Google Responds To EU Antitrust Claims In Android Blog Post 245
An anonymous reader writes Earlier today the European Union released a Statement of Objection against Google, asserting that the search giant's dominance violating antitrust rules and Android products hindering equal opportunities for market access among its rivals. Google has now released an official blog post in response to the Commission's proposed investigation. Regarding its Android devices, Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of Engineering at Android writes: "The European Commission has asked questions about our partner agreements. It's important to remember that these are voluntary—again, you can use Android without Google—but provide real benefits to Android users, developers and the broader ecosystem." He continues: "We are thankful for Android's success and we understand that with success comes scrutiny. But it's not just Google that has benefited from Android's success. The Android model has let manufacturers compete on their unique innovations [...] We look forward to discussing these issues in more detail with the European Commission over the months ahead."
Google's blog post (Score:2)
"It's a shame, what's going to happen to Germany over the next few weeks."
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Your comment is utter rubbish. EU monopoly law is different from that in the US. In the EU we assume that when you have a dominant market position, this already endangers the positive effect of a free market. Therefore, to allow other companies to be able to enter the market, the dominant company must be constraint in a way that it cannot use its size to corner the market. This will allow other companies, such as Microsoft and Yahoo to play a bigger role in that market. BTW: Microsoft was also sued by the E
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Unlike its competitors, Google allows you to unbundle all of the google-centric services from your phone and use whatever cloud APIs or App stores you want. In what way could they possibly be more open?
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You demonstrate why Europeans have been defeated by Americans in practically every industry: You're fucking morons who think success should be punished.
The success of digital communism^W^W Linux not withstanding I suppose.
Technically right (Score:4, Interesting)
You can use Android without Google services. But being technically right isn't enough when it comes to antitrust. Google uses its position to make using Android without Google services increasingly more difficult. More and more essential features are moved from Android OSP to the proprietary Google apps package (or added there without first showing up in AOSP), and the OS makes no provisions to use other services as drop-in replacements (i.e. transparently to other apps). For example, almost all apps which provide location based services depend on the Google apps package for the simple task of showing locations on a map, even though there are several other map services which could do the same thing, but have no chance of getting the necessary OS integration.
Re:Technically right (Score:4, Insightful)
That's probably because somewhere in the google complex, there are some crusty old bureaucrats that just cant let go of the notion that "Proprietary == Profit!", and that "Control" takes many forms other than just "Stop all competition at all costs!"
Things like, "Look, we design and maintain the freaking OS. Here's how the location service API works, and how to make calls. Our location service package in Google Apps is purpose tailored for the Android platform, and we provide support for it-- however, if you want to have your device provide location services using a different library, it needs to conform to this API, and you are on your own if it breaks. We wish you luck, but if it breaks, dont come crying to us over it. Likewise, if you are linking against our location service software in your app using some method OTHER than the published API (Such as hooking some of our secret sauce inside that isn't normally exposed, hijacking some unanticipated feature of our location service daemon, or using some magic ID string for some other purpose that will then break if some 3rd party location service daemon is installed-) you are not developing for the android platform correctly, and if we catch you doing it, we will boot you from the playstore for not following best practices."
You still have market dominance. You still have control over the playstore. You still have control over quality of software on offically supported devices (so you dont look bad) ,AND you get to have a powerful shield against regulatory oppression.
BUT-- Somewhere in corporate la-la land, there is that cadre of old fucks who see an open platform and shit themselves because they dont have a strangle-hold death-grip on every little thing involved.
Re:Technically right (Score:5, Interesting)
The history of mobile operating systems shows that your preferred strategy is a losing strategy. Users DO come crying over it, and developers cry twice as much. J2ME was basically Android 0.1 and took this approach - it was just a bunch of API specs and then phone vendors could license different implementations, write their own, etc.
