Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr...
by throwawayjava on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @07:08AM
(#17557214)
Which is a kind of silly decision on Google's part, because they have far and away the superior product and also the superior brand. Even if the option was given at setup, nearly everyone choosing to buy an Andriod phone would select google as the default search engine...
(I guess you could say that didn't see this coming, but the parallels with MSFT and IE are pretty hard to not see...)
The fine is going to hurt a lot more than any remedial action.
Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr...
by thefounder on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @07:49AM
(#17557441)
I believe you are wrong. In Russia Yandex has grown a lot after the option was given at setup.
Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr...
by gandhium on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @10:17AM
(#17558577)
A lot? It was about ~50% and increased by a couple of percents.
Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr...
by ocdtrekkie on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @08:24AM
(#17557674)
Much of their entire dominance as a company hinges on pushing defaults, and their ability to force manufacturers to ship Google apps, on any phone sold in the EU, is a massive blow. The penalty is chump change for Google, but the remedy is what is going to hurt long term, because competitors can finally get in the game.
For context they also push Google search to iOS devices (Apple gets huge amount of money for that), the same way as they pay firefox to have Google as their default search engine.
The issue though, is that for android phones, it's not a "let's make a deal, we will pay you to have Google Search" attitude. You can't make an android device integrated with Google Play app store without also having Google Search in the home screen and as default search engine.
What the EU is fining among others, is the business practice of forcing device makers that want to use the Play Store to also bundle the other service (Search).