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It's rather sad that Google needs to pay Android makers a fee for installing it's apps, given how Google gives away source code that makes Android exist in the

It's rather sad that Google needs to pay Android makers a fee for installing it's apps, given how Google gives away source code that makes Android exist in the first place. On the contrary, Apple's ecosystem is completely closed, app cut fairly high and non-negotiable at 30% and app store rejections arbitrary at best and blatantly anti competitive at worst. In the name of user centricity, their platform places arbitrary restrictions on code execution and access. Who'd you think the EU would investigate for monopolistic practices?

gareim 9y ago
>app cut fairly high Same as Google's, so it seems standard. >non-negotiable at 30% Reduces for certain types of apps, given specific conditions, but yes for 99.99% it's non-negotiable. Still, it's their platform. >arbitrary at best I'd wager most rejections follow very clear rules. There are some head scratchers, but those aren't the norm, so "at best" is wrong. >Who'd you think the EU would investigate for monopolistic practices? Gotta have a monopoly in order to be investigated for it.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  > Gotta have a monopoly in order to be investigated for it. That implies that anyone investigated for being a monopoly already is one so why investigate at all if you already know the outcome?
  - fleitz 9y ago
    There's nothing wrong/illegal with having a monopoly, what is illegal is having a monopoly and having anti-competitive practices. Hence, you can only be investigated for anti-competitive practices when you have a monopoly because without a monopoly the free market provides sufficient remedies for such practices.
colechristensen 9y ago
Apple sells Apple phones with Apple iOS. Notgoogle sells Notgoogle phones with Google Android. Futzing with what another company does with it's product can get you anticompetitive interest. If you want to talk about Apple being anticompetetive talk about how you can't buy/rent movies on Google Play, Amazon, etc. apps on iOS. Even so, Apple has a much better legal stance for curating it's own market than Google (Alphabet?) has for manipulating other companies' products.
- freehunter 9y ago
  >you can't buy/rent movies on Google Play, Amazon, etc. apps on iOS Isn't that a choice Google and Amazon make because they don't want to pay Apple's fees for sales going through their marketplace? If that's the case, it doesn't seem anticompetitive, since everyone is charged the same fees no matter what. Google and Amazon just don't want to pay it. Same thing as the Kindle Store, you can't buy Kindle books through the Amazon app but you can buy them through the browser. Because if you buy them through the app, Apple takes a cut, but they don't through the browser. So Amazon made the choice to not sell books through their app, even though many other merchants sell digital goods through their apps and pay Apple the fee.
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    > If that's the case, it doesn't seem anticompetitive, since everyone is charged the same fees no matter what. Google and Amazon just don't want to pay it. Apple doesn't pay them. Anyone who wants to sell media on iOS has to compete with iTunes while subject to a 30% price handicap. If that's not anticompetitive I don't know what is.
    - prklmn 9y ago
      I look at in in the context of physical goods. Grocery stores processs their private label meats. The grocery store also sells name brand meats but those brands have to pay for shelf space. The meat is exactly the same, just processed by two different entities - one who owns the store and one that doesn’t.
simonh 9y ago
The thing is if you sell a device running your software, there's no law that says you have to build in features and support for anyone else to install their own software. Feature phones are also computers, but there's no mandatory regulation compelling vendors to allow installation of third party software. Going a step further, if you sold a device with a proprietary only app store, so it can only run software you provided access to, like a feature phone where some features could be downloaded, again what's wrong with that? You used to be able to buy children's computers with limited educational software you could download, probably still can. Would you compel the vendor to open up that 'app store'? Chances are such a regulation would kill products like that stone dead. Same with consoles. Any regulation you make for the App Store should really count against consoles too, wrecking their whole business model. It's like a slippery slope. If you enforce rules that say Apple must allow side-loading of software, doesn't that mean any computer should provide that facility? What if that opens up real security risks, is it really regulator's jobs to open up vulnerabilities like that? It's a massive, horrible can of worms. At the end of the day, if you want an open platform like that you can build or buy one. There's really no benefit to the market to mandate that all platforms must be like that though. If open really is better, then it should win on it's own terms not through regulatory fiat.