J2ME sucked. I know this because I tried to write apps for it. Literally every freaking phone had its own unique combination of stupid, obvious bugs that rendered key APIs unusable without enormous piles of hacks. J2ME developers theoretically wrote Java, but often used a C style macro preprocessor because so many hacks required different source code to handle.
Android learned from J2ME and took a different approach - one single reference implementation that everyone builds off and is not pluggable except in very small, tightly controlled ways. You can modify the reference implementation to your hearts content unless you want access to the Play Store, in which case you have to pass the "Compatibility Test Suite" for core OS functionality, and for some other kinds of things that are impossible to unit test (e.g. Maps quality), agree to ship the Google implementation. This saves developers from J2ME hell making users and developers happy, and still lets manufacturers tweak things that aren't covered by the CTS, like reskinning things.
I see no evidence the EU has any understanding of the delicate balancing act Android represents, or the history of mobile phone operating systems. I fear this will be yet another bull-in-china-shop scenario. On the other hand, if Google are doing things like what Microsoft used to do by saying "if you sell any Google-services phone you cannot sell any non-Google-services phone" then that'd be a problem that is correctable without hurting developers.
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The desktop/server space is also not completely immune to these kind of things. I once found a bug in one JVM that did not happen in another, took us a couple of days to track it down (and we were lucky it was a know bug, otherwise we would still be looking for it).
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The anti-trust trouble for Google is if you want to futz around and ship your own version of Android you are banned from shipping ANYTHING with Google services, due to the anti-fork provision in the agreement required to ship Google services.
That's why Samsung has Tizen instead of an Android fork: if they shipped a version of AOSP with their own apps and store running on top of it they wouldn't be able to ship anything with Google services on it. Not only that but you can't contract manufacture those devic
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I think it's just as, if not more, likely that within the Google complex the general mindset is that any Google service in Android (or more generally, on the web) is going to so much better than any competing service that nobody in their right mind would care ab
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The reason you can't simply provide your own implementation of GoogleMap and MapView isn't because of "bureaucrats" at Google, it's because Java doesn't support it. In Java, you have to explicitly create interfaces and factories for any part of your software system you want others to be able to replace. It sucks, but that's Java for you. Rather than creating interfaces for every single class Google guesses people might want to support, they handle i
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Google uses its position to make using Android without Google services increasingly more difficult.
Google has been working over the last several versions to unbundle things from the core OS and put them into other packages-- the camera, keyboard, launcher, Chrome, and of course play services. Im not seeing how this makes it MORE difficult to use android without google services when all their effort is in modularizing it.
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The issue isn't "android" per se, its "Google Play Services" which is a big set of (AFAIK closed source and proprietary) libraries that many apps depend on to do stuff. If you want "Google Play Services" on your device you need to follow all the other Google rules. So the EU is saying that Google is using "Google Play Services" (something it has a dominant market position in since its the only provider of many of these services for Android apps) as a way to push other things in the Google stable (and hurtin
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This is different from iOS or Windows... how? It's how mobile operating systems work: people want to access services in the cloud, they want their data synced and backed up, etc.
There are tons of things you can replace, far more than on other mobile operating systems. Android even provides for using n
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Well, I bought this phone for my grandma. It is a Samsung. So how should she get rid of the Google Android and work Googless?
Please explain in 3 easy to understand steps.
Just because it is technically possible does not mean anything. The reality is that if you buy an android, you are linked to Google.
1. Open settings.
2. Go to accounts.
3. Remove google account.
There, easy. If you don't want Android at all, buy a different phone. Perhaps a cheap second hand iPhone, or look at one of the cheap FirefoxOS or Lumia Windows phones.
And in Android world, neither Nokia X phones nor Amazon Fire phones are linked to Google.
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That's not true. You most certainly can layer systems other than Google Play on top of Android. For example: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OC... [amazon.com]
The fact that something requires a developer (or more) just means it isn't designed for end users to do but rather manufacturers or service providers.
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Only if you want to use Google's online services, like the app store, backup, location service, or mapping.
The reality is that people buy Android because they want to use the Google services, not the other way around.
