The European Commission has formally lodged an antitrust complaint regarding Android.
The European Commission has informed Google of its preliminary view that the company has, in breach of EU antitrust rules, abused its dominant position by imposing restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators.
The Commission’s preliminary view is that Google has implemented a strategy on mobile devices to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general internet search. First, the practices mean that Google Search is pre-installed and set as the default, or exclusive, search service on most Android devices sold in Europe. Second, the practices appear to close off ways for rival search engines to access the market, via competing mobile browsers and operating systems. In addition, they also seem to harm consumers by stifling competition and restricting innovation in the wider mobile space.
Google has already responded in a blog post (read the whole thing):
The European Commission has been investigating our approach, and today issued a Statement of Objections, raising questions about its impact on competition. We take these concerns seriously, but we also believe that our business model keeps manufacturers’ costs low and their flexibility high, while giving consumers unprecedented control of their mobile devices. That’s how we designed the model.
This EU antitrust complaint is one of the biggest jokes in EU antitrust history; an even bigger joke than the Windows N editions. Not only is Android open source, the operating system has created a vastly more open and consumer- and competition friendly mobile operating system than anything else that has ever existed on the market. The situation before Android was absolutely dreadful – dozens, if not hundreds, of closed little feature phone platforms, the closed-source Windows Mobile, the completely locked-down iOS, the heavily fragmented, obtuse, and effectively locked-down Symbian.
The situation after Android is that any user has a lot of control over the software they run on their phone, with tons of cheap, yet high quality devices to choose from. You can install whatever software you want, from whatever source you want, without having to go through Google or anyone else. Developers can target a vast segment of the market – Android has 80% market share in Europe – without being beholden to the nonsensical whims of a single corporation. In addition, users can run Android on pretty much any phone without any additional Google software or services.
The situation clearly isn’t perfect by any means, but the real problems with mobile software are not in Android – or iOS for that matter – but in the baseband processors, firmware, and similar software. Far less sexy, of course, and yet a far bigger problem that needs to be tackled.
This entire antitrust complaint is a complete waste of money and taxpayer resources – which, coincidentally, makes it a very EU thing to do.
“This entire antitrust complaint is a complete waste of money and taxpayer resources – which, coincidentally, makes it a very EU thing to do.”
Antitrust laws don’t make sense when they punish a company just for being successful, as appears to be the case here.
Google isn’t even charging money for Android, they may be making money indirectly through ads, but they are making that ad money on all platforms and devices, so what’s the point?
Has anyone ever been forced to use an Android device ever? There were Nokia and Blackberry and Windows Phone and iOS, and except for iOS consumers favored Android consistently.
Part of the reason for that happening was exactly that Android itsself doesn’t cost a dime and runs on devices that are cheap or high-end.
And it’s not a terrible OS either, lots of customizability you don’t get with any other OS (with the possible exception of some niche OSs).
The only lock-in you could possibly see with Android is from the Play Store and Play Services. Which is a fair point, but then again are Nokia, Windows Phone, iOS, Blackberry and whatnot really better? No. Most of them have far more “lock-in” to their APIs and services. With Android you can most of the time choose not to use a part you don’t like and replace it with something else.
On iOS you can’t even install a proper third-party browser! They have really stringent restrictions on what they allow in the App Store and which techniques you may use to program your app.
This shows that politicians and vast parts of the population (which politicians mirror) have no clue at all about technology and how the parts work together internally, what Open Source means, or that Android is basically a free platform with a not-so-free store on top of it, but at least a store that you can replace with alternative stores if you so choose.
The real scandal here is that politicians can use their power to change the course of a product which consumers largely like, just because they can win political points or extract money from a huge foreign corporation.
I wonder if EU politicians would be doing the same thing if Google was European? Unlikely.
They should be concered about bankers and institutions that are “too large to fail”, instead they want to punish a successful open source technology because it is liked by a greater number of people than anythinge else?
That sort of stuff makes me question why I should even bother to go vote!
Especially at the EU level they seem to do whatever they hell they can get away with and they seem to believe they can get away with everything.
What should Google be doing in their opinion? Make Android not free anymore? Make it completely proprietory? Just abandon the project now?
Antitrust laws are supposed to keep companies in line that gain their market share in an unfair fashion and who actively try to supress their smaller competition. Google is doing neither. Better yet, Google is a far smaller company in raw numbers (market cap, revenue) than Apple or Microsoft. David is beating Goliath (even two Goliaths), and now we want to punish David?
I want to punch something right now really hard.
They want to win political browny points from people who are completely clueless.
Unfortunately most people are clueless on most issues most of the time.
Edited 2016-04-20 11:15 UTC
you know Alphabet has the biggest market cap out of the 3. It can hardly be called the David when it is the powerful one with the large market share.
This isnt about Google vs Apple. This is about Google vs Amazon, vs Nokia, vs Mobogenie when it comes to installing their services ON android.
Really?
Let me check the numbers (as of today):
1. Apple has a Market Cap of 592.99B
2. Alphabet has a Market Cap of 518.92B
3. Microsoft has a Market Cap of 442.13B
Revenue 2015:
1. Apple 234B.
2. Microsoft 93.58B
3. Alphabet ~75B
Profit 2015:
1. Apple 53.394B
2. Alphabet 16.34B
3. Microsoft 12.19 billion
I conclude that we are both somewhat wrong and somewhat right.
Yes, Alphabet’s market cap is in the same league and bigger than Microsoft’s at this point in time.
But Apple is the clear winner in all three categories. Especially with trice as much profit as either Alphabet or Microsoft.
Apple also has more than 2 times as much revenue as Microsoft, and 3 times as much revenue as Alphabet.
Which makes Apple the Goliath at this point, if there is any.
But you also have to factor in where everyone started. Google is the youngest of the three companies, when Android got started, Google was big then, but still paled in comparison to Microsoft. Initially Apple was completely dominating the mobile OS market. Android was the challenger.
Edited 2016-04-20 12:17 UTC
I concede the point on the size
It Was bigger in Feb, but that clearly didn’t last very long!
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-results-idUSKCN0VA3IS
YES : Android is open source and you can make wathever you want with it.
NO : the playstore and google services can’t be used without conditions.
So let’s be honest : if you want to make an android device that is not totally irrelevant, you have to have the Playstore. Even a giant like Amazon would cannot compete with Google and the Playstore.
(IMHO) You have no choice.
I think Amazon would disagree with you.
Of course. They are trying very hard and aren’t doing a bad job neither. Still it’s hard to sell a phone with no access to the Playstore. (poor, poor Fire phone)
West-centric view of the world. There are literally hundreds of millions non-Google Android phones in the world, in use, every single day.
The EU is only concerned with the practices in Europe which is what is being discussed. So it will always be “West-centric”. The fact it isn’t a monopoly elsewhere doesn’t mean it isn’t one here and is somewhat irrelevant.
Completely utterly totally absolutely irrelevant here.
The Fire phone failed for many different reasons and bad business choices. Locking the phone to AT&T was probably the biggest one (really, what year are we in now?), and this was no SIM lock. The phone would literally refuse to work with anything but AT&T regardless of the SIM unlock status. For another, the marketing was terrible… wait, what marketing? They didn’t push it. Didn’t even try. AT&T, despite the exclusivity they got, didn’t give a rat’s tail about it either. The Fire tablets don’t have Google Play and they’re selling like crazy. I suspect the Fire phone would have done fine, if they’d done a good job of it. Unfortunately, they flopped it and Amazon have no one to blame but themselves for that one. Most people didn’t even get to try one and wonder if thePlay store was there or not.
Tell that to the Chinese. Their domestic market devices have zero Google applications or services installed. They use Baidu for search, QQ for messaging etc.