- scholia 9y ago
  Android market share in Europe is around 75%. When you have a monopoly market share, you get treated differently, as Microsoft found. Otherwise, Google wasn't found guilty of anything to do with software or apps. It was found guilty of abusing its monopoly market power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the expense of rivals. I think we all expect Google to deliver honest and fair search results. When it delivers results that favor its own properties, users are being cheated.
psykotic 9y ago
> It's rather sad that Google needs to pay Android makers a fee for installing it's apps, given how Google gives away source code that makes Android exist in the first place. This is a very innocent view of Google's business practices in this area. Google has a tight hold over most device makers through anti-fragmentation agreements and other contracts if they want GMS and want early access to the non-public AOSP tree, which is a practical necessity to ship cutting-edge Android devices. Aside from hard legal power, Google also projects soft power through their control of the ecosystem and device makers wanting to maintain good relations. As a result, Android-derived innovation in the ecosystem is highly constrained even if AOSP is open source licensed since device makers and manufacturers cannot ship devices with Android-derived operating systems in device categories enumerated by the AFAs unless the devices pass CTS (which prevents most kinds of serious divergence from Android).
- mankash666 9y ago
  You're free to run your own app store, like Amazon fire devices, and not subscribe to GMS. Why shouldn't Google get something in return for enabling phone makers with an OS and app store? They're a for profit company after all
  - psykotic 9y ago
    Sure, and the AFA has a pro-developer and pro-consumer side by reducing fragmentation. But I think it's important to understand that the open source aspect of Android is a small part of the story in practice for device makers. The narrative that Google is just "giving it away for free" is naive at best for the very reason you state: they're a profit-driven megacorp.
    - mankash666 9y ago
      I'm not naive, but everyone takes the OS source code and platform for granted, and asks, "what else can I get"? It's obvious that Android has enabled and continues to enable an ecosystem of hardware companies to thrive. These companies have tried repeatedly to build their own software, but with NO commercial success. Imagine a world with an Apple like Android, Google owning the software, closed sourced, walled, yada yada ... That's still a possibility if the ludicrous EU actions on Android don't stop. Google makes about 1/10th the revenue and 1/100th the profit off Android as Apple makes off the iOS product lines. Android's ecosystem gets a LOT more out of Google than Google gets out of Android EDIT: Samsung, LG, Huawei, ... they're even relevant in phones because of Google. I doubt it's the other way around. Samsung is SO scared of Google cutting it off that it tries repeatedly with alternate OS-es --> everything from Tizen to windows phones. Nothing sticks
gumby 9y ago
> On the contrary, Apple's ecosystem is completely closed Their App Store is a monopoly, but I have friends who use iPhones and use Google's Inbox, Google's search app, Chrome browser, Google Maps and Waze etc and don't use the built-in defaults. I guess they like the hardware. So maybe I'm not interpreting "completely closed" correctly. > ... In the name of user centricity, their platform places arbitrary restrictions on code execution and access. As a software but non-iOS developer I like these restrictions. Yes they can be annoying (you can't use your iPhone as certain kinds of portable network scanner because they restrict access to the MAC) but they also stop shitty and malign developers from screwing me in certain ways (jerks were using the MAC as an illicit user tracking device). I see it like various sorts of regulation: everyone us better off if the paint factory can't simply dump its waste into the river, even the paint company.
- neonhomer 9y ago
  I'm one of those people who gladly use an iPhone with mostly Google apps (namely Chrome, Gmail and Maps). My little experience with Android has always been negative. The only real annoyance with iOS is you can't set Chrome nor Maps as default applications.
  - AceJohnny2 9y ago
    I'm in the same boat. My dream device would be iPhone HW with Android software. I like Android's flexibility, the replaceable home screen instead of the list of apps, the Intents system that lets you replace an app handler with another (Chrome & Maps for example), the much better notification system... I have an iPhone now (because work), and it took a few months to stop grumbling, but I definitely appreciated the overall better hardware compared to my friend's Android phones, most significantly the excellent (and immediately available!) camera.