And if you really don't want to be linked to Google yet do want online services, buy an iPhone or a Windows phone.
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One of those emails specifically says Samsung had used Skyhook to replace google location.... which sort of kills the point you were making.
Of course you cant even dream of doing something like that on any other non-AOSP OS out there.
This will be interesting, (Score:2)
Re:This will be interesting, (Score:4, Interesting)
Companies have no rights at all. Only human beings have rights. Companies have such privileges as society deems fit to grant them for the benefit of society. Benefit to the companies is purely coincidental and only needed when that benefit happens to benefit society as well.
Those who feel otherwise (and think what they are saying is free-market thinking) REALLY need to go brush up on their Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith.
Now, having said that, over-regulation is NOT to the benefit of society (but neither is under-regulation) the trick is to find the right balance, regulate against harmful behavior, regulate against the guy who would rather lock the fire escape than hire a security guard and ends up killing 103 people who otherwise almost certainly would have all survived the accidental fire (real case example).
In the case of anti-trust, take your cue from the greatest trust-buster of them all - President Rooseveldt, look at what the guy with the monpoly is actually DOING with that monopoly. Is he harming consumers ? Is he harming workers ? Is he jacking up prices ? Then destroy his monopoly with extreme prejudice. But if he isn't abusing that position, not actively trying to prevent competition from arising, not jacking prices up (but indeed his market shows a continous price-per-value drop over time), not harming consumers in a significant manner, treating workers well and fairly ? Then leave him alone in time the market will bring competitors - and we can AFFORD to wait when he isn't doing bad things.
I am always amazed when people call Obama a liberal president - his policies are center-right at best, Teddy Rooseveldt - now THAT was a Liberal. Probably the most liberal president America ever had. Conservationist, union-defender, workers-rights defender, opposed inequality and lack of social mobility (as he correctly realized: sufficient inequality can and always WILL lead to violent revolution, an outcome he believed ought ot be avoided by preventing that level of inequality from arising in the first place), the man behind some of the strictest anti-trust laws the US ever had - and willing to go to bat personally to get them enforced (as in - he personally had meetings with the CEO's of the companies he targetted - and when push came to shove showed up at the supreme court and took the stand himself).
So on balance ? There are areas where Google is due for some scrutiny, data protection and privacy laws are near the top of the list. They may have a monopoly in advertising and it may indeed be harmful (I'm not convinced but I recognize this as possible) - but android ? Nah, Android is an area where Google has been very well behaved, I don't care if their market share is monopoly level or not because even if they HAVE A monopoly what they've been DOING with it is not significantly harmful in any way.
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Companies have no rights at all. Only human beings have rights.
Rights are a legal fiction, because any right you cannot protect yourself and that nobody will protect for you is not a right at all. It's a hope, a wish, a prayer, but not a right.
The law says that corporations have rights, so you're going to just have to accept that. The law places many restrictions on your rights, so you're just going to have to accept those. Or work to change the laws, of course.
The constitution was never meant to exhaustively enumerate our rights, but in practice, that's what it does.
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Its funny that you're modded up when the very first sentence of your post is contradicted by the existence of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
As a matter of interpretation of the word "person" in the Fourteenth Amendment, U.S. courts have extended certain constitutional protections to corporations.
Perhaps you should stop relying on Ben Franklin and Adam Smith for 21st century jurisprudence.
they are opening a investigation (Score:3)
now is it to google to show that they are not breaking any rules and that they can behave
Missing tag for this story: CYANOGEN (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't figure out why Google wasn't getting pissy AT ALL over Cyanogen forking and talking smack about them.. Now the other shoe has dropped: Cyanogen's fork (and the company's very existance) is Google's main anti-trust defense, at least at the OS level.
Now Google's ad business, that's a whole 'nother matter...
WHAT is Google's busniess ? (Score:2)
I couldn't figure out why Google wasn't getting pissy AT ALL over Cyanogen forking and talking smack about them..
