The problem here is that Google allegedly dictated terms that gave them an unfair advantage in an unrelated market, breaching EU antitrust law.
A stricter antitrust law might have prevented them from gaining such a dominant position in the first place, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here.
IF Google had manufactured all of the phones themselves, and had never open sourced Android, then they could have kept Chrome and Search on Android, and there would have been no problem, right?
But because Google let other people manufacture Androids, and because Google open sourced Android, now it's a problem?
The logic of this is just baffling to me.
And secondly, they're not being punished for having an open source operating system. They're being punished for forcing manufacturers to install their suite of software (simplified). It's not because they open sourced Android. I repeat, it's NOT BECAUSE THEY OPEN SOURCED ANDROID.
As I posted elsewhere:
Couldn't Google have had Samsung OEM phones?
With co-branding?
And all of the profits going to Samsung?
This would merely be a different way to structure access to Android, right? Android is closed source, but literally everything else is the same...
Except now it's not "anti-competitive," because the phone manufacturers are not "competitors" to Google.
If
1. Android still reached 80% of market 2. Terms of OEM prohibited Samsung from making phones with another OS
That would be the same anticompetitive violation
The terms would say that Samsung installs the version of Android 2 (the new and closed source one) that Google tells it to. As manufacturing partners are always told what to do.