    - autotypo 9y ago
      On Android 6 at least, double tapping the home button brings up the camera immediately.
mrtksn 9y ago
We all love Google's products but your comment is needlessly emotional. Google is not charity, it's always good to remember that. Google is not giving away the source code of Android for philanthropic reasons, it's just part of the business model, i.e. the process of money making to pay the employees and the shareholders. Oh and Apple is definitely not putting arbitrary restrictions to anything, all the restrictions have a reason - that you might or might not agree to but definitely not random. In case you want to bypass Apple and run a code on your iPhone, you can do it by compiling it and installing it personally. I think EU will investigate the companies that have large enough marketshare that they can abuse their position.
- jsight 9y ago
  I agree with some of your critique, but I also think you are giving Apple a little too much credit. Yes you can compile and install your own software, but AFAIK, you have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of doing so. This isn't nearly as open as Android phones, where it is a simple matter of checking a box. I definitely agree with you that Google isn't giving away the code for philanthropic reasons, though. I can't really feel bad for them for having to incentivize handset makers to do things that make Google even more money.
  - kn0where 9y ago
    > AFAIK, you have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of doing so. That hasn't been the case for a number of years. As long as you have a Mac, you can download Xcode for free, compile an app, and sync it over to your iOS device.
    - ariwilson 9y ago
      Super simple to do as an end user, for sure.
      - bobwaycott 9y ago
        Your average end user who requires things to be simple is never going to install their own apps outside the approved, simple channels.
solomatov 9y ago
I am very happy with Apple's restrictions. It's the only large IT company which cares about my privacy, and I don't want to have any apps which do whatever they want on my devices.
fleitz 9y ago
Likely Google because Apple doesn't enjoy significant market share in the EU
- scholia 9y ago
  iOS market share in the UK is generally over 40% and has approached 50%. http://uk.kantar.com/tech/mobile/2017/april-great-britain-smartphone-data/ http://uk.kantar.com/tech/mobile/2017/april-great-britain-sm...
stuffedBelly 9y ago
Paying a fee makes economic sense. Open sourcing Android is an (rather successful) attempt to expand market share at the initial stage, considering that Android phone makers such as Samsung and LG already have established brand before the Android hit. The fee Google's paying is for these established phone makers to distribute Google apps to a large market. The deal Google made with these companies is probably not as simple as "I open source Android <--> You distribute my apps for free" although these two things seem like a trade-off from a developer perspective. It seems, to distinguish itself from Apple's ecosystem, Android advocates for fair competition and its "openness". Google will get unfair advantage to all the other Android app developers if they get to distribute their app for free across Android devices. The truth is, unless they are all Richard Stallman, all these companies open source stuff as a business strategy rather than from a pure good will.
on_and_off 9y ago
IMO they should investigate both. I do know that bundling hardware and software together allows apple to do whatever they want, but it still horrifies me that on a general purpose device, there is a gatekeeper raising arbitrary rules on what apps I can install (or sell for the other side of the equation). While Apple's practices have been worrying me for some time, they are in no way mutually exclusive with Google's ones.
paxy 9y ago
The Android source code isn't Google's to "give away". It is written and maintained by a huge ecosystem of hardware and software vendors and independent developers.
KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
What does Apple have to do with Google's antitrust trouble? Google was fined for abusing its monopolistic position in the search-engine market. Apple does not have a monopolistic position in any market.
skinnymuch 9y ago
Google isn't giving out Android source code out of the goodness of their hearts. It's a business decision. They also have decreased the amount of code that is open source if you measure things in a certain way (everyone has their bias). Since more and more Google services and apps are central to Android normally, those aren't open source. I think even certain standard apps aren't open source anymore. We can appreciate open source software while still being aware of why it is happening. We shouldn't just be blindly grateful. That can end up biting us.

