China Preparing an Antitrust Investigation Into Google (reuters.com) 57
China is preparing to launch an antitrust probe into Google, looking into allegations it has leveraged the dominance of its Android mobile operating system to stifle competition, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing two people familiar with the matter. From the report: The case was proposed by telecommunications equipment giant Huawei last year and has been submitted by the country's top market regulator to the State Council's antitrust committee for review, they added. A decision on whether to proceed with a formal investigation may come as soon as October and could be affected by the state of China's relationship with the United States, one of the people said. The potential investigation follows a raft of actions by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to hobble Chinese tech companies, citing national security risks. This has included putting Huawei on its trade blacklist, threatening similar action for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and ordering TikTok owner ByteDance to divest the short-form video app.
Rich as rich gets (Score:4, Insightful)
A dictatorship investigating for anti-trust is like Jack the Ripper investigating a woman with misaligned buttons.
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Antitrust for a forkable project? (Score:2)
Even without considering iOS, not sure that this falls under Anti-Trust. Search would seem to be a bigger issue with Google, but I guess because they play ball with the CCP, they aren't going to bring that up.
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It's about play store, which is not open access.
Re: Antitrust for a forkable project? (Score:2)
... and GMS more generally. Iinm, Google's intention was to prevent fragmentation of Android, but it has also locked companies in (or out) and enabled the US government to bad Android.
Google all but abandoned China in 2010 (Score:4, Informative)
When the government of China aggressively blocked Google services from functioning in the country, Google more or less took their ball and went home. Local variants of the impacted services filled the void. Why doesn't China do the same for Android?
I find it rather disingenuous for the Chinese government to sue Google when you consider all that was done to hamper Google's activity in their country.
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Unlike in America, there is no rule of law in China beyond what the party says. So the courts wont stop them for being meanies if they want to punish a private company because of diplomatic tensions with another nation. China investigating Google for anti trust is of course bullshit. But it doesn't matter. Who will call them out? A bunch of randos on a tech site? They don't care. The real reason is a tit for tat with the US in a trade war. Honestly I'm surprised they even bothered to come up with a justific
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Unlike in America, there is no rule of law ... Who are they trying to convince?
if you think that in your beloved america there is somehow more "rule of law" then ... you are a prime candidate!
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Yeah, this makes no sense to me at all. The only reason Android is in China in the first place is because Chinese companies brought it there, largely without Google's involvement. And now they're saying that Google is leveraging its dominance with Android to stifle competition? That makes no sense. To do so, Google would first have to have a presence in an adjacent market where they could leverage their dominance in China, but the Play Store is blocked in China, so it isn't alternative app stores, and Googl
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Yeah, this makes no sense to me at all.
there is a lot going on in the world that doesn't seem to make sense to many americans lately. one suggestion would be to start trying to look at things without you guys being the center of the world. flashing news, you aren't.
once you look past the gimmicks of the furious orange monkey it's easy to spot how trade wars work out.
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Yeah, this makes no sense to me at all.
there is a lot going on in the world that doesn't seem to make sense to many americans lately. one suggestion would be to start trying to look at things without you guys being the center of the world. flashing news, you aren't.
once you look past the gimmicks of the furious orange monkey it's easy to spot how trade wars work out.
Is this an effective conversation technique for you? Mock others for their confusion while failing to explain anything? Playing the haughty, "I'm so superior" card on the basis of generalization and stereotype? I'm very glad that my travels internationally have almost entirely brought me into contact with people who act as better representatives of the rest of the world than you have here.
But hey, I'm always willing to consider differing views and the notion that a change in perspective might provide answer
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China is threatening to kick someone out who left of their own volition over a decade ago?
Google has offices in China.
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Google had offices in China...
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According to Google they have offices in China: https://about.google/locations... [about.google]
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When the government of China aggressively blocked Google services from functioning in the country, Google more or less took their ball and went home. Local variants of the impacted services filled the void. Why doesn't China do the same for Android?
I find it rather disingenuous for the Chinese government to sue Google when you consider all that was done to hamper Google's activity in their country.
Ii's just tit-for-tat.
Trump blocks Huawei (or whatever), China blocks Google (or whatever).
Only an idiot would think China wouldn't respond this way eventually.
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ummm, China already blocks Google, Facebook, etc...
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Um, yes, that's be the "whatever" part.
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It's just a preview of things to come if Trump gets back in. Maybe some motivation for Google to take a position in the election.
It doesn't need to have basis in reality, any more than the Huawei security concerns do.
Re: Google all but abandoned China in 2010 (Score:2)
Iinm, it was the other way around. Google refused to comply with local laws and instead took their toys home.
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We are at war with China. Stop letting your hatred of Trump cloud your judgement on the matter. This action is actually evidence that Trump has been RIGHT.
Sloppy communication about China (Score:2)
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We are at war with China.
Are you a member of the coddled generation? Please don't use the word "war" to mean unfair economic sparing. You don't know what a war is.
This action is actually evidence that Trump has been RIGHT.
Mama mama, it all started when she hit me back!
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"Are you a member of the coddled generation?"
Hardly buttercheeks but if you think bullets kill more babies than "unfair economic sparring" I think it is YOU who don't know what war is.
