to undercut spotify's prices.
Exactly. Google isn't blocking other browsers, so the analogy is flawed. Apple is forcing iTunes to be pre-installed, so they are using their dominance on the iPhone to push many other services.
going from the actual ruling against microsoft, that ruling was microsoft had a monopoly on Intel base computers and not computers in general. Apple has an even larger monopoly on A9, A10, A11 based computers. in fact they have 100% monopoly for those computers
But Apple does pre-install iTunes/Apple Music, and make money when users use the default music app rather than downloading alternatives. You gotta pay for the OS somehow, but people aren't willing to pay for OSes. So instead, Apple makes money through the bundled hardware (to use iOS, you must buy an iPhone) and Google through the bundled software (if you want to use some Google apps like the Play Store, you must also use other Google apps like Chrome and Search).
Yeah, what Google is learning here is that you should never license your OS/sell to other manufacturers and never make it open-source and just go the Apple route instead, create the device yourself and make the OS completely proprietary and closed.
Which would allow google to gain dominance in the mobile market... NOT.
Google/Android won because it was very open and flexible, but the moment they started to dominate they started to push their agenda on OEMs users…
Okay, now I am starting to see the argument against Google. Essentially, that they captured a lot of the market with "free" but are increasingly using the terms that come alongside this "free" to bully other manufacturers now that they're locked in with "free Android!".
They tried, but then Google had "free OS" that "everyone used" so it was almost impossible to make a dent in the google-verse. And now when they killed virtually any competition they are pushing their agent.
Recently KaiOS was gaining traction and what did google? Virtually bought their presence/dominance there… sorry "supported project".
If Google manufactured all Android phones, and Android were closed source, and Android came pre-installed with the Play Store, Search, and Chrome, I think it wouldn't be a problem, right?
Again, they can be ‘open’ (sell/give to other OEMs), they just can’t use contracts to force those OEMs to help them dominate other markets/kill Android competition.
That’s what they’re doing here, just like MS did in the 90s with Windows licenses.
"But I can't make this work unless I squash the competition by abusing my monopoly" is not a good argument for allowing it to happen, even if it were true here. The alternative is not to have no operating system, but to have a healthy market of other, possibly smaller, likely more operating systems instead.
In real life more operating systems means crappier software because now developers need to create versions for each one in order to be profitable, and not the "vast array on awesome options" open source enthusiasts would like to imagine.
It's a constant tension. In the real world single party government is more efficient than multiparty democracy. But most of the world hasn't clamored for single party rule unless it's their personalo preferred party
> Imagine that Apple forced telcos to block Spotify.
But they do. Telcos are not allowed to pre-install Spotify on iPhones, are they? iTunes on the other hand is pre-installed along with Safari, Apple Maps and Apple Podcast.
Of course once you have the device you can do whatever you ... can. Similarly once you have your Android phone you can install an alternative browser.
In fact I have had Samsung phones with two app stores and two browsers. Guess which one was was I unable to delete without rooting the phone first?
I am not a fan of whataboutism, but in this case it just seems unfair that the creator of a (more) open ecosystem is taking all the beating.
Note: I actually hate the search widget as well as the assistant, but there are hundreds of alternative home screen apps.
> Most companies aren't in multiple different markets.
If you sort public companies by Market Capitalization, how far down the list do you think you need to go, before you find a company that is only in one market?
Fining anti-competitive practices only makes sense when it's successful.
The EU laws around this are also worded as such. You can do anti-competitive behavior all you want if you're not a major player because you'll just be shooting yourself in the foot.
Neither of those actions are illegal per se, but just because you it's not illegal to dictate terms doesn't mean you're allowed to choose any terms you want.
The problem here is that Google allegedly dictated terms that gave them an unfair advantage in an unrelated market, breaching EU antitrust law.
A stricter antitrust law might have prevented them from gaining such a dominant position in the first place, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here.
IF Google had manufactured all of the phones themselves, and had never open sourced Android, then they could have kept Chrome and Search on Android, and there would have been no problem, right?
But because Google let other people manufacture Androids, and because Google open sourced Android, now it's a problem?
Google didn't write all of Android, there are GPL components. They didn't have the choice to keep it closed source, all of it anyway.
And secondly, they're not being punished for having an open source operating system. They're being punished for forcing manufacturers to install their suite of software (simplified). It's not because they open sourced Android. I repeat, it's NOT BECAUSE THEY OPEN SOURCED ANDROID.
The terms wouldn't prohibit Samsung from making phones with another OS.
The terms would say that Samsung installs the version of Android 2 (the new and closed source one) that Google tells it to. As manufacturing partners are always told what to do.
No, Microsoft was fined for forcing OEMs to install IE and not preinstall other browsers on PCs if they wanted Windows. It had nothing to do directly with end users.
Firstly, Android doesn't have a monopoly. Apple does fine in Europe and their devices can be bought everywhere.
Secondly, there are device makers that didn't cut a deal with Google, notably the Amazon phones and tablets. They weren't that popular with consumers but that's not Google's fault: it just means consumers highly value the additional services Google provides.
Sorry if it was unclear. The first issue is Google pushing the search engine on mobile devices.
For context they also push Google search to iOS devices (Apple gets huge amount of money for that), the same way as they pay firefox to have Google as their default search engine.
The issue though, is that for android phones, it's not a "let's make a deal, we will pay you to have Google Search" attitude. You can't make an android device integrated with Google Play app store without also having Google Search in the home screen and as default search engine.
What the EU is fining among others, is the business practice of forcing device makers that want to use the Play Store to also bundle the other service (Search).
Which is a kind of silly decision on Google's part, because they have far and away the superior product and also the superior brand. Even if the option was given at setup, nearly everyone choosing to buy an Andriod phone would select google as the default search engine...
(I guess you could say that didn't see this coming, but the parallels with MSFT and IE are pretty hard to not see...)
The fine is going to hurt a lot more than any remedial action.
Much of their entire dominance as a company hinges on pushing defaults, and their ability to force manufacturers to ship Google apps, on any phone sold in the EU, is a massive blow. The penalty is chump change for Google, but the remedy is what is going to hurt long term, because competitors can finally get in the game.
Maybe the problem with the Google deal is that it's exclusive: if you want to make one device that's Google approved and contains the "highly valued" services, you are disallowed by the compliance contract to make other Android devices that are not Google-approved.
Yep, that is a big problem. If company A has launched an official Android device, and company B goes to A and asks them to build a totally unrelated Android-based (but not Android proper) device for them, A is not allowed to do that by Google.
But why would company B go to company A and ask them to make a phone "for them"?
It's not hard to become a phone maker these days, judging by the sheer number of Android OEMs that are out there (hundreds, I believe). If there was huge untapped demand for Android sans Google then a new company would appear, they'd download the Android code, they'd go to Shenzen and do a deal with a white label manufacturer, and they'd make such phones. Google wouldn't stop them because they'd be a company that doesn't make any other kinds of phones.
We know this is possible because there's one huge market where that's normal, China. Google's services are blocked in China anyway, so there's no point adding their app store or mapping apps. Local firms produce local versions of Android for their own market and it works fine. We also know this because Amazon tried it and they weren't sued or anything.
There are also open source spins of Android that have custom app stores like F-Droid. A new phone maker could ship those too.
You're missing the forest for the trees. The example was illustrative.
In general, when you see an example that explains a complex issue you should assume that it is significantly simplified and therefore will not be realistic.
First of all, Android is not only used on phones, but also for other types of embedded devices.
It's very normal that a company B would want to go to company A, if A already have a lot of expertise in Android. For instance a POS manufacturer might want to collaborate with Sony or Samsung on an embedded device which uses Android internally (without the GApps & stuff), but Sony and Samsung are forbidden from dealing with B.
Even Amazon would be happy to outsource some Android development to e.g. Samsung but they can't.
So Google could solve this problem by raising the price of its OS, increasing profits and decreasing market share, and leaving a billion with no access to smartphones at all.
Well, there's nothing all that special about the output of a political commission. And the fact that 1 in 5 devices don't run Android would seem to contradict the monopoly accusation.
Antitrust does not require a monopoly, it just requires enough of a market dominance that hurting the market is feasible for you, and then exploiting this position to actually hurt the market.
Basically, all you have to do, is hurt the market in noticeable ways. The sole goal of antitrust laws is keeping the market healthy. They're not fair and have almost no rules attached to them.
> Is the EU going to fine ARM next for having a monopoly on mobile CPUs?
Having a monopoly or being in a dominant position is not the problem. If ARM starts a pizza business and requires everyone who wants to buy mobile CPUs to also order pizzas exclusively from them, then this would be an equally-fineable abuse of a dominant market position and the EU would almost certainly step in.
As it stands, ARM doesn’t force others to buy pizzas exclusively from ARM PIZZA PLACE and hence doesn’t abuse its dominant market position in one market (mobile CPUs) to support its position in another market (pizzas).
Google, on the other hand, uses its dominant position in the "licensable mobile operating systems" market to support its position in the "internet search" and "browsers" market together with anticompetitive behaviour forcing its licensees to exclusively use the Google-approved version of Android.
You can use Android and make a phone that searches Bing and uses your own app store. Look at how Amazon did it.
Most phone makers don't because customers prefer the Google services, but that's not Google's fault. They have provided OEMs with options - options they didn't need to give anyone, apparently, given that non-licensable operating systems like iOS aren't being whacked the same way.
The most Google can do is give away their OS as open source and let people do what they want with it. If they then sell a bundle of extra proprietary stuff on top, stuff that customers want, that can't possibly be more problematic than making everything proprietary.
After all, Apple doesn't even let third party devs from the app store take over the default mapping app: map links always open in Apple Maps regardless of user preference. For the longest time they wouldn't even let apps that competed with their own be developed at all. On Android you can replace the dialer and even the home screen.
I do understand why people are defending the EU here: they like its ideology and vision of the future. But trying to claim Android is some sort of market abuse when Apple's own approach apparently isn't just defies basic logic.
I understand that you can look at this in a way that makes it seem like Apple's tight control over iOS is equivalent to Google's tight control over Android, but there are some key differences:
a) Android has market share dominances (likely around 75% in Europe in 2018)
b) iOS is not made available for other companies to use
You could make arguments that iOS behaves unfairly to third party developers and end users, and there are some decent arguments to be made there, but none of them are relevant to antitrust law because a) means there is no market dominance to abuse with, and b) means there are no competitors to be abused.
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You said "Most phone makers don't [skip Google services] because customers prefer the Google services, but that's not Google's fault". I think this gets to the heart of the disconnect between your stated position, and the legal reality here (IANAL though).
If Google's services are supreme because of user choice, then Google should require no legal arm-twisting to push those services onto devices.
Instead, what has happened is that Google has over-reached with its Android services contracts (one example - if you want to use Google services on one Android phone, you can't make a second Android phone that uses your own services), and that is what the EU is tackling here.
You know that Samsung has their own app store, right? By your explanation that wouldn't be possible because they also ship the Google Play store. But it is. Samsung replace many other apps too. What Google requires is that their services are available, not that others aren't.
The different stories people are telling here about why Google is "abusive" don't correlate with the realities of how Android licensing actually works.
Also since when is 75% market dominance? 75% is popular but that's still a quarter of the population successfully choosing an alternative.
Samsung phones are very often dinged in reviews because they ship a confusing mix of Samsung apps that duplicate the functionality of Google apps. I wouldn't be very surprised at all if Samsung would prefer to just ship their Calendar/whatever app, or even entire phones that only contain their apps/services, but they can't make those choices.
Regarding the 75%, please bear in mind that that is across the total market, which covers a very broad range of price points. Apple may have ~25% share, but that is skewed almost entirely to the top end of the market. In the low end of the market, Android would be nearly 100%.
So what you saying "one example - if you want to use Google services on one Android phone, you can't make a second Android phone that uses your own services" is wrong then?
No, it's not wrong. Samsung is allowed to add its own Calendar/Calculator/whatever apps, and their own App Store, but they are not allowed to remove Google's ones without dropping every non-AOSP Google app/service from every one of their android phones.
- by requiring mobile manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
- by preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
- by giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
It's not that at all. It's abuse of dominance, not the dominance itself that's the problem.
They're using a dominant position in one market to push services in an unrelated market. That's anti-trust 101. And they punish suppliers who don't tow the line.
This is exactly the same as the MS anti-trust case. Swap IE for Google Web Services (Search/Maps/Chrome) and swap Android for Windows.
If ARM started forcing phone companies using their CPUs to only sell to AT&T, that's your analogy. As it is, because ARM don't force unrelated services or products on their customers, it's not analogous.
If they abuse their position e.g. by forcing device makers to sign contracts preventing them from using RISC-V etc., then yes, EU might get interested in that, too.
Maybe? Is there something about their business practices that shapes the market to their benefit? If so, and there are enough complaints then maybe not "next" but yeah.
As an independent phone maker, if this was their concern, they should have backed one of the other dozen or so attempts at a phone OS. No one forced them to choose Android.
They also have the option to write their own OS anytime they want.
It does have a dominant market position though, and that's what's in the legal stuff that they're being fined under. You do not need a complete monopoly to have a dominant market position.
> Secondly, there are device makers that didn't cut a deal with Google, notably the Amazon phones and tablets. They weren't that popular with consumers but that's not Google's fault: it just means consumers highly value the additional services Google provides.
More than that though, they effectively stopped device manufactures from selling these (because of exclusivity agreements), and a lack of range isn't going to have helped amazon:
> For example, the Commission has found evidence that Google's conduct prevented a number of large manufacturers from developing and selling devices based on Amazon's Android fork called "Fire OS".
Apple doesn't license their OS to OEMs. I'd say them blocking alternative browser engines is controversial though. Also they dislike people using certain libraries, emulator technology, providing the ability to execute downloadable scripts (e.g. flash), etc.