Much more basic: Ask your self, *WHAT* is google's business, what are they earning money from ?
They are not earning lots of money buy selling copies of Android.
Instead they earn money with their service: they probably earn a percentage of sales of apps on their store, and they earn tons of money through their data-mining/advertising.
So yet another fork of android doesn't mean less revenue for Google. It means yet another portable platform that will eventually log into maps.google.com, and ask about pizza, a
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I couldn't figure out why Google wasn't getting pissy AT ALL over Cyanogen forking and talking smack about them.. Now the other shoe has dropped: Cyanogen's fork (and the company's very existance) is Google's main anti-trust defense, at least at the OS level.
Is it? I run SOKP, based on AOSP. Cyanogen can blow me.
Re:Missing tag for this story: CYANOGEN (Score:4)
Cyanogen isn't a fork of Android. They don't develop their own code for the core Android OS, they just build custom versions of it with the odd patch to enable development features that Google doesn't (such as AppOps). They package and release it with their own apps and installer, in the same way that Linux distros do. So Cyanogen is no more a fork of Android than Ubuntu and Debian are forks of Linux.
Besides which, surely iOS and Windows Phone would be their defence, if they needed one. The EU doesn't actually care that Android is the dominant mobile/tablet OS, in the same way that they didn't care that Windows was the dominant PC OS. What they care about is bundling other services, and trying to force manufacturers to stick to certain defaults. When Microsoft tried it the solution was to release a version of Windows without Media Player bundled, and to display a browser choice screen to all EU users. It is likely that the same solution will be proposed for Android, so when you first turn the device on it asks what search engine you want to use and offers you a selection of browsers.
Open Source implementation of Play Services (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is moving more and more utilities to Play Services, which is not open source.
Play Services is not only about Google-related services, it is also about OAuth for instance.
Unknowing developers rely on Play Services, making their apps incompatible with pure-Android devices.
To solve this problem, an Open Source implementation of Google Play Services is being developed:
http://softwarerecs.stackexcha... [stackexchange.com]
Jeebus (Score:3)
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in the bay area, I see endless google shopping cars on the freeway and local roads. someone must be using them. really hard to miss those cars as you commute in the am and pm.
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You mean the shopping service that nobody uses? I've tried before, I've never found a legitimate retailer on their search engine.
Which makes pushing people there all the more evil.
This will make Android better (Score:2)
Android is widely used today. However, due to its tie in with Google, it hinders technology evolution like Windows did. The EU anti-trust case will certainly force Google to open up which will allow other people and companies to add to Android. It could even be fixed without Google. For example, things like the browser being firmware will then no longer be possible (even though Google recently found out that this is a stupid idea all by themselves).
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Too bad there aren't any other note apps to use on Android. Oh, wait....
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I don't think the point was this app specifically. The point is that Google tries their hardest to make all apps depend on Google's "services". Sure, it's possible to do without, but it's getting damn hard. And in addition to this they have completely forgotten everything about security implications. Try to install Android and hide your data from third parties. I bet you can't do it while using the phone for very long. I would guess that more than half of the apps in Play could be classified as malware if y
Re:Android without Google (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think the point was this app specifically. The point is that Google tries their hardest to make all apps depend on Google's "services".
Keep was a FREE app written by Google. What do you expect? The shit is free.
Keep is less than 1% of the note apps available for Android. Almost all of those apps don't depend on any Google service. Some are adware. Some will phone home to someone other than Google with info gathered from your phone. Some you have to pay a small fee for. Some come with a degree of privacy and security. It takes time to sort out which is the best app, but if you don't like Google's services in your apps, don't install the apps that use these services.
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Almost all of those apps don't depend on any Google service.
Almost all apps depend on a least the store. Very few offer sideload download links that do not requite google creds.
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The point is that Google tries their hardest to make all apps depend on Google's "services"
Utter bull. Go get any of the plethora of AOSP-based ROMs, and you can use any app you want.
