8 ms·

A pretty well written analysis. I think the author is mistaken on two important points though. The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android

A pretty well written analysis. I think the author is mistaken on two important points though. The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android apps are in fact Google Play apps and couldn't be used on a non-Google version of Android without a significant rework. I believe there's already a significant body of work on providing drop in replacements for Google Play Services, e.g. microG [1]. There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out. Secondly, the author complains that: > More broadly, the European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop. There's a huge rift in how most Europeans and Americans see the role of regulators but without getting into that, I want to note Android was not Google's effort alone and hardly a significant risk. Android as a software stack is built on the back of the Linux Kernel and a dozen other open source frameworks (Java, sqlite etc). Equally, Google is hardly responsible for the hardware. Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did. The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices... [1] https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/

turbinerneiter 8y ago
Imagine the EU would invest these 5 billions into funding microg, alternative app storrs and other drop in replacements for APIs and Apps.
- megaman22 8y ago
  What exactly would the EU be spending that money on? Where does this kind of punitive fine revenue go into? Is it the general slush fund, or is it earmarked for some purpose?
  - IBM 8y ago
    It's distributed to all member states in the proportion that they contribute to the EU budget, after all appeals are completed.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      No it's not. It's contributed to the general fund of the EU. If you fully follow the money, it's mostly used to make local EU agricultural products cheaper, and for the government offices and jobs in Brussels and Strasbourg.
- kbwt 8y ago
  They would build a really nice app store and then it would sit empty because it is not preinstalled and the network effects of Google Play make it pretty much impossible to gain any traction for an alternative.
  - turbinerneiter 8y ago
    The idea is that with microg as drop in replacement all the apps would still work without the play services and be as good as. Putting your app on this additional store would cost you just a click. The vendors can preinstall that and ship google-less phones. It will not happen, but if they really care about what they claim to care about, this is what they should spend the money on. Not sure if just putting a few on Google will help to get a better, healthier market.
pluma 8y ago
Also I can't really muster any sympathy if a company is punished for having spent "billions of dollars at significant risk" to develop something intentionally anti-competitive. That's like saying "but we spent a lot of money on really expensive lawyers to evade those taxes" when charged with tax evasion.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Why would google develop Android otherwise?
  - adventured 8y ago
    The Google Android skeptics would prefer exactly that. Their ideal is that Android - as we know it today - collapses and Google loses its position with the product and in the mobile market. The fantasy is that then a truly free, pure, saintly solution can spring up and smite the evil money grubbing commercial interests. That's likely to have about as much success as desktop Linux among mass consumers (and for the same reason). The sole thing that collapsing Google's Android position will do, is redistribute a lot of that market power and tech ecosystem benefit to a few other US tech giants, some Chinese tech giants and possibly to a lesser extent to some European players and Samsung. The US would net lose a considerable hegemony. As such, the US Government - State Dept, NSA, CIA, et al. - should get involved on a strategic economic security basis, and attack a very large EU company in a manner that is crippling (something worse than the Volkswagen emissions hit). We're in the midst of an economic war with the EU, the more vicious parts of the US Government need to start getting involved. At a minimum, find an excuse to perhaps take down eg Deutsche Bank, it's particularly weak, so a $10 or $15 billion invented magic fine would probably be enough to force its collapse and nationalization.
    - IBM 8y ago
      This is a Google talking point, and a laughable one at that. The list of complainants is full of American companies. Here's DuckDuckGo for example: https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1019562507294461953 https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1019562507294461953
bmcusick 8y ago
More to the point, the EU didn't say "Google can't monetize Android". It just said that this tying arrangement between Google Search and Android is too anti-competitive. Android could find other, more transparent and competitive, revenue models.
- simion314 8y ago
  Google does not even want or need to make money from Android they were/are afraid that iPhone and Windows mobile devices would not default to Google search, having all the mobile devices not defaulting to google gave them nightmares.
  - Multicomp 8y ago
    This. Remember that article about how they acted like a toddler to Microsoft when the latter wanted to have a YouTube app?[1] All to keep WP from being viable enough to have a significant market share of users, especially users that didn't know or care enough to swap out bing search for Google. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970082/google-killed-windows-phone-not-iphone https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970082/google-killed-wi...
    - FussyZeus 8y ago
      Careful now, can't be criticizing Google too much on HN, they send the wolves for you. I'd love to know how many of the people rallying around Google's defenses now were anti-Microsoft back in the day for doing what is basically the same damn thing they were doing with Internet Explorer, only IMHO worse because Google didn't even develop Android, they just picked it up and filled it to the brim with their software.
      - kungtotte 8y ago
        I don't know which HN you've been reading, but there's a fairly strong anti-Google sentiment around here...
      - 8y ago
martinald 8y ago
I can't see how this microG is at all helpful. Sure it has a replacement to GCM but every app backend would have to be rewritten to support it. It's hardly a drop in replacement if every chat app doesn't support push notifications.