Google is exactly in the same position as Microsoft when they were caught red handed doing shitty stuff with the vendors.
The interesting part is both Microsoft and Google prioritized licensing/delivering the OS and associated software, keeping a healthy distance from building hardware. Google tried a bit more with the Nexus/Pixel programs, but even then the target was only for small scale niche devices.
What I am driving at is that once android got traction, Google’s position went way up while vendor’s bargaining power went down, even as vendors where the ones taking the risks down the line. That kind of unbalance makes it easier to have abusive contracts and business practices.
It starts with good intentions (working symbiothically with the makers at innovative products) but things change, and with success I’d guess different kind of people also come into the organization to push more aggressive practices.
Apple has no monopoly on any hardware market where they are not the only one. They cannot dictate terms to any other OEM manufacturing A10-compatible computers.
In their Statement of Objections, the European Commission accused Google of the breach of EU antitrust rules in three ways:
- by requiring mobile manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
- by preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
- by giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
My understanding is that the "certain Google proprietary apps" most importantly contain the Play store. Yes, in theory you could install FDroid - however if you, as a manufacturer, don't want to break the "install our app" flows of basically every website, you need the Play store - and therefore you also need to install Chrome, default Google Search and never sell a phone with Lineage OS installed ever again.
Not sure if the same licensing also applies to Google Play Services - if yes, this might make it difficult to even run the apps without getting the license, no matter which store is used.
That proprietary software is probably Google Play Services because replacing Play Store is relatively easy. For example, in Russia Yandex wanted to make its own store and in China (where Google is blocked by the government) there are several competing app stores.
Google Play links on websites are not the problem because on Adroid an app can use App Links [1] to start an alternative store instead of opening a Play Store page in a browser.
The margins of the Play Store are huge and it's quite easy to disrupt with a copy cat - the developers will flock to an alternative store with similar functionality and 2% fees. And of course customers.
The Play store is the crown jewel and protecting that massive revenue stream is paramount, it could well become the most important software market in the world.
-Developers
-Customers
-To be able to survive on fees less than it costs for a credit card transaction
-To be installed on something better than Android
The only thing a copycat needs is that manufacturers be allowed to install it as the default app store, without ruining their relation with Google.
Once that happens, copy cats will pay manufacturers to preinstall, leading to customers, leading to developers who want to tap that still uncrowded market. And once multiple app stores bootstrap, a price war is inevitable - margins of 30% would be undefendable since they would be passed on to the consumer who would switch to a cheaper app store.
It's very clear why Google would want to prevent such a race.
1. They should release a heavily locked-down version of Android, which manufacturers and carriers cannot modify - apart from basics like bundled apps, widgets and wallpapers (uninstallable). Update would come direct from Google, and hardware support would be limited to specific components.
2. Make all of Android closed source and shut down AOSP. What is the point of it anyway?
This would solve the fragmentation problem, and be better for consumers since they would get updates quicker and for a longer time. Paradoxically it would lead to less 'choice' for consumers.
This is more about google forcing OEMs to bundle a ton of google apps and making them default in order to get google play services. If you are an OEM, you have to accept the all or nothing proposition if you want google play. And all OEMs want google play. The android as you know is AOSP + google play services blobs. Nobody sells pure AOSP phones (not counting some small niche players).
Apple defenders will dismiss market share when comparing Android and iOS and claim that share of profits is all that counts. But they're happy to use market share to justify sanctions against Google. You can't have it both ways folks.
The fact is that Apple controls enough of the users that everybody wants that they have at least as much influence as Google does in mobile. That they've chosen to protect their fat profit margins and accumulate the largest pile of corporate cash in history while ignoring customers that can't afford premium devices should not insulate them from similar scrutiny.
If the EU wants to preserve any credibility on these issues they should take a hard look at Apple's refusal to allow other browser engines on iOS.
Looking at the comment below enumerating the reasons for the ruling, I don't see any overlap between what Google is being fined for and Apple's business practices. Apple isn't forcing 3rd party OEMs to install Safari on their hardware in order to run Apple apps because Apple makes all their own hardware. iOS is not an open source OS meant to be available to third parties, and Apple doesn't have a search engine to pay carriers to mandate.
>requiring mobile manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
>preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
>giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
You missed my point. Effectively there is more than one kind of monopoly and Apple has just as much control over the mobile space as Google does and abuses it in their own way by pushing their browser, disallowing third party app stores and alternative default mail, maps, etc. Expect to see more of this as Apple starts to rely more and more on services revenue.
Apple currently pulls in an astonishing 87% of mobile profits. Why on earth should they be excluded from anti-trust scrutiny?
Because they don't control the devices of 87% of users. Their profits are good for them and all, but have no direct bearing on their ability to exert unfair influence, especially in other markets (e.g. search engines).
They have plenty of influence for developers, which means they have influence for consumers. They have a huge say in what apps and websites get built and how because everybody has to play by their rules to get on their lucrative platform. Do you think you could launch a successful search engine today that wasn't available on iOS?
Take Safari as a case in point. Apple doesn't allow other browsers on their platform which means webdevs have been limited to the parts of the web stack that Apple supports. Which, until recently, was falling pretty far behind the state of the art.
Marketshare is marketshare and the numbers are clear. Yes, Apple is more influential than its marketshare indicates, but that is hard to quantify (especially legally) and in any case probably not as large an effect as you think.
They are not excluded. They are just not breaking the law that says you cannot force manufacturers to bundle your market-leading-services to gain an unfair advantage in other markets.
Apple might be breaking other laws, but not this one. Google is breaking this law. Hence the fine.
Google is being accused of using its dominance to force __manufactures__ into setting Google search as default, Chrome as default browser and not selling phones with Android competitor like LineageOS
Apple is incapable of abusing manufacturers as Apple does not work with manufacturers at all. The entire discussion simply does not apply to Apple.
This one is much worse because although Microsoft tried to get complete control of the PC platform many years ago, they never managed to prevent people from installing other operating systems on their PCs. Had Microsoft the same power Google has now on mobile platforms, I would be writing this post using Windows 10 instead of Debian because Linux as well as *BSD and others would either not exist or could never properly work due to lack of OSS drivers which is by far the #1 plague in the mobile world.
Google monopoly has very little to do with Chrome bundling and a lot with hardware being kept tight closed to kill any competition: the day we have OSS drivers is the day we can have other OSes (which have been already written) fully working; that will allow also software to be fully usable, creating more competition Google will have to respond to, hopefully with more openness and quality.
Before someone replies that drivers have nothing to do with browser bundling, think about how could Google force you to install anything or use any of their services if your underlying OS and surrounding environment didn't depend on anything from them because it wasn't even Android. Example: https://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/
Google monopoly is a byproduct of proprietary hardware/firmware, that's what a lot of people is missing. Going every time after this or that corporation because it built a monopoly is useless when trying to build a monopoly is everyone's untold ultimate goal in the current economic system; we would better spend our energies making sure that nobody can't even attempt to build a monopoly, and open specs hardware would be one step in this direction.
I can understand telcos wanting a closed layer before the radio section to prevent people from tampering with cell service, but to me everything else has to be open.
Man, some of these could be Corp-explained away by some savvy PR person but why the heck would you buy a URL that is like your competitor and point it to you, other than to deliberately stifle competition? I would like to hear the response from Google on that one.
Microsoft got into trouble because they forced companies like Dell and HP to make their products feature Internet Explorer.
Google is getting into trouble now because they're forcing companies like Samsung and LG to make their products feature Chrome.
Apple is not getting into trouble now because Apple is not forcing Apple to make their products feature Safari. Obviously iOS does feature Safari, but Apple was free to make that choice. There is no OEM here being bullied.
A red herring. Every product on the market—from toasters to lawnmowers—contain numerous choices made by the product manufacturer and not by the end user.
It is for having a dominant market position in mobile phones (90% global market share) and abusing the market position in mobile phone operating systems to favor their other products.
Apple does not have a dominant market position and does not give away iOS for free.
Making Android free is an anti-competitive practice because it inhibits the formation of a competitive market for mobile phone operating systems. Because Google's practice of making Android free inhibits competition they are not allowed to exploit the lack of competition for profit.
I don't see this reasoning at all. The fine is because Google is illegally cementing it's position as a dominant search engine through licensing of the android platform.
Apple is simply imposing such onerous terms that no OEMs can sell iOS. But because (as a result of this anti-competetive behaviour) their market share in the OS market is low, it doesn't break the law.
Then why isn't Google allowed to not sell their software to others to use? Google doesn't want to let Amazon have the Play Store without following conditions, they should have that right.
I am arguing there is no real difference between tying, and not selling to 3rd parties at all and only using your product in a vertically integrated business. Vertical integration amounts to tying with extremely onerous requirements that only the selling company (i.e. Apple) can meet.
I don't get it either with regards to the Microsoft case. You need a browser to start with but you can install any browser available. Android doesn't block Bing, or any other search engine. So what's the problem?
iOS is much worse. You aren't even allowed to install another browser. "Chrome" and "Firefox" on iOS are not real Chrome and Firefox, they are wrappers around Safari's webkit engine.
Apple does not have a <s>monopoly</s> dominant position. In my country I think they are like 10% of the market. You can't abuse your dominant position if you don't have one.
But for this case, they are using a definition that makes Android even more dominant: they allege that Google restricts device manufacturers' freedoms. And from a device manufacturer point of view, Android has a 90+% market share of "licensable smart mobile operating systems", with "licensable" being key: as a device manufacturer, you cannot use iOS, so that doesn't count if you buy into this line of argument:
That is fair enough - though is there really any competition in that space? Even if Google did nothing, I imagine most manufacturers would continue using Android as there isn't much choice. I don't actually know any mobile OS other than iOS and Android variants. Blackberry, Nokia (?) and Windows for mobile are all pretty much dead at this point.
Well, that's why they don't want to limit Android's market share, instead they want to open up Android licensing restrictions.
In particular, the EU alleges that if you want to install Google Play on your phones, you need to sign a license agreement which also forces you to:
a) install Google Chrome;
b) make Google Search the default search engine; and
c) not sell phones with Android forks at the same time ("Anti-Fragmentation Agreement").
They want to force Google to allow manufacturers to more freely chose which apps to pre-install and also to be able to offer Android forks in parallel to "Google-finish" Android.
I'm not sure if this will really be good for consumers... I would argue that most smartphones have too much crapware on them, not too little. On the other hand, the Microsoft Internet Explorer unbundling case arguably helped fuel the success of Firefox in breaking the IE dominance, which I would argue was good for consumers.
* Symbian
* Palm webOS
* Mozilla (I think that was also called WebOS?)
* Jola
* Some blackberry thing based on QNX that "supported" Android apps
* Tizan
* Windows Phone
* Ubuntu Phone
Plus a bunch of independent / hobby(?) ones that never really took off, eg the Inferno port
These days it feels like most people have given up trying to compete against Apple and Google.
I personally think the issue is more with the OEMs wanting to close their hardware than it is with developers and consumers (not that Im suggesting your point doesn't also play a part)
It's also about giving the manufacturers more freedom in what "flavor" of Android they ship, e.g. currently Google forbids them from making both devices with Android with all the Google stuff and devices without it, or devices only using some of the package.
Seems kinda perverse. After all, you can't fork Windows, macOS, or iOS at all. Why should making Android more open than the competition lead to worse punishment?
It's not making Android more open that leads to the punishment here. Google made Android more open when they open-sourced AOSP; they made it more closed when they prohibited manufacturers from actually forking Android in a way Google doesn't like. The behavior that is punished is the use of their market power to negate the open-sourcing, not the open-sourcing itself.
They are free to fork Android though and use it however they want, as Amazon did. They just can't install the Google Play Store without including the other Google apps which Google claims are part of a unified experience.
Of course there is. Mobile OEMs are quite capable of making their own operating systems and not so many years ago they all did. Of course Apple does, and Samsung still does with Tizen, from what I know.
These alternatives mostly suck but "your competitors suck" is not grounds for an anti-trust violation. No phone vendor is forced to deal with Google, that's an absurd distortion of the facts. Even if they feel their own in-house engineering abilities are so weak they can't make a better platform than Android, they can still take the open source code and use it as a base, providing their own mapping and app store along the way ... just like Apple do.
Probably UK, because iOS marketshare in UK is very close to 50% (52% Android, 46% iOS [1]). For curious, in some countries there is much more Apple iPhone users than Android users, like in Liechtenstein (58% [2]) or Monaco (64% [3]).
Richer countries naturally have more iOS devices because those are more expensive. With Android, you pay with your privacy. Unless you opt out of GMS, but that's an all of nothing deal.
- has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);
- made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed the Google Search app on their devices; and
- has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
- has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
This is the most clearly anti-competitive practice.
I would argue that its actually pro-consumer - because if I was Google's CEO, I would just shut down AOSP, and wish that I had done it years ago, in relation to this ruling.
Google supports AOSP and has done so for years, making it available freely. Why shouldn't they be able to dictate their own terms? If phone makers don't like it, they can make their own OS (which they have - and they all suck).
> Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
Hence the fine.
You cannot have something open and control it at the same time.
> Market dominance is, as such, not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However, dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they are dominant or in separate markets.
> Google has engaged in three separate types of practices, which all had the aim of cementing Google's dominant position in general internet search.
It’s about abusing the power of a monopolistic position in the market. The power being abused is the monopoly power.
If you don’t have a monopoly and do things your partners/competitors don’t like, they can’t complain that you are abusing a dominant market position to get away with it.
There’s nothing wrong with bundling. But when you have a monopoly on the market bundling suddenly is wrong and abusive even if it’s the right thing for your end users.