Of course, MOST free apps get revenue from ads; and ads generally are going to rely on a cloud service, and that has to be provided by an ad provider-- hence play services. EVERYONE does this, though, Google isnt alone here.
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Well, yes: Google provides web-based services, and then provides some apps to speed up access to those services from phones. You know, like the Amazon shopping app is depending on Amazon's "services" etc.
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Are you sure they don't control "an app distribution channel" for Android? You can load other app distribution systems in. Not saying that Google isn't potentially a monopoly at this point, but it is hard to see where they have engaged in restraint given that you can layer anything on top of Android in place of play. Heck Microsoft is looking at .NET for Android.
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Perhaps. But what can they do to be more open than they already are. You can sideload apps. You can install another app store. Can you do this on iOS or WinPhone? I suppose they could allow OEMs to install the Play store without any Google apps - or at least without all of them. But a lot of stuff migrated to the app store because the OEM's weren't providing OS upgrades and Google wanted a way to keep phones more or less up to date without relying on OS upgrades. And developers that target those ser
Re:Android without Google (Score:5, Insightful)
The same is true for a lot of other banks. Google has intentionally made sure that they control the app distribution channel,
* WinPhone: Apps MUST be downloaded from the Microsoft Store
* iPhone: Apps MUST be downloaded from the App Store
* Android / AOSP: Alternative stores are explicitly allowed, though off by default. Apps may be sideloaded through a bootloader, through USB, through the official play store, or through third party app stores like Amazon's or F-Droid.
How, exactly, is Google the bad guy here?
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Yes, the Open Handset Alliance exists, and yes, Google has an agreement with the OEMs who choose to receive Android from Google. It's no less damning than any agreements a Windows Phone licensee would have to agree to, an iPhone 3rd party hardware (l
Re:Android without Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Google's additions are no more or less restrictive than their counterparts.
They are SIGNIFICANTLY less restrictive than their counterparts. I just got a corporate issued iDevice, and coming from android it is infuriating just how much Apple forces you to play with their ecosystem. You can install google maps, but it wont give you lock screen integration, and it cant be made the default for instructions, and it cant prevent screen lock. You can install SwiftKey, but you cant disable the Apple keyboard, nor prevent its mandatory use for password fields. You can install chrome, but cannot force links to open in it.
It is quite obnoxious to see people holding Google up as the bad guy here. Can you imagine if Apple was dominant? Oh wait, they were for a while and it WAS obnoxious, because it WAS horrendously locked down. Google offers an alternative that people have hacked to pieces and done wonderful things with (like Samsung, XIaoMi, OnePlus, Oppo, etc's take on AOSP) and the EU feels the need to crap on them because they hate google for some reason.
Google isnt perfect but theyre the best internet company we've had in a LONG time. Everyone else is worse in just about every category.
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[Microsoft | Apple] are not licensing their OS to other manufacturers, and then forcing those other manufacturers to use other [Microsoft | Apple] services in order to use the [Microsoft | Apple] monopoly app store.
You are not allowed to use one monopoly to leverage other business into another. It's the same concept that so many around here agreed with in DoJ vs. Microsoft - you can't use the Windows monopoly to increase IE market share artificially. Now change out "Windows" with "Google Play" and "IE" wi
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Re:Android without Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me a phone that has Samsung App store on it, but doesn't have other Samsung apps forced onto it.
Show me an Android phone you can't install competing app stores on.
Thank you for admitting you're wrong.
Re:Android without Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Is anyone surprised that a cloud based note system needs you to log in? If you don't want to sign in to google, don't use keep - it's not like it's the only way to store notes - there are hundreds of alternative note apps out there on 3rd party market places.
You don't need a google account to use android, you do if you want to use google's services. A bit like you need a Live account to use Microsoft's cloud services, and an iTunes account to use Apple's cloud services.
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There is no generic map widget
I found this one [github.com] after only a couple of minutes. I'm sure there are lots of other ones out there.
