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Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

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Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#341

Post by endisneigh »

makeitdouble wrote: post #279
endisneigh wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what I mean is that manufacturers don’t have to include the play store if they don’t like Google’s requirements around using it?

Google forced them to take the Play Store and search widget (including default search engine) as a condition to get Play Services. Play Services is required by a majority of android apps and developping and maintening a compatible system layer is just out of reach of most(all?) device makers.

Yes, but my point is - can’t they they just not use the play store at all like lineageos?

Ultimately Google will always have control over android if what you’re saying is true unless an alternative ecosystem is created

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#342

Post by locallost »

antonymy wrote: post #280

The fallout from this should be interesting. This fine is a substantial part (roughly 25%!) of Google's overall revenue from the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa), of which the EU is probably like 90%, at least, of the total, so it's probably toing the line of actually making the EU unprofitable to Google considering the costs of future compliance to avoid being fined again. Worse: this was not as steep as th…

They do 200 billion in ad sales a year. Without checking the data, I am pretty sure the EU is at least their third largest market, if not the second. This is definitely a lot less than a 1/4 of their revenue and they're not going anywhere.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#343

Post by osculum »

antonymy wrote: post #301
weatherlite wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU seems fine with the idea actually - it wants more independence on technology and said so several times. There will be many many pissed off European users for sure but that never stopped the EU elite from making a decision. Still - seems like a reach to me.

I just remember when the EU passed that legislation that made it legal for member states to require Google to pay a fee to newspapers for linking to their content in Google News. Only a few countries bothered to try enforcing it, notably Spain did, and the result was Google called their bluff and de-listed every newspaper in Spain from Google News. It did not take long until Spain relented and permitted newspapers to…

It took about 8 years? And my understanding is that it changed because Spain now allows the newspapers to negotiate directly with Google, not because Google doesn’t have to pay those fees

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-news-re-opens-spai...

Disclaimer: I work for Google in an unrelated product. Opinions are my own.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#344

Post by wvenable »

kube-system wrote: post #327
wvenable wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a whole other level though? Google is being asked to stop forcing distribution of their software so other Android software can compete. Either way, you're still going to have 2 operating systems: Android and iOS.

It’s a bit of a self reinforcing loop, though. Top apps are all on Google Play because everyone using Android (on this side of the GFW) is all but forced to stay in Google’s ecosystem. The diversity of *nix based OSes are a testament to what could happen in the absence of monopolistic powers. If it weren’t for Google’s stranglehold, Android probably would already be #2 to a fork made by Samsung.

> The diversity of *nix based OSes are a testament to what could happen in the absence of monopolistic powers.

You mean how they all died and Linux became king?

The market cannot support diversity of operating systems -- users will flock to where the applications are and developers flock to where the users are. Only a small number of choices are ever sustainable.

If Android disappeared tomorrow and 10 operating systems were designed to replace it eventually there would be only 1 or 2 surviving.

If Samsung forked Android it will still need to run Android apps and therefore be Android. That's pretty much exactly what they do now.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#345

Post by at-fates-hands »

StingyJelly wrote: post #226
dahfizz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, yes. But I am confident the EU would find other ways to extract fines from Google in that case.

As a counterexample there's Apple with not insignificant market share in Europe - pushing icloud, not supporting third party operating sysems or even sideloading, still keeping proprietary connector despite everyone else using usb-c, etc.

Which kind of begs the question about the differences between a "walled garden" in a way to protect their users and what exactly amounts to anti-competitive business practices.

Windows phones tried the Apple approach if I remember correctly when their phones were on the market and it wasn't enough to keep them competitive. They had a litany of other issues to boot, but taking the "walled garden" approach raised the ire of many developers.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#346

Post by nfriedly »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #94
Hamcha wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Google refused to put Youtube on Windows Phone and when Microsoft made their own client, Google forced them to take it off their own store? Truly advocating for more choice. (Press at the time: https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/16/windows_phone_youtube... )

I had a Windows phone. The web version of Youtube worked fine. The Youtube app on Android is such a pain in the a* that sometimes I use the web version of Youtube on an Android tablet I have!

You should check out Vanced / ReVanced. Vanced is basically a modified Youtube app with ads removed and a lot of the other annoyances fixed. It's gotten trickier to find since google sent them a nastygram, but they posted the SHA256 on https://vancedapp.com/ so if you find a copy floating around, you can quickly determine if it's legit or not.

ReVanced is a WIP set of tools to patch Youtube and other apps - https://github.com/revanced

Vanced and Iceraven (Firefox with more addons enabled) are two of the main things keeping me on Android.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#347

Post by moffkalast »

rsanheim wrote: post #302
moffkalast wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android should damn well ship with multiple app stores and multiple browsers, not just the GoogleApprovedTM app store where they ban anyone that looks at them wrong or thinks about blocking ads for more than 2 miliseconds. The exclusive app stores are both iOS and Android's greatest strengths and failings at the same time. Apple is arguably the far worse offender there too. If there was an alternative app store on iO…

> If there was an alternative app store on iOS everyone would jump ship immediately citation needed. if there was an alternative app store, 90% of apple users wouldn't even be aware of it, the other 8% would hear about it and never use it, and maybe, _maybe_ 2% would install it.

I mean if there was another competitor store installed by default (as mandated by law, like browser choice was at one point) that wouldn't charge devs $100/year to upload anything and take 30% of all income you'd quickly see the App store deserted.

Then Apple would have to set their pricings competitively, instead of monopolistically.

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#348

Post by _aavaa_ »

rococode wrote: post #215
guelo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that if Google had not licensed Android and only manufactured its own devices, like Apple does, it could restrict consumer options much more harshly without EU fines and restrictions.

DMA may be coming soon and would most likely affect Apple too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act

> The list of obligations would include prohibitions on combining data collected from two different services belonging to the same company (e.g. Facebook and WhatsApp);

Would this not simply kill the kind of integration that Apple has between its different services? Or any of the smart assistants?

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#349

Post by [deleted] »

bush-bby wrote: post #163
tester756 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which is essentially nothing. Holy shit. Is it some sign of being on HN too much? Sure, 1.45% is small, because % is shitty at representing the real value at this point at the end of the day it's fucking $4 000 000 000 It's year salary of 2200 well paid engineers That's industry-changing level of possibilities

1.8 mil is “well-payed”…?

[deleted]

Re: Google loses EU appeal and is fined a record $4B

#350

Post by kube-system »

wvenable wrote: post #344
kube-system wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit of a self reinforcing loop, though. Top apps are all on Google Play because everyone using Android (on this side of the GFW) is all but forced to stay in Google’s ecosystem. The diversity of *nix based OSes are a testament to what could happen in the absence of monopolistic powers. If it weren’t for Google’s stranglehold, Android probably would already be #2 to a fork made by Samsung.

> The diversity of *nix based OSes are a testament to what could happen in the absence of monopolistic powers. You mean how they all died and Linux became king? The market cannot support diversity of operating systems -- users will flock to where the applications are and developers flock to where the users are. Only a small number of choices are ever sustainable. If Android disappeared tomorrow and 10 operating syste…

Darwin and FreeBSD have huge install bases, and can run many *nix applications, as android can too. OS developers often think about compatibility, at least, when they’re not contractually prohibited from creating their own OS to begin with.

There’s no technological reason that you can’t run popular Android apps on other OSes. Other OSes already support running Android apps. The primary reason this isn’t more common is anticompetitive.

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