3 ms·
I don't think their dirty tricks and legal consequences are the main point here. The question is poorly political: Do we want a functioning market economy or no
by usr1106 4y ago
I don't think their dirty tricks and legal consequences are the main point here. The question is poorly political: Do we want a functioning market economy or not? I take only the mobile phone operating system. We have a high end walled garden segment. By its price point it will always have limited market share. And we have a all-the-rest market segment. Competition between these market segments exists but it is by nature limited to a middle spectrum, some customers that could chose either options.
Within those rather fixed segments there is zero competition. (I said I limit my consideration to mobile operating systems, on phone hardware the situation is slightly different.) Zero competition is not market economy, so for me that means that Google's Android business must be regulated in an unprecedented way. Whether they gained their monopoly completely legally or not is just side topic. In practice that would probably mean that the Android business needs to be separated from the rest of the company and run as an utility or a non-profit until serious competition has developed again. I don't have the ready solution. The monopoly is unprecedented in history, so the solution needs to be so, too.
I am European, so the situation is even worse. Europe just waits and sees how US politics is busy with nearly losing democracy. A monopoly in the mobile operating system market is not very high on this agenda.
So what should Europe do? Create another Airbus? Introduce a heavy mobile operating system tax? I don't have good solutions, but just standing by is worse.
- bjornsing 4y ago> The monopoly is unprecedented in history, so the solution needs to be so, too. What makes you think the Android monopoly is any worse than the Windows monopoly of the 90ties?
- usr1106 4y agoFar fewer PCs in the 1990s than mobile phones today. You could live perfectly without a PC in the 1990s, everything was available using paper, phone or personal service. Yeah, but you have some point.
- DesiLurker 4y agoyou didn't need to pay microsoft a tax to run an application on 'their' devices.
- IceWreck 4y agoIn fact the Android monopoly is slightly better because you can choose to avoid using Google services and use the open source version of Android instead.
- usr1106 4y agoI do that in a way, I have no Google in my phone. But it gets increasingly difficult, more and more services you cannot buy without selling yourself to Google (or paying extra to be in Apple's walled garden).