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It's proof he has been WRONG because without his unfair and discriminative ban on Huawei access to Google Mobile Services, there wouldn't be this problem now.
However Google could dare to ignore China on this. EU should start this process too.
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"It's proof he has been WRONG because without his unfair and discriminative ban on Huawei"
Negative retaliatory actions by the Chinese don't make anyone wrong but the Chinese. The Chinese are demonstrating they have no real free market outside the direct control of the state and that makes his ban on Huawei and other actions against the Chinese justified. Further it lends support to "conspiracy" on the part of the Chinese government in favor of their private economic interests.
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It would then be proportionate to simply ban Huawei from the US market.
Trying to run the company into the ground is completely different level of escalation compared to China's pushing Google out.
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A stopped clock is right twice a day too.
It means nothing.
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Nobody is saying give Trump credit I'm saying don't let being pissed at Trump blind you to the fact the stopped clock IS right.
Re: Lack of logic in the Trump administration (Score:2)
So the hyperbole. The USA is not at war with China. Not yet anyway.
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Cyberware and Tradewar are fully active. Arguably they are less graphic and do more damage.
Meanwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
Alibaba Group, which is like Google, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, Spotify, and half-dozen other companies combined - they are just fine. No monopoly there.
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No monopoly there.
Monopolies aren't illegal nor are they necessary for anti-trust violations.
To be clear China's actions are laughable since they have no legal standing for a company that effectively doesn't operate in the country, but simply pointing to a bigger company is not a defense against targeting another company for antitrust.
Alibaba (Score:3)
I think you need to take a look at what Alibaba actually does. They have exclusivity deals for streaming audio, hotel reservations, and entire supply chains through ali-express. The only way to make on-line reservations at Mariott in China is through an Alibaba company. They also handle all on-line payments for the transaction.
Now, imagine if Google did the same thing. The only way to make reservations would be through them, and they also handle all the payments. Regulator's heads would explode.
Also, keep i
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I think you need to take a look at what Alibaba actually does.
I don't because Alibaba's actions don't have a thing to do with the post I was replying to which was entirely based on your misuse of the term "monopoly" to imply "anti-trust violation"
I'm not questioning Alibaba (they are absolutely abusive, though likely because the government requested it rather than okayed it), I'm just correcting the often completely incorrect idea that a monopoly is somehow in an off itself illegal.
Re: Alibaba (Score:2)
Indeed the whole concept of IP is dependent on granting monopoly.
This may not be the height of hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)
Chinas 12 largest firms are state-owned, and of its top 500 firms, the majority are state-owned.
If trust-busting, and not yet another round of "foreigners are bad" were the goal, they could find easier targets of the trust busing fever a bit closer to home.
Reference https://fortune.com/2015/07/22... [fortune.com]
And if found guilty what will be the sentence? (Score:3)
"Do not come back here"? I mean, google left china in 2010.
Or, perhaps the sentence will be: "do not sell Android (tm) in China or to chinese companies". So that not only Huawei, but ZTE, OPPO, Vivo, TCL, OnePlus get royally screwed abroad as well?
Good luck with that CPC.
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Na. they'll use it to get out of paying patent royalties when selling handsets outside China.
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How would that work outside Chinese jurisdiction?
China has little leverage over a company it effectively forced out already.
Re: And if found guilty what will be the sentence? (Score:2)
Google did not leave China. They still have several offices and even services in China.
And if... (Score:2)
The Europeans are getting money then that can work for china to right?
Why not apple also why we are at it?
CCP is desperate and flailing (Score:1)
China sees the writing on the wall that Trump will get a second term. This means decoupling will continue apace.
Xi and the CCP have few options other than cyber attacks, conflicts in the south china sea or starting another pandemic.
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What I see is second term is in danger. Americans are tired of his antics and fakeness.
Standing? (Score:2)
I mean it's hard to hold a company accountable when they do no business in your country. I mean you could take up Google's anti-trust violations in the USA, it's quite clear that the Google Play certification for Chinese devices requiring Google's services to be bundled is illegal, the EU at least has already ruled on that. But from within China they not only have a case, if they had a case they have no means of recourse.
Re: Standing? (Score:2)
Of course Google do business in China. What are your taking about?
antitruct (Score:2)
Exports (Score:2)
World class lame! (Score:2)
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China is a country, having sovereignity to set it's own domestic rules. Google is just a company and their actions (although forced by the US government) have damaged Huawei, company from China.
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If you will entertain my point, check the article, the investigation is brought about by Huawei's influence. Huawei has been vigorous
Re: World class lame! (Score:2)
Google is not banned in China
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Re: World class lame! (Score:2)
China does not have a national firewall. It's more like a set of broken Internet connections.
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They're right... (Score:2)
... and Google did it deliberately, though to prevent the rabid fragmentation in Android rather than to gain a monopoly as such. They progressively moved functionality out of the AOSP into GMS so that lots of things would simply not work without GMS which only was allowed with "Google Android".
I doubt they envisioned the nut job in the oval office, but it would be great if Google somehow decided to reverse their policy.
Of course Google still has plenty of interest in China, mostly advertising related, iinm,