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Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Apple is acti

Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Apple is acting independently. They've built differentiating features (like custom software) which you can only get by buying Apple's products. Apple hopes that customers will use their products because they're better than the competition. That is exactly what antitrust law is meant to encourage. Google is not acting independently. They've built differentiating features, but licensed them under terms that prevent competition. Google hopes that customers will use their products because OEMs are contractually forbidden from selling competing products. That is what antitrust law is designed to prevent.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Then how do I have a stack of history books that say the government broke up the 20th century AT&T monopoly under the antitrust laws? And Standard Oil and U.S. Steel before that? You seem to be implying that if Google did exactly what they're doing now except that they made their own hardware and refused to license Android to third parties then there would be less of an antitrust problem, even though then there would unambiguously be less competition than there is now.
- ralfd 11y ago
  How would there be less competition in that scenario? If Android would be restricted to Google Hardware the market would look way more diverse with Samsung/HTC rocking their own solutions and Nokia/Windows still having market share. The same if Android licensers were more free to provide their own solutions (see what Amazon did with the Fire brand) instead of forced to bundle Googles services on every device.

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> Antitrust law is concerned with unlawful contracts, collusion, and cartels. It's meant to ensure that businesses compete by acting independently. Then how do I have a stack of history books that say the government broke up the 20th century AT&T monopoly under the antitrust laws? And Standard Oil and U.S. Steel before that? You seem to be implying that if Google did exactly what they're doing now except that they made their own hardware and refused to license Android to third parties then there would be less of an antitrust problem, even though then there would unambiguously be less competition than there is now.

ralfd 11y ago
How would there be less competition in that scenario? If Android would be restricted to Google Hardware the market would look way more diverse with Samsung/HTC rocking their own solutions and Nokia/Windows still having market share. The same if Android licensers were more free to provide their own solutions (see what Amazon did with the Fire brand) instead of forced to bundle Googles services on every device.