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Did anyone read this article? The headline is misleading. It clearly states in the first line: > "Google’s contract with Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola blocked

Did anyone read this article? The headline is misleading. It clearly states in the first line: > "Google’s contract with Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola blocked the smartphone maker from setting Perplexity AI as the default assistant on its new devices" They didn't block Perplexity AI from Motorola's devices, the agreement states that they allow them to preload the devices with Perplexity, but the agreement, that both parties signed, does not give Motorola the permission to set it as the default. > "Motorola “can’t get out of their Google obligations and so they are unable to change the default assistant on the device.” They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim they had no choice. I understand the premise, that they think they had no choice, but this article is misleading in its headline, and plenty of the comments here clearly show that a lot of "readers" didn't bother to read it.

behringer 1y ago
If Lenovo wants preferential terms they have to sign.
- trhway 1y ago
  If i remember correctly, it was similar argument when Microsoft in similar way blocked other browsers' pre-install - "if Dell wants to be MS Windows preferred partner ...". And ultimately that argument didn't fly. Though unfortunately a huge irreparable damage was still done.
paxys 1y ago
Most online journalism relies on clickbait, and they know people aren't going to read too much past the headline to care (and 99% of threads on sites like HN clearly demonstrate that).
- esseph 1y ago
  You should just say 99% of material, because it has nothing to do with the "type" of site, what you're talking about is just a human behavior.
  - tomjakubowski 1y ago
    "The very basis of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding"
- 62342342 1y ago
  well at least it is new information unlike your statement.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
keeda 1y ago
Sure a contract was signed, but as has been pointed out many times about Google's heavy-handed control over Android, it doesn't mean it was fair to all parties: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... Given the recent judgements about Google's anticompetitive behavior in multiple other arenas, revisiting these licensing agreements seems justified.
- surajrmal 1y ago
  Android is open source and Google play services is technically possible to avoid. What other major operating system vendor for consumer electronics goes out of their way to make this sort of thing possible? Apple and Microsoft sure don't.
  - keeda 1y ago
    If you read the article I linked and many of the criticisms in these comments (not to mention TFA) smartphone vendors need to cede a huge amount of control to Google to have a viable product. As such, the open source aspect of Android is just a very effective distraction from the anti-competitive practices that Google has been plying with it.
  - realusername 1y ago
    Legally or illegally? If you don't care about doing it legally, sure you can make a stub Google play service and fake the device integrity by extracting certificates from other devices. If you care about the laws though you cannot really get rid of the play services.
    - hedora 1y ago
      What’s illegal about stubs + extracting certs? If the certificates were used for copy protection, the DMCA might apply. If they weren’t part of the API, copyright might apply. Patent law doesn’t apply, and trade secrets don’t enjoy legal protection. They could argue you’re in violation of their terms of service, but their remedy for that is to kick you off the services you’re actively avoiding. Is there some other law I’m missing?
ivewonyoung 1y ago
Google is a convicted monopolist, so it has to play by different rules.
benoau 1y ago
They blocked Perplexity via agreements, amongst many agreements to fortify their monopoly, the legality of which has been challenged in court and this testimony is to demonstrate that this agreement also belongs in the "illegal" bucket.
- MrDarcy 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - hotstickyballs 1y ago
    True, but this just added extra visibility to the anti trust case
  - zodiakzz 1y ago
    Google could be running foul of antitrust laws if forcing Gemini as default on Android OEM's is part of the standard contract required to use the Android brand.
    - surajrmal 1y ago
      The use of the android brand is allowed to be used by anything passing the compatibility test suite. That doesn't have any Google specific requirements afaik. Contracts with Google only come into play when trying to utilize Google play services or google play store in your product.
  - gostsamo 1y ago
    mmm, which part of the constitution? I remember one explicit delegation to the federal government of the cross border trade, plus a long list of items that people are forbidden from trading freely, plus, recently, a long list of items where the government meddles by imposing taxes on imported trade.
  - dayvigo 1y ago
    [flagged]
627467 1y ago
> They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim they had no choice. Did the title change? They (Lenovo) are going to court? This is an antitrust case against Google and the witness is not part of the agreement signed. Is Lenovo suing Google? The title is representing the witness (perplexity) stance, not Lenovo's. And given it's a antitrust suit it seems like a very valid stance.
- throwaway314155 1y ago
  Read it again perhaps? Without any of that context, it just reads like "google blocked [some/all] use of Perplexity AI on [some/all] Motorola devices" Try not to overthink it.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    Even rereading the whole thread I don't get what is misleading. Google and Motorola signed an agreement, and it blocks Motorola from using Perplexity as its core search engine. Saying Google has no part in this would be wrong, and the fact that the agreement was mutual doesn't change the restrictions.
  - 627467 1y ago
    Who's overthinking? This is not an example of a bad title: the main message of the piece is that a (prosecuting?) witness is demonstrating how the alleged antitrust behavior of one of the signatory parties prevents them from operating as they see fit. Lenovo is not the one on the stand being accused of antitrust behavior. I guess perplexity could accuse Lenovo of antitrust behavior but that's not the case the article is describing, is it?
phire 1y ago
It’s a little oversimplified, but I wouldn’t call it misleading. There is little point to getting an app like perplexity AI pre-installed on a phone as a non-default. Changing defaults isn’t exactly trivial, and any user motivated enough to go through that will have no problems installing the app from the App Store. So of course the deal fell through. And it’s accurate to say that “Google blocked a deal to put Perplexity AI on Motorola phones”, and highly monopolistic. Though… as an end user and occasional family tech support person, I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones. Thanks google.
- bluGill 1y ago
  > I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones Except that I still get all the google bloatware on my phone.
  - hedora 1y ago
    On my pixel, GrapheneOS has 2x the battery life of factory android. Of course, most commercial apps won’t run due to Google’s monopolistic bullshit. You can partially fix it by installing (sandboxed) google play services, but that halves the battery life back to what stock android gets.
    - ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
      Every single app I have tried on GrapheneOS works great without GMS except Too Good To Go (their app mandates location access and the manual location selection is broken). I download them using Aurora Store.
alextingle 1y ago
You could have simply written "I have no idea what anti-trust is all about", and saved yourself a lot of words.
supermatt 1y ago
> they think they had no choice And they really don't have a choice. if you don't abide by googles terms then they will not permit you to use google mobile services. That means (at the very least): - No "play" services (breaks lots of apps and 3rd party peripherals). - No app store (over 90% of apps are distributed solely through the play store. even major android players like samsung have tiny libraries in their own stores). - No youtube app (and no way to natively play without play services APIs, you NEED to use a crippled iframe embed in a webview!!!) - No push notifications (developers usually target the "built-in" option that is basically play services) - Missing apps and api-level integration with loads of other stuff, maps, mail, search, calendar, casting, etc - No widevine DRM (no hd/4k netflix, etc) - Loads of other insidious stuff I cant recall or articulate right now You cant even use the word "Android" to describe the OS. Just look at how crippled Amazons fork is. Or how huawei pretty much lost their entire GLOBAL market share because of a US sanction preventing them having a GMS contract. No matter what anyone says, android IS google. It is so riddled with google specific behaviours you cant use without a license that companies have even ditched android to make their own OS - because they literally aren't allowed to favorably position their own functionality over googles in any way.
- GoblinSlayer 1y ago
  Related: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/04/a9b0beb4443a-urgent-japan-ftc-tells-google-to-stop-antitrust-practice-over-smartphone-app.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/04/a9b0beb4443a-urge...
- gaiagraphia 1y ago
  Big shout out to Google Play Integrity/Safety Net (or whatever it's currently called). Was the one thing which ended my couple of years without Google, as my banking apps started banning my phones fingerprint for being insecure. Seems like in a major part of '''Pax Americana''' is needing to use a Google or Apple fingerprint to participate in society. Makes you laugh when people whinge about China.
  - zb3 1y ago
    In Europe, banking apps block root but still work on a custom OS (like LineageOS) without contactless payments. I guess this is because many people here buy Chinese phones and they just can't ignore them.
franga2000 1y ago
Calling the Google Apps agreement something phone vendors voluntarily agreed to is pedantic, reductive and useless. Yes, technically they didn't get physically forced into it, but that's not the whole story. Google used their unimaginably deep pockets and several monopolies to make sure that no phone without Google Apps will sell. Look at what happened to Huawei after Trump's ban - there were articles in even mainstream media about how people are buying the P10 (was it?), starting it up, realizing nothing works and trying to return it. And literally the only reason that "nothing worked" was that it didn't have Google Play services.
0xTJ 1y ago
Google has a monopoly on Android services and app distribution that the used to effectively force them to sign it. Literally not having a choice isn't the only way to be coerced to agree.
jillyboel 1y ago
As a device maker if Google or Apple demands that you jump, you jump. They are essentially being strongarmed by the duopoly.
rezonant 1y ago
Since the title has changed since you wrote this, it may be prudent to include the title at question in the future for clarity. The original title was: > Google blocked Motorola use of Perplexity AI, witness says The new title is: > Google contract prevented Motorola from setting Perplexity as default assistant The new title definitely addresses this issue, but since you're at the top of the comments, you're likely to get a lot of people responding with disagreement and/or downvoting.

behringer 1y ago

If Lenovo wants preferential terms they have to sign.

trhway 1y ago
If i remember correctly, it was similar argument when Microsoft in similar way blocked other browsers' pre-install - "if Dell wants to be MS Windows preferred partner ...". And ultimately that argument didn't fly. Though unfortunately a huge irreparable damage was still done.

paxys 1y ago

Most online journalism relies on clickbait, and they know people aren't going to read too much past the headline to care (and 99% of threads on sites like HN clearly demonstrate that).

esseph 1y ago
You should just say 99% of material, because it has nothing to do with the "type" of site, what you're talking about is just a human behavior.
- tomjakubowski 1y ago
  "The very basis of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding"
62342342 1y ago
well at least it is new information unlike your statement.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

keeda 1y ago

Sure a contract was signed, but as has been pointed out many times about Google's heavy-handed control over Android, it doesn't mean it was fair to all parties: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... Given the recent judgements about Google's anticompetitive behavior in multiple other arenas, revisiting these licensing agreements seems justified.

surajrmal 1y ago
Android is open source and Google play services is technically possible to avoid. What other major operating system vendor for consumer electronics goes out of their way to make this sort of thing possible? Apple and Microsoft sure don't.
- keeda 1y ago
  If you read the article I linked and many of the criticisms in these comments (not to mention TFA) smartphone vendors need to cede a huge amount of control to Google to have a viable product. As such, the open source aspect of Android is just a very effective distraction from the anti-competitive practices that Google has been plying with it.
- realusername 1y ago
  Legally or illegally? If you don't care about doing it legally, sure you can make a stub Google play service and fake the device integrity by extracting certificates from other devices. If you care about the laws though you cannot really get rid of the play services.
  - hedora 1y ago
    What’s illegal about stubs + extracting certs? If the certificates were used for copy protection, the DMCA might apply. If they weren’t part of the API, copyright might apply. Patent law doesn’t apply, and trade secrets don’t enjoy legal protection. They could argue you’re in violation of their terms of service, but their remedy for that is to kick you off the services you’re actively avoiding. Is there some other law I’m missing?

ivewonyoung 1y ago

Google is a convicted monopolist, so it has to play by different rules.

benoau 1y ago

They blocked Perplexity via agreements, amongst many agreements to fortify their monopoly, the legality of which has been challenged in court and this testimony is to demonstrate that this agreement also belongs in the "illegal" bucket.

MrDarcy 1y ago
[flagged]
- hotstickyballs 1y ago
  True, but this just added extra visibility to the anti trust case
- zodiakzz 1y ago
  Google could be running foul of antitrust laws if forcing Gemini as default on Android OEM's is part of the standard contract required to use the Android brand.
  - surajrmal 1y ago
    The use of the android brand is allowed to be used by anything passing the compatibility test suite. That doesn't have any Google specific requirements afaik. Contracts with Google only come into play when trying to utilize Google play services or google play store in your product.
- gostsamo 1y ago
  mmm, which part of the constitution? I remember one explicit delegation to the federal government of the cross border trade, plus a long list of items that people are forbidden from trading freely, plus, recently, a long list of items where the government meddles by imposing taxes on imported trade.
- dayvigo 1y ago
  [flagged]

627467 1y ago

> They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim they had no choice. Did the title change? They (Lenovo) are going to court? This is an antitrust case against Google and the witness is not part of the agreement signed. Is Lenovo suing Google? The title is representing the witness (perplexity) stance, not Lenovo's. And given it's a antitrust suit it seems like a very valid stance.

throwaway314155 1y ago
Read it again perhaps? Without any of that context, it just reads like "google blocked [some/all] use of Perplexity AI on [some/all] Motorola devices" Try not to overthink it.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  Even rereading the whole thread I don't get what is misleading. Google and Motorola signed an agreement, and it blocks Motorola from using Perplexity as its core search engine. Saying Google has no part in this would be wrong, and the fact that the agreement was mutual doesn't change the restrictions.
- 627467 1y ago
  Who's overthinking? This is not an example of a bad title: the main message of the piece is that a (prosecuting?) witness is demonstrating how the alleged antitrust behavior of one of the signatory parties prevents them from operating as they see fit. Lenovo is not the one on the stand being accused of antitrust behavior. I guess perplexity could accuse Lenovo of antitrust behavior but that's not the case the article is describing, is it?

phire 1y ago

It’s a little oversimplified, but I wouldn’t call it misleading. There is little point to getting an app like perplexity AI pre-installed on a phone as a non-default. Changing defaults isn’t exactly trivial, and any user motivated enough to go through that will have no problems installing the app from the App Store. So of course the deal fell through. And it’s accurate to say that “Google blocked a deal to put Perplexity AI on Motorola phones”, and highly monopolistic. Though… as an end user and occasional family tech support person, I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones. Thanks google.

bluGill 1y ago
> I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones Except that I still get all the google bloatware on my phone.
- hedora 1y ago
  On my pixel, GrapheneOS has 2x the battery life of factory android. Of course, most commercial apps won’t run due to Google’s monopolistic bullshit. You can partially fix it by installing (sandboxed) google play services, but that halves the battery life back to what stock android gets.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
    Every single app I have tried on GrapheneOS works great without GMS except Too Good To Go (their app mandates location access and the manual location selection is broken). I download them using Aurora Store.

alextingle 1y ago

You could have simply written "I have no idea what anti-trust is all about", and saved yourself a lot of words.

supermatt 1y ago

> they think they had no choice And they really don't have a choice. if you don't abide by googles terms then they will not permit you to use google mobile services. That means (at the very least): - No "play" services (breaks lots of apps and 3rd party peripherals). - No app store (over 90% of apps are distributed solely through the play store. even major android players like samsung have tiny libraries in their own stores). - No youtube app (and no way to natively play without play services APIs, you NEED to use a crippled iframe embed in a webview!!!) - No push notifications (developers usually target the "built-in" option that is basically play services) - Missing apps and api-level integration with loads of other stuff, maps, mail, search, calendar, casting, etc - No widevine DRM (no hd/4k netflix, etc) - Loads of other insidious stuff I cant recall or articulate right now You cant even use the word "Android" to describe the OS. Just look at how crippled Amazons fork is. Or how huawei pretty much lost their entire GLOBAL market share because of a US sanction preventing them having a GMS contract. No matter what anyone says, android IS google. It is so riddled with google specific behaviours you cant use without a license that companies have even ditched android to make their own OS - because they literally aren't allowed to favorably position their own functionality over googles in any way.

GoblinSlayer 1y ago
Related: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/04/a9b0beb4443a-urgent-japan-ftc-tells-google-to-stop-antitrust-practice-over-smartphone-app.html https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/04/a9b0beb4443a-urge...
gaiagraphia 1y ago
Big shout out to Google Play Integrity/Safety Net (or whatever it's currently called). Was the one thing which ended my couple of years without Google, as my banking apps started banning my phones fingerprint for being insecure. Seems like in a major part of '''Pax Americana''' is needing to use a Google or Apple fingerprint to participate in society. Makes you laugh when people whinge about China.
- zb3 1y ago
  In Europe, banking apps block root but still work on a custom OS (like LineageOS) without contactless payments. I guess this is because many people here buy Chinese phones and they just can't ignore them.

franga2000 1y ago

Calling the Google Apps agreement something phone vendors voluntarily agreed to is pedantic, reductive and useless. Yes, technically they didn't get physically forced into it, but that's not the whole story. Google used their unimaginably deep pockets and several monopolies to make sure that no phone without Google Apps will sell. Look at what happened to Huawei after Trump's ban - there were articles in even mainstream media about how people are buying the P10 (was it?), starting it up, realizing nothing works and trying to return it. And literally the only reason that "nothing worked" was that it didn't have Google Play services.

0xTJ 1y ago

Google has a monopoly on Android services and app distribution that the used to effectively force them to sign it. Literally not having a choice isn't the only way to be coerced to agree.

jillyboel 1y ago

As a device maker if Google or Apple demands that you jump, you jump. They are essentially being strongarmed by the duopoly.

rezonant 1y ago

Since the title has changed since you wrote this, it may be prudent to include the title at question in the future for clarity. The original title was: > Google blocked Motorola use of Perplexity AI, witness says The new title is: > Google contract prevented Motorola from setting Perplexity as default assistant The new title definitely addresses this issue, but since you're at the top of the comments, you're likely to get a lot of people responding with disagreement and/or downvoting.