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Google already bullies hardware vendors that don't package Google services with Android devices...which is what Microsoft did in the 90s. They also bundle all t

Google already bullies hardware vendors that don't package Google services with Android devices...which is what Microsoft did in the 90s. They also bundle all their services...which is essentially the very thing that Microsoft ended up getting slapped for. Google gets a way with a lot. Apple does too, but Apple's reach is limited to when you leave their hardware, Google's is always with you. You can't escape unless you are just a very very savvy user, and even then they can still get your data at the most basic level using GCS. I really really wish Microsoft or someone outside of the duopoly, were more powerful in the mobile and search space so people had a choice. I do have an Android phone, but only because Apple is so locked down that I essentially have to use their services, and I don't use Google services outside of their store...but I know just by having an Android phone Google is tracking me. As for advertisers, I know for a fact that some SMBs/agencies don't serve on Bing, not because the traffic isn't there...but because it's hard to manage so many bids and pacing in so many different platforms. Google makes it so simple, even if the ROI is slightly lower by not using Bing, etc. It's maddening, it is certainly a very monopolistic company.

GW150914 8y ago
Google bullies hardware vendors, Apple is its own hardware vendor. That is the essential difference. If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made and sold, instead of twisting the arms of third parties they’d have been OK. There is a qualitative difference between dictating the terms of something you alone build and sell, and using your market dominance to dictate terms to everyone else.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  I don't disagree. I really would love for Microsoft to make the "Microsoft Store" accept Android apps and launch a Surface Phone line that only they control...and if it takes off maybe OEMs could join in, if not, fine. I feel like they are the only company that can successfully do it...but even then Google services are so coupled with Android games/apps...and it doesn't solve the "walled garden" problem. Microsoft would still have a walled garden, which I'm generally against. I don't know the solution, but I certainly do not like the current duopoly or the problem of the walled garden. Maybe there could be two stores, one from the Microsoft repo and one that is a "Sideload store" that is just listings but the apps are hosted elsewhere to remove any legal implications for Microsoft or whoever.
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    i too would love to see ms take 'phone' seriously, and do a surface phone line similar to iphone. own the hardware stack top to bottom. we need a third major force to offset apple/google, and MS is one of the few that could fill that gap. they did finally start to take ownership of experience with the surface stuff, and I'm tempted to move back to that world in 2019 with a surface book of some stripe.
    - vezycash 8y ago
      >i too would love to see ms take 'phone' seriously Nadella won't because of MS hate. Lots of naive developers are drunk on the false open source android story and won't apps for their OS - e.g. snapchat founder refused to build an app for WP. And kept sending take down notices for community built clients. This is why MS keeps pursing web apps and "universal apps." Ms spent at billions in payment (bribes) to developers to build WP apps, yet. Microsoft of today would never have created Windows. They have tried and failed multiple times to turn Windows into a store only OS. Their OS was unjailbreakable far more so than IOS. WP's inability to share apps is the major reason why WP failed in my own country. Even till today, people still beam android / windows apps. Windows 10 auto updates is another clue that MS is clueless about data costs. I'll bet, more people left Windows for autoupdating than for being insecure.
      - mgkimsal 8y ago
        AFAIR, they weren't doing WP on their own hardware. The end user experience on various WP was (as with many android devices) a mixed bag. Coupled with being perceived as 'late to the game', and people wanting to jump on the app-bandwagon but not having enough resources... WP never got mindshare. PERSONALLY... I think MS could mount another shot at the phone market - but they'd have to be serious, commit long term, and be willing to lose out $ for a while to gain marketshare. I don't recall them spending billions on getting WP apps built. If anything, the anecdotes I heard were mixed - both cheap funding of lots of stupid one-off apps to try to inflate numbers, but cheaping out on funding for established apps with existing users/communities. In neither case did I ever read about billions being spent in those pursuits. Again, I think there's probably one more chance MS has to make a run for this - new leadership since the ballmer days, commitment to manage their own hardware, and a public commitment to long-term investment in that ecosystem... - lots of folks are waking up to the privacy issues in mobile - apple has a story, google doesn't have a terribly good one. Lots of smaller/secondtier players in ios world are fed up with 30% fees. MS could address privacy and fee issues, and attract/keep new market. But... we don't want another 'playsforsure/zune' situation. :/
- vezycash 8y ago
  >If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made I recall Ms was banned from building their own hardware. Just like how Car companies are banned from retailing their own cars in the US.
  - GW150914 8y ago
    As far as I know (which isn’t perfect knowledge by any means) MS has had a hardware division since 1982, it’s just that it was never their focus. IIRC Bill Gates famously didn’t want to become a major hardware vendor, but wanted to focus on the software. Certainly I’ve never heard of a ban or anything like it, and I was under the impression that dealership laws were essentially unique to cars. If you have some other information to the contrary I’d be happy to read it. Obviously if such a ban existed it was lifted before MS made things like the Zune, or Surface.
    - mycall 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_hardware
- baq 8y ago
  are you talking about device manufacturers or component manufacturers? for the latter, look at what happened to imagination when apple dropped them and then tell me with a straight face that wasn't bullying.
  - superflyguy 8y ago
    It wasn't bullying. Imagination was a one trick pony with, to mix clichés, all their eggs in one basket. They were always going to be screwed when Apple continued far enough down their predictable path to in-house silicon. The people with a clue all left (mostly to Apple) leaving behind shitty managers and the usual clueless offshore types who resorted to the court of public opinion via an embarrassing, needy blog full of vague threats of legal action. That's the closest it got to bullying, really.
dijit 8y ago
>Apple is so locked down that I essentially have to use their services I want to touch on this because in my experience this is less true than it seems on the surface. The contacts app and calendar app support carddav/caldav respectively- photos use the standard camera interface (mpd?) the things that suck are that you need to use Xcode to develop for it, and you need iTunes to put music on the default music player app (however using plex w/ sync has been my cross platform solution for a while- and honestly I don’t know many people who aren’t using Spotify) Am I missing something?
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  You're not, really. On the one hand I understand the complaints about Apple's "walled garden," but I've pretty effortlessly connected to both Google Calendar and Exchange services. (And I don't use Apple's own Calendar app anyway, although I configure the calendars through the iOS system preferences so they integrate with all the Apple stuff relatively gracefully.) I do file syncing with Dropbox, which integrates with Apple's Files app pretty nicely as of iOS 11. I keep passwords in 1Password, which always integrated fairly well with iOS and does even better as of iOS 12. I get a lot of ebooks in DRM-free ePub format from various vendors and can just open them directly in iBooks. (I suppose using iTunes is still a problem, although iTunes Match and, now, Apple Music actually made syncing pretty painless for me. After the initial pain of moving from iTunes Match, which worked great, to Apple Music, which did...not...work great for its first year. But I digress.) More apropos to the linked post, I trust Apple with my data rather more than most companies I deal with. They not only don't treat it as a profit center, they seem to prefer to minimize the amount of personally-identifiable and unencrypted information they deal with. I do still use some Google services, but I prefer to use Apple's equivalents when possible -- and I've been using Safari instead of Chrome for years. A lot of people think I'm nuts for that, but occasionally I feel a bit vindicated...
- vetinari 8y ago
  You don't have to use Google services with Android either. For years I've used an Android phone with no Google account attached - I simply skipped the OOB assistant and then created an account pointing on my company's Exchange, where all my mail/calendaring/contacts were. For maps, I used Sygic, which you can purchase outside Play Store. Yes, I did lose Google Play, Youtube, Hangouts, but exactly that was the intent - not using Google services. Today, it would be even easier, with the existence F-Droid providing third-party apps.
cm2187 8y ago
I have good hopes that pwa+wasm will change that. What killed windows mobile is the lack of apps. In a world where you have performant apps, that are completely os independant, and do not even need to be distributed through a gated store, it makes it a lot easier for a challenger to break through.
- spronkey 8y ago
  Not a chance IMO. One major reason why native apps work is platform integration - both from an HCI perspective as well as a technology one. PWA and WASM will never be able to achieve these things.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    I am sure certain apps need that integration but what is the percentage of apps that matter in your opinion?

GW150914 8y ago

Google bullies hardware vendors, Apple is its own hardware vendor. That is the essential difference. If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made and sold, instead of twisting the arms of third parties they’d have been OK. There is a qualitative difference between dictating the terms of something you alone build and sell, and using your market dominance to dictate terms to everyone else.

partiallypro 8y ago
I don't disagree. I really would love for Microsoft to make the "Microsoft Store" accept Android apps and launch a Surface Phone line that only they control...and if it takes off maybe OEMs could join in, if not, fine. I feel like they are the only company that can successfully do it...but even then Google services are so coupled with Android games/apps...and it doesn't solve the "walled garden" problem. Microsoft would still have a walled garden, which I'm generally against. I don't know the solution, but I certainly do not like the current duopoly or the problem of the walled garden. Maybe there could be two stores, one from the Microsoft repo and one that is a "Sideload store" that is just listings but the apps are hosted elsewhere to remove any legal implications for Microsoft or whoever.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  i too would love to see ms take 'phone' seriously, and do a surface phone line similar to iphone. own the hardware stack top to bottom. we need a third major force to offset apple/google, and MS is one of the few that could fill that gap. they did finally start to take ownership of experience with the surface stuff, and I'm tempted to move back to that world in 2019 with a surface book of some stripe.
  - vezycash 8y ago
    >i too would love to see ms take 'phone' seriously Nadella won't because of MS hate. Lots of naive developers are drunk on the false open source android story and won't apps for their OS - e.g. snapchat founder refused to build an app for WP. And kept sending take down notices for community built clients. This is why MS keeps pursing web apps and "universal apps." Ms spent at billions in payment (bribes) to developers to build WP apps, yet. Microsoft of today would never have created Windows. They have tried and failed multiple times to turn Windows into a store only OS. Their OS was unjailbreakable far more so than IOS. WP's inability to share apps is the major reason why WP failed in my own country. Even till today, people still beam android / windows apps. Windows 10 auto updates is another clue that MS is clueless about data costs. I'll bet, more people left Windows for autoupdating than for being insecure.
    - mgkimsal 8y ago
      AFAIR, they weren't doing WP on their own hardware. The end user experience on various WP was (as with many android devices) a mixed bag. Coupled with being perceived as 'late to the game', and people wanting to jump on the app-bandwagon but not having enough resources... WP never got mindshare. PERSONALLY... I think MS could mount another shot at the phone market - but they'd have to be serious, commit long term, and be willing to lose out $ for a while to gain marketshare. I don't recall them spending billions on getting WP apps built. If anything, the anecdotes I heard were mixed - both cheap funding of lots of stupid one-off apps to try to inflate numbers, but cheaping out on funding for established apps with existing users/communities. In neither case did I ever read about billions being spent in those pursuits. Again, I think there's probably one more chance MS has to make a run for this - new leadership since the ballmer days, commitment to manage their own hardware, and a public commitment to long-term investment in that ecosystem... - lots of folks are waking up to the privacy issues in mobile - apple has a story, google doesn't have a terribly good one. Lots of smaller/secondtier players in ios world are fed up with 30% fees. MS could address privacy and fee issues, and attract/keep new market. But... we don't want another 'playsforsure/zune' situation. :/
vezycash 8y ago
>If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made I recall Ms was banned from building their own hardware. Just like how Car companies are banned from retailing their own cars in the US.
- GW150914 8y ago
  As far as I know (which isn’t perfect knowledge by any means) MS has had a hardware division since 1982, it’s just that it was never their focus. IIRC Bill Gates famously didn’t want to become a major hardware vendor, but wanted to focus on the software. Certainly I’ve never heard of a ban or anything like it, and I was under the impression that dealership laws were essentially unique to cars. If you have some other information to the contrary I’d be happy to read it. Obviously if such a ban existed it was lifted before MS made things like the Zune, or Surface.
  - mycall 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_hardware https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_hardware
baq 8y ago
are you talking about device manufacturers or component manufacturers? for the latter, look at what happened to imagination when apple dropped them and then tell me with a straight face that wasn't bullying.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  It wasn't bullying. Imagination was a one trick pony with, to mix clichés, all their eggs in one basket. They were always going to be screwed when Apple continued far enough down their predictable path to in-house silicon. The people with a clue all left (mostly to Apple) leaving behind shitty managers and the usual clueless offshore types who resorted to the court of public opinion via an embarrassing, needy blog full of vague threats of legal action. That's the closest it got to bullying, really.

dijit 8y ago

>Apple is so locked down that I essentially have to use their services I want to touch on this because in my experience this is less true than it seems on the surface. The contacts app and calendar app support carddav/caldav respectively- photos use the standard camera interface (mpd?) the things that suck are that you need to use Xcode to develop for it, and you need iTunes to put music on the default music player app (however using plex w/ sync has been my cross platform solution for a while- and honestly I don’t know many people who aren’t using Spotify) Am I missing something?

chipotle_coyote 8y ago
You're not, really. On the one hand I understand the complaints about Apple's "walled garden," but I've pretty effortlessly connected to both Google Calendar and Exchange services. (And I don't use Apple's own Calendar app anyway, although I configure the calendars through the iOS system preferences so they integrate with all the Apple stuff relatively gracefully.) I do file syncing with Dropbox, which integrates with Apple's Files app pretty nicely as of iOS 11. I keep passwords in 1Password, which always integrated fairly well with iOS and does even better as of iOS 12. I get a lot of ebooks in DRM-free ePub format from various vendors and can just open them directly in iBooks. (I suppose using iTunes is still a problem, although iTunes Match and, now, Apple Music actually made syncing pretty painless for me. After the initial pain of moving from iTunes Match, which worked great, to Apple Music, which did...not...work great for its first year. But I digress.) More apropos to the linked post, I trust Apple with my data rather more than most companies I deal with. They not only don't treat it as a profit center, they seem to prefer to minimize the amount of personally-identifiable and unencrypted information they deal with. I do still use some Google services, but I prefer to use Apple's equivalents when possible -- and I've been using Safari instead of Chrome for years. A lot of people think I'm nuts for that, but occasionally I feel a bit vindicated...
vetinari 8y ago
You don't have to use Google services with Android either. For years I've used an Android phone with no Google account attached - I simply skipped the OOB assistant and then created an account pointing on my company's Exchange, where all my mail/calendaring/contacts were. For maps, I used Sygic, which you can purchase outside Play Store. Yes, I did lose Google Play, Youtube, Hangouts, but exactly that was the intent - not using Google services. Today, it would be even easier, with the existence F-Droid providing third-party apps.

cm2187 8y ago

I have good hopes that pwa+wasm will change that. What killed windows mobile is the lack of apps. In a world where you have performant apps, that are completely os independant, and do not even need to be distributed through a gated store, it makes it a lot easier for a challenger to break through.

spronkey 8y ago
Not a chance IMO. One major reason why native apps work is platform integration - both from an HCI perspective as well as a technology one. PWA and WASM will never be able to achieve these things.
- cm2187 8y ago
  I am sure certain apps need that integration but what is the percentage of apps that matter in your opinion?