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EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

reuters.com

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Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#111

Post by AnthonyMouse »

millstone wrote: post #92
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is not licencing iOS to OEMs. In other words they're also tying iOS to their hardware and vice versa. This is supposed to make it less of an antitrust issue? > They are also very far away from a monopoly. They sure look like a monopoly to an iOS app developer or iOS app customer who wants app store competition to drive down app store margins.

Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Apple is acting independently. They've built differentiating features (like custom software) which you can only get by buying Apple's products. Apple hopes that customers will use their products because they're better than the competition. That is exactly what antitrust law…

> Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently.

Then how do I have a stack of history books that say the government broke up the 20th century AT&T monopoly under the antitrust laws? And Standard Oil and U.S. Steel before that?

You seem to be implying that if Google did exactly what they're doing now except that they made their own hardware and refused to license Android to third parties then there would be less of an antitrust problem, even though then there would unambiguously be less competition than there is now.

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#112

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #81
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is not licencing iOS to OEMs. In other words they're also tying iOS to their hardware and vice versa. This is supposed to make it less of an antitrust issue? > They are also very far away from a monopoly. They sure look like a monopoly to an iOS app developer or iOS app customer who wants app store competition to drive down app store margins.

And Tesla has a monopoly on making Teslas. Your definition of "monopoly" is inaccurate. Android is 85% of the smartphone market. iOS is 13% of the smartphone market. Android is a monopoly, iOS is not.

So then AT&T wasn't a monopoly in 1979 because they had only a small percentage of the telecommunications market, is that what you're saying? If you don't want to buy your telephone handset from AT&T then you had lots of choices -- just move into the service area of British Telecom or the Deutsche Bundespost or dozens of others.

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#113

Post by takno »

newjersey wrote: post #107
takno wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go back to a feature phone rather than locked into Xiaomi. Even with access to the Google apps it's a disaster area

I've never seen a xiaomi phone in person. It looks pretty good from the website. Care to elaborate about your experience?

The phone is beautiful, but the OS is a weirdly ham fisted attempt to make android look like iOS. In the case of notifications for example they've restricted them to a single line and no in-notification buttons. Then they've added a bunch of apps that can't be disabled. I regularly get a notification that one of my sim cards (with no credit) cannot be activated, so they're trying to link to something I haven't asked for, and there's a loud daily notification that there is something called hidden folders which I should definitely want to know about. All of this is still stuck on android 4, even though the phone was released significantly after 5

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#114

Post by ralfd »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #111
millstone wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Apple is acting independently. They've built differentiating features (like custom software) which you can only get by buying Apple's products. Apple hopes that customers will use their products because they're better than the competition. That is exactly what antitrust law…

> Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Then how do I have a stack of history books that say the government broke up the 20th century AT&T monopoly under the antitrust laws? And Standard Oil and U.S. Steel before that? You seem to be implying that if Google did exactly what they're doing now except that they ma…

How would there be less competition in that scenario? If Android would be restricted to Google Hardware the market would look way more diverse with Samsung/HTC rocking their own solutions and Nokia/Windows still having market share.

The same if Android licensers were more free to provide their own solutions (see what Amazon did with the Fire brand) instead of forced to bundle Googles services on every device.

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#115

Post by kilotaras »

kuschku wrote: post #36

The actual issue the EC argues against – counter to many comments here – are the compatibility test suite issues. If you want to sell at least one phone with the play store, all your other phones have to come with it, too. You can’t just sell 50% with Kindle-Android, and 50% with Google Android. This is severely hurting innovation and leads to an even larger monopoly.

And if people still want to compare it to iPhone, imagine Apple having Samsung sign the agreement to not manufacture phone screens for anyone that's not Apple.

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#116

Post by ralfd »

cromwellian wrote: post #94

I just came back from China, in which most of the phones I used did not have Google Play, or Play Services, and had replacements for everything. If you try to use an phone with Google Play in China, you need a VPN, since if the app calls things like location services, it'll get blocked, for example, Taxi hailing apps could not retrieve the location, however with a native-phone, they work. Needless to say, the experie…

Interesting. How does iOS work in China?

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#117

Post by NiKMic »

kyrra wrote: post #32
NiKMic wrote: post #18

I'm not sure if I am understanding it well. Does the EU have an issue with Google Chrome coming pre-installed with Android? In that case, shouldn't Microsoft face the same penalties since IE/Edge comes pre-installed on the Windows OS? I believe that these pre-installed apps can't be uninstalled (because it might happen that you end up with no browsers on your phone), but would making the app uninstallable solve this…

Details are in the EU's press release: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm The key points: > requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google's Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps; > preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing op…

Thanks for that! As others mentioned, I'm fine with the first point but the other two I'm not too keen on.

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#118

Post by newjersey »

takno wrote: post #113
newjersey wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a xiaomi phone in person. It looks pretty good from the website. Care to elaborate about your experience?

The phone is beautiful, but the OS is a weirdly ham fisted attempt to make android look like iOS. In the case of notifications for example they've restricted them to a single line and no in-notification buttons. Then they've added a bunch of apps that can't be disabled. I regularly get a notification that one of my sim cards (with no credit) cannot be activated, so they're trying to link to something I haven't asked…

Thank you for your reply. It seems the mi 4 will get the marshmallow based miui 7 according to http://en.miui.com/thread-213606-1-1.html but clearly not for all devices especially the note.

Can you get cyanogenmod or something?

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#119

Post by cdibona »

scholia wrote: post #108
cdibona wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term Android is not trademarked. Even the bugdroid is released under a cc-attrib license. Funnily, the term 'droid' is trademarked and licensed by lucasfilm/disney mostly.

> The term Android is not trademarked. Google quote: "Android™ should have a trademark symbol the first time it appears in a creative." Brand Guidelines http://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/promote/brand.... Yes, I do know who you are -- in fact, we have met -- but Google should not be using Android™ if it's not trademarked ;-)

I agree, obviously. Lemme look into it.

Re: EU hits Google with second antitrust charge

#120

Post by cdibona »

cdibona wrote: post #119
scholia wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The term Android is not trademarked. Google quote: "Android™ should have a trademark symbol the first time it appears in a creative." Brand Guidelines http://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/promote/brand.... Yes, I do know who you are -- in fact, we have met -- but Google should not be using Android™ if it's not trademarked ;-)

I agree, obviously. Lemme look into it.

Oh, derp, I was thinking of something else. That makes a lot more sense (that We'd trademark)
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