Google App Suite Costs as Much as $40 Per Phone Under New EU Android Deal (theverge.com) 120
Android manufacturers will have to pay Google a surprisingly high cost in Europe in order to include Google's Play Store and other mobile apps on their devices, according to documents obtained by The Verge. From the report: A confidential fee schedule shows costs as high as $40 per device to install the "Google Mobile Services" suite of apps, which includes the Google Play Store. The new fees vary depending on country and device type, and it would apply to devices activated on or after February 1st, 2019. But phone manufacturers may not actually have to shoulder that cost: Google is also offering separate agreements to cover some or all of the licensing costs for companies that choose to install Chrome and Google search on their devices as well, according to a person familiar with the terms. Google declined to comment.
But ... (Score:1, Funny)
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In your example, the flint is the product.
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No, being marketed to doesn't make you the product. You become the product when you're getting a product or service someone else is partially or fully paying for. Like for example a tavern hiring a bard, the patrons might think they're the customers since they have some influence over what he plays and pay tips but from the bard's perspective it's the owner's tavern and their rules come first. It's in the same vein as "there's no such thing as a free lunch" or "the first one is free", if you're not paying f
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if you're not paying for it somebody else is with ulterior motives
Except there're no ulterior motives. You know how Google makes money. Do you think the rest of us just can't grok it?
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Yet we still have tens of deep thinkers that post to every Google thread feeling the need to explain it to the rest of the population that's not as smart as we are.
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You are the product
Agreed. The consumer is a pretty important part of a capitalist economy. Personally, I'm going to save my outrage for other topics.
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India already did it.
P.S. There should probably be some punctuation in there.
Re:But ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Freedom was never free. Everything has a price.
The price for liberty is quite messy and often uncontrollable. That is part of what freedom means.
On the other hand, if you like order, then suck up and welcome your new Fascist overlords. But at least the trains run on time huh?
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Your idea of "Free" isn't the same as mine. Freedom was bought by the eternal vigilance against tyranny. Just because it hasn't cost you anything, doesn't mean it was free. Someone paid a heavy price.
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I guess they didn't expect Google to act like petulant little children trying to get revenge.
Carriers should just tell Google to fuck off and start including F-Droid and/or Amazon on their devices. Google services are privacy invading jokes anyway and all of my devices run very smoothly without any Google apps polluting them.
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Uhmm.. no. They still offer their software to the device manufacturers. That's exactly the opposite of packing up and going home.
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It's Google being crybabies, taking their ball and going home.
What Google is doing is simply introducing a new business structure since the EU ruled their current illegal.
The reality of course is that phones won't be made in the EU because they can no longer be competitive. That's okay with Google, because there's no point in doing business w/ EU companies if they can't make money.
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I guess they didn't expect Google to act like petulant little children trying to get revenge.
That's not what's happening. If it was, Google would be shooting itself in the foot, since it would be a strong incentive for device manufacturers not to use the Google suite, which is not at all what Google wants. What's actually happening is a predictable slap in the face to the EU idiots; as the summary says, manufacturers will simply make a deal where effectively they balance the cost of including the Google sui
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Yes Samsung has had it's own app store ever since they released their first phone. What's it called now?
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Re: But ... (Score:1)
this is probably what carriers pay (Score:3)
they probably could not just give this away even if they wanted too. if they are charging carriers for android and access to the play store then they cant just offer it free to others. chances are many carriers have most favored nation type contracts that says google will always offer it to them at the lowest price it is offered to anyone else.
when you sign a contract like that you dont care what google charges you because you can pass the cost to the consumer when all you competitirs pay the same.
microso
Re:But ... (Score:4, Informative)
No one is saying this. I mean, FDA meat inspectors cost money. So do airbags and seat belts that are required by law. But things just cost money. The funny question is how much other companies will be willing to pay phone manufacturers to put their browsers and search engines onto the phones.
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... I thought regulation didn't cost anything, and you could just mandate goodness for free?
I'll gladly not pay Google to not have their spyware built into, unremovable from and if you limit their access won't stop throwing notifications, like Google Play Services does whenever I turn on the GPS to use Osmand~.
Some 95% of the apps that I use I get from F-Droid and Humble Bundle anyways.
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Right now my big complaint is that when my phone pairs/connects with my wife's car (Lincoln MKX, Base Sync), IHeartRadio starts and runs in the background on its own. No other time does IHR run on its own. And I cannot yet find out why.
IHR gives me no useful information. Anyone seen this?