“The real scandal here is that politicians can use their power to change the course of a product which consumers largely like, just because they can win political points or extract money from a huge foreign corporation.
I wonder if EU politicians would be doing the same thing if Google was European? Unlikely.”
It is very popular these days for people on the Internet to make untrue claims about the EU to “prove” it is very bad for the people. However, if you just look at the below link with statistics and in particular item 1.6 “Ten highest cartel fines per undertaking (since 1969)”, you can see there is only one non-European company in that top-10 list. All 9 other fines were for multinationals with European origin!
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/cartels/statistics/statistics.pdf
“Better yet, Google is a far smaller company in raw numbers (market cap, revenue) than Apple or Microsoft.”
Agree.
“David is beating Goliath (even two Goliaths), and now we want to punish David?”
What should we do with a miss behaving David?
More transparency in the monetization surface of Google toward their consumers could go a lot in easing the actual standing, without needing very expensive alterations in commercial profile.
“Unfortunately most people are clueless on most issues most of the time.”
Only humans. On very limited time and resources all we are.
Individuals_only Over-sighting Institutions could help a lot about this ‘clueless’ existence. Universities used to fill this role, in the good times [Now Corporations are their ‘Contributors’. So many times of late Universities prefer to remain silent].
So, it’s up to us, again.
I tend to disagree with your assessment of the current state of play of the market.
Google’s store and Play services have almost 100% of the Android coverage in Europe.
What google have effectively done is impose a monopoly on top of the Open Source Android OS.
Round the world there is Yandex and MI but in Europe, try to find me a big OEM phone with Amazon or Similar store/services. They simply don’t exist.
You can’t legitimately run ANY of Google’s services unless they certify you as an OEM, they will only certify you if you “choose” to run their whole suite
http://www.androidauthority.com/study-shows-americans-opting-mobile…
To me, this doesn’t feel like a fair playing field for the market, and therefore the consumer.
edit: sorry for the link the HTML tags arn’t displaying properly
Edited 2016-04-20 11:20 UTC
This is an interesting analysis of the situation: The EU’s Android Mistake
http://www.beyonddevic.es/2016/04/20/the-eus-android-mistake/
or even create your own if you want to.
There are a number of alternative markets, from Amazon to open source markets and so on.
You don’t need a market to distribute an App by the way, distributing an APK is not really much more difficult.
Google doesn’t force you to use any of its APIs, you can always roll your own, or use a 3rd party API.
Contrary to Apple which wants to tell you which programming language is acceptable to use and so forth.
Is it perfect? No. Could it be much worse? Yes, easily!
Android is Open source, Google Play Services are not. And as more and more of the “recomended” api’s get moved into there we loose the target openness. Similarly as google has made it’s own versions of apps available on the play store they have systematically stopped updating them in AOSP. Take the music app for example, the default AOSP one is 3 years old, all derivative ROMS have to include their own.
So I can see where they are coming from at least. However, I don’t see why they’d go after google with these charges and not after apple. They’re guilt of all of those far more.
The idea that Apple is just as guilty of these violations as Google has been going on for ages, it just used to be Microsoft not Google. The reason they are never attacked though is because of their differing business models. Google makes Android available to any phone manufacturer in order to increase competition, but then they are accused of forcing the manufacturers to only use Google services, therefore limiting competition where their services are concerned. This was basically what Microsoft did do with Internet Explorer, and to a lesser extent Windows Media Player. Where Apple is different is that they don’t offer their OS to other manufacturers, they make the OS and the hardware. They aren’t trying to force other manufacturers into using their services because they don’t offer their services to other manufacturers. If people don’t want to use Apple services then they don’t buy Apple products. But with Android if you don’t want to use Google services, and you are the average consumer that knows nothing about loading custom ROMs, etc. then your choices are few. It doesn’t matter if you choose Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, whatever, you basically have no choice in regards to Google services.
