Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

bigtechontrial.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#51

Post by passwordoops »

smallerfish wrote: post #50
GeekyBear wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "just" the Play Store. Apps >If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile c…

> Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store This isn't actually a very strong moat. (Non Waze) alternatives to maps are becoming increasingly credible. Google Now and Hangouts are history. An alternate client to Gmail is easy, since it speaks imap, and the Android app isn't particularly amazing by itself. Youtube's possibly the toughest nut, but there are alternate clients to it, the web UI works…

>This isn't actually a very strong moat.

That's true for the likes of you and me, but for the other 97% of the population, not so much. Most people just go for the default or are completely unaware of alternatives or don't trust alternatives

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#52

Post by jacquesm »

smallerfish wrote: post #50
GeekyBear wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not "just" the Play Store. Apps >If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile c…

> Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store This isn't actually a very strong moat. (Non Waze) alternatives to maps are becoming increasingly credible. Google Now and Hangouts are history. An alternate client to Gmail is easy, since it speaks imap, and the Android app isn't particularly amazing by itself. Youtube's possibly the toughest nut, but there are alternate clients to it, the web UI works…

This is actually a very strong moat. Note that there is some precedent for this: Windows and Office. Those are just as strong and they've kept MS in business for the last 40 years modulo some non-competitive behavior and strong arming 'partners' in exactly the same way that Google does.

Take that power away and suddenly you can have some actual competition. That of course would take a number of legal systems (laws, judges, governments) to hold the line. I'm not very optimistic about that.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#53

Post by smeagull »

GeekyBear wrote: post #27
gundmc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it technically use of the Play Store that requires accepting Google's terms?

Not "just" the Play Store. Apps >If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile c…

So they can include new pipe, and had ad-free youtube as a killer app. Gmail can be replaced with literally any email client, and maps also has alternatives.

No idea what a Google Now or a Hangout is.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#54

Post by cherryteastain »

GeekyBear wrote: post #27
gundmc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it technically use of the Play Store that requires accepting Google's terms?

Not "just" the Play Store. Apps >If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile c…

Huawei did it. Samsung can too.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#55

Post by jsnell »

makeitdouble wrote: post #18
granzymes wrote: post #2

Interesting that Google isn’t particularly concerned about this antitrust trial. “They basically don’t feel the doj has a real case”: >The DOJ filed its complaint against Google in this case on October 20, 2020. A couple days later, another Samsung employee suggested to Chang that the lawsuit might cause Google to loosen its interpretations of its contracts with Samsung. >Chang responded: “Actually the COMPLETE oppos…

It might be a case of not caring about the consequences, as they're already facing similar issue with the EU commission and have promised to do something about it 3 years ago [0]. Either they'll keep doing nothing, and so an additional lawsuit won't change that, either they've got changes on the way but will milk it up as long as they can before finally moving on. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/20/18273888/googl…

As far as I know those changes happened in EU. It wasn't just promises. Do you have a source saying otherwise?

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#56

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

tsimionescu wrote: post #41
gundmc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it technically use of the Play Store that requires accepting Google's terms?

I don't think you can make a third party client app for any of Google's services at all. So, unless you convince Google to port their apps on your fork of Android, your users will not be able to use an YouTube app or a Gmail app or Waze most likely. Microsoft tried to do this a long time ago for Windows Phone, and Google openly thwarted them every step of the way, changing APIs and so on to prevent those apps from ac…

Gmail still supports standard IMAP and SMTP: you can use Thunderbird, Apple Mail or whatever right now to read and send email with your gmail account.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#57

Post by smallerfish »

passwordoops wrote: post #51
smallerfish wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store This isn't actually a very strong moat. (Non Waze) alternatives to maps are becoming increasingly credible. Google Now and Hangouts are history. An alternate client to Gmail is easy, since it speaks imap, and the Android app isn't particularly amazing by itself. Youtube's possibly the toughest nut, but there are alternate clients to it, the web UI works…

>This isn't actually a very strong moat. That's true for the likes of you and me, but for the other 97% of the population, not so much. Most people just go for the default or are completely unaware of alternatives or don't trust alternatives

For now, sure. But imagine Samsung putting $10B into the branding effort.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#58

Post by Xeamek »

GeekyBear wrote: post #27
gundmc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it technically use of the Play Store that requires accepting Google's terms?

Not "just" the Play Store. Apps >If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile c…

You only mentioned services in the last sentence, but the services are actually one of the most important part.

ie. Google Play Services is the 'goto' way for ANY third party developer to implement push notification.

So Samsung wouldn't only need to create their own, whole alternative for it, but they would also need to try and convince EVERY major app developers to now implement the alterantive in their own apps.

That's what Huawei was forced to do, and to this day there are apps that don't work or have less features on Huawei phones then on "google's" ones.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#59

Post by nyanmatt »

a1o wrote: post #36
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the whole picture. Branch.io was actually quite popular among a number of big app developers. A big part of what they did was deep linking into your app, and I may have the timing on this wrong but I think it was before iOS or Google had any deep linking functionality released. For example, you see this all the time on normal Android searches now, where if I have an app already installed and I search f…

I hate this on iPhone, I want the GitHub app because of the notifications and the authentication capabilities. But repositories are much easier to read in the web version, and it forces every GitHub link to go to the app. I wanted some control, like only going to the app if I touch hold something ("right click") and purposefully chose this option.

Exact same boat. I found this behavior to be really user hostile as a default. Recently switched to Orion (browser from Kagi), and they’ve got a much more agreeable flow for this.

When a link in Orion takes you into another app, there is a popup available when you return to Orion, allowing you to disable opening in the external app. Additionally, long-pressing always provides an “Open in…” option to purposefully choose the GitHub app.

Re: Google's agreement with Samsung prevented Branch from launching: testimony

#60

Post by Xeamek »

GeekyBear wrote: post #17
Roark66 wrote: post #14

Why is it that Samsung needs an agreement with Google in the first place? Is it about a permission to use androing with Google services or does Samsung want to be paid for setting Google's search engine as default? The answer to this question is really important, because if the first is true, Samsung is essentially forced to enter into whatever agreement Google puts in front of them (the alternative is it's own flavo…

> Why is it that Samsung needs an agreement with Google in the first place? They can't make Android devices without accepting Google's terms. Amazon attempted to sell phones with their own fork of Android without permission, but didn't have much luck. Interestingly, Amazon had to find a manufacturing partner that didn't already make Android phones for anyone, because one of the terms of Google's agreement was that yo…

Ofcourse You can make Android device without google. AOSP is open source and google can't prevent You from using it. What google can prevent you from using though, it's all the 'feels like core android but actually is google proprietary' stuff. That's what the whole Huawei battle was about.
Post reply on HN