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I wouldn't say it's the app maker's *fault*, rather that they looked at the Google Maps API and decided it was the easiest, probably the best documented and most likely gives the best user experience. They could (if they needed to target people not having Google APIs on their device) use an OpenStreetMap backend - there are plenty of libraries out there.
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Google provides a map service. You dont have to have it installed AFAIK, and the app vendor does not need to use Google's API-- they could use Bing maps or another one, which some apps do.
Your complaint is about an API choice made by a dev, to choose the easiest and best mapping API out there (AFAIK-- others have always seemed worse to me but maybe Im wrong). That is not a google choice.
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No more "difficult" than using an iPhone without an Apple account or a Windows machine or Windows phone without a Microsoft account: you need an account for the app store. If that bothers you, there are plenty of phones without app stores; they are called "feature phones".
"Without Google", i.e., without the app store, you can still side-load apps on Android. Any developer can offer that. If Qando doesn't, complain to them and see what th
Re: Android without Google (Score:2)
So don't use keep, use one of the dozens of grocery list apps, many available on the amazon app store and so requiring no Google account.
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Thats because its a cloud service intimately tied to your Google account. If you dont want that, you should probably use another app designed differently.
It seems quite strange ti criticize Google for making an app that utilizes the Google ecosystem, rather than an app which directly competes with it. Perhaps we should criticize Microsoft for selling Microsoft Exchange as a service for Microsoft Windows, rather than implementing it directly on Red Hat.
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Or maybe Google really is being more evil, and a Google monopoly really is a net loss for society.
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Im not sure if everyone here is trolling or what, but this is absurd. Of the 3 major OS vendors out there, lets do a comparison.
App stores:
* iPhone, WinPhone, dumbphones: proprietary app store, no alternative way to load apps
* Android: Use any app store you want. Side load through a bootloader, or USB, or via downloading the apk directly.
OS:
* iPhone, WinPhone, dumbphones: Closed source and generally protected from modification by copyright (and possibly DMCA)
* Android: Ab
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Apple doesn't license iOS to others, and force other Apple services on them in order to have access to the iOS App Store?
Oh, right - you didn't RTFA.
Permission granularity is a big one (Score:2)
On not-Android operating systems, you can choose to deny a particular app access to a particular permission if you don't use features of that app that require access to that particular permission. For example, on iOS, you can deny an app access to your contacts without blocking the rest of the app from installing, and the App Store Review Guidelines state that the rest of an app must continue working without the permission. Android permissions commonly cited as useful to some but overly intrusive to others [slashdot.org]
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Obviously, society would be so much better off with Nokia's shitty operating system and pay-per-search offerings from the former national phone companies of Europe!
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No, but they have a monopoly on Internet search, and are using that monopoly to put Google Shopping results at the top of the page, above competitors. That's what the EU complaint actually is, with a side order of launching an investigation into Android forcing Google services down OEM throats.
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Every time I read about this EU nonsense with Android, I think about Nokia and Symbian. Maybe the EU is chapped because all the good smart phone OSs are developed in the US?
Are all good smartphone OSes developed in the US? Perhaps - but I don't think that is the issue here. I haven't read the case, or the summary, or the article about the summary, or the summary of that one; but I got a smartphone recently - a Samsung Ace 3 with Android. My impression is that the concept has huge promise, but that it is set up to disappoint massively, because although it is so-called open-source, you are not likely to be set free from the tie-in. This particular phone comes without Google Play
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Every time I read about this EU nonsense with Android, I think about Nokia and Symbian. Maybe the EU is chapped because all the good smart phone OSs are developed in the US?
... but I got a smartphone recently - a Samsung Ace 3 with Android. My impression is that the concept has huge promise, but that it is set up to disappoint massively, because although it is so-called open-source, you are not likely to be set free from the tie-in. This particular phone comes without Google Play (and as Google say: 'if it isn't installed from the start, you are not supposed to have it'), and all I can find on Samsung's equivalent is ad- and spyware. I have a suspicion the same holds for Google Play, but I don't know. Even if you download Google Play from elsehwere, it will not be allowed to run - it gets killed instantly.
