5 ms·

Phones are not free, but Google offers Android licenses to phone makers for cheap. This leads to lower prices for phones. Yes, it's dumping because many of thes

by incosta 15y ago

Phones are not free, but Google offers Android licenses to phone makers for cheap. This leads to lower prices for phones. Yes, it's dumping because many of these phones are sold below what they actually cost to make if you take software development costs into account. This is classic definition of dumping. I have to admit I don't know much about Apple vs Samsung lawsuit. But some Samsung Android phones sure look just like copies of iPhone to me. I am not surprised Apple has been irritated by this.

drivebyacct2 15y ago
Is Dell "dumping" when they sell Ubuntu laptops and don't incorporate some sort of surcharge for me since I submitted a kernel patch for free? I can't imagine how open source software is ever part of a "classic definition of dumping". Are they dumping because they don't "take software development costs" of the radio firmware, or open source compression library, or (etc) into account? Besides, is the right response to "dumping" to collaborate with competitors to patent-block a common enemy? I really, really don't understand your position, and that may be ignorance on my part. (As for the SGS/II looking like the iPhone, that's really neither here nor there, but again, I don't think it excuses patent trolling.)
- incosta 15y ago
  With Dell you have a choice of buying a PC with Ubuntu, or Windows, or whatever. Other manufacturers can also do this. Will you be able to use Android phones without Android? No. I don't think your example fits well here. Android OS is the most essential part to make Android phones operate. It does cost Google a lot of money to make, yet it gives phone manufacturers licenses for cheap, just to make phones cheap enough so that users chose them over iPhones. Google wants it so bad they are willing to lose a lot of money now hoping it will pay off in future when everyone has Androids. Apple (and Microsoft) who cannot use this model (they don't dominate in ads or search markets) obviously don't like this. How would you feel if you were Apple? So they will try to use patents to make Android licenses more expensive. I hope I explained it well this time. P.S. I don't know what is the right response to dumping. With physical goods it's easy to prove. With software much harder. This does not mean dumping prices on phone OS software to kill competition is nice. Apple and MS are just using what they can within legal means. Google did not play it nice with them - why they should be nice to Google?
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  - yohui 15y ago
    > It does cost Google a lot of money to make, yet it gives phone manufacturers licenses for cheap, just to make phones cheap enough so that users chose them over iPhones. Google wants it so bad they are willing to lose a lot of money now hoping it will pay off in future when everyone has Androids. Apple (and Microsoft) who cannot use this model (they don't dominate in ads or search markets) obviously don't like this. No need to wait for the future, Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt have stated that Android is already profitable, through advertising revenue. That Microsoft and Apple can't compete with Google's business model is not unfair, it's business: they aren't owed profits, they must earn it. In any case, you might as well say that Apple-Software "licenses" Apple-Hardware iOS for "free" and makes money from the App Store. Is it "unfair" that the Android Market doesn't dominate developer attention like the App Store has? And Microsoft in particular is trying to build its own search and ad presence, so they might in theory adopt Google's model; that they aren't successful enough to drop licensing fees is tough luck. In any case, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to concerns that advertising-driven business models may cheapen software in the long term, but that this somehow justifies some pseudo-conspiracy to take down Android with patent litigation just flabbergasts me.
    - incosta 15y ago
      We can argue about what is fair forever. Some people at Sun (Oracle) can say it's unfair to take Java language they developed and offer it in Android without paying anything to them. And Steve Jobs can say it's unfair to use ideas from iPhone Apple spent years working on in Android without even asking them. The original post was about MS & Apple being anti-competitive by using patents. To me, using a dominant position in search/ads market to crush competition everywhere else is no better. This is exactly what Google is doing. You should ask yourself a question: will you be better off when Google one day dominates web, search, mobile, browser, possibly even desktop OS markets and desktop software and there will be no Apple or Microsoft and everyone will be forced to play the same game as Google? Will it be better off for everyone to make revenue on ads and pay Google a 50% share? I don't think it's going to be very good. This is why I would like both Apple and even MS also be players in the mobile if they offer good products. Competition, not domination by a single company is what actually drives innovation. Whose ideas will Google steal next when Apple is out of mobile business?
fiesycal 15y ago
Dumping also means when the competition is wiped out the prices will be raised. Do you think Google is going to do this?
- incosta 15y ago
  Dumping just means you sell something below the actual cost to kill competition. I don't know what Google plans are, as I said their source of revenue is ads. They want to become the largest player in the mobile market - because they will be in control of mobile ads then - just like they are in search, controlling 80+ percent of it. Do you want to see this happen? I don't particularly like this prospect.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    Exactly, and they are not selling Android below cost. They are making a profit with it.
    - incosta 15y ago
      Google says so. Microsoft was also making a lot of money with its Windows OS back in 1990s, when it packaged a free IE in order to kill Netscape (which was not free). Microsoft was making money on the whole OS and packaged IE with all new distributions. Netscape as commercial company was killed, eventually. A lot of developers were sympathetic with Netscape back then: they pioneered graphical browsers, and were truly innovative. Google today with Android is a lot like Microsoft back then. Yet for some reason, today offering free (deeply discounted, more precisely) stuff to kill competition is considered perfectly OK. I find this quite interesting.
      - nitrogen 15y ago
        Google today with Android is a lot like Microsoft back then. Yet for some reason, today offering free (deeply discounted, more precisely) stuff to kill competition is considered perfectly OK. I find this quite interesting. Not really. With IE vs. Netscape, Microsoft tied IE into an existing monopoly (its Windows 95 OS). There is no smartphone monopoly or mobile advertising monopoly. Even if you consider Google's search and/or ad positions a monopoly, Google isn't giving Android away for free in association with its monopoly, it's giving Android away for free independent of its monopoly (as evidenced by Android phones that don't use Google services by default, instead using Baidu, Yahoo, etc.). IE was tied into the Windows 95 OS, so customers had little choice in using it. This doesn't even consider the various agreements Microsoft made with OEMs. Also, behavior that is illegal or unethical for a company with a significant monopoly (e.g. Microsoft in the 1990s) may be legal or ethical for a non-monopoly company (e.g. Google's smartphone business in the 2010s). Edit: I will add that Netscape's business model was probably unsustainable regardless of IE being free. Web browsers are better off being free.
nextparadigms 15y ago
So what they are cheap. If company A offers a product for $100 , and company B offers it for $10. If company B is still profitable from the product is it still unfair? Because Google has said since last year that they are already making more money from Android than it costs them.
- doe88 15y ago
  But if what's driving them profits is partly contributed from their (dominant) position on ads, that clearly doesn't sound more fair to me.

by incosta 15y ago

drivebyacct2 15y ago

Is Dell "dumping" when they sell Ubuntu laptops and don't incorporate some sort of surcharge for me since I submitted a kernel patch for free? I can't imagine how open source software is ever part of a "classic definition of dumping". Are they dumping because they don't "take software development costs" of the radio firmware, or open source compression library, or (etc) into account? Besides, is the right response to "dumping" to collaborate with competitors to patent-block a common enemy? I really, really don't understand your position, and that may be ignorance on my part. (As for the SGS/II looking like the iPhone, that's really neither here nor there, but again, I don't think it excuses patent trolling.)

incosta 15y ago
With Dell you have a choice of buying a PC with Ubuntu, or Windows, or whatever. Other manufacturers can also do this. Will you be able to use Android phones without Android? No. I don't think your example fits well here. Android OS is the most essential part to make Android phones operate. It does cost Google a lot of money to make, yet it gives phone manufacturers licenses for cheap, just to make phones cheap enough so that users chose them over iPhones. Google wants it so bad they are willing to lose a lot of money now hoping it will pay off in future when everyone has Androids. Apple (and Microsoft) who cannot use this model (they don't dominate in ads or search markets) obviously don't like this. How would you feel if you were Apple? So they will try to use patents to make Android licenses more expensive. I hope I explained it well this time. P.S. I don't know what is the right response to dumping. With physical goods it's easy to prove. With software much harder. This does not mean dumping prices on phone OS software to kill competition is nice. Apple and MS are just using what they can within legal means. Google did not play it nice with them - why they should be nice to Google?
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- yohui 15y ago
  > It does cost Google a lot of money to make, yet it gives phone manufacturers licenses for cheap, just to make phones cheap enough so that users chose them over iPhones. Google wants it so bad they are willing to lose a lot of money now hoping it will pay off in future when everyone has Androids. Apple (and Microsoft) who cannot use this model (they don't dominate in ads or search markets) obviously don't like this. No need to wait for the future, Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt have stated that Android is already profitable, through advertising revenue. That Microsoft and Apple can't compete with Google's business model is not unfair, it's business: they aren't owed profits, they must earn it. In any case, you might as well say that Apple-Software "licenses" Apple-Hardware iOS for "free" and makes money from the App Store. Is it "unfair" that the Android Market doesn't dominate developer attention like the App Store has? And Microsoft in particular is trying to build its own search and ad presence, so they might in theory adopt Google's model; that they aren't successful enough to drop licensing fees is tough luck. In any case, I'm not entirely unsympathetic to concerns that advertising-driven business models may cheapen software in the long term, but that this somehow justifies some pseudo-conspiracy to take down Android with patent litigation just flabbergasts me.
  - incosta 15y ago
    We can argue about what is fair forever. Some people at Sun (Oracle) can say it's unfair to take Java language they developed and offer it in Android without paying anything to them. And Steve Jobs can say it's unfair to use ideas from iPhone Apple spent years working on in Android without even asking them. The original post was about MS & Apple being anti-competitive by using patents. To me, using a dominant position in search/ads market to crush competition everywhere else is no better. This is exactly what Google is doing. You should ask yourself a question: will you be better off when Google one day dominates web, search, mobile, browser, possibly even desktop OS markets and desktop software and there will be no Apple or Microsoft and everyone will be forced to play the same game as Google? Will it be better off for everyone to make revenue on ads and pay Google a 50% share? I don't think it's going to be very good. This is why I would like both Apple and even MS also be players in the mobile if they offer good products. Competition, not domination by a single company is what actually drives innovation. Whose ideas will Google steal next when Apple is out of mobile business?

fiesycal 15y ago

Dumping also means when the competition is wiped out the prices will be raised. Do you think Google is going to do this?

incosta 15y ago
Dumping just means you sell something below the actual cost to kill competition. I don't know what Google plans are, as I said their source of revenue is ads. They want to become the largest player in the mobile market - because they will be in control of mobile ads then - just like they are in search, controlling 80+ percent of it. Do you want to see this happen? I don't particularly like this prospect.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Exactly, and they are not selling Android below cost. They are making a profit with it.
  - incosta 15y ago
    Google says so. Microsoft was also making a lot of money with its Windows OS back in 1990s, when it packaged a free IE in order to kill Netscape (which was not free). Microsoft was making money on the whole OS and packaged IE with all new distributions. Netscape as commercial company was killed, eventually. A lot of developers were sympathetic with Netscape back then: they pioneered graphical browsers, and were truly innovative. Google today with Android is a lot like Microsoft back then. Yet for some reason, today offering free (deeply discounted, more precisely) stuff to kill competition is considered perfectly OK. I find this quite interesting.
    - nitrogen 15y ago
      Google today with Android is a lot like Microsoft back then. Yet for some reason, today offering free (deeply discounted, more precisely) stuff to kill competition is considered perfectly OK. I find this quite interesting. Not really. With IE vs. Netscape, Microsoft tied IE into an existing monopoly (its Windows 95 OS). There is no smartphone monopoly or mobile advertising monopoly. Even if you consider Google's search and/or ad positions a monopoly, Google isn't giving Android away for free in association with its monopoly, it's giving Android away for free independent of its monopoly (as evidenced by Android phones that don't use Google services by default, instead using Baidu, Yahoo, etc.). IE was tied into the Windows 95 OS, so customers had little choice in using it. This doesn't even consider the various agreements Microsoft made with OEMs. Also, behavior that is illegal or unethical for a company with a significant monopoly (e.g. Microsoft in the 1990s) may be legal or ethical for a non-monopoly company (e.g. Google's smartphone business in the 2010s). Edit: I will add that Netscape's business model was probably unsustainable regardless of IE being free. Web browsers are better off being free.

nextparadigms 15y ago

So what they are cheap. If company A offers a product for $100 , and company B offers it for $10. If company B is still profitable from the product is it still unfair? Because Google has said since last year that they are already making more money from Android than it costs them.

doe88 15y ago
But if what's driving them profits is partly contributed from their (dominant) position on ads, that clearly doesn't sound more fair to me.