Sounds a lot how Microsoft abused licensing agreements with OEMs to discourage them from selling PCs not bundled with Windows.
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?
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.
A happy day for us consumers!
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.
>Article 102
>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.
- 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.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/513129/operating-income-... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/258399/total-operating-i... [2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-documentary-re-exa...
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.
The fine is huge, but it's a small fraction of their revenue. This fine is measured based on guidelines that have been the same for more than a decade: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:52...
I'm not sure how that's a bad thing.
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.
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.
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.
I think that this is already a counter-attack of "dieselgate".
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.
actually, 2017 google made $110B so its not 1/4 but 1/22 of their profits last year.. enormous? meh.
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
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.
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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian#Market_share_and_compe...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/24/symbian-goes-open-source-c...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_Foundation
[4] https://www.wired.com/2010/02/symbian-operating-system-now-o...
These days I actually feel more comfortable when things aren't free. It means the company's motives aren't (completely) obfuscated.
'open' and 'control' are hard to reconcile.
Excellent development! These platforms weren't "open" in the first place, just pretending to be, so I don't see the problem.
The Android growth phase has been incredibly lucrative for Google (and Microsoft, via patents). Have no doubt they'd try it again today.
And the justice system in the EU is different than in the US. It doesn't mean the next one will be the same.
Sure GDPR is vague and had Edge cases, but it’s been a huge boon to the world. Thank you EU.
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.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/18/17580694/google-android-e...
> How is it any different
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
It's not. Be Patient.
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.
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.
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 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]
https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/andro...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevant_market
[2]: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/apple-v-pepper/
I cannot change the defaults in an Android phone and sell it to you. That's the problem.
Have you tried Google Duo?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on...
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.
> 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.
Considering that, $5B doesn't seem to be much of a fine to be literally on the head of most smartphones in the world.
If they don't change in 90 days, they are fined 5% of their revenue every day. That's a lot.
But from the governments perspective that defeats the whole purpose, which is to raise funds.
A week would definitely put a noticeable dent in the economy.
> 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.
Yes, it is, which is why the EU commission have a whole section on explicitly why "default install" is still anti-competitive.
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.
the only reason Apple doesn't get a fine for iOS is because it doesn't have 80% of the market share.
this is the law
https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-l...
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.
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 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.
It'll certainly please OEMs and telcos, though.
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.
The stock is down about 1%. Not much considering that $5B should be about 1/3 of Googles yearly earnings.
On the other hand, 1% of Googles stock is about $8B. From that viewpoint, one might think it has come unanticipated.
Then again, stocks rise and fall 1% all the time. So it's hard to read something into it.
Is this the same case as reported in January here?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-results/alphabet...
"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."
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.
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.
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-results/alphabet...
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/external/html/budgetataglance/...
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.
I don't see why EU should "work with google" to make them follow regulations (EDIT: beyond the threat of punishment).
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.
What makes you think that they didn't? Have you even read the WSJ article? It says:
"Google, which can appeal any decision, has rejected the EU’s case since the bloc issued formal charges over two years ago."
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.
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.
Fining Google 4 billions after they forced all sort of lock-in strategies on the users for a decade is less than a slap on the wrists.
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.
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.
<shrug>
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.
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.
I also had a look at how to file an anti-trust complaint but to be honest, most info was over my head and more appropriate for a lawyer - this seems to be a good start: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/contacts/electronic_document...
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...
> 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.
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.
I imagine they read the antitrust law and then applied it. I could be wrong, though. Maybe it's because "they hate America for its freedoms."
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.
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.
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.
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)".
Nothing they provide really mandates they have a physical presence.
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.
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.
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.
This is the tech version of people starting a $100M GoFundMe for Kylie Jenner to reach a net worth of $1B.
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.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/17/google-reaches-7-8-million...
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.
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.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-02/google-s-...
[2] https://itep.org/amazon-inc-paid-zero-in-federal-taxes-in-20...
[3] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/09/07/could-your-st...
This is the tech version of people starting a $100M GoFundMe for Kylie Jenner to reach a net worth of $1B.
Fuck the laws and regulations in the countries in which they do business apparently.
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?
I really like this point:
> [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!
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.
PS - site is working fine for me.
Isn't that what the BlackPhone has been doing for some time?
https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/blackpho...
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
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.
P.S.
A recent indicator as to the political nature of this action, the fine announcement was delayed until after Trump's visit to europe: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-antitrust/eu-go...
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.
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!
What do you say?
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.
> [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 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.