To my mind, this is very close to being abuse of monopoly - 'collusion to abuse a monopoly' if there is such a concept.
But this is nothing to do with Google. Samsung have taken android and bastardized it to their own ends. Google Play isn't anything like this.
I tried using my phone without Google Apps, and it is largely usable, but I just missed such things as Maps, Google Camera, even location history.
BTW, you can use Cyanogenmod 11 or 12 with the Galaxy Ace 3, I believe, onto which you can load Google Apps or not, and save you from the Sumsung crapware you appear to have now.
WTF are you complaining about?? (Score:2)
You have completely lost me
Let's see ...
The phone you got is from Samsung
It runs Android
It does NOT have Google Play
And if you want to install Google Play in it, that Samsung phone somehow deletes it, instantly
Am I stating the facts correctly?
The phone's only tie with Google is the OS ( Android )
Fact 1. The Phone is not from Google
Fact 2. Google Play is not allowed to be installed in that phone
But of course, that's not all ...
You just goota bitch about the evilness of Google, even if you have
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You have completely lost me
Something about your post suggests that you were lost even before you started reading. The number of question marks, for one thing.
So what the fuck are you trying to prove?
Prove? I was making a comment - relating some of my own observations and the thoughts I had in that connection. It seems to have triggered a fit of violent rage in you; do you feel that you are religiously devoted to Google and that any hint of criticism against your Deity means that people are going all out to get you?
So - is Google evil? Could be - they are certainly not good
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Really? How does that "hinder others from entering the market"? People use dozens of search engines every day. They happen to use Google for general web searches because it works best.
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I'm not following your argument at all.
Android is a phone operating system with limited functionality that can support multiple layers on top providing a full application API including Google Play. Android is open source.
Google Play is a product designed to run on Android. It is included with some phones and not with others. Google play is not open source.
How are they abusing open source?
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Theyre abusing Open Source in the same way that Red Hat is abusing Open Source: They dare to have a business model involving open source.
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So you are saying that Google is abusing its "monopoly" on Android in order to bundle and favor Google apps and services when Samsung ships a phone based on Android that doesn't bundle Google apps and services?
Seems to me the Samsung Ace 3 is a perfect example that Google isn't doing what the EU alleges: phone vendors are free to ship Android without Google apps and services. But customers like you think the result sucks.
That shows that the reason people buy Android phones isn't actually the OS (which I per
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Most people buy Android phones because they are cheap only few care about the supposed "openness". Google Services are not a differentiation between Android and iOS. I have an iPhone an iPad and a Nexus 7. Google apps are just as good on the iPhone as they are on Android.
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Everytime I read about this non-sense about Android, I think about Apple.
- No competitng app store possible ...
- App competing with Apple removed from Apple App Store without any explanation
- iTunes locks similar to Google Account but made worse by supra
- Inability to install 3rd party firmware (cyanogen or other)
Why don't EU first attack the worst offender ?
Re:Nokia (Score:4, Insightful)
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. You need to have a sufficiently large market share that your actions distort the market to be considered a problem
I think we all get THAT, but Google is more open in just about every category than their competitors. Im failing to see how accusing them of using "closed-ness" makes sense when theyre more open than ANY of their competitors and are directly providing the groundwork for at least one of their competitors (Samsung) through that openness.
Re:Nokia (Score:5, Interesting)
Google is using the fact that they effectively have a monopoly on application distribution (yes, I know about F-Droid and the Amazon store. Most apps I want come from F-Droid, but I'm hardly a typical user and the rest come from Play because they're not in the Amazon store) to gain market share in other areas.
