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A comment on European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case. Parent comment

Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr... by VikingCoder on Wednesday July 18, 2018 @01:48PM (#17560491)
Google could absolutely close-source enough of Android to make it essentially closed.

As I posted elsewhere:

Couldn't Google have had Samsung OEM phones?

With co-branding?

And all of the profits going to Samsung?

This would merely be a different way to structure access to Android, right? Android is closed source, but literally everything else is the same...

Except now it's not "anti-competitive," because the phone manufacturers are not "competitors" to Google.

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Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr... by kilotaras on Thursday July 19, 2018 @05:13AM (#17564826)
> Couldn't Google have had Samsung OEM phones?

If

1. Android still reached 80% of market 2. Terms of OEM prohibited Samsung from making phones with another OS

That would be the same anticompetitive violation

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Re:European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitr... by VikingCoder on Thursday July 19, 2018 @10:46AM (#17566758)
The terms wouldn't prohibit Samsung from making phones with another OS.

The terms would say that Samsung installs the version of Android 2 (the new and closed source one) that Google tells it to. As manufacturing partners are always told what to do.

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