Many of the Chinese handsets are now available in the EU with or without Google Play and the other google services. So there are some choices.
Is it Googles fault that most telco providers do not supply those devices on a contract?
Consumers have a choice, you can go and install all the custom software you want on android in or out of the market place. It’s also easy enough to do for complete computer novices.
If it’s true that Google is forbidding/hugely dis-incentivising companies who ship Google Android phones from shipping anything else, then the EU have a point, as it’s a repeat of the Windows/BeOS scenario.
In a couple of episodes of Exponent.fm (with Ben Thompson of Stratechery) they talk about how the US and EU approaches antitrust differently. Although it doesn’t show in EU’s language here, their point is that US anti-trust laws exists for the benefit for the consumer. In other words: a monopoly is completely ok if it doesn’t harm consumers.
EU however is more focused on not having on company being too much in control of a market. Viewed through this lens I can see why they have complaints about Google. Put in other words: according to this view, even if Google are not abusing their power, they are at fault for simply having it.
Not saying I agree with it, just that it’s something that might explain why EU are doing what they are doing.
Take all this with a grain of salt, as I’m far cry from being a lawyer.
In short, the EU punishes success.
It all depends on what you mean by success. Is it maximum profit for the corporation or is it lowest prices for the consumer? It’s simple economics that a monopoly will benefit the company and disadvantage the consumer. Is that what you want? What’s the remidy? Regulation or break-up. Is that what the company wants? Is eliminating the competition a sign of success too?
Consumer choice is the success benchmark, and the consumers have chosen. Microsoft, Blackberry, Nokia… they all had their chance. The users have chosen Android and, by and large, they have chosen that they want Google’s services. The government has no right to attempt to limit that choice, or artificially create more choices that are not wanted. What would you propose? A services ballot for your phone?
Whatever DOMINANT does because is 1st, and couldn’t do if it where 2nd, or 3rd, SHOULD be subject to OVERSIGHT.
It so simple that has no business at all with CONSUMER CHOICE.
USA has really never grabbed firmly the idea.
I suggest you look up Natural Monopolies in an economic textbooks. It is sometimes much better for the consumer to have limited competition for certain goods and services.
In Australia I can buy a brand new Android phone for the same amount (or less) than the price of a new Nokia or Samsung feature phone. Explain how am I being exploited?
Edited 2016-04-21 06:02 UTC
I don’t think this “natural monopoly” applies to you in this case. Google doesn’t have a monopoly selling phones (even android ones), but they do have a monopoly on the services that run on those phones.
It does bother me when google services/apps are hard coded and can’t easily be removed. It bother me that my device is being used to track & profile my usage. I consciously try to disable all such tracking, but I am very annoyed that google deliberately designs android permissions to be all or nothing to prevent users from blocking the app permissions used to track us.
It bothers me that google pushed an update that causes android to ask for consent to sending my “annonymous” location information to google and continued to disable all known workarounds. Now I decline every god damn time I start the GPS yet despite my intentions never to share data and even having a rooted phone, google has removed any way to permanently opt out. I guess many users will just give up and “agree” out of futility.
Seriously if anyone knows an answer to this that works generically without completely reflashing the phone, I’d love to hear it.
http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/61739/location-consent-a…
I may not be typical, but if I could buy an android phone where google apps are officially supported, yet the all the ad/tracking hooks were disabled, I would definitely buy that phone instead. The problem is that google restricts how products can be sold to promote it’s advertising business.
Alfman. In a true don’t_lose_your_time_anymore spirit, you shouldn’t pause conscience about Google main business.
I don’t use the Google services on my Android phone. I use Here maps, Adblock browser, VLC media player etc. Location services are disabled.
unclefester,
I don’t use google services either (except for google’s app store, which I can’t really avoid because most developers only target it).
I use Maps.me for gps nav. My gripe is that each time I turn on the GPS the OS wants me to “Help Improve Location Accuracy” by sharing GPS & wifi data with google (as described in the link and has no solution). One can permanently opt in the first time using a GPS app, but it looks like google has removed all the ways to permanently opt out.
If anyone knows of a way to opt out, please let me know since this has been bugging me for a very long time.
Edited 2016-04-22 16:20 UTC
The best solution for driving is to buy a standalone GPS. They are very affordable and easier to use than a phone.
unclefester,
Haha, this is not an answer I was expecting. But yes I suppose that’s one way to avoid the google.
A dedicated GPS I used 10 years ago wasn’t that great. I’m not sure what advantage a modern one would have. I guess it might be easier to get out of a traffic ticket if it’s a dedicated GPS rather than a phone running GPS…
No. EU punishes monopolies. Monopolies are bad. They tend not to play fair with the competition. In fact, they don’t play fair since they are in total and crushing market advantage. Think of it as an biological ecosystem. If you have a climbing plant that is asphyxiating other organisms, it must be contained at some point.
Except that there isn’t one. The EU punishes success, because there would have to be a monopoly to punish a monopoly, yes?
Exactly, Darknexus. That’s why OUR monopoly has to be checked for fidelity toward us, and be the REAL dominant one
“…their point is that US anti-trust laws exists for the benefit for the consumer…”
So, is US not protecting the health of its economy, as a whole?
“This entire antitrust complaint is a complete waste of money and taxpayer resources – which, coincidentally, makes it a very EU thing to do.”
So sad you haven’t read all: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-1484_en.htm
One quote from that text:
“Android is an open-source system, meaning that it can be freely used and developed by anyone to create a modified mobile operating system (a so-called “Android fork”). The open-source model of course does not raise competition concerns – on the contrary.”
…it is much more nuanced than you are saying.
Just another reason for us brits to vote out of the EU in June.
Far to much corruption by unelected clowns that hardly understand how to tie their own shoelaces!
I’m for OUT!
But do you really want Boris as PM post the vote?
come on now, be honest…
IMHO, google has a lot to answer for but not this.
IMHO, you buy a phone with an Android brand, you might as well go and send it to the recyclers the next day. google owns the Android Trademark. They should insist that any company using it provided all the updates google release in a timely manner to the customers who have bought a branded product for at least 3 years from release.
Yes, the update and patching situation with Android is frankly pathetic when compared to IOS.
The EU has laws about warranties etc for consumer products. I’d like that extended to software updates.
Google controls the Androis source. They could do something but choose not to to so.
Boris, Cameron, what’s the difference? They’re all as bent as a ten bob note and only in it for themselves!
To be honest, I don’t care who gets in, it won’t make a blind bit of difference to the man on the street.
As for Google and Android, the EU has just stepped in where its not needed, again.
If you have read the news lately, even Juncker has admitted that the EU interferes to much in peoples lives and is over regulating.
Nothing new there then?
And that would be different how exactly? Have you ever been involved in how this country is “run”?!
Right from the bottom it is full of back stabbing, back hand taking, petty minded individuals and stacks of incompetent and lazy middle managers with little or no oversight who out source _EVERYTHING_. This is the same everywhere.
Leaving will not solve that problem – Think of something else please.
And while your at it please hand back all the EU money that is spent of law, road building, building ports, maintaining those facilities, agricultural, rural development etc etc
What have the Roman’s ever Done for Us?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso
“PEACE! OH SHUT UP!”
Nice rant. And thanks for confirming what I said in the first place, far too much corruption! The EU is coming apart at the seams under its own weight, a good idea implemented wrong and by the wrong people.
If you want a federation good luck to you, many folk including me don’t and that’s where the EU is heading.
June the 23rd will be the telling point for this country, useless to argue until then. Funny though how it seems the one’s wanting to stay in are the big business men and the rich and corrupt, the man on the street is wanting out.