- benwaffle 8y ago
  microG acts as a drop-in replacement for Google Play Services. Apps do not have to be rewritten
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    But if I, as a developer, want to send push notifications, I would have to send them somewhere else. I couldn't use the stuff I'm using for everyone else.
  - xg15 8y ago
    Yes, but you can't replace the parts that rely on Google's cloud infrastructure, such as push notifications. If a feature literally requires that you send a HTTP request to a Google web API, you can hardly use that app without Google's support.
ucaetano 8y ago
> There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out. Except that microG doesn't work. It is even far behind Amazon's own implementation of GMS, and Amazon has dumped piles of money into it. > The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices... Surprisingly, the manufacturers aren't the ones filing the anti-trust complaints in this case. The case was brought initially by Oracle, Microsoft & company.
- prepend 8y ago
  But isn’t this reasonable since Samsung bringing up this lawsuit could be disastrous in harming their partnership with Google. The Microsoft case wasn’t brought about by Compaq and Dell either even though they were being hosed [0]. While the case was brought by states and DOJ, there was lots of pressure from Netscape/Sun. Not really their hardware partners. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    > But isn’t this reasonable since Samsung bringing up this lawsuit could be disastrous in harming their partnership with Google. Sure, but you can't make the claim that Samsung is then being screwed over by Google. > Not really their hardware partners. Sure, and Samsung preloads its own browser today.
    - taeric 8y ago
      Why can't you? You can concede they would get more screwed by dirtying their relationship, without conceding that they are in a great relationship now.
      - ucaetano 8y ago
        > Why can't you? Because you have no information to make that conclusion. But if you want to make a wild guess, sure, go ahead.
acct1771 8y ago
Is microG, and Yalp, usage not against ToS?
- benwaffle 8y ago
  it is
VikingCoder 8y ago
> hardly a significant risk. Oh come on.
sweden 8y ago
The API of Google Play Services is not really open to re-implementation by third parties. The fact that microG exists doesn't invalidate the author's point. Google allows microG to exist because it is something of a niche, it is not threatening to their model. The second point you are trying to make is not really clear.
stefan_ 8y ago
> There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out. Except the contract ??
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  The contract is to get Play Services. If they don't want Play Services, they don't need the contract.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    And that's the issue the EU is having. Play Services is pretty much essential to having a successful smartphone product in much of the world (at least the US and the EU). Many, many Android apps are only distributed through the Play Store, and many of those rely on Google Play Services. So trying to ship a phone in those markets without Google Play Services is a non-starter. Google knows this, and so they have added anti-competitive restrictions to that contract. That is the behavior the EU is objecting to.
    - lern_too_spel 8y ago
      I never claimed otherwise. GGP said shipping microg would breach a contract. It doesn't.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"hardly a significant risk" Android is a massive, massive undertaking by any measure, and it doesn't matter that it uses Linux and other things. "Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did" I totally disagree (edit: I disagree that they are spending 'massively more' but it's of course a lot) as most of what they are doing is commoditized, and the hardware aspects that they are actually competitive on ... those are differentiated in their models and they can capture the surpluses generated by that differentiation, which is to say those competitive aspects are not going back into 'Android' or any 'community' etc..
- blub 8y ago
  Nope, Android v1 was a no-name product from a highly competent web service provider without any track record whatsoever in mobile OSes. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a good product, so it needed to be open source to gain traction, since no one in their right mind would pay for it. Furthermore, it needed the device manufacturers on board, since Google had zero mobile HW experience, as can be seen on how they handled their Motorola acquisition. So Google actually owes device manufacturers quite a lot. It couldn't have done it without them. And you completely fail to appreciate how complex and important the Linux kernel is. Look at their Fuchsia effort: it was published in 2016 and was in dev for a couple of years probably. Still not ready for production. Now try to imagine what would happen if Apple had 3 extra years to develop iOS before Android was launched. Android would be stillborn. That's what Linux brought to the table.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    We're not talking about Android v1, we're talking about Android now and all that's been invested in it. The 'complexity' of Linux is not relevant - it's a part of the underlying platform, in much the same way that it is in so many other products. Competitive manufacturers, mobile OS makers etc. all have access to the same Linux that Google does. Google has invested massively in Android, it's a product of theirs. If they can't 'bundle' whilst giving it away for free, their going to justify their investment by locking it up and selling it for money.
ariwilson 8y ago
Putting billions of dollars and hundreds of engineers' time into Android for years rather than something else does seem like the definition of a significant risk to me. Not to mention all the legal issues.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out." I would be shocked if 1). The licensing agreements with Google to get the Play Store in the first place allow that, and 2). If MicroG would be production ready. It might be fine for some enthusiasts and hobbyists, but I highly doubt it's ready to be shipped by default.
utopcell 8y ago
Screwing over ? Manufacturers have made a ton of money selling $800 devices every couple years.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  One or two have. Most Android OEMs aren't making that much money, if they're making any at all.

