European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by cageface » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

datalist wrote: post #829

cageface wrote: post #802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference at that time was that Microsoft had zero real competition and was stifling innovation in the OS and web space. Instead today Android is the only alternative to the most proprietary and richest company in the history of computing, which needs no legal remedies or special favors.

Zero competition? OS/2, Linux, Apple, BeOS, etc. Stifling innovation? How? The "web space" didnt even really exist.

The only one of those platforms that even kind of mattered on the desktop at the time was Apple and even they were way more niche than they were today. The web space certainly did matter and it was clear at the time it would come to matter a lot more if Microsoft wasn’t permitted to go on strangling it with IE and ActiveX.

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

#832

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #601

endorphone wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there aren't because BMW absolutely squashed the possibility of that at the outset. But Google, apparently, deserves a $5B fine because they made a mistake of powering AOSP phones, the Amazon products, countless variations in China, set top boxes, etc. It is incredible seeing Google being seriously attacked on here for have an open source path as well. I feel like this is some sort of alternative universe.

It is incredible seeing Google being seriously attacked on here for have an open source path as well. I feel like this is some sort of alternative universe. Exactly. The takeaway from this seems to be to not open up your system a little bit, because then you'll need to go all the way. Whereas e.g. Apple, which built a completely closed phone system from the start, doesn't get any trouble (even when it dominated the s…

[deleted]

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

#833

Post by datalist » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #540

joering2 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Chrome. Chrome was the biggest shocker to many @ Goog. Even as a Noogler, people often sit down in cafeteria and talked about how Chrome got traction and so popular only because it got a main spot on Google's homepage; something noone, no company or individual advertiser can ever bid for. If that's not Google's "Microsoft Internet Explorer anti-trust" moment, then nothing is.

You're missing the massive point that it was also happened to be far superior to Firefox and IE when it came out... And it held the #1 spot (by far) for nearly a decade while Firefox fumbled around and IE remained IE. It's crazy to say a product only succeeded because Google pushed it hard. Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) has a LONG list of failed products they pushed hard (Wave, Google Plus, etc). Did it play a r…

It had a few new concepts, mainly multi-processes, but "far superior when it came out" is a broad exaggeration.

Equally, IE was far superior to Netscape when it came out ;)

This is not to say Chrome is (now) the inferior browser but saying their marketing push has nothing to do with its market share is ignoring reality.

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

#834

Post by cageface » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

datalist wrote: post #830

cageface wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet still most people develop for iOS first and then later port to Android, if at all. It's really not a comparable situation at all.

That was true about seven to ten years ago.

Absolutely still true today. If you think otherwise you are clearly not in the business of developing mobile apps. Ten years ago native mobile apps were barely even a thing.

Take the HQ app for just one recent high profile app out of countless other examples.

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

#835

Post by blub » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

utopcell wrote: post #824

blub wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked for so many years at Google, you should be aware that your employer is forbidding Android manufacturers to also produce any non-certified Android-based devices. No Android logo, no app store, no GApps, still forbidden if that company happens to sell an unrelated Android device. So in fact it is not about "whether Google is allowed to control the experience of Android phones that want to use the Google a…

This argument doesn't make any sense. Android was developed via billions of dollars of investment by Google. Google has no obligation to provide a free OSS variant, other than for the parts that are GPL'ed. If all Google is offering is the complete Android experience (including the App store and all the Google apps,) and not any OSS variant, how are manufacturers limited exactly ? They can either use Android, that is…

Google has no obligation to provide the OSS version, but they can't really afford to close Android either, it would be a major PR blow and Samsung would basically immediately ship their own fork, perhaps with the Amazon store and a couple extra apps to replace the Google maps, Chrome, etc.

Manufacturers are limited contractually. This is detailed in the EU press release linked to this thread. Alas, one still has to actually read it or alternatively have some knowledge about how Android is licensed.

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

#836

Post by datalist » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #831

datalist wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero competition? OS/2, Linux, Apple, BeOS, etc. Stifling innovation? How? The "web space" didnt even really exist.

The only one of those platforms that even kind of mattered on the desktop at the time was Apple and even they were way more niche than they were today. The web space certainly did matter and it was clear at the time it would come to matter a lot more if Microsoft wasn’t permitted to go on strangling it with IE and ActiveX.

And yet there was competition.

It is similar to today, respectively we have even less choice, we have two platforms, out of which one is mostly a lifestyle company and has a minor market share of ~20%, whereas the second is dominating the market at ~80%

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

#837

Post by blub » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #791

I'm having a really hard time figuring out what happy ending the EU has in mind here. Google stops licensing Android to OEMs and doubles down on Pixel. It takes them years to catch up to Apple's marking and distribution head start, if they ever do. Samsung goes back to Tizen, which nobody wants, and sales plummet. All the other Android OEMs disappear. All we have left is Apple and the most expensive, proprietary and…

The happy ending is that megacorps stop screwing around and start obeying the laws, like everyone else.

In your fantasy scenario you didn't consider that the current version(s) of Android running on billions of devices are mostly open source, and there's nothing preventing Samsung, or Samsung + Sony + whoever to take that, combine it with one of the other existing app store and GApps replacement apps (Firefox, some maps e.g. Nokia, etc) and continuing like nothing happened. What are the Android app developers going to do, say "oh well" and settle for their market share shrinking to almost nothing which is what the Pixel amounts to? No, they will publish on the new Samsung app store.

And life moves on. Perhaps Jolla gets a boost, or we see a new or old player try something new.

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

#838

Post by datalist » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #834

datalist wrote: post #830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was true about seven to ten years ago.

Absolutely still true today. If you think otherwise you are clearly not in the business of developing mobile apps. Ten years ago native mobile apps were barely even a thing. Take the HQ app for just one recent high profile app out of countless other examples.

Absolutely not true today and I am in that business. The number of companies which are iOS-only or even iOS-first is negligible these days. In most cases both platforms are supported, often with Android having a head start.

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

#839

Post by DannyBee » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #763

DannyBee wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 w…

The first part is basically saying "Google chose a thing, so chose to market that as a good thing". Isn't that what everyone does?

As for whether it mattered, honestly, no, i would say didn't. The developers cared whether they could make money, not whether it was open.

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

#840

Post by Joeri » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #801

Radle wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company creates damages exceeding billions of dollars, it's quite obvious that they should receive penalty worth billions of dollars. That's basic proportionality.

> If a company creates damages exceeding billions of dollars, it's quite obvious that they should receive penalty worth billions of dollars. That is entirely tautological. It omits the reasoning under which that spectacular amount of irreparable damages have actually occurred to consumers. "They have a lot of money and we would like to have that" is not a valid method of calculating damages.

From the press release:

the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from search advertising services on Android devices in the EEA.

In other words, Google had an unfair advantage for search on android devices and leveraged that into revenue. The fine is a percentage of that ill-gotten revenue.

There’s an official guideline for calculating damages when anticompetitive behavior is found: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:52...