And to answer your question, no I have had nothing to do with running the country, I have however worked with local authority’s and it’s running of this district, that was enough. Corruption runs rife even there!
Anyway, it’s gone off topic here, sorry about that. Anything to do with the EU’s meddling gets my back up. Even if Google is in the wrong, and I believe they are,(I can’t stand the company to be honest, and avoid using them), there will be some funny handshakes in a back room somewhere and that will be it.
The public face of it will be a “fine” that won’t even be pocket change to Google.
Is your perception reality? You have attempted to make a dividing line between the “rich and corrupt” and “the man on the street” (implicitly, good wholesome and not at all corrupt).
This is a false dichotomy.
My point was that no matter what organisation you pick there will be those individuals whose raison d’etre is to spoon a little more porridge their way.
Is the EU to federalist? No – I think that is mostly an invention of the UK press (tends to the right anyway).
Maybe if the UK citizen made an educated attempt at voting in EU MEPs that actually represent themselves within that legislature rather than voting in UKIP and their ilk they would really get some representation at the level.
This is a tech forum so maybe we should leave this alone.
I’d like to forward this though…
The *only* reason we’re having this stupid referendum is because “Dave” got brown pants before the the last election thinking that his party was going to get crucified by UKIP. That’s why he called a referendum.
My brain says I want to vote to stay in (my job has carried me all over Europe and I would like it to stay as easy as possible to conduct business across borders). My heart says I couldn’t support “Call me Dave” if his policy was free sex and money for everyone.
So you are saying I can mix and matching anything I want on top of Android and Google with let me?
Uh … No they won’t let me do that.
In order to use Google Pay or Play there are restrictions about letting you put those on a cell phone that I might want to create. In order to add those I have to add their other apps.
More importantly, if I add all their apps I can NOT add any other pay system on that phone that isn’t Google.
Say I wanted to put on Google Pay and Amazon Pay, or whatever it is called. I would NOT be allowed to do that. Nor would I be able to add Apple Pay if they made an Android version.
You need to stop sniffing the flowers in Wonderland and see the real picture and what Google really is doing.
PS: They are slowly changing the rules more and more so that you have to have certain things on any Android phone. Ten years from now there will three brands of Google phone. I don’t know if Samsung will be one of them but likely will. But all of them will be tied to all Google apps and only apps that don’t compete with Google apps will be allowed. This isn’t paranoid. This is reality.
“…only apps that don’t compete with Google apps will be allowed…”
Those words sound like a very old folk song. Google is not alone in their sweet dreams.
You are talking about producing and selling phones and packaging them with Google’s closed source applications, correct?
Because there’s nothing technically preventing *you* from doing what you propose is not allowed – it’s when you start distributing it that Google will step in and stop you.
There is no problem with Google having a monopoly on Phone-OS with Android.
There is no problem with Google having a monopoly on search with google.com
There is a problem when you use your monopoly (actually just considerable market force) in 1 market to influence another market.
Google has a > 90% marketshare with Android and with google.com in the EU. The EU is entirely correct that this disallows Google from using Android to promote google.com and also to disallow google.com to promote Android actually.
That individuals or even companies COULD build their own Android distribution is not relevant.
That Amazon and China-brands have proven that this works outside the EU is not relevant.
That Android is free or open source is not relevant.
All that is relevant is if Google uses one strong market to enforce themselves in another market.
This is exactly the same logic that forced Microsoft to stop requiring OEMs to put an IE shortcut on the desktop ages ago.
I think this logic is sound and legally the right thing to do. But nothing the EU will do here will influence the marketshare of Android or google.com in the EU. Google will get fined and will loosen the restrictions on OEMs (in the EU) and Android will remain dominant just like google.com.
Addition:
Just like most people I thought the main issue is that Play Services + Google Search are all-or-nothing which doesn’t bother me personally. But there is something much more damaging in the Android License: Once an OEM chooses the “all” variation, they cannot use the “nothing” variation.
