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European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

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Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#131

Post by ulfw »

ekianjo wrote: post #15
rjvbk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not have a monopoly dominant position. In my country I think they are like 10% of the market. You can't abuse your dominant position if you don't have one.

Android does not have a monopoly either. You can buy an iPhone.

Microsoft never had a monopoly in operating systems ever in it's history either. You could install CP/M on IBM XTs and you could run OS/2 or Linux or a plethora of other UNIXes on later IBMs and clones instead of Windows. Doesn't mean they hadn't had market control due to it's market share.

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#132

Post by nl »

garmaine wrote: post #89
skrause wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can Google just close shop in the EU and ignore the fine? Sure, if they don't want to get any revenue from the whole European Union anymore. Fortunately the EU is a big enough market so that Google doesn't have any leverage here.

Other commentators are saying the fine is between 1/3 to a half of google’s profits. I sincerely doubt the EU represents more than that share of google’s revenues. But of course I doubt they would pull out as this is a one time thing.

You are comparing a proportion of one year of Google's profit and all EU revenue for all time.

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#133

Post by repolfx »

sveme wrote: post #119
repolfx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Apple hasn't been fined in the same way. So apparently if Google had kept Android proprietary, and made their own hardware, they'd be totally OK, even though there'd only be two phone makers left in the world instead of dozens like there is now? I'm sorry but this move is garbage. I am British and I'm so glad the UK is leaving this horrible, success hating farce of a union. Google paid billions to develop Android…

Isn't it great that you're heading for a hard brexit, then? If the competition is no level-playing field anymore, how should a local company be successful? Your points have been addressed above already, if Apple had a dominant market position, the EU would have handled things differently. And Apple has been fined by the EU before as well.

Obviously, the EU deciding to terminate all cooperation with the UK because of an ideological "all or nothing" approach is a tyrannical and cult-like way to run international relations.

However if the alternative is having to deal with the EU Commission then yep, I guess hard brexit is the next best alternative.

The reason the EU doesn't have any local mobile companies isn't do to with Android or Google's licensing terms. The EU had a very successful mobile firm and it shot itself in the foot over and over so badly it disappeared, because its own competitor(s) to Android just weren't good enough. Nokia was hopelessly out-engineered by Silicon Valley and in hindsight it would have done better to admit that, and become an Android OEM itself. It wouldn't have had to cut any deal with Google. It already had Ovi Maps and its own app store infrastructure. It could have done an Amazon and adopted Android without any strings attached.

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#134

Post by cncrnd »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #104
Radle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Piggy bank", there is a full process duo law involved. It's not like people come up with "hey we need money, let's fine google". Why would you claim something like that without providing any evidence that this is actually the case?

There is a consistent theme of American companies breaking European law and getting fined for it going back decades. The EU has a different legal system and you don't just get fined it happens after a long process of attempting to correct behaviour and legal proceedings. The arrogance of Americans to believe their legal system applies everywhere and that any attempts to apply a different one constitutes an attempt to…

Show me the evidence that Google was warned about this practice and refused to stop for a long time. I have a really hard time believing that they wouldn't take action in response to warnings if they knew that 40% of yearly profit was at stake.

How the hell can the EU entitle itself to 40% of the profit of a company that provides a massive value add to the world? Email, search, maps, video, cloud, office apps and so much more.

I don't think Americans are the arrogant ones here, with the EU levying multi-billion dollar fines on a yearly basis.

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#135

Post by tiatia123 »

vivan wrote: post #12
rjvbk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not have a monopoly dominant position. In my country I think they are like 10% of the market. You can't abuse your dominant position if you don't have one.

In my country, iOS are more than 50% of the market. I haven't been able to find any EU-wide numbers though, which are the important ones in this case.

What country is this?

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#136

Post by theBobBob »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #123
theBobBob wrote: post #103

Very slightly off topic but I actually think how Android handles default apps is the best of both worlds. It comes with very very good default Google Apps that work well together but it is very easy to switch out whatever you want for an alternative. How iOS handles it is the opposite. For their default apps they either straight out not allow competitors, severely limit what their competitors or (if I remember correc…

Could you please tell me how I can uninstall the default apps, or at least keep them from constantly updating themselves? That half a gig of unwanted apps that just keeps growing itself is pretty annoying.

True, that bit is a bit annoying, but again, not being able to switch out or uninstall default apps is much worse than just not being able to uninstall default apps.

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#137

Post by bendiksolheim »

theBobBob wrote: post #103

Very slightly off topic but I actually think how Android handles default apps is the best of both worlds. It comes with very very good default Google Apps that work well together but it is very easy to switch out whatever you want for an alternative. How iOS handles it is the opposite. For their default apps they either straight out not allow competitors, severely limit what their competitors or (if I remember correc…

Do you have a source for this? I can’t remember Apple disallowing an app because Apple itself provides a similar app. I checked the default apps quickly on my phone, and can find several competitors for all of them. If you are talking about the "apps" Messages.app or Phone.app then I guess you might be right if we define "not providing a public API" the same as "disallowing on the App Store".

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#138

Post by fauigerzigerk »

bwb wrote: post #61

This one frustrated me to read, i think they should have gotten involved sooner and worked with google. Instead they slap a crazy high fee for something that is vague in violation. It does feel a bit like a vendetta here by the EU.

>i think they should have gotten involved sooner and worked with google

What makes you think that they didn't? Have you even read the WSJ article? It says:

"Google, which can appeal any decision, has rejected the EU’s case since the bloc issued formal charges over two years ago."

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#139

Post by Fnoord »

naturalgradient wrote: post #109
heracles wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most (all?) other fields of law you are expected to abide by the rules as they are stated, or risk being punished by the legislative powers. That's not a vendetta, that's law as it is most commonly practiced. I don't see why EU should "work with google" to make them follow regulations (EDIT: beyond the threat of punishment).

The problem is that antitrust laws like these are very selectively enforced. Selection and prosecution of these cases is hence inherently political as these are non-standardized arguments or verdicts.

> The problem is that antitrust laws like these are very selectively enforced. Selection and prosecution of these cases is hence inherently political as these are non-standardized arguments or verdicts.

Following that logic, the same applies to law in general. Should we therefore abolish law?

Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case

#140

Post by yani »

repolfx wrote: post #117
claudius wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the EU going to fine ARM next for having a monopoly on mobile CPUs? Having a monopoly or being in a dominant position is not the problem. If ARM starts a pizza business and requires everyone who wants to buy mobile CPUs to also order pizzas exclusively from them, then this would be an equally-fineable abuse of a dominant market position and the EU would almost certainly step in. As it stands, ARM doesn’t force o…

You can use Android and make a phone that searches Bing and uses your own app store. Look at how Amazon did it. Most phone makers don't because customers prefer the Google services, but that's not Google's fault. They have provided OEMs with options - options they didn't need to give anyone, apparently, given that non-licensable operating systems like iOS aren't being whacked the same way. The most Google can do is g…

- by requiring mobile manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google 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;

- by preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;

- by giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.

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