Even if you thought you couldn't win, the interest is so high on a $5B fine, you want to delay payment as long as possible.

Why are they able to appeal stuff three years later?

I think they appealed three years ago, and it is only now in court?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-alphabet-inc-antitrust...

I'm going to guess an ongoing pandemic might have delayed it just a bit

Also some lobbying.

Of course they are. Water is wet.

Its a no brainer. Intel still hasnt paid 1B fine for bribing vendors to stop buying AMD products.

That is sort of strange. Part of the reason why Google is able to provide Android for free is that they monetise it via its services bundled with Android.

So I guess Google has to charge for Android as an OS instead?

But you don't get Android from google, you get a fork from the vendor which produced the phone you bought.

So you are paying (in many ways) for companies you payed getting it for free...

And maybe the cheapest level of phones would get more expensive.

But for many (most) Android phones (sold in the EU) the price increase if Android isn't free should be fairly small. (Especially given that google still gets a lot of other benefits from people using Android, I mean e.g. Google Play is still the default App store.)

>you get a fork from the vendor which produced the phone you bought.

Well yes. But the vendor get its fork from Google, particularly speaking.

From my understanding, vendor are perfectly free to take Android source code and make their own OS . But if you want all the extra provided by Google Android ( the OS ), you have to include all the bundled Software. The current ruling would be like asking Windows to not bundle Email and Browser.

This is similar to the Microsoft ruling where it has to provide a Windows OS that allows multiple Browser options during setup.

Generally speaking EUR doesn't like freemium model. That is why the suggestion of charging for Android. I read it as EU having problem with Google providing Android ( OS ) for free and stifles competition from all of its bundled services.

"But it's the only way to make it free" is no excuse when you've been found to have done something illegal. If your business is found to be against the law, then it is on you to get a better one.

If they don't think they can make Android profitable without abusing their position, they can always choose to stop offering it. I'm sure something better will take its place.

It was bundled with the phone in the same way some computers come with windows preinstalled. I would not say it was free.