>In particular, Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
Sounds a lot how Microsoft abused licensing agreements with OEMs to discourage them from selling PCs not bundled with Windows.
Also Internet Explorer. This case seems almost a mirror of MS except in the phone space instead of PC. Only difference is that when the issue came up in Congress, MS was confrontational with regulators and Google cut some fat checks.
The other main difference it that the EU is punishing Google, while turning a blind eye to Microsoft's behavior. They were only fined for bundling IE and WMP with their OS. Locking customers out of competing operating systems is much more harmful in my opinion. The only EU mention of Windows bundling I can find is an Italian court ordering that customers should be able to get a refund for the Windows tax.
I'd say that, in this day and age, preventing vendors from using Android forks counts as a form of locking customers out of competing operating systems. Even more so now that Android forks represent the only serious alternative available to any phone manufacturer who isn't based in Cupertino.
Also, two wrongs don't make a right. Microsoft getting off way too easy does not mean that Google should get off easy, too.
Android already has a problem with fragmentation, which becomes a problem for customers when their phone becomes vulnerable due to a lack of security patches.
There are lots of cheap Chinese Android phones simply filled with malware from the factory.
If Google allowed phone makers to ship Android forks, this whole problem would become a lot worse. I think this Google policy is actually pro-consumer, and the EU is wrong on this point.
You’re talking of the eternal tension between security and freedom.
No, I don’t think that reducing choice and locking them in Google’s ecosystem is pro-consumer, even if done for the right reasons.
Let’s remember that Android was welcomed by many of us as a free (as in freedom) alternative to iOS.
If you want a locked-down, secure and polished OS, then Apple’s iOS is far better at this game. The only reason why Android is dominating the market right now is because it gave freedom to users and freedom to phone makers. And Google dialing that freedom down after becoming so popular is anti-competitive.
It’s essentially a bait and switch, which is why I believe Google deserves that fine.
> The only reason why Android is dominating the market right now is because it gave freedom to users and freedom to phone makers
I would say that the biggest reason it's dominating is because it's cheap. For most people I've talked to, they don't like Android, but prefer to pay 20% of the cost of an iPhone.
> It’s essentially a bait and switch, which is why I believe Google deserves that fine.
Seems like you're projecting your own expectations onto what Google has really been selling all along. Google doesn't advertise Android as "free as in freedom." OEMs comply with their conditions. It's how it works.
No, that was Android’s marketing from day 1 and as far as OEMs go, Google’s conditions have evolved, along with what they are shoving down on their users’ throats.
And as far as “free as in freedom” goes, the US law agrees with me via “estoppel”.
Those Chinese phone manufacturers often use Google Services without a license. So what Google does doesn't change anything for them. Also, Google's agreements do not prevent vendors from installing malware as long it is not competing with Google apps.
That's pretty much the entire argument behind security, in computers or otherwise. Security features reduce yout ability to do what you want on your device.
(And it's not just an abstract "what if I want to shoot my own foot off" issue. Consider e.g. sandboxing, which by its very nature kills interoperability. In a non-sandboxed environment, you can write code that forces two applications to interoperate, whether their authors like it or not. In a sandboxed environment, you're limited to what vendors allow you.)
For both Apple and Google's phones it wouldn't be hard to allow users to securely add keys of other stores or indivual software makers without requiring one to root his phone (aka destroy the security).
You'd just have to give several huge, clear warnings of what that means before allowing it.
And, by the way, security? Come on, if they really cared about the security/privacy of their users the permissions' systems would not be made of those huge blankets that are more like websites' cookie banners than real useable security controls.
The EU also required Microsoft to create the N editions, that came without the media player installed by default. I recall reading that very few copies were sold but I can't find a citation right now.
microsoft not forbids manufacturers to install OS other than windows, that's why you can buy computers with linux. There are always options, there is nothing to blame microsoft for this. If you don't want to buy Windows, you can choose a model without windows. If you cannot find a satisfied model without windows, go to blame your PC manufacturer
Microsoft used to threaten PC manufacturers that bundled any other OS other than Windows or no OS at all. They claimed that not bundling an OS was the express purpose of installing a pirated copy of Windows.
People tend to assume laws are right, fair, just, and moral. They're not. People also assume right equals fair equals just equals moral. Again, they're not.
There may or may not be overlap on many of these but there's never a 1:1 relationship between any of them.
Also Chrome. Chrome was the biggest shocker to many @ Goog. Even as a Noogler, people often sit down in cafeteria and talked about how Chrome got traction and so popular only because it got a main spot on Google's homepage; something noone, no company or individual advertiser can ever bid for. If that's not Google's "Microsoft Internet Explorer anti-trust" moment, then nothing is.
You're missing the massive point that it was also happened to be far superior to Firefox and IE when it came out... And it held the #1 spot (by far) for nearly a decade while Firefox fumbled around and IE remained IE.
It's crazy to say a product only succeeded because Google pushed it hard. Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) has a LONG list of failed products they pushed hard (Wave, Google Plus, etc).
Did it play a role? Sure. But prominent advertising is not the same as forcing hardware manufacturers to pre-install software. Nor does it suddenly make customers want a shitty product they wouldn't otherwise use.
Chrome basically got a fresh start and built on top of existing WebKit codebase with new ideas. They did well with the “second mover advantage”
Firefox and IE were riddled with code debt issues so they couldn’t move fast.
Chrome was a great example of software written by a company with resources to dominate a huge market segment relatively quickly. I’m guessing Chrome earned Sundar Picchai a lot of good karma within Google to later become CEO.
Excellent points. Chrome has the best development tools. I used the dev tools so much that I just launch Chrome out of habit when I want to browse the web.
While at the same time they've been stripping out vital features or outright disabling them on mobile. It's almost like gasp they don't care about the users but only their bottom line.
My point was Google didn't pay anything to gain the market share because they advertise Chrome on their frontpage, something neither Firefox, nor IE, nor Opera nor Safari, nor anyone else in that matter could do.
From an antitrust law point of view, using your monopoly status in one area as a weapon against the competition in other areas is something that likely gets you in trouble.
Although, it helps to remember that in the EU, you don't need nearly as big a market share before their competition law kicks in and places restrictions on your behavior, so things that you can still get away with in the US can be quite illegal in the EU.
The GP didn't make the claim that the "product only succeeded because Google pushed it hard". All they said was that Google used their search monopoly to give it a big advantage.
Chrome's quality was a necessary, but probably not sufficient condition for it to gain the market traction that it did.
Exactly, without Search pushing so hard the adoption rate would have been much slower and would have given Mozilla, Apple, and Microsoft time to respond.
Firefox has rapidly improved since it's inception and was rapidly stealing IE market share prior to Chrome.
Had Chrome not been rammed down people's throats then we might have a more even landscape than we do today.
Search. And Gmail. And YouTube. And every other google-controlled site on the internet.
Plus email-SPAM(!!!) about installing Chrome when you signed in to your Google-account on a new computer using a non-Chrome browser.
It also used dubious wording: “You need to upgrade your browser. Click here”
And paying to have it bundled as a drive-by installation with other software.
And Chrome-only websites. And the list just goes on and on.
It was spyware tactics + SPAM all over the place. And the sheer amount of it was mind-blowing.
Even technical people who explicitly didn’t want Chrome had a hard time avoiding it. Imagine the effect on regular, non-technical users.
Saying it was all down to technical merit is just appoligist and delusional.
With Chrome’s dominance and semi-monoculture undeniably in place, Google is now using that position to force new things, like subverting open web-standards with DRM.
I can’t believe people are so non-chalantly allowing this to happen.
Its been a slow boil, and they employ experts to manipulate public opinion (HN fawns all over them still ... articles continually like "Ex-Googlers Do XYZ!". They won't get away with it long term.
Actually, the biggest thing in Chrome's favor was being an installer pack-in. People still get sometimes Chrome installed on them if they go download Adobe Reader without unchecking the box. (McAfee Security Scan Plus is Adobe's other paid pack-in, you might see that instead, depending on your location.) People seem to vastly forget that a large part of Chrome's dominance of the ordinary user is the fact that installing half a dozen plugins or tools on Windows has or still installs Chrome and sets it as your default browser.
When doing PC support for layusers, I've found that: Most people don't know what Chrome is, and don't know the difference between it, Edge, IE, and the malicious Chromium fork they have installed on their PCs. (Side note: May the soulless individuals behind the "WebDiscover Browser" suffer a life of misery and despair as punishment for their crimes.) They end up with Chrome (or a malicious fork thereof) due to a bundle installer.
What Chrome also did far better than everyone else was a user local install, ie an install that didn’t require admin on the PC. Shadow IT installs was a huge advantage over Firefox in Chrome’s first years.
I still have to fight this occasionally. :| In one instance, I ended up just telling the antivirus software at a company to flag Chrome as a virus and block it from executing. Software installation requiring admin rights is by design, and circumventing it is unethical as heck.
If you rely on the lack of admin rights to prevent unauthorised software from being run you’re doing it wrong. You should be using whitelisting (e.g. AppLocker in Windows) which also prevents “portable” applications (without an installer) from being used.
The eternal conflict between lowly workers trying to get their job done and the IT department trying to prevent them from doing their jobs to make their own life easier, based on the notion that if users can't use the infrastructure, they can't break it.
Obviously, Chrome is not needed to do their jobs. If it was, it'd be provided. Browsers, especially Chrome, are a massive malware ingress point, it makes zero sense for end users to install them.
IT actually exists to help ensure people can do their job, and do their job faster. As a general goal, I like to learn about people's business processes for the exact purpose of seeing how our IT environment can be improved to expedite their work.
And having five browsers on a PC doesn't make it easier for end users. I have no problem dealing with five browsers, but I get a lot of complaints from people when they open link A in browser B and link C in browser D and don't understand why things don't work.
You may have experienced poor IT departments in the past, or thought you experienced poor IT departments because you didn't understand the other considerations in play, but that's hardly an excuse to assume any given IT choice is some sort of attempt to prevent employees from doing their jobs.
That's a faulty assumption right there. Usually, people providing workers with their computers and software have limited idea what those workers actually need to work efficiently. This works out fine when workflows are defined so well a trained monkey could do the job, and fails miserably when the worker needs any sort of creative control over their workflow or work output (programmers, designers, all sorts of engineers and technicians, etc.). Most corporate work is probably closer to monkey level than to creative level, but enterprises love to do company-wide policy changes, making all work conform to lowest common denominator.
> You may have experienced poor IT departments in the past, or thought you experienced poor IT departments because you didn't understand the other considerations in play, but that's hardly an excuse to assume any given IT choice is some sort of attempt to prevent employees from doing their jobs.
I've experienced one competent IT department in my life, and their best quality was helping shield our programming team from policies like application whitelisting or limiting admin access, that they were forced to deploy company-wide. For other IT departments I dealt with, most of their actions were explainable if viewed through the lens of caring about the infrastructure to the extreme - that is, "if no one uses it, no one will break it" approach.
> That's a faulty assumption right there. Usually,...
You accuse me of making a "faulty assumption" about my own environment, and then proceed to assume that you can speak for most/all IT environments.
When I state "if you need Chrome, we'll provide Chrome", that's true of my environment. It's also true of my environment, if we don't provide Chrome, and you find a way to install it yourself, you'd be violating policy, and barring the casual mistake of not knowing that, potentially referred to HR. Obviously, in the ideal "don't need to involve HR" case, we just make sure you can't install it.
Now, what isn't just true of my environment, but true of all environments, is that users installing random web browsers is incredibly dangerous, and something every IT department should be preventing if they own the hardware. I don't think that's even a controversial statement, I'm confused why it's being treated like one.
Installation requirements are mostly a hangover from the days when Windows PCs weren’t locked down and anyone could write to the system folders and admin rights were just assumed.
Software developers often didn’t bother testing or ensuring that their software would install (or even run properly) without admin rights.
Not necessarily. Byod is commom. And quite frankly even if it is my employers box im not gonna put up with restrictions against installing a web browser. Or deal with some paperwork request, I'll work around it and just do it.
Who would bring their own equipment to work in software unless they are a founder? That's like paying to work. Especially when employers like to claim ownership rights to all data generated by their employees in the course of business.
Mechanics bring their own tools frequently but their employers don't try to repo their personal vehicles just because the mechanic used the same tools at home and at work
I don't have work slack on my personal phone on principle. If the company wants to require me to be available on their systems they need to provide the hardware
Are you running your personal hardware (without the security) on the internal network? Please tell me you don't have the same level of access with personal hardware as you do with the corporate equipment.
Even in a BYOD environment, an organization should be ensuring any devices granted access to resources are appropriately patched and secured.
I can understand that. I just don't want to have a reason why my employer could call me in off hours, nor for them to claim ownership of stuff I've done.
I don't see how partnering with a few other software companies to distribute software via installers is a bad thing or a sign of monopolistic practices (aka limiting competition and harming customers by forcing them to use a product they wouldn't otherwise)...