gareim 9y ago

>app cut fairly high Same as Google's, so it seems standard. >non-negotiable at 30% Reduces for certain types of apps, given specific conditions, but yes for 99.99% it's non-negotiable. Still, it's their platform. >arbitrary at best I'd wager most rejections follow very clear rules. There are some head scratchers, but those aren't the norm, so "at best" is wrong. >Who'd you think the EU would investigate for monopolistic practices? Gotta have a monopoly in order to be investigated for it.

notyourwork 9y ago
> Gotta have a monopoly in order to be investigated for it. That implies that anyone investigated for being a monopoly already is one so why investigate at all if you already know the outcome?
- fleitz 9y ago
  There's nothing wrong/illegal with having a monopoly, what is illegal is having a monopoly and having anti-competitive practices. Hence, you can only be investigated for anti-competitive practices when you have a monopoly because without a monopoly the free market provides sufficient remedies for such practices.

colechristensen 9y ago

Apple sells Apple phones with Apple iOS. Notgoogle sells Notgoogle phones with Google Android. Futzing with what another company does with it's product can get you anticompetitive interest. If you want to talk about Apple being anticompetetive talk about how you can't buy/rent movies on Google Play, Amazon, etc. apps on iOS. Even so, Apple has a much better legal stance for curating it's own market than Google (Alphabet?) has for manipulating other companies' products.

freehunter 9y ago
>you can't buy/rent movies on Google Play, Amazon, etc. apps on iOS Isn't that a choice Google and Amazon make because they don't want to pay Apple's fees for sales going through their marketplace? If that's the case, it doesn't seem anticompetitive, since everyone is charged the same fees no matter what. Google and Amazon just don't want to pay it. Same thing as the Kindle Store, you can't buy Kindle books through the Amazon app but you can buy them through the browser. Because if you buy them through the app, Apple takes a cut, but they don't through the browser. So Amazon made the choice to not sell books through their app, even though many other merchants sell digital goods through their apps and pay Apple the fee.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  > If that's the case, it doesn't seem anticompetitive, since everyone is charged the same fees no matter what. Google and Amazon just don't want to pay it. Apple doesn't pay them. Anyone who wants to sell media on iOS has to compete with iTunes while subject to a 30% price handicap. If that's not anticompetitive I don't know what is.
  - prklmn 9y ago
    I look at in in the context of physical goods. Grocery stores processs their private label meats. The grocery store also sells name brand meats but those brands have to pay for shelf space. The meat is exactly the same, just processed by two different entities - one who owns the store and one that doesn’t.

simonh 9y ago

The thing is if you sell a device running your software, there's no law that says you have to build in features and support for anyone else to install their own software. Feature phones are also computers, but there's no mandatory regulation compelling vendors to allow installation of third party software. Going a step further, if you sold a device with a proprietary only app store, so it can only run software you provided access to, like a feature phone where some features could be downloaded, again what's wrong with that? You used to be able to buy children's computers with limited educational software you could download, probably still can. Would you compel the vendor to open up that 'app store'? Chances are such a regulation would kill products like that stone dead. Same with consoles. Any regulation you make for the App Store should really count against consoles too, wrecking their whole business model. It's like a slippery slope. If you enforce rules that say Apple must allow side-loading of software, doesn't that mean any computer should provide that facility? What if that opens up real security risks, is it really regulator's jobs to open up vulnerabilities like that? It's a massive, horrible can of worms. At the end of the day, if you want an open platform like that you can build or buy one. There's really no benefit to the market to mandate that all platforms must be like that though. If open really is better, then it should win on it's own terms not through regulatory fiat.