It's not just Google. Facebook has notifications that cannot easily be cleared, items that you click without actually intending to, and ways of trapping you into interactions you didn't really want. Twitter and other social
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Right now my big complaint is that when my phone pairs/connects with my wife's car (Lincoln MKX, Base Sync), IHeartRadio starts and runs in the background on its own. No other time does IHR run on its own. And I cannot yet find out why.
That's not Google's fault, that's your phone and its own issues. My phone pairs and connects with my Sync 3 system just fine, no issues. Typically, if the last music source on Sync 3 was your phone, your phone will then use whatever the default music app is. Evidently, IHeartRadio has been set as the default on your phone. If that's not what you wanted, blame IHeartRadio app, not Google.
Re: But ... (Score:2)
Ok, first, that was my point. Google is not actually the big problem. But we digress.
Usually my phone is NOT the last connection, not the last streaming device, it's just proving hard to find the survive that is causing this, and IHR and Lincoln are unable to help so far.
In fact, both dispute my claim, despite screenshots. I'm possibly going to have to root and dump logs.
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It's not just Google. Facebook has notifications that cannot easily be cleared, items that you click without actually intending to, and ways of trapping you into interactions you didn't really want. Twitter and other social media repeatedly try to trick me into loading my contact list
And yet you continue to use Facebook/Twitter/anything like these. Astonishing.
Personally I never used either one and what you mention (while valid) is the least of my reasons. I'm not surprised to hear complaints like yours and many others. What does surprise me is that people continue to put up with this as though social media were some kind of essential requirement for human life. Maybe they enjoy being pushed around?
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I'm saddled with some business contacts on FB. All else is minimal, and I keep narrowing down my profile, but yeah I put up with a lot, especially ACs being righteous.
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Right now my big complaint is that when my phone pairs/connects with my wife's car (Lincoln MKX, Base Sync), IHeartRadio starts and runs in the background on its own. No other time does IHR run on its own. And I cannot yet find out why.
Did you really just post in this thread about a problem you are having with bluetooth and the IHR app?
Re: But ... (Score:2)
As an example of 0) potentially intrusive, privacy violating app behavior not of Google's making, and 1) how it's not just Google.
Re: But ... (Score:2)
Sure. Identifying it is the challenge.
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... I thought regulation didn't cost anything, and you could just mandate goodness for free?
I'll gladly not pay Google to not have their spyware built into, unremovable from
Talk to your device manufacturer. They always have the option to use alternatives. But they even can keep on using the android base and use a different store system. Of course running your own here costs money, that's why they are flocking to Google. But as I said: Talk to your manufacturer.
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It was never meant to be free, this was the intended outcome. Google gives manufacturers the option to pay for it or to ship Chrome/Google Search as the defaults. Having a choice is the point.
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The intended outcome was that GMS was an all-or-nothing package. Google's approach to Android was, "If you want this critical piece of Android that actually makes the phone worth using, you need to license the proprietary GMS package, and to do that you need to ship us as default." Note how all the new licensing terms only apply for phones sold in the EU. If you want to sell a phone outside of the EU, you aren't allowed to drop default Google, and you aren't allowed to ship forks. This is bare-minimum compl
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Who ever said that?
Any decision has its trade offs. If you are going to fine someone, they are collecting money which may had been used into something more productive. However not having any sort of punishment for breaking and/or reward for following a rule will just never happen.
Now for the long term, if Europeans are so sick of paying extra for Google now that they are fined for anti-competive behavior. They should actually step up to the plate and be competitive.
Europe isn't known for it technology se
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It doesn't cost anything. $40 is nothing compared to the cost anti-competitive practices impart on the economy.
Good for consumers! (Score:2)
I was worried that consumers were not paying enough to Google for their phones. Fortunately, the EU has fixed the glitch.
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I think that may be the point. While the consumer may get a financial hit. They are getting the ability to gain choices as well.
When there is a big company willing to spend millions of dollars into a free feature. It is difficult for you to try to sell your product that you invested millions of dollars in to sell for money.
Re: Good for consumers! (Score:1)
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Well, bangers and mashed splits the difference.
How much does MicroG cost? (Score:5, Interesting)
And will Google take legal action?
I will be wiping Google from my phone next month with MicroG [microg.org]. They have worn out their welcome.
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Yeah how dare them not provide everything for free.
Well that backfired somewhat... (Score:3)
Though there are of course games being played here, much in the same way Microsoft did in the 90s. It could easily go the other way in practice, Google pay Apple billions to put their search engine in iOS Safari, so they think it has value. These prices are being set to make a political point.
As much as the more hysterical American /. contingent would prefer their companies to do what they want throughout the world, and the EU is flawed when it comes to regulation, do we really want Google to be able to do anything it wants? There has to be some oversight, so, what?
Re: Well that backfired somewhat... (Score:1)
Did it backfire? I'll wait and see.
It shows what your privacy is worth to Google though.
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"As much as the more hysterical EU /. contingent would prefer their companies to do what they want throughout the world, and government is flawed when it comes to regulation"
FTFY
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Bullshit. EU is just as anal about European companies behaviour.
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How exactly is it protectionism, if there's no competing platform from the EU?
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many of the things hit US companies the hardest
Maybe that's because the EU companies have a business model that conforms to EU law, while US companies try and pretend they don't have to.
Wrong kind of oversight (Score:2)
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The right kind of oversight would be limiting what kind of private user information Google collects, or at least forcing them to disclose it. The EU kind of oversight is just trying to handicap Google so a European competitor (hahahahaha) can take its place and do the exact same evil that Google does except while paying EU taxes.
I don't see the evidence for this. Apart from there being no credible european competitors that they are supposedly protecting, Google *have* done bad. We complain about them on this site *all the time*.
I doubt limiting what data they collect is available as a punishment. You can't just make up any rule, it's not a sport. They can only be punished for things that are actually against the law, and anitcompetitive behaviour is one of those things.
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EU companies already avoid paying taxes using every loophole they can find and while that certainly has raised some eyebrows and there are politicians who want that kind of tax evasion to be persecuted, the large corporations still manage to get away with it in most cases. How? Because there's often a large number of jobs depending on those corporations and if you hurt them as hard as they deserve it, they'll make their employees, who are al
Don't pay, ship without GApps... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Define "works". LineageOS has a market share that is almost immeasurably small. You will find a niche in only those people who prefer to have an OS without any of the ecosystem (Where's my Candy Crush APK?) or those who prefer special purpose services (Kindle).
In either case you're effectively giving up the traditional Android phone in the process. Expect next year to be the year of Linux on the phone .... wait dammit that didn't work the way I wanted it to, but you get the point.
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do not even need that, ship with Aptoide (www.Aptoide.com), it is just one of the top alternative app store and almost the only not tied to another big company/manufacturer
Retaliation... (Score:3, Interesting)
The specific number seems to be based on the idea that they're going to be losing all revenue from advertising and datamining operations and are simply pulling in that revenue directly from users as a single up-front payment. For comparison's sake Facebook's per-user revenues were about $20 in 2017 so that's probably two year's revenue from datamining and in-app advertising trough Google APIs.
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Re:Retaliation... (Score:4, Informative)
This is not retaliation, this is actually good news for EU consumers, because it allows competition with other app stores. It's hard to compete with free + hidden costs.
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>Someone has to build and maintain those app stores.
You miss the point... there are alternative shops out there, f-droid and Aptoide are 2 of the biggest managed by small teams. Trying to ask phone manufactures or phone operators to bundle their store is impossible, google one is free and known, why risk anything else! Marketing, paying operators, etc is almost impossible, they have to pay for the systems and people, they have no money left for anything else!
But if you have to pay 40€... maybe that
I just care about being able to uninstall it (Score:1)
and the Google spyware (collecting WiFi info, e-mail info, DNS lookups, voice and camera recordings, text messages etc.) has to be removed as well.
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Yeah. Add the Google Play store, because that's fucking useful, and if it makes the device cheaper than sure, include Google Search and Chrome.
Hell, I'll even leave Chrome installed. It's useful for the rare sites my better browser doesn't like. I run three browsers on desktop for similar reasons.
But let me uninstall Search, let me uninstall Google Now and for fucks sake let me uninstall that shitty Facebook app without rooting my phone.
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Re:So all good news then (Score:4, Interesting)
You already have a few OSS Android-based firmwares. Seems like without Google Services these are, well, not necessarily useless - you still could make calls and browse the web with firefox and what not - but rather nothing special, so nothing that it is silly to compare them with even stock Android One.
Google services are not just tracking, it is integration of several specialized the services into an overall experience in the first place.
The issue with the OSS firmwares as an excuse is that you're right, they usually aren't comparable...but not for the reason you think.
Try using one. I can't think of a currently-sold-in-the-US Android handset that doesn't ship with a locked bootloader. I think HTC will provide a first party unlock, and I think possibly Motorola, but even those OEMs will require you surrender your warranty. So, most people end up hoping someone on XDA has managed to hack the security of the handset in order to force the bootloader open...and even if they have, it's common for OTA updates to patch those exploits, so you have to
avoid updates to ensure you have the correct bootloader version, and that's a best case scenario.
So, you've got your bootloader unlocked. You've voided your warranty, you're hoping the random root tool you downloaded isn't a trojan, and you've expressed a willingness to give up some of the hardware advantages. AOSP ROMs can't use Wi-Fi calling, and they don't ship with the extensions that make the S-Pen on Note series phones do anything useful, and so forth. You've backed up all your data with Titanium Backup, and then you flash in TWRP...and you load everything, hoping the ROM works well on your particular phone, which you can't be sure of, because Android's HAL is good, but most phones have people who customize ROMs on a per-model basis, sometimes even requiring different ROMs between different carriers to deal with the different baseband modems.
So now you flash, and you decide to put up with whatever random quirks your ROM has. You're doing the same thing again next time your ROM has an update....did I mention all of this is a best case scenario?
In summary, if you can find me a phone that has both a Google-blessed ROM and an AOSP-based ROM, where users can flash either one of them with a tool direct from the OEM and still have support and their warranty, with the ONLY difference being the lack of Google services, then it's possible you can make the 'overal experience' claim. Otherwise, you're ignoring gigantic swaths of technical reasons why end users don't have much of a choice on this topic in the first place.
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all those services are useful ... if you use then! Most people do not use most of google services
i can browser the net, use GPS and maps, see my calendar and taks, take pictures, sync my contacts and files ... what i'm missing? games? yes, i can also play several games... what else? social network? i personally do not use then, but they are there!
Most of those features are really useless or only needed by some people... talk to the phone? nope, useless to me, but for old people that may be a killer feature
No you won't (Score:3)
It is not up to you what comes on your phone. It is up to the manufacturer.
The question you need to ask is, do you seriously think Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc. are going to go to the trouble of building, packaging, and selling a "Google-free" phone that costs $40 more, for the 0.1% of customers who want said phone?
No, they will not.
(insert Nelson Muntz laugh here) (Score:2)
That's quite a "fuck-you-and-your-EU-antitrust-order" plus "thank you for strengthening our browser and search engine monopoly you bunch of fucking EU morons" combo.
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(Insert any other laughter here) As soon as the US companies have to start paying the EU taxes you speak of, how do you think they will make up for that loss of revenue? If your answer is that they will pass it on the EU consumer, then you win the 'wise consumer' prize.
Back To The Future..... (Score:4, Funny)
Smuggling things in to Europe from the UK.
It is like it is the 70s all over again!
Windows 10 mobile comeback. (Score:2)
I wonder if Windows 10 mobile starts rising from the dead over this.
If I remember correctly it's licensing fee was cheaper than $40 and just about every android phone could run it.
The cost of GDPR and unbundling (Score:3)
Now the Europeans are paying the cost of GDPR and the unbundling case. I'm not saying the browser unbundling or GDPR are bad, but to say it happens at no cost is just being naive. I hope it was worth it for them.
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Just like buying a laptop that I never even unbox. Things always look like a cost when you only look at one side of the equation. Anti-competitive practices come at a cost. Just how much money does Apple make again from selling default search options to Google?
By the way I am using my laptop so that wasn't just a cost, and neither is paying $40 in response to now being allowed to monetise a platform in ways that were previously not possible due to the previous illegal agreement.
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I don't think someone outside of clueless internet forums said or expected that. But of course that's where being offended by anything happens.
What if Amazon is cheaper? (Score:2)
You can already install LineageOS without Google, then load it with a full suite of Amazon services. The EU just made a family of Amazon phones possible.
What about Microsoft? There are already a full suite of integration apps for OneDrive, Outlook et al. Some of these depend upon gapps, but a Microsoft Android is surely not far out of reach.
What about Samsung? Every Galaxy that I've seen has a suite of Samsung apps that duplicate Google functionality.
What if all of these players unite to displace Google in
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GDPR has only a couple of onerous clauses in it, and is thus well worth the cost.
Unbridled exploitation of private data also has societal costs.
Spyware and closed source (Score:1)
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Hey, Liberal Arts majors in EU govt (Score:1)
Ask and you'll get a 39.99$ rebate (Score:2)
The oldest trick in the book if you can't give away stuff for free.
Why $40 per device? (Score:2)
battery life (Score:2)
It is just circumvention (Score:2)
If you want the "clean" gapps, you need to pay $40.
But we can pay you $40 to install all the crapware that used to come with it.
I don't really think any manufacturer will want to add $40 to the cost of a phone. Especially considering that Google crapware is not that crappy and that many customers actually want it.