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None of their competitors even OFFER the option to have an "F-Droid" or to remove their respective equivalents of play services. Google is doing something literally no one else-- except those on AOSP-- offers. Its arguably not even possible to do the thing you're suggesting short of returning to the old days of "every phone its own OS with crappy J2ME apps".
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None of their competitors even OFFER the option to have an "F-Droid" or to remove their respective equivalents of play services
I'm not sure what your point is. 'Other people are worse' is not a defence in an antitrust investigation, unless those others have enough of a market impact that you're probably not going to be in the antitrust regulator's jurisdiction anyway.
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iOS is only sold by a single manufacturer and there are competing manufacturers. As long as high end Android exists there is no monopoly.
As for the rest...
I don't know what you mean by Apps competing with Apple removed. There are music apps competing with Garage Band. There are presentation apps competing with Keynote. There are word processing apps competing with Pages.... I'd say Apple demonstratively does allow competing applications.
As for inability to install 3rd party firmware... Apple allows yo
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2008 wants their arguments back....
Their are plenty apps on the app store that compete with iTunes, iTunes Radio, Beats Music, Mail, Maps, iBooks, Podcasts, and basically every other app.
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Yeah, diplomats and politicians in Brussels really give a shit that Symbian died the death it deserved.
Or, they passed laws restricting certain trade practices, which Google was being investigated over and actively working on a settlement until they walked away. Shocking that the EU would then work to uphold their laws.
Apparently we're all cheerleaders for the EU when they uphold antitrust laws against Microsoft, but they're just protectionist assholes when they go after Google for the exact same practices
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Except that Apple pushed Nokia in Panic then Google pushed Apple aside...
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No it wouldn't. Nokia had tremendous restructuring costs. Microsoft was providing large subsidies in exchange for the exclusive use of WindowsPhone OS. Without those subsidies Nokia's restructuring costs and higher costs of manufacturing means it can't be cost competitive with the Asian manufacturers and goes bankrupt. There is no Nokia if they follow your advice. Instead Elop gets them through the restructuring and then gets the company sold for $7b.
Re:Nokia (Score:4, Insightful)
Fanboyism trumps market economics every time. I personally want a healthy Android, and a healthy iOS - both systems push each other to be better, and we all win. Hell, a healthy Windows Phone in the mix wouldn't hurt either. A nice 3-way competition for my money.
Why people figure for one company to win, they have to completely crush the competition is beyond me - it only leads to irrational fanaticism that the company itself doesn't feel, and legal problems just like Google is now facing in the EU.
Apple doesn't give a shit if Android wants to take the bottom 60% of the market - they're perfectly happy owning the top 25%.
Google doesn't give a shit if Apple holds 25% of the market - they're happy with the 70% of the eyeballs looking at their ads, and inputting data into their indexing engines.
Microsoft probably gives a shit, because they've always been ruthless assholes. But, they're under 5% of the mobile market so nobody cares.
Blackberry hardly exists anymore, just like Symbian and the other also-rans.
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Yes. Yes you CAN do that.
You may have to root the phone. In a worst case scenario you may have to install an alternative android ROM like cyanogenmod.
Oh you can't do THAT ? If so, that's not google's doing, they have never done anything at all to prevent this - on the contrary they actively encouraged it and considering they specifically prohibited Cyanogenmod from including the google apps you can't HAVE them on cyanogenmod unless you actively seek them out and manually add them yourself.
If you can't find
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Can I remove GMail, the calendar, maps, youtube from my phone
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I've done it on my Nexus. At the very least you can disable them, even if your phone wont allow their removal.
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Yes, but not because of Google. Symbian died long before Google had significant market share, for the simple reason that it sucked. It had three different UIs, each of them awful, and one of the most horrible APIs imaginable. It looked like sh*t. It missed the touch screen boat. App installation was a nightmare. Good riddance.
Re: Google has money... (Score:2)
How dare they require that laws be obeyed! Damn commies!
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How many antitrust investigations happened to Nokia when they had the vast majority of the smartphone market in Europe? None? That's weird.
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