In other words, Samsung has to choose: All their phones with the “all” variation, or none of their phones. This would be akin to Microsoft saying “Hello mr. Dell, you can license Windows 10 Home on all your devices or on none!”
Source: http://www.beyonddevic.es/2016/04/20/the-eus-android-mistake/ as linked here in the comments
Edited 2016-04-20 23:06 UTC
Yes, this is a really nice summary, and the EU’s reasoning seems pretty clear if you ask me.
The only thing I’d add is that I don’t think the aim would necessarily be to reduce Google’s dominance in either the phone OS or search markets. The important thing is to ensure potential new entrants to the market don’t have unfair barriers imposed. This way, Google can’t be complacent and will have to retain its market share by producing the best product, rather than by abusing its dominance in each market to prop up the other.
If the result is to stop exclusivity deals and require Android to support multiple search providers, that could result in Google’s search becoming better in the long run.
In your knee-jerk reaction you forgot to quote what google is accused of:
1) requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google’s Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
2) preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
3) giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
The first one seems to be the tie-in sales of the google apps, e.g. google play+search+maps+chrome. The second and third ones clearly contradict the so called openness of the android ecosystem as a market.
Edited 2016-04-21 02:50 UTC
On creating a Private Subset of the Internet. ALL of the OS industry [not only Google] is guilty of censure, and consequently, of awareness & choice deprivation.
Do you have GoogleNet, AppleNet, WindowsNet or any other?
Most people in the World have GoogleNet. And no, it’s not consumers’ choice. You could monetize from the CONSUMER herself.
Free OEM licensing has to be splitted toward another complaint.
With Fedora/Red_Hat.
I know of a a small company with an Android app targeting developing nations. They have have only 500K downloads via the Play Store and over 8 million downloads via other stores.
This is a good thing, and credit to the company for managing to do this. However, the EU’s complaint is that Google Play Services has a dominant position in the EU (which seems pretty uncontroversial to me) and that Google are leveraging this to create a barrier for other search providers succeeding in the mobile space.
I could be misunderstanding, but it doesn’t look like your example is contradicting these claims.
Given Google’s dominance with Android, I’d think twice before investing in a company offering a competing mobile search product to consumers in the EU, even if its product was obviously better.
Edit: grammar.
Edited 2016-04-21 08:28 UTC
There’s an open-source part to Android, and there’s a proprietary Google chunk, called GMS, for which you must pass a series of tests. In a 2011 court case, a Google executive memorably describe Google using the compatibility tests with the words: “We are using compatibility as a club to make them [OEMs] do things we want”.
“They’ve structured it in a way [as] to make GMS commercially irreplaceable,†Edelman explains.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/20/edelman_android/
You are only looking at it from a consumers view, which in this case is wrong.
Here is from the eu page:
In today’s Statement of Objections, the Commission alleges that Google has breached EU antitrust rules by:
• requiring manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Google’s Chrome browser and requiring them to set Google Search as default search service on their devices, as a condition to license certain Google proprietary apps;
• preventing manufacturers from selling smart mobile devices running on competing operating systems based on the Android open source code;
• giving financial incentives to manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-install Google Search on their devices.
For those who also see that Thom Holwerda is very subjective in his writing which also lacks depth and nuance, I would suggest reading the article The Economist wrote about it:
http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21697193-time-it…
It is much more nuanced than just saying the EU is wasting money on this…
Edited 2016-04-21 10:32 UTC
steven32,
From your link…
This is certainly true. It’s hard enough to compete on merit, but when restrictions additionally prohibit competitors from pursuing potential business partners, that’s flagrant anti-trust abuse. As I’ve argued in another post, it limits my choices.
Many will probably think it unfair to punish google for activities that other competitors like apple and microsoft are also guilty of, and personally I wish anti-competitive restrictions could be abolished across the board, but antitrust laws only apply to entities with a dominant market share.