Did anyone read this article? The headline is misleading.
It clearly states in the first line:
> "Google’s contract with Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola blocked the smartphone maker from setting Perplexity AI as the default assistant on its new devices"
They didn't block Perplexity AI from Motorola's devices, the agreement states that they allow them to preload the devices with Perplexity, but the agreement, that both parties signed, does not give Motorola the permission to set it as the default.
> "Motorola “can’t get out of their Google obligations and so they are unable to change the default assistant on the device.”
They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim they had no choice.
I understand the premise, that they think they had no choice, but this article is misleading in its headline, and plenty of the comments here clearly show that a lot of "readers" didn't bother to read it.
And they really don't have a choice. if you don't abide by googles terms then they will not permit you to use google mobile services. That means (at the very least):
- No "play" services (breaks lots of apps and 3rd party peripherals).
- No app store (over 90% of apps are distributed solely through the play store. even major android players like samsung have tiny libraries in their own stores).
- No youtube app (and no way to natively play without play services APIs, you NEED to use a crippled iframe embed in a webview!!!)
- No push notifications (developers usually target the "built-in" option that is basically play services)
- Missing apps and api-level integration with loads of other stuff, maps, mail, search, calendar, casting, etc
- No widevine DRM (no hd/4k netflix, etc)
- Loads of other insidious stuff I cant recall or articulate right now
You cant even use the word "Android" to describe the OS.
Just look at how crippled Amazons fork is. Or how huawei pretty much lost their entire GLOBAL market share because of a US sanction preventing them having a GMS contract.
No matter what anyone says, android IS google. It is so riddled with google specific behaviours you cant use without a license that companies have even ditched android to make their own OS - because they literally aren't allowed to favorably position their own functionality over googles in any way.
The Play services thing is a major deal for banking apps and such. If anyone has tried dealing with third-party ROMs like LineageOS and GrapheneOS, they would know how much Google tries its best to screw you if you leave their gross leech of an ecosystem
Big shout out to Google Play Integrity/Safety Net (or whatever it's currently called).
Was the one thing which ended my couple of years without Google, as my banking apps started banning my phones fingerprint for being insecure.
Seems like in a major part of '''Pax Americana''' is needing to use a Google or Apple fingerprint to participate in society. Makes you laugh when people whinge about China.
Attesting that a closed source device meets arbitrary closed source standards is a necessary evil.
One real world problem is that some existing systems are built relying on the integrity of the components within, i.e. BART in the bay area relies on the BART cards being honest and secure. If iPhones are to be allowed into the system, they also have to be honest and secure.
The capability is being over-used and abused, and we should design systems to never need it, but some do.
In Europe, banking apps block root but still work on a custom OS (like LineageOS) without contactless payments. I guess this is because many people here buy Chinese phones and they just can't ignore them.
Almost two decades of Google market dominance with Android, and Google's simultaneous ownership of the entire ecosystem, including the browser, search engine, cloud integration and the internal app store (which is integrated so far up the OS's ass you can't do much without it). You just can't enforce a monopoly like Google does and simply claim "why wouldn't the competitors and consumers just kneecap themselves to leave??"
Play Services, and the Play Store. The network effect is so strong that competition becomes impossible. Nobody would buy a phone with a different AI provider because you couldn't use apps like Uber, and Uber wouldn't develop and publish to a different store and re-write their app to avoid Play Services to target a platform without any users.
You’re not being clever like you think you are. “They could simply build something else” is … something that truly everybody knows. That’s not the point.
They blocked Perplexity via agreements, amongst many agreements to fortify their monopoly, the legality of which has been challenged in court and this testimony is to demonstrate that this agreement also belongs in the "illegal" bucket.
Google Cloud has also gotten a huge boost from large retailers who, understandably, don't want to run their software on Amazon owned AWS.
When I asked out of curiosity why not Azure, especially given that these companies almost all use Office, Teams, Outlook, etc. several have told me it's because of Google Shopping and SEO. Though never formally stated or part of the contract it's often mentioned by Google that "They already have a relationship" with these companies via the feeds they provide for those products. And there are consistent talking point among the GCP sales reps about how they "help deliver you customers" and you "shouldn't fund a competitor".
Obviously not the same thing but it does indicate that Google isn't afraid to leverage their search monopoly in the other parts of their business.
> And there are consistent talking point among the GCP sales reps about how they "help deliver you customers" and you "shouldn't fund a competitor".
I wonder how much of it is Google asking them to do that, versus quotas and incentives that make anything else untenable.
The latter is a well-known phenomenon, if your sales reps are under enough pressure, they will eventually resort to illegal tactics that make your company look bad, even if they're never explicitly told to do so.
Another way to look at this is through an evolutionary lens; the salesmen that do the right thing can't possibly perform as well as those that don't, so they're fired / never promoted. It's not that all salesmen are evil, it's that, in such an environment, only the evil ones have a chance, all without managements knowledge or approval.
HSBC is the most famous example where this happened, to the point of their bank employees knowingly assisting gangs and cartels in laundering money.
I doubt it's because of that. Being a user of those msft products like Teams, it is more likely that they don't want another msft product if they can avoid it. why would you want bugs on top of bugs?
It’s a little oversimplified, but I wouldn’t call it misleading.
There is little point to getting an app like perplexity AI pre-installed on a phone as a non-default. Changing defaults isn’t exactly trivial, and any user motivated enough to go through that will have no problems installing the app from the App Store.
So of course the deal fell through.
And it’s accurate to say that “Google blocked a deal to put Perplexity AI on Motorola phones”, and highly monopolistic.
Though… as an end user and occasional family tech support person, I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones. Thanks google.
On my pixel, GrapheneOS has 2x the battery life of factory android.
Of course, most commercial apps won’t run due to Google’s monopolistic bullshit. You can partially fix it by installing (sandboxed) google play services, but that halves the battery life back to what stock android gets.
> They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim they had no choice.
Did the title change? They (Lenovo) are going to court? This is an antitrust case against Google and the witness is not part of the agreement signed. Is Lenovo suing Google?
The title is representing the witness (perplexity) stance, not Lenovo's. And given it's a antitrust suit it seems like a very valid stance.
Even rereading the whole thread I don't get what is misleading. Google and Motorola signed an agreement, and it blocks Motorola from using Perplexity as its core search engine.
Saying Google has no part in this would be wrong, and the fact that the agreement was mutual doesn't change the restrictions.
Sure a contract was signed, but as has been pointed out many times about Google's heavy-handed control over Android, it doesn't mean it was fair to all parties:
> Sure a contract was signed, but as has been pointed out many times about Google's heavy-handed control over Android, it doesn't mean it was fair to all parties:
The article is basically saying "if you don't use Play store and Google apps you'll have to build them yourself". I don't really understand - yes? You would have to. But you still got a load of stuff free. You only have to build apps on top. You get a working OS for free still, which is incredibly valuable.
> The article is basically saying "if you don't use Play store and Google apps you'll have to build them yourself".
The article says a lot more. A key point about the Open Handset Alliance, OHA (emphasis theirs):
"If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that.
...
The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork."
Android is open source and Google play services is technically possible to avoid. What other major operating system vendor for consumer electronics goes out of their way to make this sort of thing possible? Apple and Microsoft sure don't.
If you read the article I linked and many of the criticisms in these comments (not to mention TFA) smartphone vendors need to cede a huge amount of control to Google to have a viable product. As such, the open source aspect of Android is just a very effective distraction from the anti-competitive practices that Google has been plying with it.
Legally or illegally? If you don't care about doing it legally, sure you can make a stub Google play service and fake the device integrity by extracting certificates from other devices.
If you care about the laws though you cannot really get rid of the play services.
If the certificates were used for copy protection, the DMCA might apply. If they weren’t part of the API, copyright might apply. Patent law doesn’t apply, and trade secrets don’t enjoy legal protection.
They could argue you’re in violation of their terms of service, but their remedy for that is to kick you off the services you’re actively avoiding.
Most online journalism relies on clickbait, and they know people aren't going to read too much past the headline to care (and 99% of threads on sites like HN clearly demonstrate that).
Calling the Google Apps agreement something phone vendors voluntarily agreed to is pedantic, reductive and useless. Yes, technically they didn't get physically forced into it, but that's not the whole story.
Google used their unimaginably deep pockets and several monopolies to make sure that no phone without Google Apps will sell. Look at what happened to Huawei after Trump's ban - there were articles in even mainstream media about how people are buying the P10 (was it?), starting it up, realizing nothing works and trying to return it. And literally the only reason that "nothing worked" was that it didn't have Google Play services.
Google has a monopoly on Android services and app distribution that the used to effectively force them to sign it. Literally not having a choice isn't the only way to be coerced to agree.
If i remember correctly, it was similar argument when Microsoft in similar way blocked other browsers' pre-install - "if Dell wants to be MS Windows preferred partner ...". And ultimately that argument didn't fly. Though unfortunately a huge irreparable damage was still done.
Google have slid back on this from day one. A pure-AOSP build of Android is borderline unusable, to the point that the dialer UI, various essential apps such as contacts and the like are now proprietary Google code, stripped out of AOSP. Additionally, AOSP has gone to a source-dump release pattern, rather than an open build. Last I knew, even basic things like the Camera and clock app had been made Google-Properietary.
You have to go to a completely independent distribution like LineageOS, which has maintained a step by step fork of Android, in order to have a "google free" environment that is vaguely useful.
However, the thing the courts have gotten very angry with is that in order to use the Android trademark, you have to get certification, which requires you to exclusively ship a series of Google applications (Chrome, Gmail, Youtube, the Google Photos app, etc) even if you have your own replacement (e.g. Samsung's browser, a native photo app, email client, etc.) and you Must ship with the Google account system up front.
> Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
Going with the previous one: The apps you install then are going to require the Google services that may or may not have been shipped with your phone. Additionally, the hoops that an application must go through to get the same level privileges as a Google application -- even for things on the local phone -- are far and above what most people would be willing to go through: Since Google apps are installed on the system software end, they are given privileges that no other application could have.
> Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
See previous: If you want to ship with Google's blessed market, you must ship with Chrome and it must be the default. The power of defaults is strong here.
The requirement that amazes me they never gone absolutely done for was that to get certified (to carry the Play Store) you must not release any Android devices which are not certified.
i.e. a given manufacturer would not be able to sell Google based Android devices and separate non-Google based Android devices.
It's as if being able to bundle Windows OEM licenses was reliant on not selling any models with Linux.
Perhaps not "absolutely done for," but there was meaningful action here that resulted in a 4.3 billion EUR fine (of which only 200 million was reversed on appeal).
IMO there should be mechanisms that prevent this kind of thing from ever occurring, but regulating this in a way that doesn't meaningfully impede other (benign) certification programs is a complex design space indeed!
It was -- and it's so blatantly anti-competitive and letter-of-the-law (at least in the US) abuse of a monopoly position that Microsoft stopped it almost as soon as they were challenged on it.
Camera apps on Android are very loosely coupled to the OS. They are intentionally left to OEMs to provide because that's the most visible aspect of hardware differentiation, and that differentiation probably depends on software support. On top of that, it would be hard to design an API for every possible camera hardware, apart from a high level API for apps to acquire an image.
>On top of that, it would be hard to design an API for every possible camera hardware, apart from a high level API for apps to acquire an image.
APIs themselves are hard to make, but why is a camera one especially so? The language is well understood, the math and science are well understood. There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work.
Why is it hard?
In advance -- No, Sony/Panasonic/Toshiba/Apple/Whoever locking functions behind magic numbers and proprietary blobs and other 'un-Gentlemanly' things shouldn't count as difficulty in making a Camera API; that's just shit companies being shit to people, not an API problem.
>There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work.
Have an infrared camera that augments the image from a normal camera?
Have a rotationally pop up camera that allows using the same 3 cameras for back and selfie, but also use it to take panoramas. (I miss my Asus ZenPhone flip)
Create photos that allow users to change focus when viewing?
Have two cameras back to back and allow capturing simultaneously to create 360 photos/videos?
Have two cameras side by side and allow stereo vision?
If you have a 0.7x, 1x, and 4x camera, and the user is zooming at 3, use the 1x to fill the frame, but the 5x to have better image quality at the center?
Use the optical stabilizer to take several shots with micro shifts and do super resolution?
We can go on and on. Cameras and even smartphone cameras allow a lot of possibilities. Some of them are already explored by some manufacturers.
> However, the thing the courts have gotten very angry with is that in order to use the Android trademark, you have to get certification, which requires you to exclusively ship a series of Google applications (Chrome, Gmail, Youtube, the Google Photos app, etc) even if you have your own replacement (e.g. Samsung's browser, a native photo app, email client, etc.) and you Must ship with the Google account system up front.
The Daylight Computer doesn't ship with Google applications like this from what I can remember, and I noticed it doesn't actually mention Android on their home page, just that it can "run your favorite apps". It only mentions Android on the specs page under software. I wonder if they did that because of this.
It's open-source in the same way TiVo was "open-source" back in the day: yeah, you get the code, but you can't do anything with it in a practical sense.
Also, that article was published in 2013 and only received light updates in 2018 -- and its core arguments haven't really aged even with the additional five years.
Android is more definitely more user hostile. They’re both closed in practice. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if jailbreaking iOS breaks less stuff than moving to a custom android rom.
i have a pixel phone, but google is not the good guy here. Like in this example, it basically bundles stuff in a way, so if you want for example the store, you have to take other stuff also and that other stuff has its own requirements.
The mistake Google is making with the courts is that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have an open OS while simultaneously flexing your other business units to dictate how other people use it.
Google flexing in this way, arguably for the benefit of the user, is nonetheless anticompetitive and the courts are reaming them for it.
No one could use the open source OS because the closed source play store was off limits unless you complied with google’s terms. It is like someone saying here is candy for you for free! But you can’t unwrap it unless you buy my dental insurance.
For the record, none of those are objectively "better". You and I may think they're better. Lots, lots, as in billions of people, couldn't care less:
> Open source Android vs. closed iOS
Almost no one outside specific tech circles cares, and even if they understood what it meant, still wouldn't care.
> Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
That's one of the primary reasons I suggest that my relatives buy iPhones. I have older family who would absolutely install an APK from hackerz.ru if they got a phishing email claiming they won the Facebook Lottery and that's how they claim the prize. For that matter, I'm glad my bank has to publish their app through the App Store, because otherwise they'd almost certainly be hosting it on sketchysounding.bankservices.biz if no one made them.
The walled garden is an enormous advantage for a huge chunk of the world. I understand why it's a PITA for others. I'd love to install unsanctioned software from GitHub on my iPhone, but I'll happily accept that tradeoff in exchange for my uncle not being able to install "Real Actual Gmail.apk" from god knows where.
> Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
I might agree with that, although part of me is glad that there's at least one major platform that Chrome hasn't taken over.
> Easy switch of search provider in Chrome vs. countless dark patterns pushing Edge and Bing on Windows
Five years ago, I'd have agreed. Today Chrome seems like the King of Dark Patterns because it can get away with it. It's the one single app on my Mac that makes me specially configure cmd-Q to quit it. Manifest v3. Web Integrity API. Etc., etc., etc. Google does this because they can. They haven't been the better actor in ages.
> I might agree with that, although part of me is glad that there's at least one major platform that Chrome hasn't taken over.
> Five years ago, I'd have agreed. Today Chrome seems like the King of Dark Patterns because it can get away with it. It's the one single app on my Mac that makes me specially configure cmd-Q to quit it. Manifest v3. Web Integrity API. Etc., etc., etc. Google does this because they can. They haven't been the better actor in ages.
One of my biggest fears with the EU coming down on Apple is that they'll force Apple to allow "real" Blink-powered Chrome (vs. the current shell around WebKit), and that we'll wind up with another late-90s/early-00s browser monopoly. Blink is already at something like 90% market share on desktop and 60% on mobile (basically everything not iOS/macOS), and Google is already acting near-unilaterally on new features.
I would agree with that in principle if it were remotely true, but on my iPhone, when I searched for chatgpt or openai when they came out, I got half a dozen fake apps before the real one. And that's been the case for so many search terms for popular apps or areas. There are 1.8 million apps on iOS app store! How do they get this aura and image of safety and reliability? Or, how do I find that safe walled garden? :)
First, yes, I totally agree with the premise. I still think there's a big difference between scammy software like you described and flat-out malware. App Store review can identify and reject lots of malicious syscalls. If you get a fake ChatGPT app, it might very well have in-app purchases that don't actually do anything server-side, but it probably won't exfiltrate your email to North Korea.
You're right. It's not "safe" in the sense that things clearly, demonstrably make it through that shouldn't. I do believe those are the exceptions that stand out, though. It doesn't mean that scammers can't still get malware into the store. It does mean they have to work harder for it than most scammers are willing or able to.
By analogy, Fremont, CA isn't "safe". They still have robberies and thefts and assaults and murders. But with a crime rate literally 1/10th that of St. Louis, I'd forgive people for describing it that way.
Are you confused between open source and open development?
Isn't the source fully open?
Edit:
If I made a movie, and made the files freely available after I make it and let you do whatever you want with it
.. would you insist that it isn't "open" because you didn't see me argue with my editor or the 100 times I iterates on the end scene or whether your idea for chase sequence was not incorporated?
You can't even install the resulting binaries of an opensource Android build on a phone because of gaps. And even if you could (or fill in the gaps) Google poisoned the ecosystem by ensuring almost all Android apps require Google Play services. Which aren't open source and you realistically need for all Android apps.
So no, Google made sure there is no open source Android. There are just some (incomplete) source dumps.
I'm not talking about the Google Maps app or the YouTube app here. I'm talking about the API's which Google Play services offer which all apps use. API's which for example allows your app to get the location of the user. Or allows your app to be updated.
Simply said probably none of the apps you installed on your phone are going to work without Google Play services installed. Google Play services are closed source. Which is why manufactures like Samsung need to sign a contract with Google and can't simply "install opensource Android". Samsung could live without Google Maps being installed and they could even live without the Google play store but they can't live with none of your apps (like your bank app, your Netflix app, etc.) working.
> Can you name an OS that gives more support to OEMs than Android?
I don't see how this is relevant for this discussion? The whole point is that Android is only opensource in name. You must license Google Play services from Google otherwise Android is practically useless since you can't run 99.9% of the Android apps. When you license Google Play services Google will also impose all kinds of other restrictions on you which have nothing to do with Google Play services. Like for example mandating you don't set Perplexity AI as the default...
Imagine Microsoft "open-sourcing" Windows (by doing some source drops at regular intervals) but you wouldn't be able to run all the existing Windows applications on it without licensing closed source software and online services from Microsoft.
> Imagine Microsoft "open-sourcing" Windows (by doing some source drops at regular intervals) but you wouldn't be able to run all the existing Windows applications on it without licensing closed source software and online services from Microsoft.
In case of Android and Google Play services that is never going to work reliably. Your users will experience breakage on a regular interval and you will make yourself wildly unpopular with app developers (since they will be getting the bug reports of the subtle incompatibilities). Probably to a point where they might just block their app from running on your phone.
All this stuff works on paper but it is going to be a constant up hill battle which you will loose in the end because your users will become fed-up with the constant needling of broken stuff and having to wait for you to fix it. It similar to using Wine on Linux. It works _a lot_ of the time but not all the time.
If you want to experience using reverse engineered Google play services, try an Android phone (or emulator) with microG on it [1].
building your own services doesn't help any existing app OSes live and die from 3rd party apps so unless you can convince 10k developers to port their apps to a platform with no users, you're dead in the water
It sure is. Open source doesn't require open development model or even taking outside contributions. It simply requires that you have access to the source and can do things like fork it, which you absolutely can with Android. I think people android to be more like Linux, but that's a very difficult arrangement and has tradeoffs.
Free Software Foundation General Public License version 2:
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
That's generally interpreted to mean that the build environment or build system is included in the requirements of the licence. This is included in FSF's Free Software Definition as well:
Answering your question then, no, source absent build prerequisites / systems does not satisfy either FSF's Free Software Definition or the subsequent Open Source Definition by the Open Source Initiative.
Android is not open source and has not been for years. There is AOSP that contains small part of Android source. But the product that Google sells to OEMs is not open source.
It seems the probability of being guilty in the current justice system is a function of how many persistent enemies you have and not how just or unjust your actions are.
With Apple, they are the manufacturer of the phone and the software, so they get to decide what goes on the hardware.
Google makes the OS, but not the hardware. Why should they be able to decide what another company puts on the hardware.
This is exactly the same playbook Microsoft tried in the 90s, and it is going to court for the exact same reason. It's using your market power to prevent competition.
We've decided that just because you are the maker of a piece of software does not mean you get to decide what runs on someone else's hardware.
So are you proposing that Google shouldn't allow other companies to install Android? What would Samsung, Motorola switch to and do app developers have to create apps targeting all of the different mobile OSes?
This seems like a far worst path than today, and to OP's point, though Google isn't perfect, they're doing better than their competitor in providing options. Pushing Google to only offer Android on their own phones is not a win for consumers.
I'm proposing that Google can't decide what other hardware companies include in their devices just because they are including Android.
I think it is fine for Google to say you have to include the Play store, or you have to include Chrome, but to say you can't include firefox, or you can't include instagram, etc. etc. That shouldn't be up to Google.
This is what got Microsoft in anti-trust trouble in the 90s. They included Internet Explorer with the OS, and said that it had to be the default and only browser included by vendors. They weren't allowed to include competing browsers.
> Pushing Google to only offer Android on their own phones is not a win for consumers.
How can you possibly know that? Traditionally, competition + standards for interoperability has been a big win for consumers.
In a world without Google-android, maybe Samsung & Huawei get together and put in the polish to make https://postmarketos.org/ into a consumer-usable system? Maybe each fork LineageOS or KaiOS but collaborate on a standard apk format so developers can easily ship on different app stores?
> No one is forcing these other companies to make and sell...
> I'm really struggling to see where the consumer harm is.
Imagine a world where it's illegal to grow crops unless you use a particular brand of seeds. Nobody is forcing you to make cereal, but you're going to have a bad time if you can't get the needed components for it.
It's not that far off base, either. Heard of Monsanto? Google is basically going down the same path.
Google Maps must be the biggest value-add Google has built for their phone ecosystem, full stop. I see no reason they should give that away no strings attached. I am no Google fan but it's one of the few things they have done which positively impacts me almost daily.
They're being harassed for lying about being a better actor. Apple gets to be a controlling asshole because there's no legal requirement for tech companies to not be. Google tried to have their cake and eat it too.
iOS is a package deal: you use our OS on our phones with our App Store and browser. Very straightforward and honest, even if we rightly hate the deal. This all relies on basic protections of IP law that the state is so far unwilling to roll back.
Android is a confusopoly[0]. For every point you mentioned, Google has a hidden deal or catch that subverts the intention of the words in question and makes it as bad as iOS.
Yes, Android is FOSS, but the app store everyone uses is proprietary; and Google's licensing terms for the proprietary store contravene the licenses on the FOSS portion. You specifically agree not to ship devices with "Android forks", even if you don't put the proprietary store on those specific devices. And what's actually released in AOSP shrinks every time a Google engineer puts a Google client in an app. Let us also not forget Android Honeycomb, which actually was not released to AOSP. There is no legal requirement for Google to ship source, and they've already tried out a fully-proprietary release of Android in the past.
Yes, you could install non-Google-Play apps on Android, but updating them required you to manually approve every update. Third-party app stores were a nightmare to use until Epic sued about it and Google provided APIs to actually deliver updates in the same way that Google Play can.
Yes, Google Play lets Mozilla ship Gecko. But Google is also paying phone manufacturers lots of money to make Chrome the default. Oh, and to not ship any third-party app stores. Combined with Google Play not letting you distribute other app stores through itself, it makes actually finding and using an app store a pain.
And Chrome is specifically designed to make you use Google Search with the same dark patterns Edge uses.
Please do not fool yourself into thinking that any actor in this industry is good. They all suck, and you should be happy when any of them get their noses bloodied.
[0] A term coined by the writer of Dilbert, Hatsune Miku, for deliberately confusing marketing intended to make you sigh in frustration, open your wallet, and let the sales guy decide what product you buy.
The factual info in your reference "[0]" makes no sense. The writer (and illustrator) of the Dilbert cartoon is Scott Adams [1]. I have no idea what the name you referenced has anything to do with it, other than some Japanese software. Or was all of part of your comment written by an LLM?
And it's not an accident, or just an unthinking corporation with big divisions accidentally working at opposites, or just something looks bad when someone writes it up from the outside.
E..g. Google recently announced that it will be moving Android development entirely to its private internal branch, no more development sharing. They say they'll still be open source, but Google has been caught lying about a lot of things lately.
> This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases are finished.
I might be missing something big here, but how does the consistency work in these scenarios? At one place, you are saying Google is not allowed to pay to be default, but at the same time you are allowing others to be default because they are not a monopoly. One would naively assume that rules should be consistent. I get that asking people to choose induces friction and yet people would gravitate towards the most popular option. But, giving the default to an objectively inferior product (not talking about perplexity, but you would agree bing/DDG is not on the same level as Google for most non tech users) is worse when it comes to user experience and increases the friction even more.
Everyone's trying to fight for a piece of the AI walled-garden pie. I guess it's only getting divided up between a few players all over again. Nice try Perplexity, and I do see it as forewarning for the power play OpenAI will attempt (we just don't know what it will be yet).
Perplexity setting up talks with phone makers is itself an anti-competitive behavior to curb an already anti-competitive behavior. Either this should be banned in entirety or let the free markets prevail.
That's not happening. Everything that comes with a computer could be possibly construed as anti-competitive. Even the Start Menu - after all, if Start11 and StartIsBack exist, why should Microsoft have the right to ship their own start menu? How about calculators (Desmos)? The system that puts maximize, minimize, and close on windows (after all, WindowBlinds exists)? The login screen (LogonStudio)? What about the Task Manager (Process Explorer)? File Explorer (Total Commander)? The Media Player (VLC)? The PDF viewer (unfair competition against Adobe!)?
I agree that at some point, it crosses a line. Perplexity is nowhere near powerful or influential enough to cross that line.
Yeah, I don't think bundling programs by default should be considered anti-competitive for exactly this reason; there's a near infinite number of possible combinations of configurations and it would be ridiculous to expect users to have to make an affirmative choice between all of them every time they buy a product.
What should be considered anti-competitive is when you take active steps to block alternatives from existing. Like if Windows started requiring start menu alternatives to have a signed certificate from Microsoft in order to run; that would be anti-competitive. Or if they wanted to block a manufacturer from selling computers with Start11 pre-installed, that would be anti-competitive.
The Start Menu and Taskbar components of Windows Explorer is probably the most-used program in the world, and it's not even close.
It also unfairly competes and damages competition from TaskbarX, Tabame, ObjectDock, RocketDock, Start11, and countless other small businesses.
As a result, Microsoft enjoys a near-monopoly on the world's most used program, and even has the audacity to break compatibility with these competitors regularly.
And how can we be sure that the EU’s silence on the lack of competition, isn’t because Microsoft crushed all competitors before they even had a chance?
In my competitive world, in my competitive dream, car dealerships will be offering free taskbars when you refinance. The market for the world’s most used program should be open to competition from anyone.
The most capitalist thing to do here is to have the parties gathered in an app on the device and have the companies bid on the user and have the user pick their prefernce. That way the user can enjoy many dialogs and be paid for their time. You pick, ebay 10$ temu 12$ Amazon 2$ aliexpress 15$ etc or all 20 shopping apps for 80$
Should be fun to install 500 games for 60 cent each. It might even push storage forwards.
Who knows, maybe there are enough parties out there to fund the entire device.
No, what’s anti competitive is Google making an open source operating system that is worth absolutely nothing without the Google play services, and locking these play services behind contract that contains anti competitive rules, like « you have to set Google Gemini as default assistant », or « you can’t ever sell a phone without the Google play services or with any alternative than the Google
play services ».
Android at its core is free and open source, every company can ship it. But Google hold one key thing in its hands, the Google play services, and use that to force others to do whatever they want them to do.
Else they can go the huawei direction, good luck making a Google play services competitor outside of China. Maybe in Russia ? That’s nothing.
Maybe perplexity ai is just better than Gemini and that’s one of the reason Motorola wanted to ship it. Maybe it’s for money. Whatever the reason, Google is abusing its dominant position to prevent competitor from competing with them.
Apple never pretended iOS is free and available to all other phone manufacturer. It was always a main selling point for Apple phone.
Google killed competition by first making a free operating system that all phone manufacturer could use, lowering their production cost, and when competitor like windows phone or Samsung tyzen died, slowly tightened his grip by pushing more and more core feature in their third party services, hence forcing manufacturer to agree to their terms if they want to have a play store, Google pay service or just pass play integrity so that bank app can run.
That’s in my opinion completely different strategies, one is fair, the other is deceptive and manipulative.
Windows Phone was not killed by Google offering a free OS. Microsoft chose to charge a licence for it[0]. And every Android handset requires (or required) the manufacturer to pay Microsoft licence fees of about the same amount, so the cost to the OEM wouldn't have been that different.
> Already in anti-trust related to ads, AI is probably in the clear.
"Already in trouble for committing monopolist behavior in market A, Google should be fine committing even more monopolist behavior in the very related and overlapping market of B"
This makes claim makes pretty little sense to me. AI search and Google web search (ads) are already stepping on each other. I see no reason that Google wouldn't be worried about antitrust on AI search if they're worried about antitrust action in general- which they clearly are.
Seems like the real issue is that Google is using proceeds from the core illegal monopoly to fund a dumping operation in another market in order to establish a monopoly there. They've been able to dump a free browser on the market and smother any potential competition in that space in the same fashion.
Every browser I've used in the last 20 years: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, all free. The browser market has been full of free competitors since before Google even existed.
Someone at Google should sic an llm at the trove of documents from the Microsoft antitrust trial. This is directly from the 90s Microsoft playbook. I'm sure I'm by far not the only one with a sufficient attention span to remember that.
Motorola is one of the better phone manufacturers, though. Hardly any bloat, usually able to root easily, decent support from other operating systems, reasonably priced, and with decent battery life.
I still struggle to see what phones at 10x the price actually provide.
I got a Motorola Razr because it was an affordable folding phone and was shocked by how nice it is. As in I, a cheapskate, may actually have brand loyalty now.
Google/Alphabet's corporate death penalty (forced dissolution by the state) cannot come quickly enough.
Live by the sword (secretly cooperate with state-run intelligence agencies against the interests of their own users), die by the sword (swift and merciless forced corporate dissolution, by the state).
It clearly states in the first line:
> "Google’s contract with Lenovo Group Ltd.’s Motorola blocked the smartphone maker from setting Perplexity AI as the default assistant on its new devices"
They didn't block Perplexity AI from Motorola's devices, the agreement states that they allow them to preload the devices with Perplexity, but the agreement, that both parties signed, does not give Motorola the permission to set it as the default.
> "Motorola “can’t get out of their Google obligations and so they are unable to change the default assistant on the device.”
They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim they had no choice.
I understand the premise, that they think they had no choice, but this article is misleading in its headline, and plenty of the comments here clearly show that a lot of "readers" didn't bother to read it.
And they really don't have a choice. if you don't abide by googles terms then they will not permit you to use google mobile services. That means (at the very least):
You cant even use the word "Android" to describe the OS.Just look at how crippled Amazons fork is. Or how huawei pretty much lost their entire GLOBAL market share because of a US sanction preventing them having a GMS contract.
No matter what anyone says, android IS google. It is so riddled with google specific behaviours you cant use without a license that companies have even ditched android to make their own OS - because they literally aren't allowed to favorably position their own functionality over googles in any way.
Was the one thing which ended my couple of years without Google, as my banking apps started banning my phones fingerprint for being insecure.
Seems like in a major part of '''Pax Americana''' is needing to use a Google or Apple fingerprint to participate in society. Makes you laugh when people whinge about China.
One real world problem is that some existing systems are built relying on the integrity of the components within, i.e. BART in the bay area relies on the BART cards being honest and secure. If iPhones are to be allowed into the system, they also have to be honest and secure.
The capability is being over-used and abused, and we should design systems to never need it, but some do.
What has Google done to stop Amazon here?
That's not going to happen, it's already a large problem in China.
When I asked out of curiosity why not Azure, especially given that these companies almost all use Office, Teams, Outlook, etc. several have told me it's because of Google Shopping and SEO. Though never formally stated or part of the contract it's often mentioned by Google that "They already have a relationship" with these companies via the feeds they provide for those products. And there are consistent talking point among the GCP sales reps about how they "help deliver you customers" and you "shouldn't fund a competitor".
Obviously not the same thing but it does indicate that Google isn't afraid to leverage their search monopoly in the other parts of their business.
I wonder how much of it is Google asking them to do that, versus quotas and incentives that make anything else untenable.
The latter is a well-known phenomenon, if your sales reps are under enough pressure, they will eventually resort to illegal tactics that make your company look bad, even if they're never explicitly told to do so.
Another way to look at this is through an evolutionary lens; the salesmen that do the right thing can't possibly perform as well as those that don't, so they're fired / never promoted. It's not that all salesmen are evil, it's that, in such an environment, only the evil ones have a chance, all without managements knowledge or approval.
HSBC is the most famous example where this happened, to the point of their bank employees knowingly assisting gangs and cartels in laundering money.
There is little point to getting an app like perplexity AI pre-installed on a phone as a non-default. Changing defaults isn’t exactly trivial, and any user motivated enough to go through that will have no problems installing the app from the App Store.
So of course the deal fell through.
And it’s accurate to say that “Google blocked a deal to put Perplexity AI on Motorola phones”, and highly monopolistic.
Though… as an end user and occasional family tech support person, I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones. Thanks google.
Except that I still get all the google bloatware on my phone.
Of course, most commercial apps won’t run due to Google’s monopolistic bullshit. You can partially fix it by installing (sandboxed) google play services, but that halves the battery life back to what stock android gets.
Did the title change? They (Lenovo) are going to court? This is an antitrust case against Google and the witness is not part of the agreement signed. Is Lenovo suing Google?
The title is representing the witness (perplexity) stance, not Lenovo's. And given it's a antitrust suit it seems like a very valid stance.
Try not to overthink it.
Saying Google has no part in this would be wrong, and the fact that the agreement was mutual doesn't change the restrictions.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
Given the recent judgements about Google's anticompetitive behavior in multiple other arenas, revisiting these licensing agreements seems justified.
The article is basically saying "if you don't use Play store and Google apps you'll have to build them yourself". I don't really understand - yes? You would have to. But you still got a load of stuff free. You only have to build apps on top. You get a working OS for free still, which is incredibly valuable.
The article says a lot more. A key point about the Open Handset Alliance, OHA (emphasis theirs):
"If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. ...
The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork."
If you care about the laws though you cannot really get rid of the play services.
If the certificates were used for copy protection, the DMCA might apply. If they weren’t part of the API, copyright might apply. Patent law doesn’t apply, and trade secrets don’t enjoy legal protection.
They could argue you’re in violation of their terms of service, but their remedy for that is to kick you off the services you’re actively avoiding.
Is there some other law I’m missing?
Google used their unimaginably deep pockets and several monopolies to make sure that no phone without Google Apps will sell. Look at what happened to Huawei after Trump's ban - there were articles in even mainstream media about how people are buying the P10 (was it?), starting it up, realizing nothing works and trying to return it. And literally the only reason that "nothing worked" was that it didn't have Google Play services.
They are essentially being strongarmed by the duopoly.
Open source Android vs. closed iOS
Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
Easy switch of search provider in Chrome vs. countless dark patterns pushing Edge and Bing on Windows
Google have slid back on this from day one. A pure-AOSP build of Android is borderline unusable, to the point that the dialer UI, various essential apps such as contacts and the like are now proprietary Google code, stripped out of AOSP. Additionally, AOSP has gone to a source-dump release pattern, rather than an open build. Last I knew, even basic things like the Camera and clock app had been made Google-Properietary.
You have to go to a completely independent distribution like LineageOS, which has maintained a step by step fork of Android, in order to have a "google free" environment that is vaguely useful.
However, the thing the courts have gotten very angry with is that in order to use the Android trademark, you have to get certification, which requires you to exclusively ship a series of Google applications (Chrome, Gmail, Youtube, the Google Photos app, etc) even if you have your own replacement (e.g. Samsung's browser, a native photo app, email client, etc.) and you Must ship with the Google account system up front.
> Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
Going with the previous one: The apps you install then are going to require the Google services that may or may not have been shipped with your phone. Additionally, the hoops that an application must go through to get the same level privileges as a Google application -- even for things on the local phone -- are far and above what most people would be willing to go through: Since Google apps are installed on the system software end, they are given privileges that no other application could have.
> Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
See previous: If you want to ship with Google's blessed market, you must ship with Chrome and it must be the default. The power of defaults is strong here.
i.e. a given manufacturer would not be able to sell Google based Android devices and separate non-Google based Android devices.
It's as if being able to bundle Windows OEM licenses was reliant on not selling any models with Linux.
The action was based partially on the Anti-Fragmentation Agreements (AFAs) mentioned above: https://www.clearyantitrustwatch.com/2022/09/the-general-cou...
IMO there should be mechanisms that prevent this kind of thing from ever occurring, but regulating this in a way that doesn't meaningfully impede other (benign) certification programs is a complex design space indeed!
Huawei sell both. Not in the same market, but they sell both.
APIs themselves are hard to make, but why is a camera one especially so? The language is well understood, the math and science are well understood. There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work.
Why is it hard?
In advance -- No, Sony/Panasonic/Toshiba/Apple/Whoever locking functions behind magic numbers and proprietary blobs and other 'un-Gentlemanly' things shouldn't count as difficulty in making a Camera API; that's just shit companies being shit to people, not an API problem.
Have an infrared camera that augments the image from a normal camera?
Have a rotationally pop up camera that allows using the same 3 cameras for back and selfie, but also use it to take panoramas. (I miss my Asus ZenPhone flip)
Create photos that allow users to change focus when viewing?
Have two cameras back to back and allow capturing simultaneously to create 360 photos/videos?
Have two cameras side by side and allow stereo vision?
If you have a 0.7x, 1x, and 4x camera, and the user is zooming at 3, use the 1x to fill the frame, but the 5x to have better image quality at the center?
Use the optical stabilizer to take several shots with micro shifts and do super resolution?
We can go on and on. Cameras and even smartphone cameras allow a lot of possibilities. Some of them are already explored by some manufacturers.
The Daylight Computer doesn't ship with Google applications like this from what I can remember, and I noticed it doesn't actually mention Android on their home page, just that it can "run your favorite apps". It only mentions Android on the specs page under software. I wonder if they did that because of this.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
This article lays out in painstaking detail in one place most of the criticisms about Android you'll find in this comment thread.
And this was published in 2018! That Google still maintains "a better actor" aura despite all that we know now is the greatest trick they ever pulled.
Also, that article was published in 2013 and only received light updates in 2018 -- and its core arguments haven't really aged even with the additional five years.
Google used to be more permissive with OEM "customization" and the result was lots of Bad Product Differentiation. Phone OEMs suck at software.
Huawei has a phone OS not based on AOSP, but you can't easily get it in the US.
Making a coherent OS product that doesn't get horribly mutated by OEM licensees is not easy. Vide Windows bloatware.
Google flexing in this way, arguably for the benefit of the user, is nonetheless anticompetitive and the courts are reaming them for it.
> Open source Android vs. closed iOS
Almost no one outside specific tech circles cares, and even if they understood what it meant, still wouldn't care.
> Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
That's one of the primary reasons I suggest that my relatives buy iPhones. I have older family who would absolutely install an APK from hackerz.ru if they got a phishing email claiming they won the Facebook Lottery and that's how they claim the prize. For that matter, I'm glad my bank has to publish their app through the App Store, because otherwise they'd almost certainly be hosting it on sketchysounding.bankservices.biz if no one made them.
The walled garden is an enormous advantage for a huge chunk of the world. I understand why it's a PITA for others. I'd love to install unsanctioned software from GitHub on my iPhone, but I'll happily accept that tradeoff in exchange for my uncle not being able to install "Real Actual Gmail.apk" from god knows where.
> Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
I might agree with that, although part of me is glad that there's at least one major platform that Chrome hasn't taken over.
> Easy switch of search provider in Chrome vs. countless dark patterns pushing Edge and Bing on Windows
Five years ago, I'd have agreed. Today Chrome seems like the King of Dark Patterns because it can get away with it. It's the one single app on my Mac that makes me specially configure cmd-Q to quit it. Manifest v3. Web Integrity API. Etc., etc., etc. Google does this because they can. They haven't been the better actor in ages.
> Five years ago, I'd have agreed. Today Chrome seems like the King of Dark Patterns because it can get away with it. It's the one single app on my Mac that makes me specially configure cmd-Q to quit it. Manifest v3. Web Integrity API. Etc., etc., etc. Google does this because they can. They haven't been the better actor in ages.
One of my biggest fears with the EU coming down on Apple is that they'll force Apple to allow "real" Blink-powered Chrome (vs. the current shell around WebKit), and that we'll wind up with another late-90s/early-00s browser monopoly. Blink is already at something like 90% market share on desktop and 60% on mobile (basically everything not iOS/macOS), and Google is already acting near-unilaterally on new features.
You're right. It's not "safe" in the sense that things clearly, demonstrably make it through that shouldn't. I do believe those are the exceptions that stand out, though. It doesn't mean that scammers can't still get malware into the store. It does mean they have to work harder for it than most scammers are willing or able to.
By analogy, Fremont, CA isn't "safe". They still have robberies and thefts and assaults and murders. But with a crime rate literally 1/10th that of St. Louis, I'd forgive people for describing it that way.
But yes, the App Store is a shit show
Doesn't mean much in a duopoly. Anyway, there's no real alternative to using google services which basically ruins the phone.
Isn't the source fully open?
Edit:
If I made a movie, and made the files freely available after I make it and let you do whatever you want with it
.. would you insist that it isn't "open" because you didn't see me argue with my editor or the 100 times I iterates on the end scene or whether your idea for chase sequence was not incorporated?
So no, Google made sure there is no open source Android. There are just some (incomplete) source dumps.
Are you saying because Google Maps isn't open source, the operating system is useless?
Simply said probably none of the apps you installed on your phone are going to work without Google Play services installed. Google Play services are closed source. Which is why manufactures like Samsung need to sign a contract with Google and can't simply "install opensource Android". Samsung could live without Google Maps being installed and they could even live without the Google play store but they can't live with none of your apps (like your bank app, your Netflix app, etc.) working.
Incidentally, version 8 was vastly superior to current iOS or Android, even after those OS’s stole a few UI innovations.
If only the team responsible for that got to run Windows, and not the other way around!
I don't see how this is relevant for this discussion? The whole point is that Android is only opensource in name. You must license Google Play services from Google otherwise Android is practically useless since you can't run 99.9% of the Android apps. When you license Google Play services Google will also impose all kinds of other restrictions on you which have nothing to do with Google Play services. Like for example mandating you don't set Perplexity AI as the default...
Imagine Microsoft "open-sourcing" Windows (by doing some source drops at regular intervals) but you wouldn't be able to run all the existing Windows applications on it without licensing closed source software and online services from Microsoft.
Or building your own services, presumably?
In case of Android and Google Play services that is never going to work reliably. Your users will experience breakage on a regular interval and you will make yourself wildly unpopular with app developers (since they will be getting the bug reports of the subtle incompatibilities). Probably to a point where they might just block their app from running on your phone.
All this stuff works on paper but it is going to be a constant up hill battle which you will loose in the end because your users will become fed-up with the constant needling of broken stuff and having to wait for you to fix it. It similar to using Wine on Linux. It works _a lot_ of the time but not all the time.
If you want to experience using reverse engineered Google play services, try an Android phone (or emulator) with microG on it [1].
[1] https://microg.org/
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html>
That's generally interpreted to mean that the build environment or build system is included in the requirements of the licence. This is included in FSF's Free Software Definition as well:
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
OSI's Open Source Definition includes substantively similar language:
The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program.
<https://opensource.org/osd>
Answering your question then, no, source absent build prerequisites / systems does not satisfy either FSF's Free Software Definition or the subsequent Open Source Definition by the Open Source Initiative.
Similarly the EU forced Apple to allow alternative browser engines and to add a default browser selector.
Google makes the OS, but not the hardware. Why should they be able to decide what another company puts on the hardware.
This is exactly the same playbook Microsoft tried in the 90s, and it is going to court for the exact same reason. It's using your market power to prevent competition.
We've decided that just because you are the maker of a piece of software does not mean you get to decide what runs on someone else's hardware.
This seems like a far worst path than today, and to OP's point, though Google isn't perfect, they're doing better than their competitor in providing options. Pushing Google to only offer Android on their own phones is not a win for consumers.
I'm proposing that Google can't decide what other hardware companies include in their devices just because they are including Android.
I think it is fine for Google to say you have to include the Play store, or you have to include Chrome, but to say you can't include firefox, or you can't include instagram, etc. etc. That shouldn't be up to Google.
This is what got Microsoft in anti-trust trouble in the 90s. They included Internet Explorer with the OS, and said that it had to be the default and only browser included by vendors. They weren't allowed to include competing browsers.
How can you possibly know that? Traditionally, competition + standards for interoperability has been a big win for consumers.
In a world without Google-android, maybe Samsung & Huawei get together and put in the polish to make https://postmarketos.org/ into a consumer-usable system? Maybe each fork LineageOS or KaiOS but collaborate on a standard apk format so developers can easily ship on different app stores?
I'm really struggling to see where the consumer harm is.
> I'm really struggling to see where the consumer harm is.
Imagine a world where it's illegal to grow crops unless you use a particular brand of seeds. Nobody is forcing you to make cereal, but you're going to have a bad time if you can't get the needed components for it.
It's not that far off base, either. Heard of Monsanto? Google is basically going down the same path.
iOS is a package deal: you use our OS on our phones with our App Store and browser. Very straightforward and honest, even if we rightly hate the deal. This all relies on basic protections of IP law that the state is so far unwilling to roll back.
Android is a confusopoly[0]. For every point you mentioned, Google has a hidden deal or catch that subverts the intention of the words in question and makes it as bad as iOS.
Yes, Android is FOSS, but the app store everyone uses is proprietary; and Google's licensing terms for the proprietary store contravene the licenses on the FOSS portion. You specifically agree not to ship devices with "Android forks", even if you don't put the proprietary store on those specific devices. And what's actually released in AOSP shrinks every time a Google engineer puts a Google client in an app. Let us also not forget Android Honeycomb, which actually was not released to AOSP. There is no legal requirement for Google to ship source, and they've already tried out a fully-proprietary release of Android in the past.
Yes, you could install non-Google-Play apps on Android, but updating them required you to manually approve every update. Third-party app stores were a nightmare to use until Epic sued about it and Google provided APIs to actually deliver updates in the same way that Google Play can.
Yes, Google Play lets Mozilla ship Gecko. But Google is also paying phone manufacturers lots of money to make Chrome the default. Oh, and to not ship any third-party app stores. Combined with Google Play not letting you distribute other app stores through itself, it makes actually finding and using an app store a pain.
And Chrome is specifically designed to make you use Google Search with the same dark patterns Edge uses.
Please do not fool yourself into thinking that any actor in this industry is good. They all suck, and you should be happy when any of them get their noses bloodied.
[0] A term coined by the writer of Dilbert, Hatsune Miku, for deliberately confusing marketing intended to make you sigh in frustration, open your wallet, and let the sales guy decide what product you buy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert
As for my comment being LLM slop, it's not. LLMs are way too corporatized - yes, even the local ones - to put in-jokes or references in citations.
Vouch. (modulo Chrome aping Edge dark patterns)
And it's not an accident, or just an unthinking corporation with big divisions accidentally working at opposites, or just something looks bad when someone writes it up from the outside.
E..g. Google recently announced that it will be moving Android development entirely to its private internal branch, no more development sharing. They say they'll still be open source, but Google has been caught lying about a lot of things lately.
(Sent from my Android.)
https://9to5google.com/2025/03/26/google-android-aosp-develo...
> This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases are finished.
I agree that at some point, it crosses a line. Perplexity is nowhere near powerful or influential enough to cross that line.
What should be considered anti-competitive is when you take active steps to block alternatives from existing. Like if Windows started requiring start menu alternatives to have a signed certificate from Microsoft in order to run; that would be anti-competitive. Or if they wanted to block a manufacturer from selling computers with Start11 pre-installed, that would be anti-competitive.
It also unfairly competes and damages competition from TaskbarX, Tabame, ObjectDock, RocketDock, Start11, and countless other small businesses.
As a result, Microsoft enjoys a near-monopoly on the world's most used program, and even has the audacity to break compatibility with these competitors regularly.
And how can we be sure that the EU’s silence on the lack of competition, isn’t because Microsoft crushed all competitors before they even had a chance?
In my competitive world, in my competitive dream, car dealerships will be offering free taskbars when you refinance. The market for the world’s most used program should be open to competition from anyone.
UPD. ah. I see. But Perplexity is an assistant. On Android AFAIK you can't just install another assistant.
UPD2. Actually, turns out on Android you can install a 3rd party assistant. AFAIK Alexa can just be installed from Play Store.
Should be fun to install 500 games for 60 cent each. It might even push storage forwards.
Who knows, maybe there are enough parties out there to fund the entire device.
Android at its core is free and open source, every company can ship it. But Google hold one key thing in its hands, the Google play services, and use that to force others to do whatever they want them to do.
Else they can go the huawei direction, good luck making a Google play services competitor outside of China. Maybe in Russia ? That’s nothing.
Maybe perplexity ai is just better than Gemini and that’s one of the reason Motorola wanted to ship it. Maybe it’s for money. Whatever the reason, Google is abusing its dominant position to prevent competitor from competing with them.
Trying to figure out the argument.
As opposed to Apple, Android is free and open like you said. It’s the Google Play Store that has limited access.
Google killed competition by first making a free operating system that all phone manufacturer could use, lowering their production cost, and when competitor like windows phone or Samsung tyzen died, slowly tightened his grip by pushing more and more core feature in their third party services, hence forcing manufacturer to agree to their terms if they want to have a play store, Google pay service or just pass play integrity so that bank app can run.
That’s in my opinion completely different strategies, one is fair, the other is deceptive and manipulative.
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/ZTE-exec-reveals-how-much-th...
1. Already in anti-trust related to ads, AI is probably in the clear.
2. If they are thought to violating a law they will get like a $10,000,000 fine and pay it, still less money than they will make from harvesting data.
"Already in trouble for committing monopolist behavior in market A, Google should be fine committing even more monopolist behavior in the very related and overlapping market of B"
This makes claim makes pretty little sense to me. AI search and Google web search (ads) are already stepping on each other. I see no reason that Google wouldn't be worried about antitrust on AI search if they're worried about antitrust action in general- which they clearly are.
I still struggle to see what phones at 10x the price actually provide.
Title is misleading
Live by the sword (secretly cooperate with state-run intelligence agencies against the interests of their own users), die by the sword (swift and merciless forced corporate dissolution, by the state).