Google Warns Turkish Partners Over New Android Phones Amid Dispute

Google has told its Turkish business partners it will not be able to work with them on new Android phones to be released in Turkey, after the Turkish competition board ruled that changes Google made to its contracts were not acceptable. From a report: Turkey's competition authority had fined Google 93 million lira ($17.4 million) in September 2018 for violating competition law with its mobile software sales. The company was given six months to make changes to restore competition. Turkey's competition board ruled on Nov. 7 that changes which Google made in its contracts with its business partners in line with the board's demands were inadequate as they still did not allow changes to the default search engine.

Good

[Arthur, KBE]

Let Google pull out and Turkey and can develop their own third-world phone operating system, just for Turkey. Gobble, Gobble!!!

Re:

[sit1963nz]

Good, there needs to be more competition. In fact all of Europe and Asia should help, make it open source so any country can use it.

Re:

[BioNTechKid]

Good, there needs to be more competition. In fact all of Europe and Asia should help, make it open source so any country can use it.

Android Open Source Project aka AOSP is open source, and you dont have to google stuff on it, but Google doesnt need to aid in that. The project is already there, and lots of users flash to it. However users will find that it is not as functional because it wont have a search tool, email, photos, etc etc everything that is a Google service. I have a feeling that phone wont sell well.

Fork It

[FeelGood314]

Android started out open source and is based on Linux. If you don't like android, you are free to fork it and make your own. You just can't call it Android. Google is a near monopolist in the smart phone OS market but not quite. There is a low bar to entry. The APIs are all open and well documents. the older code is still available. There is no competition because people like standardization and that standardization means that when I get an Android phone I get a specific set of standard features. For good or bad google gets to say what Android means.

Re:

[Wired In Blood]

There is a low bar to entry. The APIs are all open and well documents.

No they aren't. Google tried this in court and Oracle won. The courts have shown that the API's are not open for usage, and anyone who wants to try this will have to pay Oracle for the privilege. Or re-write almost everything from scratch

Re:

[riis138]

Turkey is a first world country...or are you trying to say that the quality would be third world? Was this all a setup so you could say gobble gobble? I'm so in the weeds with this comment.

Turkey is a democratic dictatorship

[aberglas]

They have elections, but are very rough about civil rights. They thump the Kurds regularly, and recently pushed them out of most of the Kurdish homeland in Syria (with Trump's blessing).

So not sure what was wrong with these contracts, but state spying quite likely was involved.

Re:

[jbengt]

You should know that 3rd world refers to countries not aligned with western capatalists or eastern socialists, rather than undeveloped countries.

Re: Good

[technothrasher]

Well, that's definitely how the term "Third World" got started, during the cold war. But since the "Second World" (aka the Eastern Bloc) no longer exists, the term has mostly come to mean the same thing as "developing countries". It's kind of a hold over term that is fuzzy and mostly useless at this point.

Re:

[Barsteward]

Mustn't upset Trump's new business pal Erdogan.

Google to Turkey

[93 Escort Wagon]

"I have altered the deal. Pray I do not alter it further."

History Repeating

[theshowmecanuck]

Google is guilty of the same anti-competitive crime as was Microsoft when the latter was accused of tilting the playing field by bundling Internet Explorer with its operating system. The EU forced MS to make IE a separate install, and to allow the users to designate browsers of their choice. There is also the issue of users being able to choose the default search engine for their browser. The bottom line though is that Microsoft was using its position as the OS provider to freeze out competition in an anti