Europe nearing Google antitrust charges

The U.S. remedy of splitting Microsoft up (which was over-turned on appeal) and led to the more limited U.S. Consent decree doesn't negate the findings of fact:

"Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, RealNetworks, Linux, and others." [0]

In Europe the EU consistently found against Microsoft and fined them very large sums (> €1.5B) over the course of more than 10 years due to monopolistic practices and refusing to implement judgements around bundled media-player, web-browser and lack of interoperability for server (APIs). [1]

"Microsoft entered into a consent decree in 1994 that barred Microsoft from conditioning the availability of Windows licenses or varying their prices based on whether OEMs distributed other operating systems.[8] Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said that the decree was effective in allowing Dell and HP to offer Linux computers". [2]

This was later nick-named the Windows Tax, but at the time it prevented alternative OSs such as Digital Research DOS (DR-DOS) from gaining much traction as a pre-installed OS (I owned a company back then that did pre-install DR-DOS and it was much better than MS-DOS).

Regarding Google/Android:

"While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android -- Google's Android -- and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.

Acer was bit by this requirement when it tried to build devices that ran Alibaba's Aliyun OS in China. Aliyun is an Android fork, and when Google got wind of it, Acer was told to shut the project down or lose its access to Google apps. Google even made a public blog post about it:

"While Android remains free for anyone to use as they would like, only Android compatible devices benefit from the full Android ecosystem. By joining the Open Handset Alliance, each member contributes to and builds one Android platform -- not a bunch of incompatible versions." [3]

Also in that article is a good overview (albeit from 2013) of how Google has progressively moved open source functionality into the closed source Google applications.

And from a different source (lauding the move to Play services) there's:

"Google not only has pulled these services and their respective APIs out of the OS, it has made it easy for application developers to use them. The past few days here at Google I/O we've seen just how easy it can be to add these features to an app, because Google is doing all the heavy lifting. Developers only need to reference the particular thing they need from the Google Play Services application in their code, and the magic happens when you run it on your phone." [4]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Anti-trus...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows#...

[3] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/21/googles-iron-...

[4] http://www.androidcentral.com/new-google-play-services