5 ms·

If the result here is cast support for Amazon video and YouTube working again, I'll take it. It's not like Amazon isn't doing the same thing.

by bla2 9y ago

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
This fight started with Google. Google gates off their Android apps solely to manufacturers which agree to all of Google's demands on control of Android devices, things like the default search settings, which apps are preinstalled, etc. In order to comply with Google's terms, Amazon would've literally had to preinstall Google Play Books on their Kindles. This issue is the subject of the EU's next antitrust case expected to be settled this year. Amazon then in return chose to not sell Google products which were intentionally blocked from supporting Kindle products, which is why they won't sell the Chromecast, for instance.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  From the consumer perspective, Amazon being forced to preinstall Google Play Books on their Kindles sounds like a good thing, it only increases competition for the actual content.
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    on the other hand, book sales surely subsidize the hardware costs, so they'd have had to sell those android kindles for significantly more. which wouldn't have been a good thing for consumers. which one outweighs the other? beats me.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    Which consumer has 2 thumbs and would rather have as little bloat pre-installed due to weird business requirements as possible? This guy!
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I think there's a significant difference between preinstallation requirements and support. It'd be excellent if antitrust action against Google required they compulsorily offer Google Apps to any device which can technically install them, so that Amazon users could install Play Books if they wish. I do not think a company should be forced to preinstall a competitor's app. Imagine your Google Pixel being required to have the Windows Store installed. Wouldn't that be irritating?
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  To be fair, it _is_ Google's operating system they're using. Those restrictions are basically the price of using Android, in lieu of an actual monetary cost for licensing the OS.
  - dcow 9y ago
    No. That's the price of using Google Play Services--Google's platform framework (which supports the Google apps including YouTube). Android can forked and built and deployed entirely independent of Google's framework services. What's even funnier, all the restrictions to Android recently aimed at solving battery life.. guess who the worst offender is: Google Play Services. Guess who's excluded from all the anti-competitive restrictions Google is sliding into Android: Google Play Services. (Now to be fair you could also vendor your own framework services/components/whatever and delivery them with your build of Android, but Google certainly has the upper hand in that in order to be licensed to use googles framework services and thus their apps, you have to pass a set of compliance tests, among other things.)
    - Ajedi32 9y ago
      > Guess who's excluded from all the restrictions Google is sliding into Android: Google Play Services. Do you have a source for that? Because I'm pretty sure that's false. In fact, the Android 8.0 changelog even [explicitly says][1] that Play Services is affected by the new background location limitations: > This behavior change affects all apps that receive location updates, including Google Play services. [1]: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.0-changes.html https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8....
      - dcow 9y ago
        That's location, not execution. Effectively Google is preventing 3rd party apps from running persistently in the background by limiting location (because that's how some apps would "cheat"--you could get around a user explicitly stopping your app if you registered for background location updates, similar scenario on iOS until they added the extra status bar informing the user when apps are using background location). Because play services can run persistently (how do you think GCM works) it doesn't really affect their stuff. But it's good to see Google closing that gap because it's one of the ways naughty apps would piss in the pool for everyone else. And it's one of the criticisms a lot of people had against Google's upper hand.
- Sargos 9y ago
  >This fight started with Google This is simply incorrect. You put out some facts about licensing Google apps but you apply this completely subjective line in front of it which makes it sound like Google actively did something. These licensing terms have been around for years and every company you can think of has agreed to the terms. They aren't that onerous. This whole mess is entirely in Amazon's court. They made all of the decisions and made all of the moves. It's their call to do everything themselves and want to own every piece of the system. They weren't forced to. They want to.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > They aren't that onerous. Yes they are. Installing 20 google apps and placing them extremely prominently, forced google widgets, google has to be the only search, the only voice... Google is putting these very strict rules on anyone that wants to use the play store, and being actively misleading about it because "android" is still "open". If they want the benefits of being "open" then they should walk the walk and let all android devices use these free android apps.
    - kllrnohj 9y ago
      > Installing 20 google apps and placing them extremely prominently, forced google widgets, google has to be the only search, the only voice... OK you clearly haven't read the licensing terms since most of this is bullshit. The preinstalled apps don't have to be "extremely prominently" placed, and there is no forced google as the only voice. Most of this you could trivially find out by just picking up a Samsung S8 which its own voice search (Bixby), and a home screen where the only Google app is Play Store. Even still they can (and do) then shove the other Google apps into its own Google folder in the app launcher.
    - notyourwork 9y ago
      Android is open unless Google says otherwise.
    - obmelvin 9y ago
      I've yet to see (which I acknowledge doesn't mean that it doesn't exist) any compelling argument that this is actually harmful to the users or anything of that line. All I see is tech people talking about hypothetical competition or the EU effectively trying to create protectionist policies in the name of anti-trust. Personally, I have no issue with Google's licensing. Why shouldn't they be able to ship their software how they want? At the end of the day most users don't care. I love FOSS when it comes to my own development and I couldn't imagine being a developer without access to so many FOSS libraries. However, I don't give a crap if my phone is fully open source and neither do vast majority of the other billion+ Android users

If the result here is cast support for Amazon video and YouTube working again, I'll take it. It's not like Amazon isn't doing the same thing.

by bla2 9y ago

If the result here is cast support for Amazon video and YouTube working again, I'll take it. It's not like Amazon isn't doing the same thing.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago

This fight started with Google. Google gates off their Android apps solely to manufacturers which agree to all of Google's demands on control of Android devices, things like the default search settings, which apps are preinstalled, etc. In order to comply with Google's terms, Amazon would've literally had to preinstall Google Play Books on their Kindles. This issue is the subject of the EU's next antitrust case expected to be settled this year. Amazon then in return chose to not sell Google products which were intentionally blocked from supporting Kindle products, which is why they won't sell the Chromecast, for instance.