turbinerneiter 8y ago

Imagine the EU would invest these 5 billions into funding microg, alternative app storrs and other drop in replacements for APIs and Apps.

megaman22 8y ago
What exactly would the EU be spending that money on? Where does this kind of punitive fine revenue go into? Is it the general slush fund, or is it earmarked for some purpose?
- IBM 8y ago
  It's distributed to all member states in the proportion that they contribute to the EU budget, after all appeals are completed.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    No it's not. It's contributed to the general fund of the EU. If you fully follow the money, it's mostly used to make local EU agricultural products cheaper, and for the government offices and jobs in Brussels and Strasbourg.
kbwt 8y ago
They would build a really nice app store and then it would sit empty because it is not preinstalled and the network effects of Google Play make it pretty much impossible to gain any traction for an alternative.
- turbinerneiter 8y ago
  The idea is that with microg as drop in replacement all the apps would still work without the play services and be as good as. Putting your app on this additional store would cost you just a click. The vendors can preinstall that and ship google-less phones. It will not happen, but if they really care about what they claim to care about, this is what they should spend the money on. Not sure if just putting a few on Google will help to get a better, healthier market.

pluma 8y ago

Also I can't really muster any sympathy if a company is punished for having spent "billions of dollars at significant risk" to develop something intentionally anti-competitive. That's like saying "but we spent a lot of money on really expensive lawyers to evade those taxes" when charged with tax evasion.

garmaine 8y ago
Why would google develop Android otherwise?
- adventured 8y ago
  The Google Android skeptics would prefer exactly that. Their ideal is that Android - as we know it today - collapses and Google loses its position with the product and in the mobile market. The fantasy is that then a truly free, pure, saintly solution can spring up and smite the evil money grubbing commercial interests. That's likely to have about as much success as desktop Linux among mass consumers (and for the same reason). The sole thing that collapsing Google's Android position will do, is redistribute a lot of that market power and tech ecosystem benefit to a few other US tech giants, some Chinese tech giants and possibly to a lesser extent to some European players and Samsung. The US would net lose a considerable hegemony. As such, the US Government - State Dept, NSA, CIA, et al. - should get involved on a strategic economic security basis, and attack a very large EU company in a manner that is crippling (something worse than the Volkswagen emissions hit). We're in the midst of an economic war with the EU, the more vicious parts of the US Government need to start getting involved. At a minimum, find an excuse to perhaps take down eg Deutsche Bank, it's particularly weak, so a $10 or $15 billion invented magic fine would probably be enough to force its collapse and nationalization.
  - IBM 8y ago
    This is a Google talking point, and a laughable one at that. The list of complainants is full of American companies. Here's DuckDuckGo for example: https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1019562507294461953 https://twitter.com/DuckDuckGo/status/1019562507294461953

bmcusick 8y ago

More to the point, the EU didn't say "Google can't monetize Android". It just said that this tying arrangement between Google Search and Android is too anti-competitive. Android could find other, more transparent and competitive, revenue models.

simion314 8y ago
Google does not even want or need to make money from Android they were/are afraid that iPhone and Windows mobile devices would not default to Google search, having all the mobile devices not defaulting to google gave them nightmares.
- Multicomp 8y ago
  This. Remember that article about how they acted like a toddler to Microsoft when the latter wanted to have a YouTube app?[1] All to keep WP from being viable enough to have a significant market share of users, especially users that didn't know or care enough to swap out bing search for Google. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970082/google-killed-windows-phone-not-iphone https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970082/google-killed-wi...
  - FussyZeus 8y ago
    Careful now, can't be criticizing Google too much on HN, they send the wolves for you. I'd love to know how many of the people rallying around Google's defenses now were anti-Microsoft back in the day for doing what is basically the same damn thing they were doing with Internet Explorer, only IMHO worse because Google didn't even develop Android, they just picked it up and filled it to the brim with their software.
    - kungtotte 8y ago
      I don't know which HN you've been reading, but there's a fairly strong anti-Google sentiment around here...
    - 8y ago

martinald 8y ago

I can't see how this microG is at all helpful. Sure it has a replacement to GCM but every app backend would have to be rewritten to support it. It's hardly a drop in replacement if every chat app doesn't support push notifications.

