Share holders, not Google will pay this $5 billion fine
Google will pay. All subsidiaries of Google are some form of limited-liability partnerships.
European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
761–770 of 975 posts
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#762The net outcome of this decision will be that nobody will create significant open platforms of this type anymore, because once you are successful you will no longer be able to have any control over the experience. Someone will always be able to find a market that you are hurting. If you actually read the decision that's essentially their underlying complaint. They dress it up in terms about search market blah blah bl…
I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again.
The Android growth phase has been incredibly lucrative for Google (and Microsoft, via patents). Have no doubt they'd try it again today.
And the justice system in the EU is different than in the US. It doesn't mean the next one will be the same.
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#763Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Android being open at all was already a fight inside Google, this decision will essentially make it impossible for anybody win that fight in the future. I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again. It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several…
"It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several handset manufacturers via the OHA [0]." This is actually not why it was done (I was there :P), and didn't really factor very much into the calculation at all. So your perspective, while interesting, was not the one used…
I could have sworn that the the open-source thing was a big part of the incentive to develop for Android rather than Apple with its walled garden and arbitrary app store policies. Now development and commitment to the open source track may have begun much earlier. And it was a way for Google to differentiate itself from Apple by having a different business model. My recall of the first couple of years on the market was that everyone knew Android apps were not as fast or as fancy as iOS ones, but 'at least it's an open platform.'
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Android being open at all was already a fight inside Google, this decision will essentially make it impossible for anybody win that fight in the future. I can't see why anyone would risk making an open platform again. It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several…
"It was a calculated risk that had a handsome payoff, if it worked, which is why it had to be open source, anything short of open source and Android would never have taken off like it did with several handset manufacturers via the OHA [0]." This is actually not why it was done (I was there :P), and didn't really factor very much into the calculation at all. So your perspective, while interesting, was not the one used…
How does the business model relate to the source-code being published under a Free Software license?
I don't see how the license of the software relates to it it giving you a shitty experience or not.
The shitty experiences I had on Android were largely due to carrier and OEM spyware and bloatware preinstalled on devices -- deals Google struck.
I had always attributed the security problems to Google having inadequate terms with handset manufacturers, to keep handsets up to date. Specifically, that handsets could automatically fall back to stock Android if the OEM/carrier didn't want to continue to develop their proprietary fork for that line of handsets. Maybe this is wrong. Maybe it was planned obsolescence with unintended consequences.
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”. I'm using Android every day and never once opened Chrome (instead I'm using the Lightning browser) or used the Google app to search (I'm just searching directly in my browser). So IMHO that's definitely NOT the core experience of Android, while the Play Store is.
Neat. So the OS allowed you to choose alternatives and to avoid Chrome wholly. So you're fully of the opinion that the EU argument has no merit then, right? Of course, saying it's a part of the Android/Google Experience is from the average consumer. You know that you have the Chrome browser if you so choose. Yes, you can go to the Play Store and install Firefox. Unlike on iOS where the browser alternatives are facade…
An "app" on Android is not a traditional executable. It's really a library and a collection of OS hooks that execute code from that library on various events.
The home screen icon is one of those hooks but by far not the only one. If I hide it or never press it, that implies exactly nothing about whether or not code from the app gets executed while I use the phone.
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still have to fight this occasionally. :| In one instance, I ended up just telling the antivirus software at a company to flag Chrome as a virus and block it from executing. Software installation requiring admin rights is by design , and circumventing it is unethical as heck.
If you rely on the lack of admin rights to prevent unauthorised software from being run you’re doing it wrong. You should be using whitelisting (e.g. AppLocker in Windows) which also prevents “portable” applications (without an installer) from being used.
I don't disagree, but a significant majority of IT environments are "done wrong".
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still have to fight this occasionally. :| In one instance, I ended up just telling the antivirus software at a company to flag Chrome as a virus and block it from executing. Software installation requiring admin rights is by design , and circumventing it is unethical as heck.
If you try that on my box, your admin rights will be removed. Preventing me from installing necessary software to do my job is unethical.
Users who have a valid necessity for Chrome can have it, in a very controlled fashion (extensions and cloud features disabled) on request and review.
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#768Can anyone concisely explain what this fine is for, and also why the same wouldn't apply to Apple for iOS? It seems to be a rehash of the issue that Microsoft faced when it only gave you Internet Explorer on install. But iOS comes with only Safari on install, and forces you to use Apple's various apps - how is this any different?
Why couldnt Google argue that manufacturers can fork andoid project and disable Google apps ?
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#769This is a dangerous ruling that pushes the world further into the potential for trade wars by proxy. Contrary to numerous posts- -no, the law isn't "clear". This is an incredibly nuanced situation, and the notion that Google was just overtly flouting (ed: thx sjcsjc) the law is outright nonsense. Google has a huge litany of bad practices (I personally recently switched my daily driver to an iPhone for that reason), b…
To put the $5B fine into perspective: - Google had an operating income of 32.9 billion in 2017 [0]. $5B fine for anti-trust practices is 15.2% (5 / 32.9) of that. - HSBC had an operating income of 63.8 billion in 2017 [1]. In 2017, HSBC suffered a $1.9B fine for _willfully_ relaxing it's anti-money laundering filters in order to profit from the illegal drug industry, regimes that are embargoed, and entities or indivi…
1.9 / 63.8 != 0.29%
Re: European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case
#770Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How is the Play Store related to the Google Seach app or to Chrome? “Related to” does not mean that they are the literally same thing. They are clearly related as a suite of applications which form the core experience of what is called “Android”. The law doesn’t say that if it is technically possible to unbundle a set of options from a product offering to be sold al la carte that companies must do that. These are a…
> Mixing and matching, for the vast majority of users, is neither practical or expected, and absolutely negatively impacts the brand. Firefox has over a 100 million downloads according to the Play Store, so that argument at least doesn't work for bundling Chrome.
But that is 100 million out of over 6 billion Android phones shipped [1] which means around 2% of users install Firefox.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263445/global-smartphone...