So we see time and again monopolies are knee-capped in the market and face these absurd fines, in the name of fairness and competition.
I have no doubt that some monopolies leverage their market dominance for some pretty atrocious dealings. I personally see nothing wrong with Google licensing the optional (but extremely popular) Google Play services such that it requires Google Search and Chrome along with it.
If they were unrelated then the experience of Google Play Services would be identical with or without the other pieces (Chrome and Search). I don’t use Android so I can’t say for sure, but I’m quite confident that the overall experience suffers without all three pieces together.
> If they were unrelated then the experience of Google Play Services would be identical with or without the other pieces (Chrome and Search). I don’t use Android so I can’t say for sure, but I’m quite confident that the overall experience suffers without all three pieces together.
The EU text talks about requiring chrome and search if the play store is installed. As a user of android, I cannot think of any way in which these are linked. I don't see why the play store wouldn't work without those two, or would even lose a single feature.
if we are comparing to the microsoft case apple does have a monopoly. microsoft was not found to have a monopoly on computers in general. it was specifically found to have a monopoly on intel based computers. Apple has a monopoly on A9, A10, A11 based computers. A 100% monopoly
A monopoly is not defined by the possiblity that there are other products available for purchase on the market, but rather how many products have been purchased and are in use.
Using your reasoning, Microsoft could never have had a monopoly on Windows because you always could have bought a Mac.
That latter definition is in fact a reasonable counter-argument to Windows being a monopoly (people did buy Macs), and that's why Microsoft got in trouble for the deals they cut to try and crush Netscape, not for making a more popular OS than Apple did.
You can't define a monopoly as "your competitors aren't popular" because otherwise it'd be illegal to invent new product categories, as at the start you'd be the only player in the new space. You can't define it that way for another reason: it punishes success.
FWIW the definition of a patent is a "time-limited monopoly on working an invention", so all new products that are patented are monopolies by definition.
As the sibling comment rightly says, monopolies are acceptable. But, as the EU clearly point out, a greater onus is put on monopolies to avoid abusing their monopoly power.
That would work if patents were enforceable but they really aren't. I can't see a company that (re)invented a new product category where no competitors emerged because of patents.
A monopoly is exactly that. Mono means one. Thats the root of the word. What you are describing is a dominant position, which is completely different since its a relative definition.
> Nevertheless, the Commission investigated to what extent competition for end users (downstream), in particular between Apple and Android devices, could indirectly constrain Google's market power for the licensing of Android to device manufacturers (upstream). The Commission found that this competition does not sufficiently constrain Google upstream for a number of reasons, including:
They are not punished for their behavior in the downstream market (in which they barely participate). They are punished for their behavior in the upstream market. We consumers do not participate in the upstream market.
Nevertheless, the EU commission considered whether the lack of a monopoly in the downstream market ameliorated the monopoly effects in the upstream market and found it did not.
This is talking about from the perspective of phone manufacturer. As a phone manufacturer you can't license iOS so that's out. You can really only license Android and if you do you have to also install Google Apps, Chrome, and make Google the default search engine on your phone.
You are not required to license Android to use Android. AOSP and other versions forked from AOSP do exist.
There are.other mobile OSes available as well. I'm sure Microsoft will gladly let you use their OS for the right price, KaiOS, Ubuntu phone OS could be resurrected, you could role your own, I'm sure Symbian is for sale somewhere, how about Meego.
>In particular, Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
If you want to have Google apps on your phone you can't sell any forked android version.
Microsoft never had a monopoly in operating systems ever in it's history either. You could install CP/M on IBM XTs and you could run OS/2 or Linux or a plethora of other UNIXes on later IBMs and clones instead of Windows.
Doesn't mean they hadn't had market control due to it's market share.
The problem with this definition is that it also assumes that if you have 75%+ market share you're likely having a similar share of the profits which is not the case here. If you take profit into account it's really at best a 50-50 market for Google.
I agree that assumption is the wrong word. But do you have examples of monopolies that didn't take the profits and control the pricing of the markets they control?
Monopolies are not based on the profit but market share. Yes Apple has a very profitable niche but that does not mean Android does not have a near-monopoly on smartphones.
No, a monopoly is controlling a market to the point where competition is restricted via controlling supply or other means. A company can have 100% market share and not be a monopoly (which is always what happens when a new market emerges).
(Not OP:) In theory I agree. As soon as you have IPR like patents and copyright that are protecting the new product then you're inhibiting access for other companies; that is probably the case in a lot of new markets.
So if price pressure from consumers forces down your profit then you should be allowed to exploit a monopolistic position to leverage profits in another sector?
Like, own all cinemas in a country but home-viewing keeps profit low, so now it's fine to only allow people to visit your cinemas if they buy clothes from your clothing company?
A better example would be you own 75%+ of the cinemas but revenue wise you only control 50% of it. And in that case I think it's fair to do it. If they would force Apple out that would be a problem, but instead they even give you the basis for your own cinema for free (in contrast to Apple).
This isn't a revenue generating scheme. This is a fine for bad business practices.
This might shock you, but not every country in the world believes companies should have free reign to do whatever the fuck they like. It's not like deregulation is a requirement for capitalism.
The real problem here is the minority of Americans who live with their heads firmly up their own arses and don't have any concept of the wider world - of which America is literally only one entity amongst a great many of others. You assume that everyone is envious (which, by the way, is the correct term. "Jealousy" - as you described it in one of your other comments - doesn't refer to possessions) of America when in actual fact we just want American businesses to play by the same rules as European businesses do when those companies do business in Europe. You're not being singled out because we have the same expectation for companies of all nationalities; regardless of the continent they reside. It just so happens that American businesses are some of the worst offenders (possibly due to your culture of anything goes in business?). However as you have also pointed out, European companies do also get penalised when they break the rules too. So you aren't a special case.
But honestly, given the stunts Boeing pulls, your various business lobby groups that affect overseas legislation (eg the breast milk vs formula was), the recent changes to trade relations Trump has made, and all the other numerous indiscretions America make to put their own industries first; you are hardly in the position to take the moral high ground when it comes to international business relations.
> It's not just the administration. Every time the EU has levied fines against Google a lot of Americans on HN claim that the EU is doing it because they're jealous of how successful American businesses are.
I'm having a really hard time figuring out what happy ending the EU has in mind here. Google stops licensing Android to OEMs and doubles down on Pixel. It takes them years to catch up to Apple's marking and distribution head start, if they ever do. Samsung goes back to Tizen, which nobody wants, and sales plummet. All the other Android OEMs disappear.
All we have left is Apple and the most expensive, proprietary and locked down platform in computing history. A single gatekeeper effectively controls the app space. Safari dictates what happens on the web. Who wins here except for the company that's already the richest in history?
Or, more likely, the EU keeps going down this road and tech companies eventually start treating it like the backward nanny state it is and wall it off.
I get the impression that you didn't read the actual article. There are three complaints all basically about the contractual conditions Google imposes, two about imposing Google search and the most interesting one about Google forcing manufacturers to choose between selling only Google's version with Play Store & Google apps or never Google's version. This forced in particular the big ones to commit fully to Google's version and companies like Samsung that might have been interested in providing a phone with Cyanogen, Lineage, etc etc simply couldn't do it.
It's a plain and simple competition case where Google was exploiting its market position "buy only from us or never from us". Your scenario doesn't make any sense whatsoever. In fact Samsung can produce Tizen phones already and still does as it's not a competing Android.
Why would Google continue to license Android to Samsung when it can no longer make any revenue from Samsung phones? At that point it would only make sense for them to throw all their efforts into Pixel and catch up as best they can.
They would negotiate different licensing terms that require the licensee to risk their own capital on a bet that the consumer wants android devices with all of the associated Google services. That would be different from their current position of essentially paying for Google services with an in-kind payment of non-competition.
If there are lots of people to buy from, that's a fair offer. If there's only one person to buy from (Google, in this case), that's not a fair offer, it's abusing your monopoly.
How about Google just allows OEM to license without preventing them to customize as they see fit best for their customers? Or allow them to build other solutions, not forcing them to do it the Google way?
Its the exact same evil business practicr Microsoft did in the 90s, surprising Google got away with it that long. But also Microsoft wasn't fined until something like 10 years later...
The key difference at that time was that Microsoft had zero real competition and was stifling innovation in the OS and web space. Instead today Android is the only alternative to the most proprietary and richest company in the history of computing, which needs no legal remedies or special favors.
Absolutely still true today. If you think otherwise you are clearly not in the business of developing mobile apps. Ten years ago native mobile apps were barely even a thing.
Take the HQ app for just one recent high profile app out of countless other examples.
Absolutely not true today and I am in that business. The number of companies which are iOS-only or even iOS-first is negligible these days. In most cases both platforms are supported, often with Android having a head start.
I’ve been developing mobile apps professionally for 8 years. Clients want and care about iOS first. Android gets kicked down the road and outsourced to a third party every time. The only thing that’s changed is that people realize they need an android version eventually, instead of just ignoring it completely.
Maybe it’s different in some other markets but this is simply irrefutable in the USA and anybody trying to argue otherwise is just being disingenuous.
Eight years ago I'd agree with you, probably even five-ish, but for the past two, three years there is virtually no difference anymore and Android is usually the priority, except for some designer firms who still live in their Apple bubble.
For the US market it might be different, as it is one of the few markets where Apple is still the clear leader.
Both of you are insisting your own experience is more correct, without any imperical evidence or empathy. Take a moment to step back and realize your perspective isn't the only one.
I cant do more than provide the numbers my statements are based on. Please go and check that before you make wild allgations about lack of evidence or empathy.
The only one of those platforms that even kind of mattered on the desktop at the time was Apple and even they were way more niche than they were today. The web space certainly did matter and it was clear at the time it would come to matter a lot more if Microsoft wasn’t permitted to go on strangling it with IE and ActiveX.
It is similar to today, respectively we have even less choice, we have two platforms, out of which one is mostly a lifestyle company and has a minor market share of ~20%, whereas the second is dominating the market at ~80%
Google doesn't need to stop licensing GMS to OEM's. They simply need to stop giving it away for free and start charging OEM's to license it. And the OEM's that do license it will, of course, pass on the expenses to the consumer and raise the cost of the device. If the EU wants to stop Google from forcing OEM's to install their apps then congratulations you've now put OEM's in a position where they will now pay for GMS licensing and increase phone prices. Ironically, this decision will favor Google as the additional revenue from GMS licensing will allow them to decrease their dependency on search and further diversify their revenue streams. That 5 billion dollar fine will quickly be replenished with EU GMS licensing fees.
>The free distribution of the Android platform, and of Google’s suite of applications, is not only efficient for phone makers and operators—it’s of huge benefit for developers and consumers. If phone makers and mobile network operators couldn’t include our apps on their wide range of devices, it would upset the balance of the Android ecosystem. So far, the Android business model has meant that we haven't had to charge phone makers for our technology, or depend on a tightly controlled distribution model.[1]
The happy ending is that megacorps stop screwing around and start obeying the laws, like everyone else.
In your fantasy scenario you didn't consider that the current version(s) of Android running on billions of devices are mostly open source, and there's nothing preventing Samsung, or Samsung + Sony + whoever to take that, combine it with one of the other existing app store and GApps replacement apps (Firefox, some maps e.g. Nokia, etc) and continuing like nothing happened.
What are the Android app developers going to do, say "oh well" and settle for their market share shrinking to almost nothing which is what the Pixel amounts to? No, they will publish on the new Samsung app store.
And life moves on. Perhaps Jolla gets a boost, or we see a new or old player try something new.
This isn't a realistic scenario. If Google "stopped licensing Android", most OEMs would fork it at least initiating. Additionally, if Google were to move solely into the Pixel space, it would fail, overtaken by Samsung and other OEMs which know how to run a hardware business. Apple will continue to be a niche player because they like it that way, they aren't a threat and never have been. And without the big Android bully in the picture, it's likely new Linux-based OSes would find a place to flourish. Microsoft would probably reenter the mobile arena as well. You are forgetting there are dozens of manufacturers who all have large mobile phone businesses, and they aren't going to disappear because Google is forced to comply with the law.
There is no scenario where Apple becomes a big scary monopoly that wins everything. That's what Google is, and that's why they're being fined.
Who is going to use Android with no app store and a bunch of crappy bundled apps? The answer is nobody. Look how far Amazon has been able to push that with all their engineering and marketing muscle.
Apple is a niche player only because they clung to their margins like a bag of heroin and let cheap Android phones eat their lunch. If it weren't for Android they would have zero serious competition.
I find myself in the very odd position today of having for the first time some sympathy with the Brexiters.
>If Google "stopped licensing Android", most OEMs would fork it at least initiating.
Every OEM release of Android is forked so your statement doesn't make sense.
>Additionally, if Google were to move solely into the Pixel space, it would fail, overtaken by Samsung and other OEMs which know how to run a hardware business.
Google doesn't need to confine their OS to just Pixel devices. They can also work with any OEM that wants to ship the Google version of Android and GMS - (Nokia, Motorola, etc). Given a choice, consumers would easily choose a phone running Android with GMS over any other non iOS device. Furthermore, Google could also close source Android and not continue to give Samsung a free OS to cake their services on. The decline of Samsung as they scramble to make Tizen their only smartphone OS would be entertaining to watch.
>And without the big Android bully in the picture, it's likely new Linux-based OSes would find a place to flourish.
Yes, just like all of those desktop Linux distributions have flourished.
>You are forgetting there are dozens of manufacturers who all have large mobile phone businesses
You mean the same ones that can't write operating systems or secure their devices?
