South Korea's Antitrust Regulator Fines Google $177 Million for Abusing Mobile Market Dominance (cnbc.com) 27
South Korea's competition regulator on Tuesday announced it will fine Google 207.4 billion Korean won ($176.9 million) for allegedly using its dominant market position in the mobile operating system space to stifle competition. From a report: Google's Android operating system currently holds the lion's share of the smartphone market, ahead of Apple's iOS platform. The U.S. tech giant allegedly used its market position to block smartphone makers like Samsung from using operating systems developed by rivals, according to the Korea Fair Trade Commission. Yonhap News added that the regulator, which published its decision in Korean, said the tech giant required smartphone makers to agree to an "anti-fragmentation agreement (AFA)" when signing key contracts with Google over app store licenses and early access to the operating system. That agreement prevented device makers from installing modified versions of the Android operating system, known as "Android forks," on their handsets, Yonhap reported. The regulator alleged that Google's practice stifled innovation in the development of new operating systems for smartphones, the news site added. The KFTC has asked the tech giant to stop forcing companies to sign AFAs and ordered it to take corrective steps, according to Yonhap.
Make your own OS? (Score:2)
Apple made its own OS for its phone.
Everyone else just uses Android. A company the size of Samsung could indeed make its own OS for its devices, it has the money and resources to do it. Chances are you can make it Android App Compatible too.
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... A company the size of Samsung could indeed make its own OS for its devices, it has the money and resources to do it. ...
Doesn't Bada or Tizen count? Both have either died, or worse yet, lay mortally wounded, in searing pain, with festering puss-filled wounds. Samsung has been down the "build your own" OS path more than once.
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A company the size of Samsung could indeed make its own OS for its devices,
You mean like Tizen and Bada?
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Samsung did. The problem was, the Google agreement Samsung signed prohibited a lot of things. Including selling phones with non-official Android that can run Android apps.
Note that this is not an agreement to just Android, but Android updates and Google Apps for Android
Fines are a penalty for the past (Score:2)
What changes are required so the past isn't repeated?
We have to fundamentally change who we vote for (Score:2)
To fix that we need a lot of things to happen. Pointless wedge issues like gun control & abortion need to be settled so we can focus on economics. Critical thinking needs more time
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It's easy to convince "a person" that we need to head in a certain direction. The problem is, even with consensus among a big portion of the population, you're asking the people in control to make changes that will essentially put them out of control. In America, that's the real root of the problem. Even whispering "stop legalized bribery in the form of lobbying money being funneled directly into your wallets" around a politician and you'll see them go white before trying to devise a way to "legally" shu
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Not necessarily. Military oaths are sworn to the Constitution, and most if not all military members will refuse to turn on their countrymen and their own families -- it is possible to refuse an order that you think is out of line. Yet another reason that your scenario is unlikely is that no nation has ever overcome an armed native populace. Source: VietNam and Afghanistan. You can't push the big red button if you've been shot dead first.
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With the way things are going, we may be putting that theory to the test sooner rather than later. It is unfortunate that we're so divided as a people though. You'll never see 100%, or even 90 or 80% consensus among the American people. I mean, we're all fucking sick of our government, but for completely different reasons. And some seem to think if they just wipe out $political_party then 'their side' will save the universe. While I have to think anybody that doesn't see the two big political parties a
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Frankly my belief is that wiping out BOTH "sides" would be a good start. And George Washington was known to dislike political parties for the exact reasons we have today.
The issue IMHO is that people think they have representation.
They don't.
The parties represent the donors who happen to be the Elites and extremely wealthy. All the rest of it is just identity politics and wedge issues designed to divide and conquer.
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...no nation has ever overcome an armed native populace.
Apart from every European colonial power when they arrived in the New World, or Africa, or India for that matter.
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Pointless wedge issues like gun control & abortion need to be settled
If they were easily settled, they wouldn't be wedge issues, and I think you will find that for a very large number of people on both sides of those issues, neither of your examples is "pointless."
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This is only true when you consider "sides." And yet, 70%+ support most specific gun control measures.
70% support abortion in most actual cases. There are lots of people who have been tricked into believing that late-term abortion is common. And that the "other side" is "pro abortion." There are lots of people who think they're "pro life" but who don't think they're actually "anti-abortion," they actually think they're fighting against satanic baby murderers, and they would happily support a "compromise" wh
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they're told by their media sources that the Democrats are "coming for their guns"
By "media sources" I guess you mean "the words coming out of the mouths of the candidates?"
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What changes are required so the past isn't repeated?
Why would South Korea be a big enough market to be able to force changes so the past isn't repeated?
They are, however, big enough to fine google $177m.
That's over $3 per person! That's like the US fining them $1b
Android forks (Score:3, Interesting)
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As painful as the past was your anger is misdirected. The problem with the past was *vendor support*, not Android itself. Google has made leaps and bounds in decoupling issues of security from the core OS release.
This is no different than Ubuntu signing a deal with Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc saying that Ubuntu is the only Linux they are are allowed to offer. It is none the less anticompetitive.
If Google wanted to use it's power for good then they would mandate minimum support for any variant of Android, but inst
BOOOOOO (Score:3)
What is $180,000,000 to them?
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10 digits, or a billion dollars, would be $20 for every person in South Korea. How much does google really make there? Why would they pay that, rather than just stop doing business there? Would effectively banning google be good for South Korean companies like Samsung and LG? Would they be able to export smart phones that didn't have Android? Would they even be able to sell many TVs that don't have Android?!
You're one of these, "If they're not stabbing their own faces, they must not be serious" types. You t
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avoid damage to their own business sector if Google de-emphasizes South Korean companies
Samsung sells more phones than Apple, and has 28% of the worldwide market. They most definitely have the talent and resources to be able to ditch Android and write their own OS.
I have no idea what you mean by "de-emphasizing", but Google stand to lose a lot more than South Korea's domestic market of 50 million people if they push back too hard. Losing Samsung's support would be a huge mistake.
There are options (Score:2)
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Fire Phone? Do they still sell those? I thought it flopped.
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they could do what Amazon does and have an Android fork, but no Google services.
Amazon can only do that because they have a huge digital media market, and customers are buying those devices specifically to consume that digital media. Those customers usually also have an Android phone that does have Google services, so they don't need it on the tablet.
That's not going to work for Samsung smart phones. Though it would probably work for TVs.
Bought & Paid For (Score:2)