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Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

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Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#31

Post by realusername »

mrep wrote: post #26
peterwwillis wrote: post #20

So, their browser on their operating system has features which only work with their search engine. How does this not violate antitrust laws? Product tying, at the least?

Because you can choose a different phone OS, and you can choose a different browser on that OS. Also, both of those things are open source so you can fork them if you want. How do you think it violates antitrust laws? Do you propose that all companies should be required to make all of their features available on all possible variational usage of their service?

Android has 75% market share, it's not like you can avoid it, they have practically a monopoly. As much as people like Apple here, it's nowhere near the same market share as Android.

Also you should put quotes around open-source, AOSP does not run on any real device due to a lot of android parts being private + private drivers. It took me one month to run a custom kernel on my Samsung to get the basic hardware working, it's as far as open source as you can get. Android is a "look but don't touch" kind of open-source.

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#32

Post by [deleted] »

fyfy18 wrote: post #30
mrep wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can choose a different phone OS, and you can choose a different browser on that OS. Also, both of those things are open source so you can fork them if you want. How do you think it violates antitrust laws? Do you propose that all companies should be required to make all of their features available on all possible variational usage of their service?

This is no different than when Microsoft got hit by fines and was forced to include the browser chooser. You were still free to install Firefox or Linux, but the issue was that the defaults on new PCs used Microsoft products, and most people use the default options.

[deleted]

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#33

Post by peterwwillis »

realusername wrote: post #31
mrep wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can choose a different phone OS, and you can choose a different browser on that OS. Also, both of those things are open source so you can fork them if you want. How do you think it violates antitrust laws? Do you propose that all companies should be required to make all of their features available on all possible variational usage of their service?

Android has 75% market share, it's not like you can avoid it, they have practically a monopoly. As much as people like Apple here, it's nowhere near the same market share as Android. Also you should put quotes around open-source, AOSP does not run on any real device due to a lot of android parts being private + private drivers. It took me one month to run a custom kernel on my Samsung to get the basic hardware workin…

Back in the day Microsoft actually used the existence of Linux as a legal argument that they could not possibly be a monopoly. The judge didn't buy it.

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#34

Post by peterwwillis »

mrep wrote: post #26
peterwwillis wrote: post #20

So, their browser on their operating system has features which only work with their search engine. How does this not violate antitrust laws? Product tying, at the least?

Because you can choose a different phone OS, and you can choose a different browser on that OS. Also, both of those things are open source so you can fork them if you want. How do you think it violates antitrust laws? Do you propose that all companies should be required to make all of their features available on all possible variational usage of their service?

IANAL, but the product tying interpretation of US antitrust law specifies that making one product or service a mandatory addition to the purchase of a different product or service can be considered an anticompetitive practice.

The "feature" in question in their application was "searching the web". Imagine if they shipped a default e-mail client that only allowed you to use Gmail, and you had to install a separate client to use e-mail with any other e-mail provider. How many people are going to just use Gmail rather than go find some other app and provider? That's an unfair advantage due to product tying.

Microsoft bundled IE into Windows 98 in a way that you could not remove. Microsoft argued that, hey, it's just a standard part of an operating system, and you can get something else, what's the big deal. The government didn't buy it. They settled before the government could reach a final ruling about whether this was anticompetitive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)#Microsoft_pro...

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#35

Post by systoll »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #28
geofft wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whoever chose to commit anonymously (or gave the order to) knew they were doing something shitty and didn't feel comfortable doing it "in public". That isn't necessarily true (although it definitely seems possible in this case, especially given the choice of name). The other possible reason is that they knew they were doing something perfectly reasonable but controversial, that other people would dislike, and they…

Deliberately breaking an existing feature that caused zero trouble to any past, present, or hypothetical future user is never, in any circumstances, "perfectly reasonable". It may be largely inconsequential, it may be cynically obvious, it may be not worth fussing about, but not "perfectly reasonable".

> Deliberately breaking an existing feature that caused zero trouble to any past, present, or hypothetical future user is never, in any circumstances, "perfectly reasonable".

It's also not a realistic scenario.

Anyone who bought a Samsung Galaxy S from Verizon got a phone with Bing as the default search engine. Some of the people who bought that phone would've preferred Google.

Because of this feature, there was added additional effort in using the phone due to the need to switch the search engine. And likely some of them didn't even know about the option, and wound up with an experience worse than they would've without it being present.

Adding to this, there is malware that changes this setting.

I think this was a valuable option to have -- but there are no features that cause zero trouble to anyone.

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#36

Post by alangpierce »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #28
geofft wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whoever chose to commit anonymously (or gave the order to) knew they were doing something shitty and didn't feel comfortable doing it "in public". That isn't necessarily true (although it definitely seems possible in this case, especially given the choice of name). The other possible reason is that they knew they were doing something perfectly reasonable but controversial, that other people would dislike, and they…

Deliberately breaking an existing feature that caused zero trouble to any past, present, or hypothetical future user is never, in any circumstances, "perfectly reasonable". It may be largely inconsequential, it may be cynically obvious, it may be not worth fussing about, but not "perfectly reasonable".

> caused zero trouble to any past, present, or hypothetical future

I'm sure this commit was largely motivated by business reasons, but it seems pretty reasonable from a forward-looking technical standpoint as well.

Google search on Android has gone far beyond an endpoint where you give it a string and it gives you a list of URLs; it gives smart autocomplete, you can search by voice (which is smarter than speech recognition + text search), it provides custom result widgets for various situations, etc. As the feature set expands, it becomes less and less reasonable to have a single client that works against an abstraction implemented by many competing backend services, so the idea of a "search engine picker" makes less and less sense. It's saner to just say "this is the Google search client, and other search services can write their own clients". For example, Bing has its own Android app with its own design and features not in Google search. (That's not to say it's fair; Bing needs to be a separate app, whereas Google search is a first-class part of Android.)

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#37

Post by sethrin »

07d046 wrote: post #2

For the young whippersnappers, "anonymous coward" comes from Slashdot, where it was the name for anonymous posters.

I note that people are referring to Slashdot in the past tense. I don't disagree with the implied statement, but do regret its passing.

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#38

Post by notatoad »

peterwwillis wrote: post #20

So, their browser on their operating system has features which only work with their search engine. How does this not violate antitrust laws? Product tying, at the least?

the handset vendor (the actual customer of android) can change the search provider to use their own implementation, as evidenced by the many that do exactly that. Additionally, the end user can use any search application they prefer, and many exist.

despite a single commit indicating that the google search engine is required for some feature somewhere in the OS, the reality of the situation is that android is not tied specifically to any search implementation.

Re: Choice of search engine on Android nuked by “Anonymous Coward” (2009)

#39

Post by Jaruzel »

DennisAleynikov wrote: post #4

What an interesting way to go about making an uncomfortable but important decision. This is Google's platform and they should do with it what they want, it's incredible how much search has changed our interaction with our phone. There isn't a day that goes by where I'm not finding everything I need with a quick google search. If google doesn't control the searches end to end on android they would have missed out on s…

There's a new initiative called 'eelo'[1] which claims that it will be a drop-in ROM replacement for existing Android phones. Apparently it's built using a modified AOSP[2] using their own open-source software components. They are focusing on privacy and security. I'm not convinced they'll ever release anything substantial, but it's good to see another player in the Mobile OS space trying to challenge the status quo.

--

[1] https://www.eelo.io/mobile-phones/

[2] https://source.android.com/

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