Very slightly off topic but I actually think how Android handles default apps is the best of both worlds. It comes with very very good default Google Apps that work well together but it is very easy to switch out whatever you want for an alternative. How iOS handles it is the opposite. For their default apps they either straight out not allow competitors, severely limit what their competitors or (if I remember correctly) they even removed apps when a newer iOS added Apple's own version so they were now "competing".
I know that anti-trust laws are probably not applicable as Apple does have a dominant position based on total market share, but to me this practice seems far more anti-competitive. Banning competitors seems worse than fully allowing competitors but providing your own as default that can easily be changed.
> but it is very easy to switch out whatever you want for an alternative
Do tell how one could switch out the map from Google Maps to anything else (Bing, OpenStreetMap, whatever).
Or how I could get rid of Google+ without needing to wipe my device or use a zero-day.
Or perhaps how I could get apk files from their repository without agreeing to the Google TOS and privacy policy, and without using some hacky system like Yalp store that breaks every couple of weeks for a little while.
This is definitely not easy to swap out. I bet that even from the top 10% of tech-savvy people on hacker news, there's 9%. that cannot figure out how to remove google completely within a normal working day of 8 hours.
You switch out the map app like this, same way you change the default app for anything else: https://360.here.com/2015/01/29/swap-google-maps-here-androi... (The instructions for switching to, say, Google's own Waze app are pretty much the same too.) This is as I understand it not possible on Apple's iOS; even if you install a third-party mapping application, everything else on the system which opens up a map will still use Apple's map.
That's a location picker. I'm talking about the map view on which applications show you things, such as live views of all trains in the country or something.
And this is just one example, there are a hundred more things that are in the proprietary google suite, without which you'll be able to install only a few of the apps available for the platform.
Hmm, those are the specific apps using Google Maps API. That's like saying why does HackerNews use jQuery, I want it to use lodash. (I don't know if they do, just an example).
Don't they just call the default maps sdk, whatever implementation it is? Because if I firewall google play services and some other google stuff, but not the app that uses it, then everything will work but the map isn't displayed. It's google play services that does the map loading, not the app, it seems.
The OP was talking about built-in Android support for changing defaults using intents. It's a pop-up menu, and is pretty easy to understand even for non-HN users.
> Doesn't that apply to almost any software with a license?
But Android claims be FOSS. I understand that "using google servers" != "the AOSP project", but there's a large number of apps whose only publication channel is this ubiquitous play store, because the devs know that practically everyone who has Android will opt into the google kingdom as well. If it was closed source like iOS and if you can't even sideload apks (or ipas or whatever they are) then I'd not be surprised that I have to agree to some near-monopoly's TOS and privpolicy in order to get access to 99% of the published apps.
I've noticed that on iOS, Google can be quite pushy with regards to their apps. No matter how many times I click "don't ask me again", Hangouts always asks if I want to install Chrome whenever I try to open a web link (in Safari). And I get constant nags on Gmail web to install Gmail on my iPhone to "get the full experience" (as opposed to using the bundled iOS Mail app).
Could you please tell me how I can uninstall the default apps, or at least keep them from constantly updating themselves? That half a gig of unwanted apps that just keeps growing itself is pretty annoying.
In settings go to apps, select the app you wish to stop updating and then select disable. All updates to the app will be removed and the app will no longer update.
Default apps are often built-in and can't be uninstalled. But you can disable them. See https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2521768 for details. If you do this then it's worth uninstalling any updates to the app first, to free-up some space.
True, that bit is a bit annoying, but again, not being able to switch out or uninstall default apps is much worse than just not being able to uninstall default apps.
> I know that anti-trust laws are probably not applicable as Apple does have a dominant position based on total market share
It's an interesting question though, because it depends on which 'market' you're talking about. This is a vexed question in antitrust law [1]. There is some pending litigation in the United States as to whether Apple illegally monopolized the market for iPhone apps [2], but it's been brought by app purchasers rather than the regulator, and Apple has taken the case to the Supreme Court to argue that the purchasers don't have standing to sue.
It would be perverse if the court ordered Apple to modify iOS to support third-party app-stores. I see it as the same situation as video game console licensing: all games for the Xbox, PS and Nintendo must be approved by the platform owner and they take a cut from all sales.
The "happy medium" we have today: where jailbreaking was found to be not illegal, works for as long as we can jailbreak. I note that iOS does now allow sideloaded apps too, though they still must run in the sandbox, but it does mean you can distribute an app that wouldn't be approved for the App Store.
The EU had another workaround: impose a higher import tariff on video game consoles than general-purpose computers. Sony released a Linux kit for the PS2 so they could say the PS2 was a general-purpose computer, not a console. I think it worked initially but because hardly anyone bought the Linux kit (it wasn't sold at retail with the console) the customs people took a look and Sony had to start paying higher tariffs.
Do you have a source for this? I can’t remember Apple disallowing an app because Apple itself provides a similar app. I checked the default apps quickly on my phone, and can find several competitors for all of them. If you are talking about the "apps" Messages.app or Phone.app then I guess you might be right if we define "not providing a public API" the same as "disallowing on the App Store".
The policy no longer applies but for a long time, from the start of the app store, you weren't allowed to make apps that "duplicated the functionality" of the built in apps.
Notably Google made their own maps app and Apple banned it:
That's a good reason why fines (like what Google is getting) should be huge.
It's deliberate to kill competition while not being in a dominant position, and then when in a dominant position, continue the trajectory by defining defaults.
The Apple apps are dominant partially because of the abusive rules the app store had earlier. It's quite clear from the fact that in any area where Apple did not have a default app, they are unable to match what the free market offers.
You can’t choose what happens is the default on an iPhone. If I want to use Gmail to open mailto links I cannot. If I want to use chrome to open web links by default, I cannot.
On Android you can pick whatever apps you want as the default.
I might have misunderstood what theBobBob meant with "default apps" completely, but that was not how I understood it at all. As far as I understand, he talks about disallowing apps on the App Store, so this would be a completely different point (to which I agree, setting a different browser would be nice).
They don’t allow apps that have similar functionality as well. On my phone, but when AirPods came out they pulled an app that helped you find your AirPods from the store because they included their own version of the same tool in an update
IMHO, antitrust fines/penalties should change from amount of money to some other type of penalty, like temporary market exclusion/block or something, otherwise companies like Google and others can simply use its cash (that's was also made due to the unfair advantage), pay the fine and move on to the next market dominance.
They will always have cash to pay, even if the fines are higher and higher. They kind of expect for this in their long term strategic planning.
This is the initial fine. Now they have 90 days to comply, otherwise they will get penalties (up to 5% worldwide turnover of Alphabet) until they do. From the link:
> Google must now bring the conduct effectively to an end within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
5% of your worldwide revenue (not benefits) for lack on compliance on one issue? With others pending? I do think this is not something you can ignore very long.
I reckon companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, $bigCorp, probably calculate the ROI of the venture before executing it. So for example in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if Google calculated a high chance of pocketing $5b and expected (lobbied) to be fined much, much less, leaving them with a big profit anywhere. And if they don't get caught or fined: win.
Last I heard, Google didn't actually require Google Search to be the default on Android phones. For a while Microsoft was paying some manufacturers to make Bing the default, and in some cases even requiring them to stop users from changing it.
That's hefty. But this does affect all major iPhone markets, not the EU alone. So they probably (maybe. I guess.) only put a fraction of that on the bill.
Good point. But I think if Google/Alphabet does not comply, the commission could fine them again. But that's difficult to judge now... All we consumers can do is wait for Google's next move and where it leads from there.
But generally, this is a step in the right direction. As much as I am a fan of early Google and the great services they offer, a big part of me doesn't like the privacy-nightmare conglomerate they became.
Yeah I agree. This is a particularly interesting situation because I love part of google while simultaneously am afraid of parts of it as well.
I would be sad if google was beaten out of existence (seems unlikely I know) even though my permissions are probably being abused by google and their effect on me all in all may not be great. However, it makes me happy to see that the EU is working on making google better.
Surely you just believe that the fine is not high enough, not that it is ineffective in principle? There exists a number X which is the amount that google could be fined where they are ambivalent between that fine and a ban from the market for some period of time which is what you had in mind. Thus, a fine would be equally effective at X. So I don't see why you think fines are fundamentally ineffective?
Sure, there exists some amount X, but you can hardly remedy a complete temporay ban with money.
Because it means that users have to look at alternatives. They might find that they prefer them in the long run, and it might even just incentivize competition to keep going. And this is especially damaging in monopoly-like situations, as many users don't even know of competing products.
But how would you do something like that with companies like Google? So many organisations probably rely on GCP, GMail etc that you couldn't stop them from operating without stutting huge numbers of businesses too.
Adresses exactly none of the three points they were fined other?
> The decision ignores the fact that Android phones compete with iOS phones,
Except as explicitly stated in the decision.
> This is possible thanks to simple rules that ensure technical compatibility, no matter what the size or shape of the device. No phone maker is even obliged to sign up to these rules
Except for the very definition of anti-trust and monopoly and surely just by conincidence totally ignoring the three points.
> Android’s compatibility rules avoid this,
And nobody claimed that was a problem, but whatabout... .
> If you prefer other apps—or browsers, or search engines—to the preloaded ones, you can easily disable or delete them, and choose other apps instead,
Except manufacturers are contractually forbidden from doing that and defaults are so unimportant that google explicitly puts them as contractual obligations...
> Phone makers don’t have to include our services; and they’re also free to pre-install competing apps alongside ours
Don't have to include..exceot if they need access to google play, which is what this whole decision was about...
Can they please hire better PR people? That is embarassing to read.
>> The decision ignores the fact that Android phones compete with iOS phones,
>Except as explicitly stated in the decision.
Well the EU simply argued they don't compete because iPhones tend to cost more and it's hard to switch. I feel like your average person would admit you have a choice between the two, which is what competition is.
it's certainly far from trivial to remove the search bar at the top of the home screen. i tried once, it broke android, and i had to reset the entire OS. but, tbf, the entire process did take <1 minute
Install another home screen, probably can be done in a minute. It is much easier than trying to modify anything at all about the iOS or Windows Phone home screens.
Also, I don't think all Google apps can be uninstalled. Either way, I've certainly seen apps from other OEM partners that can be removed. That should outright be illegal within the EU. All apps that aren't strictly necessary for the functioning of the case operating system should be uninstallable.
All it takes is a little thought experiment to see why this doesn't make sense:
Let's say Google didn't license Android but instead only sold their own Pixel devices and somehow managed to achieve dominant market share this way. With good marketing and multiple price points this could easily have happened. Google search is the default but users can switch it to something else. This would be fine under the current reading of the law, right? So what this ruling is effectively doing is punishing Google for trying to create an open mobile ecosystem to compete with iOS's closed approach. How is this helpful to consumers?
Feels like a lot of recent EU rulings on technology are well intentioned but actually make things worse for consumers by picking favorites and raising barriers to entry.
It wouldn’t be ok. You can’t use one monopolistic product to gain advantage in another market. Microsoft was forced to randomize browser selection in Windows, remember?
History is repeating itself. Only difference is that Google search and Chrome browser is not as bad as MSN and IE in former times. Why Google did not looked on how MS handled that issue when you become the market leader?
I somehow doubt it pays more than 5 billion dollars. I mean, even when I had the option I would use Google search and Google Chrome anyway and I think many other people too.
People use defaults. Look up UC Browser and the Samsung Browser. Especially their market share.
Regarding potential gains, Android has all but cemented its position as the smartphone OS. Microsoft did the same in 1995 with Windows in the desktop market and it has 90%+ marketshare there, 23 years later. It's very likely it will still dominate the desktop market in 2045.
Android will be at least a loss leader for Google for decades to come. And they made $10 billion in profit in 2017 alone (of course not all of it is driven by Android, but you get an impression of the scale).
there is a lot of criticism of the EC by the HN community, but I am extremely happy to have some push-back against the oligopoly of Apple, Google, etc.
let's do apple, facebook, and amazon next.
now if we could only convince comcast to provide services to the EU....
having a small set of companies controlling everything harms all consumers.
This literally strengthens Apple because they'll keep shipping services with integrated features (banning competition) while Android devices will be banned from providing the same integrated experience.
I don't understand why people keep making this argument. It's not about having integrated services. It's about abusing your dominance in one service to force another onto OEMs and consumers.
Apple has no market dominance in the EU, so nothing in this ruling is relevant to them.
> I am extremely happy to have some push-back against the oligopoly of Apple, Google, etc....let's do apple, facebook, and amazon next.
better yet, force companies to open up their walled gardens. I want phones to be more like PCs, where the device is in full control by the owner. I want the app store be available to be changed without consequence, and/or have multiple competing stores.
The European law that was used to fine Google is old and Google was warned since many years ago Microsoft was fined because it used its powers to force Internet Explorer to be the only pre-installed browser on Windows.
It seems that Google knowingly broke the law.
To play devil's advocate, Google's had these rules in place since Android released. It may be hard to visualize but Android started with 0% market share like everyone else. The tools Google used in Android's early days to rein in fragmentation (meaning what the EU is fining them for today) were effective but Google was still lambasted about not doing enough back then.
The only thing that's changed from then to today is Android's market share. I'm not so sure taking away Google's ability to fight fragmentation is necessarily a good thing for consumers or developers.
As a matter of law, the EC may be right, but as a matter of user experience, the idea that the Android market suffers from not having enough OEM-installed software on devices is a bit of a stretch. In all android phones/tablets I have seen there are a few shitty OEM apps that I have never found to be even close in quality to the google versions.
The EC claims that google have "denied European consumers the benefits of effective competition in the important mobile sphere", but I fear this will mean that cheap Android phones will have a shitty OEM-branded webbrowser and some random search engine link.
It's not clear to me if google is allowed to demand that non-google app phones not be called Android or if that would also be considered anti-competitive.