PeterisP 9y ago
From the consumer perspective, Amazon being forced to preinstall Google Play Books on their Kindles sounds like a good thing, it only increases competition for the actual content.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  on the other hand, book sales surely subsidize the hardware costs, so they'd have had to sell those android kindles for significantly more. which wouldn't have been a good thing for consumers. which one outweighs the other? beats me.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Which consumer has 2 thumbs and would rather have as little bloat pre-installed due to weird business requirements as possible? This guy!
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I think there's a significant difference between preinstallation requirements and support. It'd be excellent if antitrust action against Google required they compulsorily offer Google Apps to any device which can technically install them, so that Amazon users could install Play Books if they wish. I do not think a company should be forced to preinstall a competitor's app. Imagine your Google Pixel being required to have the Windows Store installed. Wouldn't that be irritating?
Ajedi32 9y ago
To be fair, it _is_ Google's operating system they're using. Those restrictions are basically the price of using Android, in lieu of an actual monetary cost for licensing the OS.
- dcow 9y ago
  No. That's the price of using Google Play Services--Google's platform framework (which supports the Google apps including YouTube). Android can forked and built and deployed entirely independent of Google's framework services. What's even funnier, all the restrictions to Android recently aimed at solving battery life.. guess who the worst offender is: Google Play Services. Guess who's excluded from all the anti-competitive restrictions Google is sliding into Android: Google Play Services. (Now to be fair you could also vendor your own framework services/components/whatever and delivery them with your build of Android, but Google certainly has the upper hand in that in order to be licensed to use googles framework services and thus their apps, you have to pass a set of compliance tests, among other things.)
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    > Guess who's excluded from all the restrictions Google is sliding into Android: Google Play Services. Do you have a source for that? Because I'm pretty sure that's false. In fact, the Android 8.0 changelog even [explicitly says][1] that Play Services is affected by the new background location limitations: > This behavior change affects all apps that receive location updates, including Google Play services. [1]: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.0-changes.html https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8....
    - dcow 9y ago
      That's location, not execution. Effectively Google is preventing 3rd party apps from running persistently in the background by limiting location (because that's how some apps would "cheat"--you could get around a user explicitly stopping your app if you registered for background location updates, similar scenario on iOS until they added the extra status bar informing the user when apps are using background location). Because play services can run persistently (how do you think GCM works) it doesn't really affect their stuff. But it's good to see Google closing that gap because it's one of the ways naughty apps would piss in the pool for everyone else. And it's one of the criticisms a lot of people had against Google's upper hand.
Sargos 9y ago
>This fight started with Google This is simply incorrect. You put out some facts about licensing Google apps but you apply this completely subjective line in front of it which makes it sound like Google actively did something. These licensing terms have been around for years and every company you can think of has agreed to the terms. They aren't that onerous. This whole mess is entirely in Amazon's court. They made all of the decisions and made all of the moves. It's their call to do everything themselves and want to own every piece of the system. They weren't forced to. They want to.
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  > They aren't that onerous. Yes they are. Installing 20 google apps and placing them extremely prominently, forced google widgets, google has to be the only search, the only voice... Google is putting these very strict rules on anyone that wants to use the play store, and being actively misleading about it because "android" is still "open". If they want the benefits of being "open" then they should walk the walk and let all android devices use these free android apps.
  - kllrnohj 9y ago
    > Installing 20 google apps and placing them extremely prominently, forced google widgets, google has to be the only search, the only voice... OK you clearly haven't read the licensing terms since most of this is bullshit. The preinstalled apps don't have to be "extremely prominently" placed, and there is no forced google as the only voice. Most of this you could trivially find out by just picking up a Samsung S8 which its own voice search (Bixby), and a home screen where the only Google app is Play Store. Even still they can (and do) then shove the other Google apps into its own Google folder in the app launcher.
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    Android is open unless Google says otherwise.
  - obmelvin 9y ago
    I've yet to see (which I acknowledge doesn't mean that it doesn't exist) any compelling argument that this is actually harmful to the users or anything of that line. All I see is tech people talking about hypothetical competition or the EU effectively trying to create protectionist policies in the name of anti-trust. Personally, I have no issue with Google's licensing. Why shouldn't they be able to ship their software how they want? At the end of the day most users don't care. I love FOSS when it comes to my own development and I couldn't imagine being a developer without access to so many FOSS libraries. However, I don't give a crap if my phone is fully open source and neither do vast majority of the other billion+ Android users