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Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

#21

Post by DiabloD3 »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #9
DiabloD3 wrote: post #6

They aren't going to make it very far with this. Phones are now required to bundle these services, and Samsung ships phones that uses S replacements for everything (launcher, health, payments, music, app store, cloud storage, camera/photos, and a few others), yet runs Android. Not only that, Google provides APIs in newer versions of Androids that allow third party apps to provide all this stuff. When installing apps…

>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 main issue was that you couldn't uninstall or disable IE, and due to microsoft's dominance in the market the EU felt it should be possible to do so.

Except you can never uninstall or disable MSIE period because the actual browser canvas element is depended on by both Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps and is a core service of the OS. Modern Windows Update, modern Help, Outlook/Outlook Express, anything that uses ActiveX, and third party browsers that just wrap Trident wouldn't work.

That's like telling Apple they have to unbundle Safari, then breaking all the apps that depend on the Webkit framework.... which is a shitload of apps.

The only thing N/KN editions of Windows do is force you to download the Windows Media Player if you choose to use it, and simply unhides the MSIE icon in your Start menu if you choose to enable it. And as for Windows Media Player, N/KN doesn't disable things like DirectShow and Media Foundation, which Windows Media Player is just a fancy front end for.

It was a waste of both EU and US money for our respective DoJs to have sued. Microsoft didn't stop you from using other browsers, and allowed any app to be assigned to htm/html file associations and http/https/ftp URI scheme associations, even back in Win98 when they introduced that weird "Active Desktop" shit (a Trident canvas element as a background image on your desktop, it was weird but interesting), Microsoft never stopped you from downloading Netscape Navigator and using it as your default browser.

Windows was the first OS to have a browser by default, and the second OS to have a media player by default (Quicktime came before the original Media Player in Windows 3.x, which used DShow's predecessor, Video for Windows). In fact, Apple sued Microsoft over allegations of stolen source code from Quicktime, and Microsoft settled over it.

Notice the EU hasn't sued Apple for having a bundled media player first (since 1991, or 25 years ago), nor having a bundled browser (since 2003, or about 13 years ago, or about half way between MSIE 6 and 7). Also please note that the EU antitrust case was in 2004.

Why is the EU so protectionist towards Apple? It isn't their company, they have no more interest over Apple than they would Microsoft or Google, all three are American and all three have about the same amount of involvement in the EU for local services.

Re: Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

#22

Post by secfirstmd »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #9
DiabloD3 wrote: post #6

They aren't going to make it very far with this. Phones are now required to bundle these services, and Samsung ships phones that uses S replacements for everything (launcher, health, payments, music, app store, cloud storage, camera/photos, and a few others), yet runs Android. Not only that, Google provides APIs in newer versions of Androids that allow third party apps to provide all this stuff. When installing apps…

>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 main issue was that you couldn't uninstall or disable IE, and due to microsoft's dominance in the market the EU felt it should be possible to do so.

The EU could do us all a favour and get Microsoft actually respect the privacy of it's customers by properly allowing them to fully turn off the "phone home" stuff it has going on.

Re: Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

#23

Post by dogma1138 »

ultramancool wrote: post #5

Hmm, interesting that Google, who allows 3rd party markets and non-Google signed app installs (like Amazon, F-Droid, Aptoide, etc) is getting hit with this. Perhaps it's more related to stock Google Apps they're shipping with Android devices, similar to the MS bundling IE anti-trust cases? Google's Android apps are pretty great and having them ship on devices for free is probably a pretty big killer of competition, i…

Because Aptoide is a European company and it launched the complaint which started this whole thing.

This absurdity happened because Google isn't outright blocking 3rd party apps and app stores outright.

It does has some restrictions which resulted in Google Play not being available on Kindle devices, and market apps can't be hosted on the Play Store but it leaves them enough room to actually be some what viable which means that companies exist that can cry foul.

This is basically a case of give them a finger and they take the whole hand.

Re: Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

#24

Post by mcintyre1994 »

Yetanfou wrote: post #20
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define a market that Apple has a monopoly in that a regulator should investigate? You've identified current iOS users, but surely that's circular? I don't doubt that iOS market share is super high in some segments, but do any of them constitute a regulated market? In education the last I heard was Chromebooks are at over 50% of devices in US schools, and that's against Windows and iOS. I'm sceptical Apple hav…

Identifying iOS users as a target for Apple's monopoly is no more circular than identifying Google-branded (ie. Nexus et al) Android users as a target for a Google monopoly. Non-Google branded Android can, and often does use non-Google apps and stores so that segment can not be considered to be monopolised by Google. In practice the same is true for Google-branded Android devices as it is possible - and not all that…

I'm not so sure that Google actually does have the same circular monopoly power as Apple, because really it's just about lock-in and - from experience - moving from Android to iOS is really easy. You don't lose any data and everything is cross platform by default. Going the other way by contrast, you'd have to deliberately move things into third party cross platform apps.

I'm also not sure whether that would count as a monopoly if they did have sufficient lock-in, given their vast market share - as a hypothetical. I guess probably yes.

I'd agree that neither should be investigated, but I do disagree that Apple have as much grounds to be - they just don't have the market share.

I was probably too simplistic on education, it's a difficult issue for sure. My ICT teacher in school used to have a pretty big budget and spend it on toys because he got Windows hardware/software so ridiculously cheap. Microsoft had made the ICT curriculum in the UK entirely based on learning how to use their software and apps. All their stuff can be obtained between free and really cheap for students from school to university, and it's pretty much always the standard expectation to use it. And then you have iPads and Chromebooks taking over, probably not running Microsoft apps and probably like you said with no real plan. It's interesting and probably broken, but there's probably no monopolistic player there.

Re: Google Faces E.U. Antitrust Charges Over Android Apps

#25

Post by ralfd »

eggnet wrote: post #15
x0x0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charges are claimed to be related to defaults. As such the problem isn't that the apps can't be replaced (by the tiny fraction of users who understand and are capable of doing so), it's that the vast majority of users stick with the pre-installed defaults and google controls those.

As far as I can tell there is nothing in google's terms of service that relate to defaults. How do I know this? Because Samsung replaces every app I can think of with theirs. - launcher - web browser - mail - calendar - keyboard - SMS/MMS texting app Not to mention the entire "skin" of the operating system including added and removed functionality. Samsung even has their own app store on the phone. All of the above a…

Google pressured Samsung two years ago:

http://recode.net/2014/01/29/after-google-pressure-samsung-w...

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