If they must allow Android branded phones that do not come with google apps, then the EC is making it harder for consumers to choose by disallowing the normal use of a brand to signal what it is that you are buying when you buy something. People may buy an Android cheap phone thinking that they are getting what is now an Android phone and end up with a shittier product.
Under a normal market, these OEM-branded phones would be sold as "ShitPhone OS 12.0" and it'd be clear that you have the option between paying slightly more for Android, a lot more for iOS or go with ShitPhone 12.0
"Profit fell 35 percent to $12.6 billion because of the tax bill and a separate charge last summer for a $2.7 billion European Union antitrust fine, which is under appeal."
In return for not having to compete on equal terms in a giant market for years, that seems like a defensible deal for Google even if the fine is large per se.
Thanks. Looks like they are getting used to paying fines as a regular part of their business.
Maybe in future earning reports we will see statements like "Legal fines went up 80% YOY from $7B to $12B and we are planning to continue our aggressive spendings in this area to expand our market dominance".
When the fines are lower than the expected benefit from your "wrongdoing" then what's the incentive to stop?
As a person getting caught stealing/defrauding/etc. you would have to pay restitution and additional fines/time in prison. This is how it should work for businesses to. If the goal is to actually prevent future abuse.
You would have to record every single conversation to pin intent on specific individuals. This is one big advantage of being concentrated in cities, you can meet face to face with people and discuss things without fear of legal repercussions.
That wasn't my point. I'm not talking about assigning blame on individuals in a company but to at least use the same principles when punishing companies as we do with individuals.
A private individual is expected to return all illegal gains, pay additional fines, and possibly do prison.
But a company might be expected to pay fines that are actually a fraction of the profits made abusing the law. This means paying the fine is more lucrative business than ceasing the abusive behavior.
As such the system only gives the appearance that it's working when in reality it's just not bringing the expected benefits. If paying the fine and keep skirting the law is cheaper than fully complying than that's what companies will do.
The fact that Google allows other OEMs to install their OS, as opposed to Apple which does not, is being used against them. If the lesson that Google learns is that it will kill it's OEM program then consumers will be worse off.
Not quite. The problem is that Google offered Android Open Source for free but then didn't allow its parrtners to use it freely. If they never open sourced Android they wouldn't have this problem.
Why would Google have to allow OEMs to install their OS? They do not control the hardware, what google does is not allowing OEMs accessing it's services like Google Play unless it installs a lot of other apps like Gmail, Maps, Google search...
Google is a serial offender at this point and we are not even into GDPR territory. It seems these fines might actually be too low if they can't keep Google's hands off the cookie jar.
I feel the EU needs to educate their government. Microsoft != Google when it comes to the Android OS. Google made Android free to make cheap devices possible for everyone to be able to afford a smartphone. They include their search engine as a way to fund all of their contribution to the development of Android. Manufacturers can pay to remove Google, it's still an option for them. How is this not a trustworthy business model?
As a dev, I genuinely fear the day when Android devices ship without being approved by the CTS (compatibility test suite, devised by Google to ensure that compliant devices implement the APIs correctly).
Fragmentation is 99% FUD right now. If everybody starts shipping huge forks of Android; with silently diverging APIs, it will be a nightmare.
And that's just for devs.
I guess my point is that I see why the EU reached this conclusion but I am unsure this will be a net benefit for devs and consumers.
So Microsoft is out of the phone business and basically the browser business. That’s the 3rd major phone OS. The rest are Chinese and there’s a huge cultural gap for them to become competitive in Europe. Google may have stifled OS competition, but that’s a lot more difficult market to crack than hardware competition for which google provided a huge opportunity for. It’s a lot easier making a phone that you know billions of users know the OS interface for.
If I was Google, I’d use this as a perfect PR opportunity to switch gears and start charging $250 per phone for licensing Android and then offer $50 per phone to put all Google related apps on their for a net gain of $200 a phone plus their previous market share. Chrome, Google, Android are too deeply infiltrated to even effect a single percent of sales to a new OS competitor.
Then slowly eat away at the competition by producing Pixel and related models which you can beat the competition for lower and mid phones by jacking up android licensing as you eat away at the market. End result, EU users pay hundreds of more per each phone and Hardware companies die off. Apple could also further jack up their phone prices.
> Despite being a record fine, Alphabet generated about the same amount of money every 16 days in 2017, based on the company’s reported annual revenue of $110.9 billion for the year.
A fine comes out of your profits, not your revenue. From a Routers[1] source they had $110.9 billion in revenue, but a profit of $12.6 billion. So this is somewhere between a third and half of their global profits.
Such fines are also recurring if the issue is not rectified. Of course no company that ever had to pay the fine tested this principle :).
I'm pretty sure they'll fight it just like Intel is doing.
That’s not the only way. Independent government auditors could make their own profits assessment and work off that. This is exactly what is done in other jurisdictions and other industries.
Let's say you have one profit bringing business unit like google ads. (Let's call it main unit) but you also have internal startups in your company (side units). But you only have one operations department, only one HR department etc. How do you account the expenses of these departments in relation to main business and the side units?
You can't. If people are not forced don't write down exactly whether they spent their time on working for the main unit or the side units units, you can't later account it correctly. Unfortunately it's not even clear for the company what happens sometimes. You might for example hire an employee, but place him in a different business unit than originally planned. Or the employee later on changes business units.
The other problem with this is even if you require such a strict accounting setup, you can't tell whether employees and/or departments are accounting their efforts correctly, it's just incredible difficult to enforce the rule; to make sure they don't lie.
Even if you think hey you can do it, you have to rigorously enforce this for all companies in your juridiction, because as soon as you stop looking, they will stop caring.
So the problem is you can't tell the profits before "internal investments" as long as you can't pin down operational costs.
You'll see that the only thing that you can accurately account for is the main business units revenue, but you can't give a precise number on operational income. (Which is revenue - product costs - operational costs).
The setup explicitly allows for contextual customization of approach. You’re right that it is too complex an issue to precommit a strategy, which is why you don’t. It’s up to the discretion of the judge and the court as to what accounting strategy is used in the audit. If the company thinks it is unfair they can fight it as part of the proceedings or under an appeal.
To put it in a slightly different context, this is more money than the annual contributions of quite a few EU member states. Google is now a bigger contributor to the EU budget than Belgium, the Netherlands or Ireland.
Fines paid to the EU go straight into its own general budget. Combined with the nature of the EU Commission as judge, jury and executioner in cases like this, it is a severe conflict of interest. Member state are refusing to pay more into the budget and the UK is leaving, which will create a massive budget hole. The EU is strongly incentivised to levy fines for vaguely defined, highly debatable "crimes" on US tech firms in order to avoid their own internal political disputes over funding.
The executive fines someone (like you are fined for violating parking regulations), then you can appeal that fine in court, in this case most likely the ECJ.
Would you argue that it's wrong to address a coporation's wrongdoings? EU companies are fined regularly as well, might not create such an upheaval in the US media, though.
If the government believes people have broken the law, in a democracy that means civil servants have to launch a criminal case and win a prosecution.
The EU is not structured like that, and thus doesn't have to win any prosecution. Margrethe Vestager just issue a proclamation with a number she and the Commission picked out of the air, and the deed is done.
That's a very narrow (and in my opinion even wrong) understanding of what constitutes a democracy. Prosecuting companies via criminal lawsuits might be the American way but that does not mean every democracy has to have those same rules. If an administration fines a company and there is the possibility to appeal to a court that is also a democratic process. My homecountry Germany uses this process (companies are never sued in a criminal lawsuit) and I don't see a reason why that would be undemocratic.
Neither is the US. Numerous state and federal agencies have the right to directly levy civil penalties. You have the right to challenge those penalties in court, as you do in the EU.
First: this is a civil law fine. In the E.U., companies are not subject to criminal law, only individuals are. It’s not much different in the US, where antitrust actions are also civil.
Second: Google can appeal in court. It’s exactly the same as it is in the US.
This one frustrated me to read, i think they should have gotten involved sooner and worked with google. Instead they slap a crazy high fee for something that is vague in violation. It does feel a bit like a vendetta here by the EU.
In most (all?) other fields of law you are expected to abide by the rules as they are stated, or risk being punished by the legislative powers. That's not a vendetta, that's law as it is most commonly practiced.
I don't see why EU should "work with google" to make them follow regulations (EDIT: beyond the threat of punishment).
The problem is that antitrust laws like these are very selectively enforced. Selection and prosecution of these cases is hence inherently political as these are non-standardized arguments or verdicts.
The ones I know about have all been the result of a complaint made by competitors. I would be surprised if the regulator could selectively reject such complaints without good reason.
That is a fair point, but isn't it built into this particular field?
We can prosecute equally for jaywalking, but anti-competitive behavior gets worse the bigger the offender is and/or the worse offense they commit. So in that way it makes sense to prosecute "top-down", that is go after the biggest ones first.
That's at least what I prefer as an EU member state citizen and consumer.
Not only does it get worse the bigger the offender is; in law, generally there are specific actions that you're not allowed to take iff you're dominant in the market.
> The problem is that antitrust laws like these are very selectively enforced. Selection and prosecution of these cases is hence inherently political as these are non-standardized arguments or verdicts.
Following that logic, the same applies to law in general. Should we therefore abolish law?
I'm guessing that they did, and probably came to the conclusion that they'll make more money than the fine that gets imposed. I wonder if they were right?
I kind of felt the same about the Apple Tax / Irish Revenue Commissioners thing.
On looking into the judgement however it appeared as though both parties actively sought to subvert competition rules under a disingenuous "veil of ignorance". Warning shots had been fired earlier but the practices continued hence the fine.
I haven't read into the details of this judgement yet but you may well find similar reasoning therein.
That's not a fine against Apple, it's a demand that Ireland corrects past behaviour that has been deemed state aid.
While it's certainly Apple's prerogative to play EU states off against each other to get the best deal, it should have been blindingly obvious that what it was getting from Ireland would be, and should be reversed.
The EU's demand was that Ireland collect that tax from Apple.
And blindingly obvious to Apple, the benefactor.
When somebody says, "Hey come and do your stuff here, we'll only charge you 0.005% corp tax!" you should expect that their wider financial governing body (who is losing out severely because of a deal like that) might have something to say about it.
You think it was blindingly obvious to Apple that they would have had to pay this tax eventually? Seems to me and everyone else it was an attempt at a stroke. You're alleging that Apple were a passive actor.
You saw that thing in the ICIJ Jersey papers leak where Apple went round the world actively seeking jurisdictions that would twist their tax rules to suit them?
No, I'm not alleging Apple was passive here, at all
I'm saying that when you get a deal this good —however you ended up there— you should not be surprised when it turns out that it was illegal.
Of course Apple shopped around. But if somebody offered to sell you $20 bills for half a cent each, would you suspect something dodgy? That's the scale of the issue here.
Apple should be forced to pay back 10x what they gained in this illegal deal.
It's bleedingly obvious that it's illegal to be taxed differently than other companies. Paying back €13bn is nothing.
Companies that "make deals" on tax anywhere in the world should be effectively banned from the EU market. It's pure evil. Or pay 10x of any gain they have made anywhere in the world by "making deals" on tax, thereby undercutting fair competition in a free market.
Playing states against each other is par for the course in the US. Each state can offer wildly different tax structures and incentives, and they all do, because each wants to be the state government that oversaw "6000 new jobs". They've seen similar issues with the collection of sales tax, when one company can "operate" over many state lines.
But saying "hey, that's obviously corruption" isn't enough. We need a good way to restructure tax collection so that the right people get it.
Multinationals paying Luxembourg (Paypal, eBay) or Ireland (Apple, Amazon) for all revenue and operations from the entire EU is wrong, no? How do you fix that?
There is literally a "world" of difference between a collection of trade-aligned sovereign nations, and a single nation of autonomous economic regions. As you mention, it's an accepted part of daily business in the US but everybody pays taxes to the Fed at the end of the day. All governed by the same congress, president, and a coherent political dialogue throughout. That's not to say it'll always remain so.
The particular problem with the EU is that it's a system of "good faith" agreements that has until quite recently been quite weak against cynical attacks.
This kind of dealing undermines the spirit of the EU accords and you can expect it to be dealt with in the course of time - probably through tax harmonisation, which wouldn't then be a million miles away from the american model.
It's bleedin' blindingly obvious that this is all a matter of corporate strategy. Yeah they should be fined for sure, but as many are keen to point out they keep to the letter of the law. That's not to say the EC couldn't enact some kind of retroactive legislation but that wouldn't be likely as they have their own "special interests" to look after too ...
This is just a drop in the ocean for the total amount of wealth that is protected with these schemes. In the $20 for ¢0.5 picture this probably amounts to ¢50. They're still making off with the other $19.49. Though arbitration would probably round that up.
Though tax avoidance was a corporate strategy and they actually sought these deals it would not have been obvious that this was technically illegal. The Irish Revenue Commissioners told them it was legal as an interpretation of Irish law, which was incorrect.
> While it's certainly Apple's prerogative to play EU states off against each other to get the best deal
It certainly IS NOT. When Apple "get's a deal" it is by definition market manipulation. You're not supposed to "get a deal" regarding taxation!
The same taxation rules must apply to every company or else there is illegal subsidy. The whole idea around "making a deal" on tax is horrendous anti-capitalist BS.
It's exactly the same as "making a deal" wrt the law in a corrupt country. A corporation "making a deal" by having government look away when they do something illegal, or getting their competitors fined on dubious charges.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, and basically all of those companies ARE THE SCUM OF THE EARTH for not refusing do to business with the market-corrupting Irish Republic.
> i think they should have gotten involved sooner and worked with google.
You are assuming that Google is a poor layman that is accidentally breaking laws. Indeed Google has an army of lawyers and they know precisely well the risk of their actions.