benwaffle 8y ago
microG acts as a drop-in replacement for Google Play Services. Apps do not have to be rewritten
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  But if I, as a developer, want to send push notifications, I would have to send them somewhere else. I couldn't use the stuff I'm using for everyone else.
- xg15 8y ago
  Yes, but you can't replace the parts that rely on Google's cloud infrastructure, such as push notifications. If a feature literally requires that you send a HTTP request to a Google web API, you can hardly use that app without Google's support.

ucaetano 8y ago

> There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out. Except that microG doesn't work. It is even far behind Amazon's own implementation of GMS, and Amazon has dumped piles of money into it. > The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices... Surprisingly, the manufacturers aren't the ones filing the anti-trust complaints in this case. The case was brought initially by Oracle, Microsoft & company.

prepend 8y ago
But isn’t this reasonable since Samsung bringing up this lawsuit could be disastrous in harming their partnership with Google. The Microsoft case wasn’t brought about by Compaq and Dell either even though they were being hosed [0]. While the case was brought by states and DOJ, there was lots of pressure from Netscape/Sun. Not really their hardware partners. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > But isn’t this reasonable since Samsung bringing up this lawsuit could be disastrous in harming their partnership with Google. Sure, but you can't make the claim that Samsung is then being screwed over by Google. > Not really their hardware partners. Sure, and Samsung preloads its own browser today.
  - taeric 8y ago
    Why can't you? You can concede they would get more screwed by dirtying their relationship, without conceding that they are in a great relationship now.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      > Why can't you? Because you have no information to make that conclusion. But if you want to make a wild guess, sure, go ahead.

acct1771 8y ago

Is microG, and Yalp, usage not against ToS?

benwaffle 8y ago
it is

VikingCoder 8y ago

> hardly a significant risk. Oh come on.

sweden 8y ago

The API of Google Play Services is not really open to re-implementation by third parties. The fact that microG exists doesn't invalidate the author's point. Google allows microG to exist because it is something of a niche, it is not threatening to their model. The second point you are trying to make is not really clear.

stefan_ 8y ago

> There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out. Except the contract ??

lern_too_spel 8y ago
The contract is to get Play Services. If they don't want Play Services, they don't need the contract.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  And that's the issue the EU is having. Play Services is pretty much essential to having a successful smartphone product in much of the world (at least the US and the EU). Many, many Android apps are only distributed through the Play Store, and many of those rely on Google Play Services. So trying to ship a phone in those markets without Google Play Services is a non-starter. Google knows this, and so they have added anti-competitive restrictions to that contract. That is the behavior the EU is objecting to.
  - lern_too_spel 8y ago
    I never claimed otherwise. GGP said shipping microg would breach a contract. It doesn't.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"hardly a significant risk" Android is a massive, massive undertaking by any measure, and it doesn't matter that it uses Linux and other things. "Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did" I totally disagree (edit: I disagree that they are spending 'massively more' but it's of course a lot) as most of what they are doing is commoditized, and the hardware aspects that they are actually competitive on ... those are differentiated in their models and they can capture the surpluses generated by that differentiation, which is to say those competitive aspects are not going back into 'Android' or any 'community' etc..

blub 8y ago
Nope, Android v1 was a no-name product from a highly competent web service provider without any track record whatsoever in mobile OSes. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a good product, so it needed to be open source to gain traction, since no one in their right mind would pay for it. Furthermore, it needed the device manufacturers on board, since Google had zero mobile HW experience, as can be seen on how they handled their Motorola acquisition. So Google actually owes device manufacturers quite a lot. It couldn't have done it without them. And you completely fail to appreciate how complex and important the Linux kernel is. Look at their Fuchsia effort: it was published in 2016 and was in dev for a couple of years probably. Still not ready for production. Now try to imagine what would happen if Apple had 3 extra years to develop iOS before Android was launched. Android would be stillborn. That's what Linux brought to the table.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  We're not talking about Android v1, we're talking about Android now and all that's been invested in it. The 'complexity' of Linux is not relevant - it's a part of the underlying platform, in much the same way that it is in so many other products. Competitive manufacturers, mobile OS makers etc. all have access to the same Linux that Google does. Google has invested massively in Android, it's a product of theirs. If they can't 'bundle' whilst giving it away for free, their going to justify their investment by locking it up and selling it for money.

ariwilson 8y ago

Putting billions of dollars and hundreds of engineers' time into Android for years rather than something else does seem like the definition of a significant risk to me. Not to mention all the legal issues.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out." I would be shocked if 1). The licensing agreements with Google to get the Play Store in the first place allow that, and 2). If MicroG would be production ready. It might be fine for some enthusiasts and hobbyists, but I highly doubt it's ready to be shipped by default.

utopcell 8y ago

Screwing over ? Manufacturers have made a ton of money selling $800 devices every couple years.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
One or two have. Most Android OEMs aren't making that much money, if they're making any at all.