4 ms·

It does give Samsung the ability to not include Google Play Movies and so forth in the system partition, which I'd be happy to see absent. Perhaps without Chrom

It does give Samsung the ability to not include Google Play Movies and so forth in the system partition, which I'd be happy to see absent. Perhaps without Chrome shipping with every Android phone, there will be more users of alternative browsers on Android. This would be a welcome departure from the current state of affairs.

Klathmon 8y ago
Yes, this decision does make it harder for google to strong arm Samsung into including Play Movies. But Samsung has shown many times that they have no issues including bloatware on their devices for some kind of pay. It stands to reason that all Google would have to do is pay them, and the same result will still happen (unless this decision means that Google literally can't do that since they are in a dominant position, i'm not a lawyer so I don't know). Overall I think we want the same stuff. More competition, less preinstalled shit, and a healthier ecosystem. However we disagree on how to get there. I personally think Android is heading the right direction. It's always been pretty simple to replace everything but the settings view with your own alternatives after install (hell, even the system web view can be swapped out, and IIRC Mozilla has been working on getting Firefox in a position so it can be the default web view on android if you want), and I agree that Google could be forced to do more in this space (a "select your browser from these 5 choices" is a good compromise, but I'd be pissed if I had to do that for my phone, messages, browser, email client, homescreen, etc... on every device i'd be annoyed. Not to mention that many people expect a Google phone to work well, and will go to Google when it doesn't. If my phone app stops working and I didn't choose the Google phone app, they now need to field calls from users who don't know Google can't do anything to fix it).

Klathmon 8y ago

Yes, this decision does make it harder for google to strong arm Samsung into including Play Movies. But Samsung has shown many times that they have no issues including bloatware on their devices for some kind of pay. It stands to reason that all Google would have to do is pay them, and the same result will still happen (unless this decision means that Google literally can't do that since they are in a dominant position, i'm not a lawyer so I don't know). Overall I think we want the same stuff. More competition, less preinstalled shit, and a healthier ecosystem. However we disagree on how to get there. I personally think Android is heading the right direction. It's always been pretty simple to replace everything but the settings view with your own alternatives after install (hell, even the system web view can be swapped out, and IIRC Mozilla has been working on getting Firefox in a position so it can be the default web view on android if you want), and I agree that Google could be forced to do more in this space (a "select your browser from these 5 choices" is a good compromise, but I'd be pissed if I had to do that for my phone, messages, browser, email client, homescreen, etc... on every device i'd be annoyed. Not to mention that many people expect a Google phone to work well, and will go to Google when it doesn't. If my phone app stops working and I didn't choose the Google phone app, they now need to field calls from users who don't know Google can't do anything to fix it).