The law may be the law but you still need someone to complain to the authorities.
If I went out into the street and 'keyed' someone's status symbol car then I would not be in trouble until someone decided to do something about the crime.
The owner might not be pleased and, pressured by the insurance company, might get the police to go through CCTV and finally find me caught in the act.
Alternatively, a neighbour or passer by might just call the cops on me whilst I 'brazenly commit the deed'.
Either way, unless there is a report of wrong-doing then I would be getting away with it, not having to be fined etc. The police don't just sit there idly looking through the rule book looking what they can nick me for, someone would have to bring matters to their attention.
And that is the problem with this EU ruling. Nobody I know has bought a phone, decided to write to their MP (or MEP) and complained about not having Bing! as their default search engine. The EU don't accept complaints from little people like that anyway.
So what has gone on here is that some group of lobbyists have sought out some money from the Microsofts of this world, invariably to setup some fake pressure group, to bring on this legal action. With previous history, e.g. bundling in Windows, the modus operandi was the same, albeit with Netscape being the whinging ninnys.
Whwn the story finally hits the press the parasitical legal firm, the fake consumer group and who fronted the cash to pay for the action get forgotten, instead debate concerns whether the E.U. is a load of rubbish, being as silly as when they banned bent bananas and had wine lakes or whether Google have been truly evil.
In The Emperors New Clothes the people that sold the expensive invisible thread leave the story so in the final act there is just the stupidity of the crowd and the stupidity of the Emperor, story facilitated by the boy. Similarly here, the people that have wreaked this carnage have left the story a long time ago.
According to the article they tried to work with google on this for 2 years, and it’s still not a final decision - google can appeal.
Although, they should have put a fine of $12b (all of googles yearly earnings), effective immediate, and double it every year until non competitive practices ended.
My company ran into this time and again, trying to get our browser pre-installed by the manufacturer only to loose the deal last minute as Google would threaten to withhold device certification if there is a different browser pre-installed (beside Google Chrome).
Google is a big bully and if you try to compete with them in an area they care about, they will use their market dominance to keep your product out. They have been deserving that fine for a long time.
Yeah I laughed at this idea too - the stock Android install that is free of any bloatware or dubious OEM-replacements for things like gmail or chrome or the play store or google photos is what a lot of consumers want, yet Google is getting fined by the EU for basically trying to enforce that.
I'm wondering how such a fine actually comes into existence. How does some EU committee get the idea that Google is anti-competitive here? Is this the result of lobbying by competitors? Can we somehow post the EU about instances where companies are being anti-competitive, and get them to take action somehow?
Given the enormous amount of anti-competitive behavior we see every day in the news, I can't help but feel this fine seems a bit arbitrary.
You can see the original fact sheet of the investigation here (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-15-4782_en.htm). The reasoning for the investigation is at the bottom. There were two complaints and an independent investigation by the committee.
The fines "reflect the gravity and duration of the infringement. They are calculated under the framework of a set of Guidelines last revised in 2006." (http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/procedures_101_en....). There's a link to the guidelines on the page.
Probably in part yes, but the European Commission is also pretty proactive. E.g. if I remember correctly, they reached out to Mozilla to get their take on how MS was bundling IE with Windows, after Opera originally complained about it. This came out of it: https://www.google.com/search?q=browser+choice+screen&tbm=is...
You don't really need lobbying in order to make Google conspicuous. In particular with their creative approaches to accounting.
> Is this the result of lobbying?
In all likelihood there was almost certainly an element of lobbying, in particular complaints about these business practices which eventually coalesced into some kind of more focused activities.
It seems a bit quixotic to blame "competitors". Which competitors exactly? That's the whole premise of abuse of dominant market position.
Google is debatably the leader of the tech market and mobile is the fastest growing segment, so the term "arbitrary" is not warranted - as in, picking market losers and winners by selective enforcement of the law.
Whenever allocating limited enforcement resources, you would expect the most egregious violators to be targeted first, with immediate social benefits and prompting self-compliance for smaller actors.
The absence of competition is a sign a free market is not working as intended. The rules and benefits of free markets ceases to apply. A monopoly is a market failure and requires intervention.
Free market advocates are always talking about regulations and the need for free markets but don't seem to care so much about monopolies, outsize profits, the accumulation of market power and its abuse that further impedes the operation of free markets and the billionaires that result.
I think this is a mistake and essentially punishing Google for pursuing an open distribution model for Android, without which I doubt it would have emerged as a serious competitor to iOS.
We're all a lot better off, even people that use iOS, because there has been real competition in mobile. This is essentially choosing which business models the EU thinks should win.
The punishment is not for pursuing an open source distribution model, but by applying undue power in taking back control of the open distribution model.
But Apple hasn't been fined in the same way. So apparently if Google had kept Android proprietary, and made their own hardware, they'd be totally OK, even though there'd only be two phone makers left in the world instead of dozens like there is now?
I'm sorry but this move is garbage. I am British and I'm so glad the UK is leaving this horrible, success hating farce of a union. Google paid billions to develop Android and then gave it away for free under the Apache license specifically to encourage competition and diversity in the smartphone market. They then added a carrot of some apps and the app store if OEMs agreed not to introduce backwards incompatibilities, to avoid the J2ME problem of a hopelessly forked and buggy platform.
If they hadn't done these things, very likely Apple would have wiped out every competitor in existence.
The EU is sending a powerful message with this move: keep everything proprietary, pick a high enough price point to price out most poor European countries, and you'll be fine. Build an open ecosystem where competitors target every price point and you'll suddenly find yourself being an involuntary contributing member to the EU's budget. What a great disincentive to build products for the Spanish or German markets.
Apple doesn't try to tap markets that doesn't own and to force their own ecosystem into those markets. Google does. That's the fundamental difference.
It is okay for them to do whatever they want with their Nexus/Pixel devices, since they fully own them. But forcing some random DTV vendor to install Google Search, Google Social Network, Google Online Shop, Google Payment System, Google This and Google That, just because the vendor chose to adopt a free operative system into their system, it's just abuse of power and monopoly.
It automatically gives Google an advantage over the Search, Online Shop, Social Network, etc, markets. It is basically impossible to start a new video streaming business in the DTV market, for example, when you know that every single DTV system has Youtube already installed just because Google mandates so. And Youtube is "good enough" for 90% of the people.
The entire world doesn't suddenly owe something to Google just because they made something open source.
Google is in fact forcing all device manufacturers to use Gapps and do many other things or else lose access to all the features that make Android be Android. Companies like Sony, Samsung, HTC are only allowed to ship official Android devices if they want to continue to be able to do mobile-related business with Google.
For instance if Philips wanted to ship an Android TV without spyware, they would have to remove some Google apps => anti-fragmentation clause kicks in => Philips isn't allowed to sell official Android devices any more.
But they can continue to sell Philips-Android devices which nobody would want because they're missing critical features which would be disabled by Google shutting down their official Android access.
So actually Google has Philips by the balls, even if Android is open source. The EU doesn't like that.
>if Google had kept Android proprietary, and made their own hardware, they'd be totally OK
Yes, why is that surprising ? They would also not get the benefit of OEMs shipping their bundle of services across the globe.
>gave it away for free under the Apache license specifically to encourage competition
It has nothing to do with increasing competition. It's anything but. That's one of the reasons for the fine. The non compete clause prevents OEMs from creating forks of Android.
No, you're completely wrong. Have you even ever used Android devices? Samsung's flavour of Android is quite different to HTCs or LGs. Google doesn't prevent people creating competing forks of Android, that's the entire point of Android's design.
What their agreements require is that the forks be compatible with base Android, that is, apps should run the same on every variant of Android. It's designed to ensure app compatibility and avoid the mistakes of the past, like with J2ME where apps had to be debugged on every single phone because they were all riddled with bugs and incompatibilities.
But outside of app compatibility issues vendors can and do make big changes, everything from the appearance to the UI to the set of bundled apps - Samsung for instance replaces the browser, replaces the calendar, replaces the contacts app, replaces the home screen, replaces nearly everything. And Samsung is a Google licensee. So clearly, your understanding of what Google is doing here is not accurate.
>Google doesn't prevent people creating competing forks of Android, that's the entire point of Android's design.
Did you read the main points of the press release ? If you (say an OEM like LG) license google play, you cannot create a competing OS based on AOSP. It has nothing to do with OEMs customizing AOSP for the devices they sell. It has everything to do with, say, an OEM selling a different phone that can run Amazon's version of Android with Amazon's services. I think that's one of the reason's why Amazon's phone never caught on. Nobody other than Amazon would be able to make or sell one because everyone had licences from Google.
From the press release:
"Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks")."
The press release is wrong, who'd have guessed. What is Samsung TouchWiz or whatever they call it these days, if not a competing OS based on AOSP. Ditto for every other Android device. Android was forked so much that for the longest time the lament of geeks everywhere was "give me a device with stock Google Android". That doesn't sound like an monopoly to me.
The fact that Android was open source was a huge factor in increasing adoption and obliterating the other competition (like Symbian, Windows, etc). It's a competitive advantage, not a kind hearted choice.
When Android was launched is was just another unknown piece of software, poor performance, lack of features, etc.
They can't both reap the profits of open source and then reject any disadvantages (such as with their anti-fragmentation clause).
They have the option at any point to go closed source and face the huge shitstorm that will follow.
Isn't it great that you're heading for a hard brexit, then? If the competition is no level-playing field anymore, how should a local company be successful?
Your points have been addressed above already, if Apple had a dominant market position, the EU would have handled things differently. And Apple has been fined by the EU before as well.
As Apple fans always rush to point out, Apple owns most of the really profitable users, so if I'm developing a new app or website I have to play by their rules and can only rely on technologies and protocols Apple supports.
Obviously, the EU deciding to terminate all cooperation with the UK because of an ideological "all or nothing" approach is a tyrannical and cult-like way to run international relations.
However if the alternative is having to deal with the EU Commission then yep, I guess hard brexit is the next best alternative.
The reason the EU doesn't have any local mobile companies isn't do to with Android or Google's licensing terms. The EU had a very successful mobile firm and it shot itself in the foot over and over so badly it disappeared, because its own competitor(s) to Android just weren't good enough. Nokia was hopelessly out-engineered by Silicon Valley and in hindsight it would have done better to admit that, and become an Android OEM itself. It wouldn't have had to cut any deal with Google. It already had Ovi Maps and its own app store infrastructure. It could have done an Amazon and adopted Android without any strings attached.
> However if the alternative is having to deal with the EU Commission then yep, I guess hard brexit is the next best alternative.
They're currently headed towards not really exiting the EU. Once they looked into the details they determined that the drawbacks were outright lies (350M GBP/week) and the benefits are huge. It might even end up as a paper exercise.
Well it's hard to say that because the EU is the wrong way to organise European cooperation from the start. European cooperation should be done the way it used to be, as many multi-lateral agreements and organisations that are only loosely affiliated or not at all.
But most of the European political elite want to unite the continent under a single government instead. Given that, the best kind of Brexit would be one where the UK is no longer a part of this, and can sign various unlinked bilateral treaties to continue cooperation in the areas where there is agreement, and discontinue in areas where there are disagreement.
This makes perfect sense - agreement on everything is rarely possible, so collaboration on the areas where people do agree is the best you can do. It's also exactly what the UK has proposed repeatedly. However the EU refuses to allow it, exactly because if people were offered that alternative the EU and associated gravy train would cease to exist tomorrow.
Well, I personally am in favour of the way the EU acts as a permanent umbrella to organise cooperation and according to the latest polls, the majority of people in most countries are in favour of that too. Otherwise, with each country acting on its own, they would be picked apart by the much larger players, the US, China and Russia.
Maybe the UK media points a wrong picture of the mood in the EU, but I seriously doubt that it would cease to exist if your alternative would be put forward. But that's something all Brexiteers tell themselves repeatedly, over and over, like a mantra.
I'm sure it would cease to exist. The EU has lost every referendum on further integration held in, what, the last 15 years? The EU political elites are notorious for telling countries that voted wrong to vote again, or just ignoring them.
If every population that's asked rejects the EU's vision what on earth makes you so sure that a comprehensive alternative wouldn't be popular?
Also there's no such thing as "picked apart" in the sense you mean, i.e. outside of military strategy. Nobody is picking North Korea apart despite that it's a world pariah. If a country doesn't want to collaborate with another country or accept its terms, it doesn't have to - the idea that cooperation is a form of warfare is exactly the mentality that the EU has, and is why it's so desperately dangerous and problematic as an organisation.
it seems likely that if Android wasn't "free" it would not have gained almost 100% of the market share in licensable mobile OSs, so there would still be the same amount of phone makers, but with more OS fragmentation.
False. Windows isn't open source and they got quite the same reacction with the accusation of using their monopoly to manipulate users into using internet explorer, thus resulting in a windows version with an initial browser choice when starting first. I don't know how much they were fined though...
One wonders if the unintended consequence of this ruling is to further diminish competition in the smartphone space down to Apple and Google.
Google is clearly getting in to the smartphone manufacturing business with Pixel phones and their acquihire of HTC engineers.
Outside of HN, most consumers want the integrated experience offered by Apple and the default Google apps. You see this with Samsung - where consumers like the hardware but are not super keen on Samsung Apps.
The easiest way to get that integrated experience is to buy an Apple or Google device.
This is a bit over my head. How does this apply to Google but not Apple? Don't they do the exact same thing? One of the arguments I saw was Google pushed its own market over others. But Apple makes it so you can't use any other market period. So I'm confused...
So, according to the EU, it is illegal to open source OS components (thus allowing anyone to use it without further input from Google as long as the license is followed), but then close source other components and the services that drive them, although they are given out for free, but require specific licensing in the contract to distribute said free closed source components and services on their OEM devices, of which the sale of said devices does not earn Google money as they are provided to OEMs and users for free?
In addition, said closed source components and services are merely defaults, and you can install anything you want?
Example: Bing Search, Cortana with full Android Assistant support, Microsoft Launcher (which has full Bing and Cortana support, just like Pixel Launcher has for Google), and Microsoft Edge.
Further Example: TouchWiz, Bixby, Samsung Browser, Samsung App Store, Samsung Pay, Samsung Everything. If there is an AOSP/Google app, Samsung has probably replaced it with a custom app that is not based on the AOSP/Google version and has generally ruined their phones with them.
I guess the EU has to fine Microsoft and Samsung too, since they also give away closed source OS components for Android, and they can only be used with Microsoft and Samsung services... even though it is optional to use them and can be replaced with something else.
I guess the EU has to fine Apple too, since they do not allow third party components at all, all the way from third party app stores, third party browsers, or anything deemed "overlaps with functionality in iOS (retroactively as well)".
I did. They tried to make an argument that Google forbids Android OEMs from shipping Google Play on Android without also shipping Google Search, and they can only opt in all of their devices, not only specific ones.
In the form I stated, this is true, to get Play you must ship Google Search, and must do so on all of your devices.
What is not true, but implied by the EU ruling is that, a) Android (as defined as purely AOSP) is incomplete and unusable without Google apps, b) that other app stores do not exist for Android, c) that other search engines somehow magically don't work on Android.
None of those are true. I find it unfortunate that Android does not have higher profile alternative options, but no one else seems to want to put as much effort into their products as much as Google has.
Google's actions simply do not meet any reasonable definition of being a monopoly. Google's only action is requiring the entire Google Apps suite shipped on a device as an all-or-none license, it does not require the end user to use them, it does not prohibit the end user from installing others or disabling built in apps, it does not require signing into a Google account to use the device, it does not prevent APK sideloading.
And, until recently, Google was not even a phone OEM (and arguably still isn't, as they do not build their Pixels, HTC and LG do), and Pixels are not nearly as popular as Samsung Galaxy S series (which are famous for "ruining" the Android experience by using tons of custom Samsung apps), and LG G and V series, and Motorola phones dominating the mid-tier segment, and China and India being largely Xiamoi, Huawei, and BBK (Oppo, OnePlus, and Vivo).
Worldwide, Samsung and BBK are the #1 and #2 phone manufacturers, and they merely use Android as their OS. At what point did the EU have the authority to say Google had a monopoly when they do not sell Android phones in any reasonable capacity.
It's cutting your nose to spite your face. This isn't how business is done. So they would give up tens of billions in revenue per year for a one time comparatively low fine.
If Google packs its bags they'll be the ones feeling most of the pain. And such a drastic move would have consequences on any business Alphabet tries to do in the EU over the next decades.
If anything they're not handing out enough fines. Companies just pay them and keep doing shady business because it's financially more sound to keep abusing the system. Paying the fine is cheaper than correcting their business practices.
On the bright side many decisions the EU takes also benefit the rest of the world by virtue of being a big enough market.
Of course you can expect any government to be a little easier on local businesses but as far as correctness goes the EU has always done a pretty good job.
The amount of the fine is literally proportional to the revenue that was made using the practices in question. The more money you make by breaking the rules, the bigger the fine. Which part is petty or vindictive?
They could but they'd lose access to the economy with the largest spending power per capita in the world. Inevitably another player would spring up to feed this void and could then use that as a platform to start eating their lunch elsewhere.
Do you imagine the EU would force every ISP to block Google web search, Gmail, etc? Beyond being technically difficult I do not believe the EU currently has the power to create a Great Firewall of Europe like that.
Why would the EU do that? The EU demands fines, nothing else. If Google wanted to leave the market to not pay them, it would be their job to geoblock every EU IP from using Google services.
Google's profit center (adsense and all related ad selling) would not exist in europe, and therefore, all europeans would be unable to purchase ad space using google. Unless, a business decides they prefer to circumvent their local laws, and pay google from an overseas account to access advertising services.
However, i suspect if google left europe, another competitor to google (ala, bing?) would immediately swoop in and take all the business. Google would suddenly find itself losing 1/3 or even half of their revenue!
Doesnt make sense, if google didn’t geoblock EU IP addresses how would the EU react? Issue another fine which Google won’t pay?
A similar analogy would be like the US blocking their citizens from traveling to North Korea. But then having direct flights from LA to Pyongyang and expecting North Korea to enforce the ban of US citizens at their customs. It’s not their responsibility..
Parent post's point was that Google should block European users in response to European sanctions. Why would the EU prevent her denizens from using Google's services for free?
To twist your analogy this is basically like the US deciding not to give Pynongyang aid any more, in which case yeah they might just decide to block US immigration.
How would it be Googles responsibility? Asking nicely would only get you so far and honestly with GDPR and now this, the EU is becoming more and more of a liability
I would hate to live in such a restrictive area but that is probably more a cultural difference than anything. I'd rather have competition and innovation than security and stability. In my opinion it is the main distinguishing factor between the USA and Europe
All I can think of is Nokia and possibly Vodafone if those count as technology. What other big tech companies are there? Not trying to be rude, just generally curious as I don't know much about the European technology scene
I actually hadn't realised Spotify was Swedish! Deezer is French.
Pretty much every high-end car manufacturer.
ARM.
Did you know the modern three-point tractor hitch was invented by an Irishman? Modern motor cars come from Germany. The Web as I mentioned earlier comes from CERN which is a joint European project.
Ericsson, Siemens, Philips.
Airbus is also another joint European cooperative.
They "could" block all import of Android based smart phones if they wished (based on noncompliance with trade rules of course).
In all liklihood they'd slap a levy on these imports which would either raise their price making alternatives more interesting to the market. Android devices are dominant in the cost sensitive segment.
Alternatively the manufacturers could push this back on to google or it might provide additional commercial impetus to develop a viable alternative.
That's the beauty of one of the largest economies in the world singing in harmony from the same hymn-sheet. When the collective foot is stamped it echoes around the world.
The discussion was about "losing access". To do that the EU would have to impose not just tariffs but complete import bans on dozens or maybe hundreds of OEMs, many of which aren't American. It'd mean starting a phone-oriented trade war with most of the world's big economies, and handing the entire European market to Apple.
But Android is much more popular than Apple phones in some EU countries (not all) mostly because it's a lot cheaper. So either a lot of Europeans would have to fork out a lot more than they wanted to for a phone, or decide they couldn't afford a smartphone at all and go back to feature phones.
This is why you admit the EU would never do this.
When the collective foot is stamped it echoes around the world.
Very Orwellian imagery you have there. It wouldn't really echo around the world. Google wouldn't give a crap. Android was created mostly to stop Apple from gaining a monopoly and holding them over a barrel with respect to services (go read up on the origins of the project). It has wildly succeeded in that mission already. If the EU selectively taxes its own people whenever they buy an Android smartphone, this would not only hurt the EU's own popularity significantly (people love their cheap smartphones), but it wouldn't harm Google much or at all because Apple un-clenched a lot since Jobs died and iOS is a more open platform than it used to be, albeit, still nowhere near as open as Android. The rest of the world is sufficient to keep Apple in check anyway.
Losing out on a market place with 22% of the world GDP and ceding it to Amazon, Apple and Microsoft would probably invite at least a little bit of shareholder challenge.
> Can Google just close shop in the EU and ignore the fine?
Sure, if they don't want to get any revenue from the whole European Union anymore. Fortunately the EU is a big enough market so that Google doesn't have any leverage here.
Other commentators are saying the fine is between 1/3 to a half of google’s profits. I sincerely doubt the EU represents more than that share of google’s revenues. But of course I doubt they would pull out as this is a one time thing.
Google's profits are a bit weird right now, thanks to the new us tax law. (I wrote more about that at the end)
Their 2016 profit was $19.4 billion and without the one-time foreign asset charge it would have been $22,4 billion, as such the fine compromises less than 1/4 of googles earnings.
Their European revenue was $22.6 billion out of $90 billion total revenue for 2016.
This makes it look like an incredible high fine. It's important to notice that the revenue in Europe is mostly google ads. The total revenue for alphabet is also bloated by thing stuff like other bet, which produce $400 million revenue and $900 million loss. Or to put it more bluntly, the revenue in Europe has a stronger influence on alphabets profits than the revenue in the USA.
I still think the fine is incredible high, one reason for this might be a lack of commitment from google after they were fined for $2.4 billion last year.
This being the second time google breaks European anti trust laws. In a really short time.
Last year they were fined for what Brusels describe like this in their press released: Since the beginning of each abuse, Google's comparison shopping service has increased its traffic 45-fold in the United Kingdom, 35-fold in Germany, 19-fold in France, 29-fold in the Netherlands, 17-fold in Spain and 14-fold in Italy.
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A bit more on why google earnings are weird:
"For the quarter of 2017 that ended on December 31, 2017, it actually recorded a loss of $3 billion, but that was due to a one-time foreign assets charge due to the recently passed U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. If that is excluded, Alphabet would have had net income of $6.8 billion, up from $5.3 billion compared to a year ago. "
yearly
"For the entire 2017 fiscal year, Alphabet recorded revenues of $110.8 billion, up from $90 billion in 2016. Net income was $12.6 billion for the 2017 fiscal year, compared to $19.4 billion in revenues in 2016, once again reflecting the one time charge due to the tax law change."
Couldn't they still generate revenue from ads and services in Europe? The EU could block Android phones but its not like they are going to build a firewall.
Sure, but Google will even with the fine have made a significant profit in the EU.
Google leaving the EU would be, for the company, like Google leaving the US – firing half their staff, losing half their revenue and profits, etc. Absolutely not worth it.
If a company simply ignores fines, the regulators will assume that they didn't choose high enough fines, since it did not hurt the company enough. They'll schedule another meeting, check whether the company still breaks the rules in the same way and if so impose fines which are a lot more painful.
You can expect that to happen way faster and with way less bureaucracy then the initial fine.
it'd be interesting to imagine how a company could potentially still operate in a hostile country, if said company is only dealing with cyberspace products (such as software/saas).
Would they be able to continously ignore any/all rulings, by operating the datacenter, and any payment mechanisms, outside said hostile country?
>Can Google just continue their practices after this?
Seeing as nobody else has read the article.
>If Google fails to ensure compliance with the Commission decision, itwould be liable for non-compliance payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company. The Commission would have to determine such non-compliance in a separate decision, with any payment backdated to when the non-compliance started.
They can but it would just invite further action from regulators. Which is why they will comply with the requests (not without a fight) even if just in name. I'm sure there are other ways they can get the same benefit as a monopoly without running afoul of the concrete requirements put in front of them by now.
I would like to add that there was a similar case in Russia where Yandex, a Russian company, accused Google that it made contracts with phone manufactures that banned them from preinstalling Google competitors' software. So the manufacturer had either to agree to those terms or was unable to get a license for Google Play Services and Google Play [1]
I'm glad the EU has fined Google 5 billion. It's finally going to make them reassess their Android open source strategy and hopefully come to the inevitable conclusion that open sourcing Android was a mistake. Hopefully, they don't repeat this same mistake with Fuchsia.
As for Google Mobile Services (GMS) - I believe the smart thing to do now would be to start charging OEM's, that sell phones in the EU, to license GMS at 5% of the cost of the device or $50 - whichever is lower. If OEM's don't want to use GMS they're free to ship their own services.
I like the amount of trouble EU takes just to protect consumers. This should actually be applauded. I don't think many countries do this outside Europe.
This is part of the power/money struggle between huge corporations and governments.
Big corporations often succeed in avoiding taxes [1][2], and regularly pit states or countries against each other to get the highest tax benefit [3]. Governments really don't like that, but often there's not a lot they can do.
Except for banding up in something like the EU, and using that combined power to strike back.
Google should offer a kickback service. "Install our stuff on your phone and receive $50 back on your purchase!". Or just use Android without the preinstalled spyware _but_ with all of the API's that had been moved to Play Services.
So in practice what is the possibility this will not result in low quality and even more malicious default configurations? It’s not like hardware manufacturers are known to bundle all kinds of crap into their systems right?
I do care about companies that abuse their position as a monopoly. I think its probably right that Google gets fined for not allowing companies to sell Android forks. What I have a problem with is that if a company is doing some standard business practice, like paying a different company to exclusively use their product, that is okay when they are a not a monopoly but that suddenly become not okay because they have been successful.
Yes, laws are in place to to protect customers from abuse of monopoly power. In this case specifically using that power to hurt competition unfairly. If the company is successful and doesn't abuse that success then no one gets fined. Using that success to unfairly hurt competition from a monopoly position needs to be prevented for a free market to function.
>Because a monopoly is a special status that infers special powers and special responsibilities.
In principal I have a problem with legally treating a company different if they have 85% market share as opposed to 30%. I am okay with making anti-competitive practices illegal but we should also enforce those on small companies.
The idea is that it is almost by definition more difficult or impossible for a small player to conduct anti-competitive practices, since there are other competitors to choose from.
if the practices used by the company were so bad and abusive, shouldn't the customers just move to another company? Voila, problem solved, the company no longer has monopoly.
You should understand that Americans have a very opinion on manufacturers & carriers than Europeans. I haven't owned a European handset but manufacturers & carriers before Google and Apple told them to fuck off were notorious for bundling crapware with their phones. For the simple fact that if I buy an "Android" phone I can be sure it comes with a baseline of decent software is seen as a good thing to most.
Finally its official that Google does evil - good to see this even it came many years too late, same as it was with Microsoft and IE. But better late, then never. Now if only the US would do something similae.
Is google too big now and may have to be broken down?
Is having someone as big as google a good thing for the rest of us? Would society, economies etc benefit from google broken down into several smaller independent companies?
One money-making company (ads) and dozens of money-losing ones? No, you would simply cease to have Android, cease to have maps, cease to have docs, etc. That's not better for anyone (except maybe Apple and Microsoft).
Anyone know which Android based phone manufacturers or brands are based in the EU? Does the fine match their expected loses?
What does the EU do with the money?
> [Google] has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
Woaah, if this is dropped, it might entice someone to produce Google-free Android Phones (e.g. with MicroG) WITHOUT sacrificing the "Google pre-installed" Android market.
I would buy the Google-Facebook-Other_BS-free variant of your otherwise commercial high-to-mid-end, google-and-other-stuff-infested mobile phone!
I agree, if dropped, this will motivate big electronics players to release smart phones powered by android that aren't Google infested.
Sometimes when I'm in a cynical mood, I feel like my android phone isn't really mine, it's owned by google and exists purely to serve them.
This would improve the smartphone market on so many levels. We need a great driver support for AOSP, multiple app stores, community driven updates, so on and so forth to make this new reality.
I also feel like Android could play a huge role in IoT if it weren't as Google infested as you call it.
This is a funny comment. You can get a samsung infested phone anytime, or Amazon, or any something from China? AOSP is created and being developed by google, calling Google's applications infestation is weird. You can also get an Apple infested (to the very core) phone as well.
Fair enough. I still feel like iPhones are infested with apple apps for my benefit or at least to not let other cos take advantage of me. Apple’s privacy oriented disposition makes this perception.
My iPhone serves me even if it is apple infested. My Nexus 6P can’t make me feel the same. Feels like it exists only to feed google data about me, and help me a little while doing so.
The problem with these offerings is: They are special developments targeting a niche. For that, they're great.
But I am not willing to spend 650 Euro on a BlackPhone2 when a 250 Euro phone is technically/hardware-wise enough for me.
If things go as the EU wishes, Silent Circle could offer mass market phones at competitive prices and with the software most users expect (full Google Android experience) in addition to their current offering - allowing for MUCH better scaling effects and thus lower prices for their phones.
You can s/Silent Circle/ with any other manufacturer, e.g. HTC or Samsung. Those are already targeting the mass market and thus are already producing at scale. In theory they "only" need to develop a source tree variant, add some bucks to the price for Enterprise phones and could then serve a (gut feeling: growing?) privacy niche as well.
I don't know if that's really worthwhile for any them, I honestly have my doubts; what's the local saying? Hope dies last... Whatever way this turns out, at least now the manufacturers have more legal options (in the EU).
Volvo is a much smaller company with much less revenue serving a small market share of a smaller market. With fines based partly on revenue, this difference makes perfect sense. Unlike your comment.
Paywalled. Small article. Copy pasting entire article as comment.
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BRUSSELS—The European Union plans to hit Alphabet Inc.’s Google with a record antitrust fine of €4.34 billion ($5.06 billion) on Wednesday, according to an official familiar with the matter, a decision that could loosen the company’s grip on its biggest growth engine: mobile phones.
A formal decision—which would mark the EU’s sharpest rebuke yet to the power of a handful of tech giants—is set to be taken during Wednesday morning’s meeting of EU commissioners following a presentation by competition chief Margrethe Vestager, according to the person. No discussion of the decision is expected, the official said.
The EU’s antitrust regulator has been looking into whether Google had abused the dominance of its Android operating system, which runs more than 80% of the world’s smartphones, in order to promote and entrench its own mobile apps and services—particularly the company’s eponymous search engine.
Google, which can appeal, has rejected the EU’s case since the bloc issued formal charges over two years ago. Google says Android, which is free for manufacturers to use, has increased competition among smartphone makers, lowering the prices for consumers. Google also says the allegation that it stymied competing apps is false because manufacturers typically install many rival apps on Android devices—and consumers can download others.
The fine would top the EU’s €2.4 billion antitrust decision against Google just over a year ago.
Wednesday’s expected ruling would be the latest in a series of decisions in which the EU has cast itself in the vanguard of a backlash against U.S. tech superpowers, on issues ranging from competition to taxes to privacy. Ms. Vestager has become the face of that battle, arguing that regulators must do more to restore fairness to the digital market.
The EU’s executive announced Wednesday morning that Ms. Vestager would give a press conference at 7 a.m. ET.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
Right, so Google develops Android at great expense, they release it as an open source project and now they’re supposed to make even less money from it?
If you think you see similarities between this fine and the microsoft case you should also consider the differences.
For all intents and purposes the market is split 50/50 between Android and iOS, and the fact that Android can be competitive with iOS is largely due to Google’s conditions, as by ensuring quality and consistency they spared Android from the fate of the desktop linux and turned it into a mass market product, not to mention the whole free and open source thing, which is a big deal that is seemingly being brushed aside (what about all the forks?!).
In any other context finnig an open source project for antitrust violations is absurd.
They keep hitting Google with these record fines as there is no political cost for hammering Google in the EU it’s all profit, they get fawning headlines from an approving press and quench the bloodthirst of the politician there who don’t even try to hide their distaste for US tech firms and Google in particular (try and look up their quotes), they can talk up the benefits of free trade all they want and complain about this tariff or that but there is no denying that much of what the EU does is try and hamstring US tech companies.
The EU is not using Google or any other company as a piggy bank. Google is doing business in the European Union making tens of billions of dollars and they should follow the rules, just like their European, American and Asian competitors.
It's not like you have to be a legal genius to know the rules. They are right in the treaty (think of it as the EU constitution) and Google know about the many previous cases interpreting the rules that share similarity with theirs, including Microsoft's case about bundling Explorer with Windows and making it the default browser.
So Google and their hundreds of lawyers are well aware of the rules against abusing dominant position. Nevertheless, they have chosen to ignore the rules - maybe because they stood to gain so much money on breaking the rules.
When Google does business in Europe, they make use of European laws such as the trademark rights that grant them exclusivity to the brand "google", the copyright that grant them exclusivity to their source code, patent rights that grant them exclusivity to their many inventions, and hundreds of other laws that ensure that Google - just like European counterparts - can rely on the rule of law to protect them while they make money. Google itself has likely benefited tremendously from the exact same European competition law, that they are now fined for breaking. Were it not for such laws, Microsoft or Apple could and would likely have toppled Google from the advertisement market simply by forcing their own search engines, browser, maps, emails etc. on users of their operating systems.
Whether the administrative decision of the European commission to fine Google will hold up in court will be seen if Google decides not to accept the fine. So far the European Commission has had a good track record.
The EU has laws. Some of these are different to those in the US, not just in wording, but in aim. There's definitely a much stronger drive to protect consumers from companies exploiting them through data and market abuse, wherever those companies are.
There is a consistent theme of American companies breaking European law and getting fined for it going back decades. The EU has a different legal system and you don't just get fined it happens after a long process of attempting to correct behaviour and legal proceedings.
The arrogance of Americans to believe their legal system applies everywhere and that any attempts to apply a different one constitutes an attempt to raid the piggy bank is kind of amazing. I wish it wasn't such a prevalent view but you see comments like the one you responded to every single time a fine is levied.
Show me the evidence that Google was warned about this practice and refused to stop for a long time. I have a really hard time believing that they wouldn't take action in response to warnings if they knew that 40% of yearly profit was at stake.
How the hell can the EU entitle itself to 40% of the profit of a company that provides a massive value add to the world? Email, search, maps, video, cloud, office apps and so much more.
I don't think Americans are the arrogant ones here, with the EU levying multi-billion dollar fines on a yearly basis.
This is not evidence, charges were issued years ago based on past behavior. Until there is a decision made, why should Google change it's behavior?
My view on this situation is that regulators should decide if such bundling is allowed on a case by case basis. Then, the ruling is 'We have made a decision. You get X fine if you do not comply.' Rather than, 'We prosecutors think you are not complying' followed by 'Yep you were not complying, give us billions'.
So, if you're caught parking in a handicapped spot, do you also expect a note asking you nicely to stop doing that in the future before getting a fine?
The last fine google got was 10% of their income, last year. This year they aren't playing by the rules again. What is the EU supposed to do? Give another 10% fine that will be ignored? Also the fine is not 40% of googles income. The corrected income this year is $22.4 billion USD. $5 billion is less than a quarter of that. Going from 10% to 20-25% seems totally okay, if google does not try to follow european law.
(The 2017 income of google is lower because they decided to use the new US tax law in order to move a lot of money to the USA which cost them $9.8 billion. But you can't say your income is low just because you spend it all on ice cream. This is why I use the adjusted number of $22.4 billion)
Oh, you'll love it when you finishing reading the article and read the bit about what happens if Google don't actually stop doing this in the next 90 days.
I am not claiming that the law was unjustly carried out. Google must have had the chance to plead their case.
The question is rather, "Should this law exist?" The answer is no. A law which allows this magnitude of a fine for the behavior described is ridiculous.
These are not laws sent down by god. Some elected or not elected officials sat down and decided on some stuff - and they can make mistakes. Have you seen the US congress questioning Zuckerberg and the elementary level of the questions asked? These are the EU analogs, making laws (probably not as incompetent though).
> A law which allows this magnitude of a fine for the behavior described is ridiculous.
It's a percentage of their yearly revenue (or income, not sure). If a company breaks the law and you want it to stop doing that and change their behaviour, you need to be able to hand them a fine that makes them stop and think. Would you prefer if they were handed a $100 fine instead? What would be an appropriate fine for you? I think a moderately high percentage-based fine is the only way you can do this.
Regarding "personal branding": most people in the EU doesn't even know the name of the 1-3 top ranking officials in the EU. So while there might be all kinds of personal reasons for this (I can't possibly rule that out), public appeal as I perceive it from the USA it not a factor AT ALL.
Most members in the EU also completely lacks the "personal branding" of judges, they usually aren't elected and politics and law intertwine less so in EU than in USA (again, as I understand USA).
How is Google holding consumers hostage and not Apple?
Honestly, for the value that Android gives phone manufacturers I am surprised that Google's requirements were so low. Android gave the phone manufacturers a platform and asked for little in return.
>How is Google holding consumers hostage and not Apple?
It does not matter what Apple is doing this is about Google.
I would expect that there are ongoing investigations against Apples practices regarding similar issues too.
>Honestly, for the value that Android gives phone manufacturers I am surprised that Google's requirements were so low. Android gave the phone manufacturers a platform and asked for little in return.
Not being allowed to release competing OSes / forks and other software is more than a "little" in return. Google does not give android away "for free" because they want to help others they do it because they want to help themself get into everybodies smartphone.
When Google remove free apps that are used by millions of users from the play store for weeks, because one of their own automated tests fails, such fines can't come soon enough.
I think Google gave away too much control with Android. By making it open source they let OEMs fork it and make worse versions. Apple exerts much more control and consumers appreciate it. Google controls the Google Pixel and it's considered a real competitor to the iPhone (in terms of user experience).
> Google must now bring the conduct effectively to an end within 90 days or face penalty payments of up to 5% of the average daily worldwide turnover of Alphabet, Google's parent company.
What scares me about this huge fine is that someone else than Google is going to have to pay for it. Maybe the stock shareholders are the ones paying the price or maybe it will be us, the end consumers.
Expect pricey freemium models coming to the Google product line in the coming years, which will give the green light to other companies to push higher prices for software.
We've already entered the age of monthly subscriptions, the amount of iOS apps using this system is growing at an unprecedented rate. Get ready!
If the EU don't want Google or other mobile phone OS providers to do competition-fixing and other shenanigans, they could create their own European mobile phone operating system.
They should probably do this anyway, since control of computing platforms and user data within them is fast becoming a major factor both in geopolitics and in business.
Personally I feel like the European Commission is going to far and trying to make an example of Google. I think there is a space for antitrust fines for practices but I was it was aimed at practices that are anti-competitive at any size and are only effective because of a dominate market position. With in mind I think only 1 of the 3 feels like that to me.
> [Google] has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);
I think this is an acceptable business practice. Saying "If you use one, you have to use the others" is reasonable. We want to provide a consistent experience so you cannot pick and choice which part of the bundle you use.
> [Google] made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed the Google Search app on their devices;
I don't see how this is a problem in a business. "Hey, we want to use our app. Here is some money if you agree to only use ours." Seems like a bog standard way of doing business.
> [Google] has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
This one I think the Commission has made a good point with this one. This one does hamper competition because you have to choose Android or Android forks. Well, that is an obvious choice because of how big Android is. That is bad for competition and I am okay with Google being fined for it.
Overall I disagree with 2/3 of the reasons but I do respect the Commission to make the fines big enough that they hurt so that Google might change behavior.
I find this fine bizarre. Sure, Android is dominating the European markets, but I find it to be a good thing. I am surprised that the EU commission never investigated Apple. I don't know when they stopped doing it, but Apple used to remove apps from their store that were duplicating Apple provided services.
I also think that manufacturers have themselves to thank. AOSP used to be quite complete in the old days, but every time Google updates it, it takes ages for the device makers to update their devices (if they do it at all); that's why so much of what makes Android great right now relies on Play Services. It was a move that was welcomed by the consumers/tech journalists.
"Sure, Android is dominating the European markets, but I find it to be a good thing. I am surprised that the EU commission never investigated Apple."
You are answering your own question. The problem is that Apple is not under investigation because it has 15% a 20% marketshare and so it's impact is regarded as rather small and not seen as a monopoly.
When you have a big share of the pie there are other rules that apply and personally I'm fine with that. When you have 80% of the market it can't be all fun and play.
Sounds a lot how Microsoft abused licensing agreements with OEMs to discourage them from selling PCs not bundled with Windows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows