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Comment by fxtentacle | Hacker News Reader

I have a vague feeling that if Google takes active steps to lock out a government project, the EU will find a way to motivate Google to play nice. I mean Google surely wouldn't want to give anyone an incentive to revive that $1bn historical tax debate or the $1.5bn antitrust investigation ;)

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What's 1.5 billion for Google? Apparently they give something like 10bn every year to Apple to be their default search engine.

I much prefer the Japanese way: you get a massive fine AND you have to close shop for a certain amount of time. It's much more painful for a company not to work than to pay a fine.

You have a point there, but Google's profits from Android are at least one order of magnitude larger than the numbers you quoted [0], and it may be rational for them to risk the fight.

[0] https://www.kamilfranek.com/how-google-makes-money-from-andr...

Maybe, but the counter is enough money is at play to create a successful competitor. Someone doing a smart phone with 1/10th the penetration of Android is somewhat significant and not to be ignored. (in absolute numbers that is more than the number of Mac users vs Windows users)

Is this a government project though?

I don't know anything about it other than their site, but it states that it was supported "in 2019" by PrototypeFund ("a project of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research") and/but "since 2020" supported by E Foundation.

Google may be able to make specific deals for particular countries and hence greatly limit the impact.

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