scholia 9y ago
Android market share in Europe is around 75%. When you have a monopoly market share, you get treated differently, as Microsoft found. Otherwise, Google wasn't found guilty of anything to do with software or apps. It was found guilty of abusing its monopoly market power by promoting its own shopping comparison service at the expense of rivals. I think we all expect Google to deliver honest and fair search results. When it delivers results that favor its own properties, users are being cheated.

psykotic 9y ago

> It's rather sad that Google needs to pay Android makers a fee for installing it's apps, given how Google gives away source code that makes Android exist in the first place. This is a very innocent view of Google's business practices in this area. Google has a tight hold over most device makers through anti-fragmentation agreements and other contracts if they want GMS and want early access to the non-public AOSP tree, which is a practical necessity to ship cutting-edge Android devices. Aside from hard legal power, Google also projects soft power through their control of the ecosystem and device makers wanting to maintain good relations. As a result, Android-derived innovation in the ecosystem is highly constrained even if AOSP is open source licensed since device makers and manufacturers cannot ship devices with Android-derived operating systems in device categories enumerated by the AFAs unless the devices pass CTS (which prevents most kinds of serious divergence from Android).

mankash666 9y ago
You're free to run your own app store, like Amazon fire devices, and not subscribe to GMS. Why shouldn't Google get something in return for enabling phone makers with an OS and app store? They're a for profit company after all
- psykotic 9y ago
  Sure, and the AFA has a pro-developer and pro-consumer side by reducing fragmentation. But I think it's important to understand that the open source aspect of Android is a small part of the story in practice for device makers. The narrative that Google is just "giving it away for free" is naive at best for the very reason you state: they're a profit-driven megacorp.
  - mankash666 9y ago
    I'm not naive, but everyone takes the OS source code and platform for granted, and asks, "what else can I get"? It's obvious that Android has enabled and continues to enable an ecosystem of hardware companies to thrive. These companies have tried repeatedly to build their own software, but with NO commercial success. Imagine a world with an Apple like Android, Google owning the software, closed sourced, walled, yada yada ... That's still a possibility if the ludicrous EU actions on Android don't stop. Google makes about 1/10th the revenue and 1/100th the profit off Android as Apple makes off the iOS product lines. Android's ecosystem gets a LOT more out of Google than Google gets out of Android EDIT: Samsung, LG, Huawei, ... they're even relevant in phones because of Google. I doubt it's the other way around. Samsung is SO scared of Google cutting it off that it tries repeatedly with alternate OS-es --> everything from Tizen to windows phones. Nothing sticks

gumby 9y ago

> On the contrary, Apple's ecosystem is completely closed Their App Store is a monopoly, but I have friends who use iPhones and use Google's Inbox, Google's search app, Chrome browser, Google Maps and Waze etc and don't use the built-in defaults. I guess they like the hardware. So maybe I'm not interpreting "completely closed" correctly. > ... In the name of user centricity, their platform places arbitrary restrictions on code execution and access. As a software but non-iOS developer I like these restrictions. Yes they can be annoying (you can't use your iPhone as certain kinds of portable network scanner because they restrict access to the MAC) but they also stop shitty and malign developers from screwing me in certain ways (jerks were using the MAC as an illicit user tracking device). I see it like various sorts of regulation: everyone us better off if the paint factory can't simply dump its waste into the river, even the paint company.

neonhomer 9y ago
I'm one of those people who gladly use an iPhone with mostly Google apps (namely Chrome, Gmail and Maps). My little experience with Android has always been negative. The only real annoyance with iOS is you can't set Chrome nor Maps as default applications.
- AceJohnny2 9y ago
  I'm in the same boat. My dream device would be iPhone HW with Android software. I like Android's flexibility, the replaceable home screen instead of the list of apps, the Intents system that lets you replace an app handler with another (Chrome & Maps for example), the much better notification system... I have an iPhone now (because work), and it took a few months to stop grumbling, but I definitely appreciated the overall better hardware compared to my friend's Android phones, most significantly the excellent (and immediately available!) camera.
  - autotypo 9y ago
    On Android 6 at least, double tapping the home button brings up the camera immediately.

