Re:Amazon won't sell you a Chromecast, but they will sell a ...
by NicoJuicy on Sunday March 04, 2018 @02:47PM
(#16516264)
Google was making sure Android wasn't getting taken over by Amazon, I think it's more about business.
Amazon also didn't open-source anything of their changes, something Google did.
Their compatibility was a requirement for getting apps in their Amazon app store ( business decision)
Where is Google killing standards? If it is what I think you mean, they are changing the whole Android system slowly to adjust app/system updates. Balancing between open source and proprietary source is difficult and it's probably a business decision to close it more. If Amazon was successfull in taking over Android, they would have lost a lot.
Trying to prevent competitors from providing compatibility with your products is anticompetitive.
In an ideal market, products are compatible, and you have multiple competitors to choose from. You could buy phones from multiple manufacturers, with different operating systems, that would be able to run the same apps. And you could stream YouTube to FireTV and Chromecast, and your FireTV could receive streams from Kindle and Google Android devices.
Amazon actively works towards providing intercompatibility whenever they can. Amazon added the same APIs to their Android version that Google closed off in Android.
Google, on the other hand, has in the past years every time they had a chance to, actively worked to prevent intercompatibility, kill standards, and limit the usefulness of open source.
I’m not sure there’s any way to see Google’s actions as a positive.