Clickbait, sensationalist. Counterpoint: Amazon FireOS.
How many phone companies can afford to do this?
Imagine a different scenario with a company you may not have a strong positive bias towards: Microsoft. Imagine all the OEM agreements are: "if you want to sell laptops with Windows you must agree to never sell laptops with other OSes". Or "if your software runs on any competing OS you are no longer allowed access to some proprietary and critical Windows API".
What many people refuse to understand is one simple fact: what Google did is illegal. And it's only their personal pro-Google bias that makes them ignore and excuse the behavior. Or even to claim that the law should change for them. The fact that so few people were outraged when Microsoft landed in the same hot water is irrefutable proof of this.
There was no meaningful competition in the OS space when Microsoft was fined.
To say they can't be allowed to put restrictions on access to the app store and play services on a particular model is ridiculous though.
And normally I had to endlessly argue with people about why competition is good. But now you have an excellent example in AMD vs. Intel where after years of stagnation and no price drop in sight Intel was persuaded into offering more cores at lower price by the simple fact that they suddenly had competition.
The whole situation reminds me of progressives in the US that keep voting for people like Nader and Sanders and effectively make conservatives win. Life very rarely offers us our ideal options.
Alibaba's Aliyun OS would likely have been a successful OS. If it wasn't in the same situation as Amazon where no OEM would touch it and the OS itself wasn't cut off from anything Google.
How is the removal of these artificial limitations "handicapping" Android? Wait, don't answer.
So my good sir, you are either a troll, or simply unwilling/unable to understand the issue. Reading the article would have answered every question you pretend to want the answer to.
Maybe if Google banned you from Gmail because you have an email address with the competition you would understand the situation better.
Now were you this upset when Microsoft had not only to give other browser makers access to an OS that was on 90% of computers in the world, they had to take them to 99% with the "browser choice" screen that was basically free promotion for other browsers?
The law is clear, when you have a dominant position you are not allowed this kind of shenanigans. And Google was fully aware of that law. This situation isn't the negotiating type. And you are not actually looking for answers, you think trolling is useful somehow.
Android may look like it's similarly dominant but in the most valuable markets it's way closer to parity and if you exclude the cheap low end devices it's actually a minority. Apple isn't raking in 85% of the profits in mobile for nothing.
Be careful what you wish for. A lot of improvements in iOS in recent years were inspired by Android.
The only thing I wish for is for none of these companies to be allowed to get the entire pie. Those improvements you talk about? They were done during a fight when they were more or less tied with the opponent. The closer you are to 100% market share, the fewer and far between they are. You want proof? Look at MS, or Intel. The moment they got dominance they coasted on it for years with no tangible improvement to anything else but their bottom line.
And you seem to think that I must be an iOS fan and probably hate Google. My main phone is Android and has been for 7 years now (although I tend to own and use one of each Windows, iOS, BB10). That's exactly why I want to see more free competition.
P.S. Google deals in user data, not selling phones. So a valuable market is one that gives them access to that data. One with lots of users. The phone they use is irrelevant.
Those are the most valuable markets and even in those markets startups and developers target iOS first. If you kneecap Android you’re just putting Apple even more in the driver seat than they are today.
I still haven’t heard anyone explain how they think this recent ruling makes anything better. Who is going to benefit from this?
Notice how conspicuously absent is the price of the phone or the number of apps you choose to buy.
It's not just Android, it's also the Google apps that come with it (you know, the ones that an OEM loses access to if it tries to compete).
And the revenue is not a percentage from every expensive phone you buy in the US. It's the user data that phone, cheap or expensive, gives them access to. So as long as the phone is able to provide data about your location, browsing habits, emails, music preference, searches, etc. Google will never care if it's a cheap one.
Why do you think Google complies with every request it gets from the government of one of its biggest markets that you forgot to mention, China? Because access to that trove of user data is almost priceless. Why do you think the likes of Facebook want to give free internet in Africa? For a Nobel prize? No, it's because that's paving the way to accessing more user data.
> I still haven’t heard anyone explain how they think this recent ruling makes anything better. Who is going to benefit from this?
The customers. I see you are commenting a lot but probably didn't bother to read the article linked here on HN. You are asking questions that have very logical answers available everywhere you look, even in real life. Which makes me believe you're not actually trying to get an answer, you're suggesting that competition law is wrong. Possibly just when some companies have to suffer.
This is why I don’t understand how computer geeks can prefer Android over iOS. I understand not everyone can afford iOS products, but for the people who both know Google’s business model and can afford it, why wouldn’t someone prefer the simple transaction that Apple offers - you give them money and they give you stuff.
When Nvidia tried this move with its GeForce Partner Program just this year[1], they faced a social media shitstorm (rightly so). Similarly, Intel received a record fine by the EU in 2009 because it "made payments to some manufacturers in exchange of postponing, canceling or putting restrictions on the introduction or distribution of AMD-based products"[2].
I don't see how Google's behavior is any better just because parts of Android are open source, in fact it strikes me as even more dishonest.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326122/nvidia-geforce-pa... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/global/14compete...
There are no complaints about "Windows fragmentation", on the other hand, because you can't fork Windows at all. Or any other major OS, such as macOS or iOS.
GPL components such as the Linux kernel must be open sourced, but other parts of Android could have been made proprietary. Carriers and manufacturers only cared that Android was free-as-in-beer, not free-as-in-speech. The flip side of complaints that Android's development isn't community driven enough is that it's hard to turn around and claim Android owes its success to the open source community either.
Second: The point isn't that you disagree with me, it's that you disagree with the outcome of an official investigation under EU law that found that Google's practices are illegal. So I have that to support my opinion. Feel free to bring something stronger to support yours. You can't say it's not bias but then bring nothing to support that claim. ;)
P.S. >There are no complaints about "Windows fragmentation"
Android fragmentation is Google's own doing and is in no way solved by blocking OEMs from forking it. The forks are not Android, they are the likes of Fire OS and Aliyun OS. As such would never count under "Android fragmentation".