mrtksn 9y ago

We all love Google's products but your comment is needlessly emotional. Google is not charity, it's always good to remember that. Google is not giving away the source code of Android for philanthropic reasons, it's just part of the business model, i.e. the process of money making to pay the employees and the shareholders. Oh and Apple is definitely not putting arbitrary restrictions to anything, all the restrictions have a reason - that you might or might not agree to but definitely not random. In case you want to bypass Apple and run a code on your iPhone, you can do it by compiling it and installing it personally. I think EU will investigate the companies that have large enough marketshare that they can abuse their position.

jsight 9y ago
I agree with some of your critique, but I also think you are giving Apple a little too much credit. Yes you can compile and install your own software, but AFAIK, you have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of doing so. This isn't nearly as open as Android phones, where it is a simple matter of checking a box. I definitely agree with you that Google isn't giving away the code for philanthropic reasons, though. I can't really feel bad for them for having to incentivize handset makers to do things that make Google even more money.
- kn0where 9y ago
  > AFAIK, you have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of doing so. That hasn't been the case for a number of years. As long as you have a Mac, you can download Xcode for free, compile an app, and sync it over to your iOS device.
  - ariwilson 9y ago
    Super simple to do as an end user, for sure.
    - bobwaycott 9y ago
      Your average end user who requires things to be simple is never going to install their own apps outside the approved, simple channels.

solomatov 9y ago

I am very happy with Apple's restrictions. It's the only large IT company which cares about my privacy, and I don't want to have any apps which do whatever they want on my devices.

fleitz 9y ago

Likely Google because Apple doesn't enjoy significant market share in the EU

scholia 9y ago
iOS market share in the UK is generally over 40% and has approached 50%. http://uk.kantar.com/tech/mobile/2017/april-great-britain-smartphone-data/ http://uk.kantar.com/tech/mobile/2017/april-great-britain-sm...

stuffedBelly 9y ago

Paying a fee makes economic sense. Open sourcing Android is an (rather successful) attempt to expand market share at the initial stage, considering that Android phone makers such as Samsung and LG already have established brand before the Android hit. The fee Google's paying is for these established phone makers to distribute Google apps to a large market. The deal Google made with these companies is probably not as simple as "I open source Android <--> You distribute my apps for free" although these two things seem like a trade-off from a developer perspective. It seems, to distinguish itself from Apple's ecosystem, Android advocates for fair competition and its "openness". Google will get unfair advantage to all the other Android app developers if they get to distribute their app for free across Android devices. The truth is, unless they are all Richard Stallman, all these companies open source stuff as a business strategy rather than from a pure good will.

on_and_off 9y ago

IMO they should investigate both. I do know that bundling hardware and software together allows apple to do whatever they want, but it still horrifies me that on a general purpose device, there is a gatekeeper raising arbitrary rules on what apps I can install (or sell for the other side of the equation). While Apple's practices have been worrying me for some time, they are in no way mutually exclusive with Google's ones.

paxy 9y ago

The Android source code isn't Google's to "give away". It is written and maintained by a huge ecosystem of hardware and software vendors and independent developers.

KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

What does Apple have to do with Google's antitrust trouble? Google was fined for abusing its monopolistic position in the search-engine market. Apple does not have a monopolistic position in any market.

skinnymuch 9y ago

Google isn't giving out Android source code out of the goodness of their hearts. It's a business decision. They also have decreased the amount of code that is open source if you measure things in a certain way (everyone has their bias). Since more and more Google services and apps are central to Android normally, those aren't open source. I think even certain standard apps aren't open source anymore. We can appreciate open source software while still being aware of why it is happening. We shouldn't just be blindly grateful. That can end up biting us.