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

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

#71

Post by fmajid »

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…

There are Chinese phones that don't have any of these. In China, smartphones are basically a mostly invisible and easily replaced hardware layer under the everything app, QQ (WeChat).

Outside China, however, that's a non-starter. Furthermore, many apps like online banking will refuse to work on phones that don't pass Google's Android Attestation, which is also part of the take-it-all-or-leave-it package.

If you want to see how hard this is, just check out the forums for GrapheneOS (a secure thus degoogled fork of Android for Pixel phones).

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

#72

Post by mastercheif »

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.

If you long press on a link and choose open in Safari it will remember your preference and not open the app going forward.

Terrible UX, but it works.

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

#73

Post by voisin »

dalbasal wrote: post #69

You can't scare google with antitrust. The game is structured. If Google lose, they face an affordable fine or mandated adjustment to a single business practice. In this case, the business practice is "OEM Search Deals" which has been litigated before. The practices is profitable and strategic enough to take the heat. IMO, antitrust was entirely declawed by the "US vs MSFT" settlement in 2001. It's a similar case. An…

> WTF does "breaking up Google" actually mean?

Well for one, the ad business could be separated into the auction system and the use of the auction system on their different services.

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

#74

Post by dartos »

voisin wrote: post #73
dalbasal wrote: post #69

You can't scare google with antitrust. The game is structured. If Google lose, they face an affordable fine or mandated adjustment to a single business practice. In this case, the business practice is "OEM Search Deals" which has been litigated before. The practices is profitable and strategic enough to take the heat. IMO, antitrust was entirely declawed by the "US vs MSFT" settlement in 2001. It's a similar case. An…

> WTF does "breaking up Google" actually mean? Well for one, the ad business could be separated into the auction system and the use of the auction system on their different services.

A few more off the top of my head

Android could be spun off.

The whole pixel phone business as well.

GSuite could be its own thing.

I think google is still an ISP in some parts.

They’re research sections too.

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

#75

Post by therealpygon »

dalbasal wrote: post #69

You can't scare google with antitrust. The game is structured. If Google lose, they face an affordable fine or mandated adjustment to a single business practice. In this case, the business practice is "OEM Search Deals" which has been litigated before. The practices is profitable and strategic enough to take the heat. IMO, antitrust was entirely declawed by the "US vs MSFT" settlement in 2001. It's a similar case. An…

> Breaking the monopoly of a tech giant could, and likely would, decimate their value.

And to that end… so? Why is the government so afraid to slap down excessively profiteering, monopolizing conglomerates? Because primarily rich people would lose a small amount of their vast wealth? Because some poorer investors who foolishly hoped to capitalize by investing heavily in a single company might lose a lot of money, having knowingly taken such a risk? It certainly isn’t because of the significant taxes they pay, or that a 190k jobs, which wouldn’t necessarily be lost, would be such a significant addition to the 6.4 million people already unemployed.

As for how? Google has quite a number of differing product lines and “businesses”, so, rather easily I’d say? Search, apps, hosting, ads… it really wouldn’t be that difficult to define those lines.

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

#76

Post by Mindwipe »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #62
Xeamek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

> 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 than on "google's" ones. “Forced”? By whom and to what end?

By the US government by Trump's ban on American companies doing business with them.

So yes, at the time Huawei were forced to try and build their own independent versions and it didn't work very well at all.

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

#77

Post by dalbasal »

voisin wrote: post #73
dalbasal wrote: post #69

You can't scare google with antitrust. The game is structured. If Google lose, they face an affordable fine or mandated adjustment to a single business practice. In this case, the business practice is "OEM Search Deals" which has been litigated before. The practices is profitable and strategic enough to take the heat. IMO, antitrust was entirely declawed by the "US vs MSFT" settlement in 2001. It's a similar case. An…

> WTF does "breaking up Google" actually mean? Well for one, the ad business could be separated into the auction system and the use of the auction system on their different services.

Sure... maybe. Do you really think a court process could make those decisions well?

I'm not even sure if that would work. Does Google search now have to use adwords? Will the court mandate the revenue split? Most of both entities' revenue will come from this revenue split. It's almost like spinning off the cash register in a convenience store.

It's just a lot for a court to actually do.

Meanwhile, there's a tension between eliminating monopolism and eliminating market value. A judge's decision could blast $1trn off of Google's value, and cause a general market shock.

Meanwhile, what are consumers getting out of this? Advertisers are not going to have more choice. There will be no competition induced price reductions. What's the goal here? Justice?

This stuff is basically industrial policy. To have industrial policy, we need to do industrial policy. Can't just let courts handle the whole thing.

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

#78

Post by jraph »

deely3 wrote: post #67
Xeamek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does it make sense to use AOSP without Google ecosystem? If you can't use Android Market, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps what the point? And to use Market you have to accept Google license.

Yes. If you need a smartphone but want to avoid as much Apple and Google (GAFAM in general) and/or reduce your reliance on proprietary software as must as possible, that's the easiest way to do it. Linux mobile goes further but is not there yet for most people.

If you need a smartphone to call, message people, browse the web, for maps/directions/location/gps, to display PDFs, you can do it on a Google-free Android:

- App "store": F-Droid

- Navigation: Organic Maps and OSMAnd. I guess you won't have traffic information nor radar warnings which seems a big thing for many people.

- Browser: Firefox or any Chromium-based browser found in F-Droid

- Emails : K9-Mail (has it been rebranded to Thunderbird yet?)

- Messages : the AOSP Messaging app (or maybe a fork of it if any) or QKSMS; Element, Telegram, Rocket Chat…. For Signal you'll need to download the APK from the Signal's website as they are against distribution of unofficial builds of it, or use Aurora.

- PDF : There are PDF viewers on F-Droid but can't remember their names.

and you still have Aurora for downloading things from the Play Store. I fortunately never had to use WhatsApp and Messenger but they can be downloaded from there if you need them.

You may miss some things, but it covers a lot already. Most things work.

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

#79

Post by [deleted] »

dartos wrote: post #74
voisin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WTF does "breaking up Google" actually mean? Well for one, the ad business could be separated into the auction system and the use of the auction system on their different services.

A few more off the top of my head Android could be spun off. The whole pixel phone business as well. GSuite could be its own thing. I think google is still an ISP in some parts. They’re research sections too.

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by j-bos »

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…

Doesn't this apply even more to Apple devices? I'm not complaining, rather trying to understand how this fits into the broader arguments.
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