It's a bit shady to make it 'automatically the default browser'. But that is a problem with the OS. An installer shouldn't be able to make that choice for the user.
They fixed this with Windows 10, actually. Which of course, upset people because it defaults people to Edge, and asks people to give Edge a try when they change it.
True, I remember seeing that now on my moms laptop. I remember it was quite aggressive in warning you not to switch away from Edge.
Microsoft can never let the marketing people stop having control and ruining their products. They are trying to make it more useable and user friendlier, but it's funny seeing the push back within the product.
I've recently said that Microsoft is the most self-defeating company in history. They often take all of the goodwill they've earned, and then torch it on minor battles that aren't really making them any money. If someone's gotten into the settings screen to change their default, they probably have tried Edge, or at least know what it is and have some reason for switching.
Windows 10 telemetry is a great example: They shot themselves in the foot PR-wise on an otherwise excellent operating system, chasing a pile of metadata that won't really be significantly more useful than what they get from people who voluntarily agree to be Windows Insiders. There isn't a good business case for preventing people from shutting off error reporting, and it's had a huge impact on mitigating all of their other efforts to repair their image.
I'd say the forced update from 8 to 10, with all the UI dark patterns, was even worse. An OS "collecting telemetry" on you was mostly an abstract problem for non-technical users. An OS trying to annoy and trick you into updating to that scary "telemetry version" - that's another thing, and I know plenty of people who were pissed off about that. Hell, my own mother sticks to 8 and still refuses to entertain the thought of using 10 precisely because of those attempts at forced upgrade.
It's a shame, really, because Windows 10 is a decent OS, and it fixed most of the issues with 8.
> You're missing the massive point that it was also happened to be far superior to Firefox and IE when it came out
I mean, you really could have said the same thing about IE 4 when it came out. It was actually better than Communicator at the time, which was a bloated, unfocused, mess of a browser.
I was a www user at the time and that’s how I remember it. IE4 was clearly better than netscape’s comparable offering at the time, and IE5 and IE6 entrenched that lead to the point where I had to switch to IE. Much faster and much better standards support (ironically IE6 had by far the best standards support at the time of its release.)
It had little things like multi-process, omnibox, and something like a 10x faster JS engine than the competition, but the real killer feature was the auto-updating.
It did come with advantages, no doubt, but - as so often - its market share is not necessarily because it tried to push the web further, a large share is simply because of Google's aggressive marketing.
To this day Google is pushing their browser if you dare to use their services with Edge.
Why is that a shocker? They own google.com and they want to upsell another product, and aren't forcing it upon users or vendors. This seems like normal/standard business practice. Bundling IE with Windows was not the problem, but forcing PC vendors to only sell with Windows installed, and aggressively forcing IE to be the default browser was.
On the other hand, building "web" apps that only run on chrome, that was a shocker for me.
There was a solid half a year where google hangouts does not work on current versions of Firefox. It claims that Firefox support is in development, but the actuality of it is that hangouts was deprecated for hangouts meet, which does support firefox
Inbox, hangouts video calls, google earth, off the top of my head, spent 6months+ being chrome-only. H/o video calls over a year (just a few months ago became firefox compatible).
That is an important point; you might be ten times more talented than Google engineers but you won't get your browser promoted on the on of the most popular internet pages or preinstalled with Android. Google is using its dominance in one area to disrupt competition in other areas. I think that this is something that should not be allowed.
Does it not sound hypocritical to sue a corporation for pre-installing software (Microsoft installing IE on Windows) and also suing another corporation for not allowing software to be pre-installed?
I also wonder how they come up with the multi-billion dollar values? How does that massive amount of money actually help repair whatever "economical damage" that was inflicted by not having some sort of app pre-installed on a device?
> Massive fines discourage monopolistic behavior, if nothing else.
The problem is businesses may take it as a signal that the EU is against foreign businesses rather than against monopolistic practices, in which case the thing being deterred is doing business in the EU rather than monopolistic practices. To show otherwise they would have to levy equally large fines against local businesses engaged in the same sort of practices, which they haven't and likely won't.
If they really wanted to signal discouragement of monopolistic behavior rather than a cash grab they would be ordering specific conduct rather than excessive fines. For example, if the issue is that they promoted Google Chrome in an unacceptable way, prohibit them from distributing Google Chrome in the EU for five years. And then do the same thing to Microsoft just to be even-handed, because they're still bundling their browser with Windows. And likewise with Apple and Safari.
