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

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

#911

Post by Sylos » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 3:06 AM UTC

trothamel wrote: post #558

r_singh wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly Android doesn't have a monopoly. The EU commission doesn't think so. Their press release* says that 80% of smart mobile devices in Europe, run on Android. * http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm

Well, there's nothing all that special about the output of a political commission. And the fact that 1 in 5 devices don't run Android would seem to contradict the monopoly accusation.

Antitrust does not require a monopoly, it just requires enough of a market dominance that hurting the market is feasible for you, and then exploiting this position to actually hurt the market.

Basically, all you have to do, is hurt the market in noticeable ways. The sole goal of antitrust laws is keeping the market healthy. They're not fair and have almost no rules attached to them.

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

#912

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

on_and_off wrote: post #657

radium3d wrote: post #618

I feel the EU needs to educate their government. Microsoft != Google when it comes to the Android OS. Google made Android free to make cheap devices possible for everyone to be able to afford a smartphone. They include their search engine as a way to fund all of their contribution to the development of Android. Manufacturers can pay to remove Google, it's still an option for them. How is this not a trustworthy busine…

As a dev, I genuinely fear the day when Android devices ship without being approved by the CTS (compatibility test suite, devised by Google to ensure that compliant devices implement the APIs correctly). Fragmentation is 99% FUD right now. If everybody starts shipping huge forks of Android; with silently diverging APIs, it will be a nightmare. And that's just for devs. I guess my point is that I see why the EU reache…

So keep the compatibility requirements and remove the anti-competitive requirements.

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

#913

Post by Sylos » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 3:33 AM UTC

savanaly wrote: post #475

menegattig wrote: post #244

IMHO, antitrust fines/penalties should change from amount of money to some other type of penalty, like temporary market exclusion/block or something, otherwise companies like Google and others can simply use its cash (that's was also made due to the unfair advantage), pay the fine and move on to the next market dominance. They will always have cash to pay, even if the fines are higher and higher. They kind of expect…

Surely you just believe that the fine is not high enough, not that it is ineffective in principle? There exists a number X which is the amount that google could be fined where they are ambivalent between that fine and a ban from the market for some period of time which is what you had in mind. Thus, a fine would be equally effective at X. So I don't see why you think fines are fundamentally ineffective?

Sure, there exists some amount X, but you can hardly remedy a complete temporay ban with money.

Because it means that users have to look at alternatives. They might find that they prefer them in the long run, and it might even just incentivize competition to keep going. And this is especially damaging in monopoly-like situations, as many users don't even know of competing products.

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

#914

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 3:52 AM UTC

trasz wrote: post #708

pertymcpert wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL issue is completely separate. The law regarding GPL and where is applies vs LGPL is well understood.

Not really, no. There's the FSF interpretation on one hand, but on the other there are companies like VMWare which happily put binary blobs into the Linux kernel and don't consider it a "derived work".

There are disagreements, but let's put it this way: If even the FSF would call it okay, then it's almost certainly okay. And the FSF will tell you that the kernel license doesn't infect user space.

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

#915

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 3:58 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #882

TeMPOraL wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eternal conflict between lowly workers trying to get their job done and the IT department trying to prevent them from doing their jobs to make their own life easier, based on the notion that if users can't use the infrastructure, they can't break it.

Obviously, Chrome is not needed to do their jobs. If it was, it'd be provided. Browsers, especially Chrome, are a massive malware ingress point, it makes zero sense for end users to install them. IT actually exists to help ensure people can do their job, and do their job faster. As a general goal, I like to learn about people's business processes for the exact purpose of seeing how our IT environment can be improved…

> If it was, it'd be provided.

That's a faulty assumption right there. Usually, people providing workers with their computers and software have limited idea what those workers actually need to work efficiently. This works out fine when workflows are defined so well a trained monkey could do the job, and fails miserably when the worker needs any sort of creative control over their workflow or work output (programmers, designers, all sorts of engineers and technicians, etc.). Most corporate work is probably closer to monkey level than to creative level, but enterprises love to do company-wide policy changes, making all work conform to lowest common denominator.

> You may have experienced poor IT departments in the past, or thought you experienced poor IT departments because you didn't understand the other considerations in play, but that's hardly an excuse to assume any given IT choice is some sort of attempt to prevent employees from doing their jobs.

I've experienced one competent IT department in my life, and their best quality was helping shield our programming team from policies like application whitelisting or limiting admin access, that they were forced to deploy company-wide. For other IT departments I dealt with, most of their actions were explainable if viewed through the lens of caring about the infrastructure to the extreme - that is, "if no one uses it, no one will break it" approach.

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

#916

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 3:59 AM UTC

Anagmate wrote: post #879

pergadad wrote: post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that you didn't read the actual article. There are three complaints all basically about the contractual conditions Google imposes, two about imposing Google search and the most interesting one about Google forcing manufacturers to choose between selling only Google's version with Play Store & Google apps or never Google's version. This forced in particular the big ones to commit fully to Google's…

> "buy only from us or never from us" And? Seems like a valid move (from both moral and corporate perspective) to me.

Interfering in your customers' dealings that have nothing to do with you sounds morally awful to me.

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

#917

Post by sweeds » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:27 AM UTC

datalist wrote: post #854

cageface wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS rules the USA startup market, which is still where most of the money and energy is globally. Believe me I’d prefer that this were not the case.

I am not arguing iOS'es market share in the US, I am saying it is of faaaaaaaaar less relevance outside the US.

Both of you are insisting your own experience is more correct, without any imperical evidence or empathy. Take a moment to step back and realize your perspective isn't the only one.

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

#918

Post by MarkMc » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:30 AM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #733

sah2ed wrote: post #712

Earlier 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…

Thanks for giving us a peek at the early development of Android.

It's interesting that Andy was pushing open-source for altruistic reasons, but I'm tempted to think that it happened to also be the best business strategy - despite what the suits thought at the time.

Every business school teaches that IBM made one of the worst business decisions of all time when it licenced the software for its new personal computers from Microsoft. Samsung certainly didn't want to make the same mistake, and an open-source operating system can always be forked so Samsung had a guarantee it wouldn't end up paying the 'Windows tax'.

If Android was closed-source it would have found it much more difficult to get that critical early install base. But with a successful open-source platform it could then develop its closed-source Play service.

To me this one-two punch would make a great business school case study in favour of Android's open/closed-source hybrid approach

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

#919

Post by reitanqild » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:37 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #898

reitanqild wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just because you're a foreign company, what are you supposed to do then? Most foreign companies aren't considered bad actors. We are talking about 1) the old Microsoft here - definitely a bad actor - getting rid of it seems to have been refreshing even for Microsoft shareholders. - 2) Google, a company we many of us loved at some point but who might now be in need of some refreshing at least in some areas.

> Most foreign companies aren't considered bad actors. Google wasn't considered a bad actor until then they were. > the old Microsoft here - definitely a bad actor - getting rid of it seems to have been refreshing even for Microsoft shareholders. The old Microsoft deserved everything they got and then some. But even then, it would have been nice for the penalties to be more "actually effective in increasing competiti…

> Google wasn't considered a bad actor until then they were.

The alternative (where they are considered a bad actor before they were) seems a lot worse ;-)

I think EU might even have cut them a good slack here based on their previous status as good guys.

> and less "suspiciously convenient transfer of large sums of money."

In a EU perspective I think we'll find this doesn't matter much to them.

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

#920

Post by datalist » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:55 AM UTC

sweeds wrote: post #917

datalist wrote: post #854

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not arguing iOS'es market share in the US, I am saying it is of faaaaaaaaar less relevance outside the US.

Both of you are insisting your own experience is more correct, without any imperical evidence or empathy. Take a moment to step back and realize your perspective isn't the only one.

What?

I cant do more than provide the numbers my statements are based on. Please go and check that before you make wild allgations about lack of evidence or empathy.