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I'm curious to see if the argument made in the article holds water in court. Do the examples of other services winning in messaging, music, social, & storage ou

I'm curious to see if the argument made in the article holds water in court. Do the examples of other services winning in messaging, music, social, & storage out weight the App Store and search dominance. Or will the case be about the limits placed on phone manufacturers, not consumers, making all of it moot.

abritinthebay 10y ago
It's not about limiting consumers actions it's about limiting consumer choice in the market place. Related but different. The EU actually has a pretty good case tbh, though I doubt it'll lead to very much. Google wants to have the closed control that Apple does (because they want to control the software) but wants to tout their difference in "openess" because they needed that to sell hardware (which they profoundly suck at at scale). Now they've got better at the hardware (see, Nexus lines) they want to slowly choke off competition. This has been obvious for years but there was very little to be done about it other than companies moving away from Android (which isn't really practical short to medium term) or some kind of governmental play - which this is. Now... will the EU win? Possibly, it's not a slam dunk, but it could lead to small - but important - changes in how Google has to play the game.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Except this isn't about consumer control. The EU anti-trust suit is based on licensing for the proprietary Google Play app, which requires Google Search to be bundled by manufacturers that want to install Play. Android is open sourced, the Google Play services are not, and they're not required to run Android. Consumers can install/uninstall anything they want. Manufacturers can preinstall anything they want, just that if the license to preinstall the Play app they need to preinstall Search.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    > Except this isn't about consumer control. I know...? I said exactly that..?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

abritinthebay 10y ago

It's not about limiting consumers actions it's about limiting consumer choice in the market place. Related but different. The EU actually has a pretty good case tbh, though I doubt it'll lead to very much. Google wants to have the closed control that Apple does (because they want to control the software) but wants to tout their difference in "openess" because they needed that to sell hardware (which they profoundly suck at at scale). Now they've got better at the hardware (see, Nexus lines) they want to slowly choke off competition. This has been obvious for years but there was very little to be done about it other than companies moving away from Android (which isn't really practical short to medium term) or some kind of governmental play - which this is. Now... will the EU win? Possibly, it's not a slam dunk, but it could lead to small - but important - changes in how Google has to play the game.

bduerst 10y ago
Except this isn't about consumer control. The EU anti-trust suit is based on licensing for the proprietary Google Play app, which requires Google Search to be bundled by manufacturers that want to install Play. Android is open sourced, the Google Play services are not, and they're not required to run Android. Consumers can install/uninstall anything they want. Manufacturers can preinstall anything they want, just that if the license to preinstall the Play app they need to preinstall Search.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  > Except this isn't about consumer control. I know...? I said exactly that..?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]