Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

I can tell you that they don't do it in most European countries, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it in a few places (like the UK).

Not only that, Google provides APIs in newer versions of Androids that allow third party apps to provide all this stuff. When installing apps that provide those services, they just need to use the APIs to integrate into the system.

Such as, I have OneDrive installed, and Google Drive and OneDrive appear as accessible from any app that uses the new file loader API (which was introduced in ... 4.x?). Google is working with Microsoft to allow Cortana to be a full replacement for Google Now's "Okay Google" trigger, including "Hey Cortana" trigger while sleeping (on phones that support that).

I can also install any office suite I want without any API support required, I can also install third party music players (and get full music player API support and Chromecast support for players that support it), third party... anything. Even a third party app store.

From what I can tell, this is all about the Google Now launcher supporting Google Search only. You can install any launcher you want. Google Now cannot integrate into other search engines because of THEIR lack of an API, not because Google doesn't want to (I mean, they don't, but it's not their fault).

The EU needs to step off and stop ruining company's products. This is literally a repeat of Microsoft Windows shipping a browser and a media player , where any browser and media player could be used instead. The EU at the time, apparently, could not understand you could have multiple apps installed that do the same thing, and file types and URL types have associations that can be changed by the user.

The EU is dangerously clueless about technology.

And if they're not going after Apple for the same charge, where they won't let you use third party browsers on iOS, or third party app stores, or music players, or whatever, then they're just untrustworthy idiots that have no clue how the world works.

Google gives away the OS for free (speech and beer), allows competition on the devices, but requires bundling of its app with its store (which has competitors).

Apple not only bundles the apps, it explicitly locks out competitors with code, forbids competitors in their agreements with customers and developers, and IIRC forbids developers who write for its platform to also put the same app on any competing app store (which again are forbidden by contract and locked out with code).