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> Manufacturers should be able to get only the Google Play store. Why? Google is a for-profit company that puts time and effort into developing the store. The

by beaner 8y ago

> Manufacturers should be able to get only the Google Play store. Why? Google is a for-profit company that puts time and effort into developing the store. The play store may not actually be self-sustaining in terms of revenue. Perhaps it is paid for by things like Maps and YouTube. Shouldn't Google be able to specify the terms of use for its closed-source products? It seems sane that those terms might specify a package deal with other products. By mandating that companies should be able to only get the Play Store, you're asking that Google work for free for others, and that doesn't seem fair.

AndersSandvik 8y ago
The rules are different, like in this situation, for companies that are near to or in a monopoly situation. Last I checked Android had over 85% smartphone market share.
- llampx 8y ago
  Not to mention a situation where a huge megacorp has basically driven every other smartphone OS out of the market by dumping[0] its software on the market and then insidiously making it less free and open with every release. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
snthd 8y ago
Google play earned $6.2B in 2018Q3
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  And how much did it cost to develop and operate? Including traffic acquisition.
s3r3nity 8y ago
> Perhaps it is paid for by things like Maps and YouTube. This is why monopoly rules exist, and why it's not quite so simple. Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti-competitive behavior. My retort to your argument would be: why even do hardware / Android at all? Because it's a distribution mechanism for _their_ services. If you leverage market dominance to expand that distribution network with fewer / no alternatives for consumers, that's like anti-trust 101.
- fixermark 8y ago
  > Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti-competitive behavior. Is it less clear how monopoly rules work if the price is "free?" If a company can offer a service for free by supplementing the cost with bundling (in a market where the going rate is "free") vs. not offering it at all, I'm not sure that's considered the same by US monopoly law (I have no idea of EU monopoly law).
  - s3r3nity 8y ago
    It's a reasonable question - but the price can never be truly "free," because there's a cost to investment / build that product - meaning costs are non-zero. Therefore the negative profit in the short-term due to pricing is called "undercutting," as other companies (generally) don't have that luxury in the long run. You have to ask: why is it free? - A thousand engineers working on a non-revenue product for Google is like "pennies," when it might be a whole company anywhere else. - How are you funding that negative profit? Using leverage and profit from strong market position elsewhere. Therefore: anti-competitive, as other companies in the space don't have similar leverage. Now, a startup can, say, operate at negative profit and not count as "anti-competitive," because a startup most likely has fractional market share. But imagine you're building a startup in a brand new space, and Google decides to also enter that space. If you price your product at $10, and Google says "we're pricing at $0," you can imagine how no one could compete with that for the long-term. Hence why monopoly / anti-competitive rules are important.
    - fixermark 8y ago
      If we're talking app stores, I think it's free because no consumer would pay for it. F-Droid is also free.
      - shock 8y ago
        I don't think this argument holds generally. For example people used to pay for GPS apps (iGO, TomTom, etc.) before Google Maps/other navi apps were available for "free" on smartphones. Google, in fact, might have destroyed a market by making Google Maps "free".
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Given the massive 30% cut the Play Store takes on all app sales and in-app purchases, it's likely the Play Store is wildly profitable on it's own. That being said, this announcement actually revealed the real moneymakers: Everything else Google offers is just what they feel they need to keep you locked into Search and Chrome, which drive Google's real market dominance. The only real reason they're making it hard to get the Play Store (despite it being self-sustainable) is to provide an incentive to let them put Chrome and Search on the phone, and that carries through with this announcement. They'll charge for the Play Store, but they'll happily pay you more or less the same amount to install Chrome and Search.
zelon88 8y ago
> Shouldn't Google be able to specify the terms of use for its closed-source products? It seems sane that those terms might specify a package deal with other products. Not to the extent that it is allowed to decimate competition. Related: When IBM was trying to find software for the IBM-PC they went to Microsoft initially looking to buy just the languages (like BASIC) to run on it. They wound up buying DOS for pennies on the dollar because Microsoft valued contractual freedom to deal with other businesses over instant bottom-line. IBM low-balled Microsoft expecting them to come back higher, but instead they accepted on the condition that they be allowed to sell their OS to other vendors. The result was nearly 40 years of market domination because for years nobody could decouple Microsoft Windows from the PC. Even after it slipped out of IBMs grasp; Microsoft held on. Microsoft commoditized the hardware and then strong-armed everyone into license agreements because they had unstoppable market share. It was almost a case of "Give them the razor for free but make them keep coming back for blades." Microsoft could, quite literally, give away their code for free without fear of financial loss because every PC running Windows was infinitely more valuable than that same PC running anything else. By running Windows instead, even a free one, Microsoft was strengthening it's market share. With Android and mobile devices the hardware is already a commodity. Google has all the market share it needs. They don't need more reward for something that's already been paid off if it just means the rest of the market is limited in their ability to do business outside of Google. The entire market doesn't need to support Google on both sides. We're paying Google in data, in market share, and in advertising revenue. Bending Samsung's arm backwards to install the whole kit just breaks competition. It's triple dipping for Google to the detriment of the rest of us. For what? Just so Google can make sure they're the only Google forever? They're licensing practices are disingenuous and anti-competitive for the sake of limiting advancement that could threaten Google's bottom line. That potential advancement would be a huge benefit for the rest of the world, but we may never see it if Google is allowed to completely own the tech sector in every conceivable way.
rayiner 8y ago
Antitrust theory says that a company should not be able to use a product where it has a monopoly to get people to use another product where it lacks a monopoly. If we assume that Google has a monopoly on smart phone platforms with Android/the Google Play Store, (I take no position on whether that's true) it should not be able to leverage that monopoly to get people to use Maps and YouTube, where it has no monopoly. That doesn't mean that Google has to "work for free." Nothing prevents them from simply charging money for Android and the Play Store. But Google doesn't want to be Symbian, getting a $10-15 one-time license free per phone. Instead, it wants to use Android/GPE as a vehicle for getting people to use apps like YouTube, which generate recurring revenue. That's a great business strategy, but if you're too successful with it, you run into antitrust concerns. (Google's should've probably taken a page from Intel/Microsoft and paid off Symbian or Blackberry to keep working on an Android competitor.)
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > Nothing prevents them from simply charging money for Android and the Play Store. So what happens when they do just that, but the price for Android + Play Store sans Google Apps is ~$150, i.e. the same price as Microsoft Windows? It's completely fair to ask that they offer an a la carte version for full price, but then almost everyone would choose the free/discounted version that bundles the services. It's also fair to ask that the user be able to uninstall them, but again most of them won't. What the hardware vendors are really after is the ability to sell the default position to someone else. The profit from which disappears with the discount Google was giving them for exactly that.
  - apexalpha 8y ago
    >So what happens when they do just that, but the price for Android + Play Store sans Google Apps is ~$150, i.e. the same price as Microsoft Windows? In that case other companies, say, Micrsoft could then start to offer a $100 Android version containing Edge, Bing Maps, Hotmail as services. Exactly what this anti-trust measure try to accomplish. Now, this is not possible since Google forces you to install Chrome if you want Play Store. Which basically leverages it's monopoly on mobile OS to get more market share in the browser game.
reaperducer 8y ago
That sort of thinking is the reason millions of people who never watch sports on TV have to pay for ESPN as part of their cable/satellite package, whether they like it or not.
syn0byte 8y ago
Why? Because they clearly spent a lot of time and effort on making a supposedly FOSS OS dependent on it, while actively encouraging vendors to use said OS by claiming it was FOSS. They already didn't play fair.
eudora 8y ago
> The play store may not actually be self-sustaining in terms of revenue Really? 30% of every sale and in-app purchase in the entire android ecosystem of billions of users? I think it's probably profitable. Just a bit.
themihai 8y ago
Perhaps Google should charge whatever profit it wants for Google Play store. And here is the beauty: If google charges too much then someone else will offer a "play store" for less thus more competition. If Maps and YouTube are so important to Google then it should advertise them more(i.e. pay the local/global manufacturer or whoever can advertise it). This way the market is open to competition for each product. Bonus: Android could become more privacy oriented. More choices for end users, more choices for manufactures => happy people, less monopoly. Side note: I'm not particularly happy with the dictatorships regimes(Google and Apple) in the native apps environment. It just doesn't feel right to have the whole world censored/guarded by two big corporations.

by beaner 8y ago

AndersSandvik 8y ago

The rules are different, like in this situation, for companies that are near to or in a monopoly situation. Last I checked Android had over 85% smartphone market share.

llampx 8y ago
Not to mention a situation where a huge megacorp has basically driven every other smartphone OS out of the market by dumping[0] its software on the market and then insidiously making it less free and open with every release. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

snthd 8y ago

Google play earned $6.2B in 2018Q3

Godel_unicode 8y ago
And how much did it cost to develop and operate? Including traffic acquisition.

s3r3nity 8y ago

> Perhaps it is paid for by things like Maps and YouTube. This is why monopoly rules exist, and why it's not quite so simple. Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti-competitive behavior. My retort to your argument would be: why even do hardware / Android at all? Because it's a distribution mechanism for _their_ services. If you leverage market dominance to expand that distribution network with fewer / no alternatives for consumers, that's like anti-trust 101.

fixermark 8y ago
> Leveraging strong market position in one market, say search/advertising, to undercut prices in a completely different market is clear-cut anti-competitive behavior. Is it less clear how monopoly rules work if the price is "free?" If a company can offer a service for free by supplementing the cost with bundling (in a market where the going rate is "free") vs. not offering it at all, I'm not sure that's considered the same by US monopoly law (I have no idea of EU monopoly law).
- s3r3nity 8y ago
  It's a reasonable question - but the price can never be truly "free," because there's a cost to investment / build that product - meaning costs are non-zero. Therefore the negative profit in the short-term due to pricing is called "undercutting," as other companies (generally) don't have that luxury in the long run. You have to ask: why is it free? - A thousand engineers working on a non-revenue product for Google is like "pennies," when it might be a whole company anywhere else. - How are you funding that negative profit? Using leverage and profit from strong market position elsewhere. Therefore: anti-competitive, as other companies in the space don't have similar leverage. Now, a startup can, say, operate at negative profit and not count as "anti-competitive," because a startup most likely has fractional market share. But imagine you're building a startup in a brand new space, and Google decides to also enter that space. If you price your product at $10, and Google says "we're pricing at $0," you can imagine how no one could compete with that for the long-term. Hence why monopoly / anti-competitive rules are important.
  - fixermark 8y ago
    If we're talking app stores, I think it's free because no consumer would pay for it. F-Droid is also free.
    - shock 8y ago
      I don't think this argument holds generally. For example people used to pay for GPS apps (iGO, TomTom, etc.) before Google Maps/other navi apps were available for "free" on smartphones. Google, in fact, might have destroyed a market by making Google Maps "free".

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Given the massive 30% cut the Play Store takes on all app sales and in-app purchases, it's likely the Play Store is wildly profitable on it's own. That being said, this announcement actually revealed the real moneymakers: Everything else Google offers is just what they feel they need to keep you locked into Search and Chrome, which drive Google's real market dominance. The only real reason they're making it hard to get the Play Store (despite it being self-sustainable) is to provide an incentive to let them put Chrome and Search on the phone, and that carries through with this announcement. They'll charge for the Play Store, but they'll happily pay you more or less the same amount to install Chrome and Search.

zelon88 8y ago

> Shouldn't Google be able to specify the terms of use for its closed-source products? It seems sane that those terms might specify a package deal with other products. Not to the extent that it is allowed to decimate competition. Related: When IBM was trying to find software for the IBM-PC they went to Microsoft initially looking to buy just the languages (like BASIC) to run on it. They wound up buying DOS for pennies on the dollar because Microsoft valued contractual freedom to deal with other businesses over instant bottom-line. IBM low-balled Microsoft expecting them to come back higher, but instead they accepted on the condition that they be allowed to sell their OS to other vendors. The result was nearly 40 years of market domination because for years nobody could decouple Microsoft Windows from the PC. Even after it slipped out of IBMs grasp; Microsoft held on. Microsoft commoditized the hardware and then strong-armed everyone into license agreements because they had unstoppable market share. It was almost a case of "Give them the razor for free but make them keep coming back for blades." Microsoft could, quite literally, give away their code for free without fear of financial loss because every PC running Windows was infinitely more valuable than that same PC running anything else. By running Windows instead, even a free one, Microsoft was strengthening it's market share. With Android and mobile devices the hardware is already a commodity. Google has all the market share it needs. They don't need more reward for something that's already been paid off if it just means the rest of the market is limited in their ability to do business outside of Google. The entire market doesn't need to support Google on both sides. We're paying Google in data, in market share, and in advertising revenue. Bending Samsung's arm backwards to install the whole kit just breaks competition. It's triple dipping for Google to the detriment of the rest of us. For what? Just so Google can make sure they're the only Google forever? They're licensing practices are disingenuous and anti-competitive for the sake of limiting advancement that could threaten Google's bottom line. That potential advancement would be a huge benefit for the rest of the world, but we may never see it if Google is allowed to completely own the tech sector in every conceivable way.

rayiner 8y ago

Antitrust theory says that a company should not be able to use a product where it has a monopoly to get people to use another product where it lacks a monopoly. If we assume that Google has a monopoly on smart phone platforms with Android/the Google Play Store, (I take no position on whether that's true) it should not be able to leverage that monopoly to get people to use Maps and YouTube, where it has no monopoly. That doesn't mean that Google has to "work for free." Nothing prevents them from simply charging money for Android and the Play Store. But Google doesn't want to be Symbian, getting a $10-15 one-time license free per phone. Instead, it wants to use Android/GPE as a vehicle for getting people to use apps like YouTube, which generate recurring revenue. That's a great business strategy, but if you're too successful with it, you run into antitrust concerns. (Google's should've probably taken a page from Intel/Microsoft and paid off Symbian or Blackberry to keep working on an Android competitor.)

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> Nothing prevents them from simply charging money for Android and the Play Store. So what happens when they do just that, but the price for Android + Play Store sans Google Apps is ~$150, i.e. the same price as Microsoft Windows? It's completely fair to ask that they offer an a la carte version for full price, but then almost everyone would choose the free/discounted version that bundles the services. It's also fair to ask that the user be able to uninstall them, but again most of them won't. What the hardware vendors are really after is the ability to sell the default position to someone else. The profit from which disappears with the discount Google was giving them for exactly that.
- apexalpha 8y ago
  >So what happens when they do just that, but the price for Android + Play Store sans Google Apps is ~$150, i.e. the same price as Microsoft Windows? In that case other companies, say, Micrsoft could then start to offer a $100 Android version containing Edge, Bing Maps, Hotmail as services. Exactly what this anti-trust measure try to accomplish. Now, this is not possible since Google forces you to install Chrome if you want Play Store. Which basically leverages it's monopoly on mobile OS to get more market share in the browser game.

reaperducer 8y ago

That sort of thinking is the reason millions of people who never watch sports on TV have to pay for ESPN as part of their cable/satellite package, whether they like it or not.

syn0byte 8y ago

Why? Because they clearly spent a lot of time and effort on making a supposedly FOSS OS dependent on it, while actively encouraging vendors to use said OS by claiming it was FOSS. They already didn't play fair.

eudora 8y ago

> The play store may not actually be self-sustaining in terms of revenue Really? 30% of every sale and in-app purchase in the entire android ecosystem of billions of users? I think it's probably profitable. Just a bit.

themihai 8y ago

Perhaps Google should charge whatever profit it wants for Google Play store. And here is the beauty: If google charges too much then someone else will offer a "play store" for less thus more competition. If Maps and YouTube are so important to Google then it should advertise them more(i.e. pay the local/global manufacturer or whoever can advertise it). This way the market is open to competition for each product. Bonus: Android could become more privacy oriented. More choices for end users, more choices for manufactures => happy people, less monopoly. Side note: I'm not particularly happy with the dictatorships regimes(Google and Apple) in the native apps environment. It just doesn't feel right to have the whole world censored/guarded by two big corporations.