Let everyone use Firefox for five years and see how much browser bundling happens after that.
It's a matter of proportionality. A punishment that is the economic equivalent of the destruction of a small city is proportional to something on the order of mass murder, not the prominence of certain information on a company's web page.
the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from search advertising services on Android devices in the EEA.
In other words, Google had an unfair advantage for search on android devices and leveraged that into revenue. The fine is a percentage of that ill-gotten revenue.
> the fine has been calculated on the basis of the value of Google's revenue from search advertising services on Android devices in the EEA.
"They have a lot of money and we would like to have that."
The actual "damages" have nothing to do with their total revenue, only the revenue incident to the behavior in question, which is an independent value and not a percentage of total revenue.
For example, if they improve their search engine which causes more people to use it, it doesn't change the actual amount of damage from separate actions -- it may even reduce it by transitioning some of the defaulted users into users who would make an affirmative choice in their favor -- but it would have increased the amount of the fine when calculated as a percentage of revenue because it would have increased their total revenue.
Well you're making some assumptions about damages and maybe have opinions what constitutes damages. I think the other side you have to consider is if revenue related to wrong doing is in the billions and your fine is in the thousands, it's toothless. Companies will gladly pay a pittance in fines over and over again against billions in revenue. That's not ideal from and enforcement standpoint. It doesn't get companies to follow the law and play by the rules. There's consequences for that too, voters have opinions about their governments letting companies run amok without any real consequences or deterrents.
> I think the other side you have to consider is if revenue related to wrong doing is in the billions and your fine is in the thousands, it's toothless.
If the revenue related to wrong doing is in the billions and the harm is in the thousands, attempting to prohibit the conduct instead of imposing a small tax and using the money to compensate the victims is obviously a large dead-weight economic loss.
You do understand that nobody, including politicians and FF users want to remove Chrome, Edge or Safari?
You do understand that doing that would probably cost those companies (and everyone else) a lot more?
We only want a level playing field. Giving companies a real fine is just a way to make sure the board and the shareholders actually gets the message ;-)
> You do understand that nobody, including politicians and FF users want to remove Chrome, Edge or Safari?
It's punishment. If somebody wants it then somebody has a perverse incentive.
> You do understand that doing that would probably cost those companies (and everyone else) a lot more?
Exactly. You actually punish them, in the way directly contrary the the goal they were trying to achieve with their bad behavior, without suspiciously enriching yourselves in a way that calls your true motives into question.
> We only want a level playing field. Giving companies a real fine is just a way to make sure the board and the shareholders actually gets the message ;-)
But what message are they getting?
It's not as if there is a clear roadmap for how to avoid this sort of thing. Antitrust laws are super vague and prohibit a wide variety of common business practices, to make it effective to use them against powerful nefarious entities with many lawyers. The theory is that the government will only use them against bad actors. But if the government considers you a bad actor just because you're a foreign company, what are you supposed to do then?
> just because you're a foreign company, what are you supposed to do then?
Most foreign companies aren't considered bad actors.
We are talking about 1) the old Microsoft here - definitely a bad actor - getting rid of it seems to have been refreshing even for Microsoft shareholders.
- 2) Google, a company we many of us loved at some point but who might now be in need of some refreshing at least in some areas.
> Most foreign companies aren't considered bad actors.
Google wasn't considered a bad actor until then they were.
> the old Microsoft here - definitely a bad actor - getting rid of it seems to have been refreshing even for Microsoft shareholders.
The old Microsoft deserved everything they got and then some. But even then, it would have been nice for the penalties to be more "actually effective in increasing competition in PC desktop operating systems" and less "suspiciously convenient transfer of large sums of money."
> How does that massive amount of money actually help repair whatever "economical damage" that was inflicted by not having some sort of app pre-installed on a device?
By creating an incentive for Google (and other corporations) not to do it again.
Manufacturers have been notorious for not security patching their forks. Manufacturers have been notorious for altering OS compat APIs to lie about device capabilities. While I wish Google would have used their leverage for a more nuanced set of requirements, I can understand the motivation here.
I have been wondering when the USA would start fining Google, Facebook and other mega corporations. It seems that will not happen.
I am really glad that EU did this, been waiting years for this to happen. Other fines will surly come. You can’t eat and kill your competition too long before someone starts to sett the records straight.
Sounds a lot how Microsoft abused licensing agreements with OEMs to discourage them from selling PCs not bundled with Windows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows