After Microsoft’s extortion racket has failed to stop Android, and after Oracle’s crazy baseless lawsuit failed to stop Android, and after Nokia adopting Windows Phone failed to stop Android, Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle are now grasping the next straw in their fruitless efforts to stop Android: they’ve filed an antitrust complaint with the EU, claiming Google unfairly bundles applications with Android.
Filed by Fairsearch, an anti-Google lobby group formed by Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle, the complaint seems to centre around the suite of Google applications you can find on most Android phones today, such as Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and so on. The complaint claims if an OEM wants to ship one application from said suite, they are contractually obliged to ship them all, including the Play Store (a basic fact the three companies got wrong, but more on that later). On top of that, the complaint also claims that Google undercuts the market by giving Android away for free.
In a press release, the companies behind the complaint state that “Google’s predatory distribution of Android at below-cost makes it difficult for other providers of operating systems to recoup investments in competing with Google’s dominant mobile platform.” In other words, any open source software package could be at risk of complaints like this.
This complaint is, of course, complete and utter bogus. First of all, not a single OEM wanting to make an Android device is forced to ship the suite of Google applications. In fact, devices such as the Nook and Kindle series show that it is entirely possible to build successful Android devices without carrying the Android trademark, the Google suite of applications, or even the Play Store. Similarly, many Chinese companies are developing Android-based operating systems that do not ship with Google’s suite of devices either.
There are many other examples of success with Android without the Google suite of applications, most prominent of which for us here is probably CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod ROMs ship without the Google suite of applications, and CM users have to flash them separately after flashing CM itself. In spite of this, CM has been a massive success, as are many other ROMs out there that do not ship with Google’s Android applications. In fact, Google employees have even helped CyanogenMod in the past.
This is possible because Android has been designed to be modular from the very start. Virtually every component can be replaced by OEMs and users alike. Virtually every major OEM ships their own Android skin, launcher, and applications, and even something like Facebook and HTC can ship a device with a Facebook launcher, and there are even Android-certified devices on which Bing is the default search engine.
In order to receive the Android trademark and be able to ship the Play Store pre-installed, you have to comply with the Android compatibility program by following the Compatibility Definition Document. This document is identical in nature to the Windows Logo Program, and defines the minimum hardware specifications and components your device must carry in order to carry the Android trademark and ship the Play Store pre-installed.
If you want to take it up a notch, and want to ship Google’s suite of Android applications, you have to comply with a separate, non-public program. This program is identical to Microsoft Signature, which also requires those wanting to ship devices with the Signature label to install a suite of Microsoft applications.
The key here is that neither of these are required. You can ship an Android device without Play and the Android trademark, and without the Google Android applications. Similarly, you can ship computers without the Windows Logo certification, and without Signature. You may have noticed that Android devices without Play are far, far more common than PCs without the Windows Logo certification, mostly thanks to the likes of Amazon.
All in all, this complaint has so many holes in it that it’s hard to take seriously. For instance, it already gets the most basic of things wrong by claiming that in order to get Play you need to install the whole suite of Google Android applications, which is just plain wrong. If Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle get something as basic and out-in-the-open as this wrong, it’s hard to imagine the rest of the complaint will have undergone better scrutiny and proofreading.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle are free to ship Android devices with Play and the Google applications. They are free to ship Android devices with Play, but without the Google applications. They are free to ship Android devices without any of them, but won’t be able to use the Android trademark. In fact, they are even free to cherry-pick whatever parts of the Android Open Source Project they want, and build their own custom device that still runs Android applications but comes bundled with Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle technologies at the system level.
In other words, the complaint is complete and utter bogus, and is based on absolutely nothing. If this is all they can come up with, Nokia and Microsoft are in even bigger trouble on the mobile front than I thought.
I am starting to feel ashamed to have worked at one of those companies, their culture wasn’t like that.
What do you mean? Microsoft has been a piece of sh|t for a very long time. And Nokia has been a steamy one for years now, since that microsoftie became Nokia’s CEO.
You have to remember that what we see on the outside of the company can be very different on the inside. Stuff like this comes from the management and legal departments, not the engineering departments who are often filled with intelligent, passionate people who generally just want to worry themselves with crafting inventive products and solutions.
Sure, you could argue that they should no better to work at a company who’s legal/management actions are unscrupulous, but consider that a) it might not have been like that when they started, b) it’s not the greatest economy to just quit and find another job, and c) they may believe that resources and opportunities available to them to create marvelous things for the public outweighs the risk that their creations or the income from them may be used for evil.
Usually you can’t separate them since management has a great deal of influence on engineering. Motivation and proud to be with a company are important values that increase engineering productivity. If behavior to outside competition is war you can be sure inside competition is too. That’s not a healthy environment for those down the stack, engineers.
We are all driven by motivation. Engineers, more so the very good ones, need support and motivation. Kill that and you lose your best engineers, like happened at Nokia, and make those staying more unproductive.
Like Windows 8 and Lumia? Come on, if you look for the reason why they are so non-competative don’t look future then that. Its problems in management and execution. Now guess why…
An what does it help your products if your engineers hate “there” management and company, if they feel bad about action done by “there” company?
Its a great economy situation for talented people. Your A-class engineers. Those you like to keep. They are the ones who are going to change job first if conditions on the current job change to a level they aren’t happy, motivated, supported any longer. That’s why company’s put large money into engineers just to keep them feel home. Google’s 20% own-projects schedule, bonus, company events, inhouse marketing are all for that.
And yet it influences there productivity and those who not stay and switch will make those who stay even more unhappy. The way to go as we see with the unique success of Lumia. Haha.
Edited 2013-04-10 07:55 UTC
In case of Oracle and Nokia – many good engineers left (people from Sun in Oracle, and Nokia Linux engineers), because they didn’t agree with their companies’ approach. In case of Microsoft – such people don’t even appear there to begin with.
Edited 2013-04-10 17:51 UTC
MS and Oracle never had a good culture, so I guess you are talking about Nokia. They were going down the slope to become a complete troll ever since Elopocalypse.
What’s Nokia?
Actually Nokia was stuck in limbo even before Elop.
There is an interesting article (in russian) that covers some details: http://habrahabr.ru/post/171325/
Yep. Right. And then they call an Expert to never wake up that limbo. :p
Oracle no, but SUN were pretty decent…
Cool story Microsoft, can I buy PowerPoint by itself yet?
How about install Firefox or Chrome on Windows Phone 8?
Install anything other than Windows RT on a Surface RT device?
How about “secure” boot that really just makes it a lot harder on alternative desktop OS vendors?
Gmail isn’t even the default e-mail client on Android phones. I hope the regulatory authorities laugh “Fairsearch” all the way back to Redmond.
As for Nokia, it looks like they are destined to “SCO” themselves to death. What a pity.
You can, and always have been able to buy Office products separately. See:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/buy-microsoft-office-and-microsof…
Not a Microsoft restriction. Ask Mozilla and Google.
Valid, but not really fair. Who buys a tablet (Nexus, Surface RT, etc.) just to run another OS? Ubuntu super-fans maybe? Alternatively, can I install Windows on a Google Pixel?
How can an optional feature cause so much trouble? Do you complain equally about Chrome OS “verified boot” and Android’s locked boot loaders?
It is the second you enter your Google account information at setup. (Ok, maybe it asks. But my anecdotal evidence is that the normal email application is still un-configured on my Xoom 4.2.1 AOSP making me believe it is automatic.)
Thanks for all the misinformation. I’m not trying to argue that the FairSearch claims are valid, but had to comment on this single post due to the amount of inaccuracies in it.
Edited 2013-04-13 16:50 UTC
That’s hilarious! I clicked on the link, using the latest version of Chrome on Ubuntu, and got the following message:
I think Microsoft is the last Windows-only website on the Internet! 🙂
Hmm. I tried the link (using Chrome Version 26.0.1410.64 m). I get no such message.
I wouldn’t have thought there would be any problem installing Windows on a Chromebook Pixel. Do you know of any problems?
Is Secure Boot optional on a Windows 8 pre-installed laptop?
You can buy one application and pay almost the same as you would for four. Not really sure if that was what he was meaning by ‘buy separately’. They may as well charge three times the price for PowerPoint on it’s own, it’d make about as much sense (in one sense that is what they are doing).
A lot of the users use Android because of the features and flexibility it provides, not because of GMail, YouTube etc. If I was an OEM, I would not mind to set up a start-up screen and ask the users if they want to use — “GMail” “Outlook” — or “Google Search or Bing”. I am sure users will make the correct choice. As for the Play store, that’s gotta be there or other company’s application stores will also have to go.
Edited 2013-04-09 10:57 UTC
I am also surprised by how ridiculous their complaints are. Pure non-sense and illogical.
Edited 2013-04-09 11:02 UTC
Well, don’t be. It’s them (Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle), the usual ‘victim’ in IT world.
DONE
Its called Google Play
I use it because it’s not Microsoft, and especially because it’s not Apple. *ducks*
Of course, the fact that Linux is its core is nice too, but I’d say that’s just a bonus.
The new American Company culture …
If you cannot innovate, litigate !!.
Oh yes, and remember to file in the state where you have the judge in your pocket – not in a state where there is someone with technical skills and just a little bit of fairness sitting on the bench.
Last I checked it was the carriers who make it so that various applications cannot be uninstalled, and unless Google played a part in forcing them to lock Google applications then this is ridiculous.
Who locks the phones in ways that no one can install whatever ROM they want? Last I checked it was the carriers.
Hmm… Perhaps the lawsuit is just aimed at the wrong company!
Then you need to update your check. On the nexus 7, you cannot remove gmail, google+… apps. And the nexus is the stock android.
You can if you root. Unlike Nokia and Microsoft WP8/RT Android, more so Nexus, supports rooting. For some of us that – stock Android, no device-locks, upgrades – are the major reasons to buy Nexus.
Edited 2013-04-10 08:02 UTC
Not true at all. On any Nexus device you can install a custom ROM and then choose to install any or none of the Google apps. For my Nexus S 4G, I found rooting and custom ROM instructions on Google’s own website. Not only do they allow it, they encourage it for developers and power users.
For a long time I’ve run CM10 on my Nexus, and I had to install the Google apps separately. I’ve only recently gone back to the stock ROM to address a battery and stability issue with a CM nightly build that I should not have installed on my daily device. And even with this stock ROM, I can easily remove any apps I want via the terminal, since the device is rooted.
What a joke. Google would love to have all its products on every phone out there, regardless of OS or manufacturer. OK, so maybe they won’t take the time to write an app for a platform that has almost no market share but I am sure they would help the other platform create the app. 😉
And now the EU has to verify if the complaints are valid.
like I said it only costs tax money. these companies should be fined if there complaints turn out to be bogus indeed.
No worries… They already pay for that. Our tax money is not affected. Microsoft is generous enough with their violations to make sure that we are covered.
I’d give this +10 if I could.
[Face-palm] Wow. Just wow. I don’t even know what to say about this complaint.
Even though I agree with the points in the article, and have no love for the companies making the complaint, there is some truth in their claims. Google is using their position is one market to secure a dominant position in another market. In this case, they are using market analytics and advertising in order to provide a product to other vendors below cost. They are also using their consumer products (e.g. search and email) in order to make the product more desirable to consumers.
That being said, I think that they are playing their cards carefully in order to avoid anti-trust sanctions. Notice that their is a differentiation between the Gmail app and the Email app. They also have Browser, which is distinct from the Google branded (and much more Google reliant) Chrome. Of course, you don’t need Play since apps can be side-loaded or other marketplace apps can be used.
Whether they can avoid sanctions or not will depend upon their contracts with third parties, of which I am definitely not privy. Yet they are probably sufficiently flexible to avoid major issues. For example, I have noticed that devices with the Google apps also ship with competing apps. My device shipped with an alternative book store, news stand, and app store — in addition to Google’s products.
Is google making money from purchases made on google play? What’s to stop MS or anyone else from relying on the app store itself for revenue? Oh yeah, that’s not part of MS’s business model, who likes to charge an arm and a leg just for the OS itself!
Sounds to me more like this is an attempt by MS to change the market through legal means instead of changing itself to adapt to the market!
Microsoft doesn’t allow any other app stores than their own on WP7 and WP8 phones and tablets. They don’t allow any other browser besides IE. Look in the Play store and you’ll see about two dozen browsers at any given moment. Install the Amazon app store and you never have to use Play again. You can even choose to set up your Gmail account using the generic Email app instead of the native Gmail app.
Maybe they are playing their cards carefully as you said. Or, perhaps a company built on open source technology from day one just likes the idea of choice and openness in their products.
I’m not one to trust Google with everything (especially my personal data, though they already have too much of it anyway) but even with all its warts, Android is the most open mobile platform available now. That may change when Ubuntu Phone OS hits, but it will have a lot of catching up to do.
to Google own applications bundled?
I never heard of an Android
* browser
* map application
* E-mail
* …
application provided by Microsoft, Nokia or Oracle.
Microsoft does provide some apps, most of which are not very popular. The only search app is called “Bing in China”
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Microsoft+Corporatio…
Nokia brought Here Maps to iOS and Android, but people quickly noticed that it is even worse than Apple Maps so it did not see much success either. Best review quote: “Try this out if you want to feel like your Apple Maps is Google’s.”
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/here-maps/id577430143
Microsoft complaining of a competitor bundling applications? Now that must be a first.
How come such big players can come with such horribly distorted accusation and just *get away with it* ?
How come they are not punished for basically lying, grabbing away scarce public resources for baseless accusations ?
Isn’t 1st April fools jokes over yet?
Of course this complaint is totally bogus and the only reason to begin it is to annoy Google. MS and Nokia do not have competing software packages for Android and are just sour that their own platform is not selling very good.
Maybe they’ll run out of “straws” eventually
Nah. They are just Rumplestiltskin in reverse. They will just spin their gold onto straw …
“Microsoft […] filed an antitrust complaint with the EU, claiming Google unfairly bundles applications with Android.”
Come on Microsoft, grow a little, take your memory pills…
Kochise
I can understand wanting to ship only a subset of the standard Google apps. This issue is (for example) that a manufacturer could not replace the standard browser but keep everything else. Me personally as an end-user, I’d love to be able to uninstall some of the default apps and replace them with better ones.
It could only work if your are an experienced Android user and knows the apps to install.
Me, as a user, I’d like first to see my phone not crippled with carrier’s crapwares. And having a minimum set of applications would be interesting instead to have just Google play at first boot that requires you to connect to your Google account and start digging through thousands of applications to find the ones that suits me after several trial and errors.
Just note that app sync works between your devices connected to the same Google account. Buy a new device, sync it, you’ll get your favorite apps you’re used to installed in no time.
Kochise
While I agree, nothing stops a vendor from shipping the Google apps *and* alternatives, and make the alternatives the default ones, does it? At least several of my Android devices (admittedly cheap Chinese ones from companies that might have ignored Google’s rules) came with pre-installed alternatives to one or more Google applications as well as the Google applications themselves.
Except, according to your article, that’s not what the complaint says:
The complaint claims if an OEM wants to ship one application from said suite, they are contractually obliged to ship them all
I take that to mean they’re not saying that you HAVE to ship the suite, but if you want to ship ONE app in the suite, you have to ship ALL of them. So, for example, you couldn’t ship an Android device with the Play store, but without Gmail, and vice-versa. I don’t know if that changes things or not insofar as how valid the claim is, but I think it’s an important distinction.
BTW: There are no Android devices shipping without that suite; there are only OS’s based on Android, but which really aren’t.
Edited 2013-04-09 20:04 UTC
And thats the important distinction. Google isn’t forcing anyone to do anything. IF you want to ship “Android” you have to have certain apps installed and you can’t change the system so much that it won’t run Android apps. This is the deal of being in the Open Handset Alliance. You are still free to take Android and do whatever you want with it, as seen by Amazon and B&N. Thing is, only t he real “Android” devices seem to be doing really well. People want their Google services.
And THAT is what they’re forcing vendors to do. According to what the article says, you can’t ship a device running Android and only include certain apps, while not including others. It’s either ALL or NOTHING. In other words, Nokia couldn’t ship a phone running Android, with the Google Play store installed, and then include their own mapping solution while leaving Google Maps off.
I’m not arguing whether Google is justified or not in enforcing this requirement, but that is what the complaint is about.
Edited 2013-04-10 00:15 UTC
WorknMan,
“And THAT is what they’re forcing vendors to do. According to what the article says, you can’t ship a device running Android and only include certain apps, while not including others.”
Precisely. Some will find it debatable whether this is harmful, and nearly everyone will find it ironic that microsoft has been convicted of the same sort of bundling in the past. Microsoft’s intentions may not be pure, but it seems logical to me that if it was illegal for microsoft, then it should be illegal for google as well in the markets which they have a monopoly.
Hopefully google will just concede and allow vendors to bundle whatever they please. It’s not like google needs to bundle software to attract users – they still have a tremendous marketing advantage in the android ecosystem due to their brand.
Edited 2013-04-10 01:03 UTC
They already do so. Vendors can already bundle whatever they please.
There is perhaps a certain minimum set of apps that must be shipped before one can call one’s device “Android”, but AFAIK they don’t have to be Google’s apps. Nokia could ship Nokia maps if they want to.
After all, “Android” is a product of the Open Handset Alliance, not just Google.
http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/
http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/oha_members.html
lemur2,
“They already do so. Vendors can already bundle whatever they please.”
I am taking the information at face value. If it’s true that google’s forcing vendors to bundle, then there may be an antitrust case. If it’s untrue, then there isn’t. As MacTO indicated earlier, the contract between google and android vendors is information we are not exactly privy to. Keep in mind this complaint was filed in Europe, the contracts may be jurisdiction and/or vendor specific. If you have more information than what’s been disclosed already, it’d be helpful if you could post a link to it. Thanks.
“My Android tablet shipped with Android, with the Google Play store installed, but left Google Maps off.”
That’s interesting, however I’m not sure the complaint included the tablet market since the smartphone market was explicitly mentioned. Do you have a similar example of an android phone model?
Edited 2013-04-10 03:25 UTC
I have only two Android devices, and I am familiar with only one other Android device. Two of these three devices are phones, the other is a tablet. They each shipped with different versions of Android, and each shipped with a different set of apps by default. By no means were all of the apps Google’s, and some of the more common Google apps for Android were omitted from each device. The Android YouTube app, for example, shipped only on the tablet, yet Google Maps was missing only from the tablet. I think GMail was the only Google app which shipped on all three devices.
That is the extent of personal anecdotes I am able to tell you about it, I’m afraid.
Here is an opinion to consider, perhaps:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130409095055445
Edited 2013-04-10 04:56 UTC
lemur2,
“They *can* compete with free. Just take the free code and make it look like your brand and make it do what you want it to do.”
Google might make it easy for competitors to rebrand and sell android, but I don’t think that view of competition would gel with the spirit of antitrust law – switching to android makes google stronger. Consider that if google charged for android’s true & non-monopoly-subsidized costs, then competing operating systems would begin to look more attractive to vendors, some of whom would begin defecting from android in favor of alternatives. In other words, more competition, which in theory could be better for consumers. I’m not really sure how I feel about predatory pricing since, even after careful consideration, it seems to me that it is a painstakingly difficult line to draw.
Edited 2013-04-10 06:02 UTC
Android is actually the product of the Open Handset Alliance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance
The Open Handset Alliance is a consortium of 84 firms to develop open standards for mobile devices. Member firms include Google, HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, Nvidia, and Wind River Systems.
These firms form a consumer cooperative, they split the development costs of Android between them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
This (a consumer cooperative) is a perfectly legal way of doing business. Because it reduces costs for any one participant, is also far more efficient than any single firm trying to carry similar costs on its own.
If Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle want to reduce their costs and compete, they could always join the co-operative. In fact, they don’t even have to do that, since the product of the cooperative is offered to everyone (including Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle) to use for free if they want to.
After all, Nokia used to use an open source operating system for its phones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian
Then Nokia recently chose to switch to Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. It is chutzpah of the highest order for Nokia to abandon its open source OS, switch to the far more costly Microsoft Windows Phone OS, then complain about the low costs of Android.
This is a ludicrous complaint on the face of it, utterly bogus, and painfully obvious that it is. It simply doesn’t pass the smell test at all.
Edited 2013-04-10 08:51 UTC
How could a more costly commercial, proprietary and closed OS, compared to a zero-cost one which anyone can use, possibly be more beneficial for users?
Closed == more expensive, and can contain anti-features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damaged_good#Computer_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_%28technology%29
Open == zero-cost, and is guaranteed to preserve user freedoms.
Now you perhaps need to know a little bit about EU antitrust law (also called competition law).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law
My bold. It is all about what is good for the consumer, not necessarily what is good for companies.
This fact underlines just how ridiculous this complaint is. Consumers are greatly benefited, directly, if 84 companies get together and form a co-operative which provides a consumer product at reduced prices, with guarantees that the reduced price will be permanent. That is absolutely great for consumers, especially when the alternative is far more costly and it enables ant-features such as DRM and walled-gardens which are directly against the best interests of consumers.
Edited 2013-04-10 10:01 UTC
lemur2,
“How could a more costly commercial, proprietary and closed OS, compared to a zero-cost one which anyone can use, possibly be more beneficial for users?”
One example: for some users windows is more useful than linux, despite being closed, commercial and proprietary. Of course you and I prefer open source, but even in this space we still should acknowledge that competition is good and monoculture is bad. Ideally we would have entirely different competing implementations and not just forks of the dominant ones.
Edit: Back to this case, going after predatory pricing practices with open source seems bizarre, since open source by it’s nature is usually free. Suffice it to say I’ll be watching this closely to see how it plays out.
Edited 2013-04-10 14:41 UTC
Why do you always take a black and white viewpoint to proprietary vs open source software?
It doesn’t have to be one or the other. I don’t see you complaining that you can’t see the source of many of the android applications?
So I can only assume it is because you want a mono-culture of Linux.
If you want to understand my motivation it is very simple. I simply ask, in any given scenario, what is best for the greater number of people? In this case it is abundantly clear, the OS which is open, which does not include anti-features, which is far less costly, which is supplied and supported by 84 companies not just one, and for which the wider ecosystem is not a walled garden is clearly better in every way for the vast majority of consumers. Hell, since we are talking an alliance of 84 companies, plus a number of other suppliers who use the codebase without being part of the alliance, versus a single supplier, then that same option is even better for more companies.
It is a no-brainer, really. How could anyone objectively decide otherwise is the mystery to me.
Edited 2013-04-12 01:23 UTC
Except it doesn’t matter what scenario it is you will always say Linux is the better choice, no matter what the argument is presented.
You are zealot, nothing more.
As for your reasoning it is flawed.
Can you stop using this term because tbh you haven’t proven that they always exist. Tarring everything with the same brush is mis-information
Innovation rarely happens when there is design by committee. While specifications and standards are great e.g. TCP/IP, HTTP etc, XML, JSON etc. It doesn’t really work on one product.
I upgraded from a HTC Desire to a Samsung SIII … While it looks a bit nicers and a bit slicker … there isn’t a huge difference between the OS versions.
In anycase, Google controls Android Development. It is pretty much irrelevant whether Google is part of it or not.
Edited 2013-04-12 07:40 UTC
I notice you make an unsupported claim, you are claiming to know what is in my mind, but you completely avoid the point I made.
Why exactly would you claim, in this particular case, as Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle are claiming, that open, non-walled-garden, zero-cost mobile OS software is somehow not the best choice for consumers? This is the crux of the matter, because EU competition law is actually meant to protect the best interests of consumers, not software companies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law
So go ahead, make your case, present an argument.
Until you do that, and until I can come up with no valid counter, you have made no point at all.
At this juncture, your claiming that I am a zealot, without you having made any actual argument, is merely an ad hominem attack meant to distract everyone’s attention (my own in particular) away from the fact that you have no point.
Edited 2013-04-12 08:00 UTC
My argument is that you will always support Linux no matter what the argument, so there is little point having a conversation.
Reading between the lines, that was nothing but an admission that you do not have an argument.
No I was just talking the truth.
No, by continuing your lame attempts at ad hominem attacks, you were just avoiding trying to make an argument, because you don’t have any point, and you don’t want people to notice that you don’t have a point.
This is your argument so far:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110102174418AA04h5M
Edited 2013-04-12 10:31 UTC
I asked you why you were so against something and you came up with the usual extremist viewpoint and I answered you.
You seem to be incapable of realising that people have different reasons for choosing product other than a rigid set of beliefs that you think everyone should adhere to even when the vast majority of people don’t even factor these into their decision. That is definition of a zealot and nothing you have posted has proven otherwise.
Observations based on past and current behaviour are not ad-hominem attacks, however much you claim otherwise.
Cost is not an “extremist” position.
By sharing development costs across 84 alliance members and other parties, the Open Handset Alliance can produce a (software) platform that costs consumers nothing. As single software companies, Apple and Microsoft must charge perhaps $90 per device for their platform, and this cost IS passed on to consumers.
You may not care that Microsoft or Apple wants to control what features and apps you may or may not install on your device, and you may even be correct in your claim that this is not an issue for many, but let me assure you, cost and value-for-money are very much issues for the majority of consumers.
Backup:
http://gs.statcounter.com/?PHPSESSID=j2juf5bil673j4vrso39eijui6#mob…
Please try to remember, it is not just one factor in Mobile OS that is to the consumer’s advantage for an open platform, it is every factor.
The fact that you try to label someone as “extremist” when they point this out speaks volumes about the extraordinarily low quality of your argument.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion
Edited 2013-04-12 12:13 UTC
Oh comon, we both know we had many arguments about closed versus open. I know that it is soo important to you, the fact that it is free is just mask to hide your real opinions.
You can play dumb if you like. Doesn’t bother me as much as it does you it seems.
You still haven’t got a point, I see.
I made it, you just didn’t want to listen.
You did no such thing.
You don’t have any point at all, not even you off-topic attempts to belittle other posters are in any way valid, they are in fact a dead give away that you have no point. You might think of yourself as a mighty keyboard warrior, but I think the reality might be a little different, something like this perhaps:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_p2_8aZ7honk/TSbjFq7t84I/AAAAAAAAADs/-kJJq…
For someone that says I don’t have a point, you seem very upset. Call me what you want, it doesn’t change anything.
I asked you why you hated closed software soo much and you basically rehashed what it says on the FSF website.
I did no such thing. I said, in this case, that an open platform for their Mobile OS is far better for consumers. That is the primary consideration … what is better for consumers, just as that same aim happens to be the aim of EU competition law.
An open platform is better in this case primarily because of lower price. That is the primary benefit to consumers. The FSF website is primarily concerned about freedom, about users rights, not price.
It is better only secondarily because of the lack of a walled garden, and thirdly because the consumer is in control of their own device, rather than the author of the OS, but these are not the primary factors at play.
I would point out that it is you who did not listen.
I did listen, and I pointed out to you that price is only factor in someone’s decision as it not as important as you think it is otherwise iPhones wouldn’t fly off the shelves like they do.
However you started bringing up the anti-features rubbish which you have continually trotted out over 3 years on this site. You may have well have copied word for word from their website, in fact I go as far as saying maybe you should at least reference the website.
If cost is the only reason to adopt an open platform then it is likely to fail in the consumer space.
Why do you even bother with him? Hardly anybody wastes time like that any more, he’s a hopeless case…
It is not mis-information to point out that anti-features can only exist in closed software. If software is open yet it paradoxically contained an anti-feature (a feature that was not in the best interests of the end users, but rather in the best interests of the software authors), then ONLY in the case of open software could the users collaborate together to create a fork and remove the anti-feature.
Since some people might claim that there are anti-features in Android, let me point this out to illustrate my point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyanogenMod
So, are the any demonstrable anti-features in Windows Phone?
Well, how about this one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone#Submission
So Microsoft gets to approve apps (and hence veto apps as well)? Microsoft gets to say what apps a Windows Phone 8 user may, or may not, install?
I would ask: “Once a consumer has purchased a phone, whose phone is it, anyway”?
Other than in most 1st world countries most of those are illegal or restricted to Adults … that kinda makes sense? So you are saying that Microsoft should break the law?
Well at least those apps are getting vetted, because Android with it free an open model has dodgy freeware and spyware apps … which is a major problem that Windows used to suffer from.
With Apple and Microsoft vetting apps, you know if they are in the store then they have had to pass whatever their requirements are … and these are pretty easy to look up and read by anyone. You found them easily enough.
It is swings and roundabouts. There are pros and cons to both open and closed platforms.
No, there is nothing wrong with Microsoft selecting only a certain set of apps for its store, if that was all that was happening. The problem with Microsoft’s store is that it does not allow apps to be installed other than via their store, and that Microsoft rejects apps from their store for more reasons than they have stated above.
For example, can I get any .webm capability on a Windows Phone? How about FLAC? What about ad blocking?
In what way would a .webm or FLAC capability break any of Microsoft’s rules as stated above, or indeed how would they break any law?
BTW, with regard to CyranogenMod, one of the capabilities it introduced was FLAC. So Android itself responded by:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/05/11/android-finally-gains-nativ…
This is a matter of choosing your source. For example, on Android, I can choose a source other than Google Play which nevertheless is guaranteed free of spyware:
http://f-droid.org/
This will allow me to install ad-blocking software, which Google itself has restricted:
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/adblock-plus-removed-google-play-…
So it turns out that I, as a consumer, am not bound by defective-by-design anti-feature decisions that Google does make from time to time.
But what they don’t tell you about are apps and features that Apple and Microsoft don’t want consumers to have. Do you imagine, given that Microsoft has Skype and Apple has FaceTime, that either Apple or Microsoft will allow a browser that supports WebRTC?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebRTC
So we are talking about perfectly legal apps and features at that. Apps and features that do not advocate discrimination or hate, promote usage of drugs, alcohol or tobacco, or include sexually suggestive material.
You are really struggling to find a true unequalled “pro” for a closed platform that is also an insurmountable “con” for an open one, IMO. What is also very interesting is that you have no points at all to argue against the true unequalled “pros” (from a consumer’s perspective) for an open platform, instead you simply ignore them all.
Edited 2013-04-12 10:07 UTC
I Ignore what you call pros because they are un-important to me, they do not factor into my decision at any point.
I happen to own an Android device, the openness of the platform didn’t factor in at all.
It does not factor into decision for the vast majority of people, and a lot of the time it isn’t because they don’t know any better. I know several people at work that know the closed nature and chose the product anyway because those factors you consider problems didn’t factor into their decision i.e. they aren’t important.
You choose a product on what features are important to you. The decision isn’t as simple as you make out.
As for your example about WebRTC … why would I care? I have an already working program and it is free on most common platforms.
Edited 2013-04-12 11:36 UTC
My Android tablet shipped with Android, with the Google Play store installed, but left Google Maps off.
If Kogan Australia could do it, why couldn’t Nokia?
I think the complaint is utterly bogus … there is no valid complaint there at all.
I’ve seen a number of small manufacturers who ship Google Play even though they have not gone through the compatibility program. Looking at the Google Play Developer Console, where all compatible devices are listed in order for app developers to manually exclude devices, I couldn’t find any reference to Kogan, or anything that looked like a relevant model number. My suspicion is that they’re not actually Google certified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kogan_Technologies
http://www.gadgetguy.com.au/kogan-slides-under-google-with-a-119-ta…
You could well be right, perhaps they are not actually Google certified.
Then again, they do sell a number of Android tablets other than their own brand, including Google’s Nexus brand:
http://www.kogan.com/au/shop/tablets-laptops/android-tablet/
… so perhaps they may be Google certified.
Either way, Google certified or not … the question remains … if Kogan can do it, why can’t Nokia?
Edited 2013-04-11 06:22 UTC
I should have been clearer, my apologies. You can not ship a device with Android and call it Android. To use the term Android, you must meet certain minimums. Amazon and B&N both ship Android, without having any Google apps. They just don’t use the trademark Android when they advertise. Just like Google uses Java as a language, but doesn’t say it uses Java.
Sorry if it isn’t certified as an Android Device it cannot be an Android Device. It is something that is very similar but not the same.
IF it doesn’t have exactly the same set of features it cannot be called one.
This is basic requirements engineering.
Yes, in fact, they could.
My Xperia Pro shipped with Play Store, Youtube, and Maps pre-installed, but not GMail or Chrome or StreetView or a bunch of others.
My Optimus G shipped with Play Store, Youtube, Maps (with StreetView), but not GMail or Chrome or a bunch of others.
IOW, different manufacturers ship different Google apps on their phones, without installing all of them. Meaning, the argument as listed in the article is bogus.
I find this part of the complaint just hilarious: “disadvantages other providers, and puts Google’s Android in control of consumer data on a majority of smartphones shipped todayâ€, adding that this “predatory distribution of Android at below-cost makes it difficult for other providers of operating systems to recoup investments in competing with Google’s dominant mobile platformâ€.
1. This is what Microsoft did to kill Netscape.
2. Microsoft told the world for years that Linux was more expensive that Windows. Now the story changes?
3. Free software is largely a reaction to Microsoft’s almost total control over of the OS market. Free is the one thing that can’t be bought or sued out of the market.
That is what patents are for, sadly.
You seems right, I’m afraid.
Even though it is a considerable push, I really don’t see it as the main reason. Sharing solutions and lower the cost to maintain and improve them probably are. Its roots can, anecdotally speaking, be tracked down to the first time someone shared the most rudimentary steps to overcome a problem, i.e., at stone age.
This is right. Sharing knowlegde, data, methods and so on is the way science works. It’s also the way culture works. (Metal rock music builds on R&R, which builds on black blues and white folk music, which build on…. etc etc.) The idea that music, or software, or scientific knowlegde are built up from zero by some genius (or some genious company) who works in isolation and then “patents” it, is rather silly.
Get this….. picture Steve Ballmer dressed as Doc Holliday and spewing the classic line “My hypocrisy knows know bounds…..”
LOL LOL LOL
Only the EU would waste time even hearing this crap.
Actually, no, any legal system in any country that’s not an authoritarian dictatorship (and quite a few in countries that *are* dictatorships) would hear a complaint like this, as the foundation of a real legal system is that the courts don’t make up their mind about the validity of a claim before they’ve actually heard arguments from both sides.
Actually, no. Anyone can make a complaint about something that is not in any way actually illegal. The fact that a nonsense complaint was made should not oblige a legal system (in any country) to actually hear it.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/De+Minimis
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Failure+to+State+a+Cl…
Too much bloatware shipped with Android phones lately anyways. This is clearly cutting into other companies’ bottom lines. They should really just distribute new Android phones with only the Linux kernel source code and the Android Debug Bridge, and maybe a README file with links to some popular launchers and browsers for Android. Let users compile their own userland and apps.
sb56637,
Sarcasm aside, many of us geeks would jump for a hardware-only bring-your-own-operating-system ARM portable device! Unfortunately very few companies will sell just hardware to geek niches. It’s a bit sad, but often times the easiest & cheapest way to acquire good hardware is to buy off-the-shelf consumer devices and re-flash them with a custom mod.
Very true!
This is one more piece of evidence that antitrust legislation is about as bad as patents. No matter how careful a company is, as soon as it succeeds to serve the customer better than the competition, they are in trouble.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law
EU competition law (antitrust law) is designed to protect consumers. If a company “succeeds to serve the customer better than the competition”, then it should have nothing to fear from EU competition law. If trouble for a company which serves the consumer better does arise from EU competition law, then the law is broken and does not achieve its actual intent but rather the opposite. The Open Handset Alliance (and hence Google) would therefore have excellent grounds for appeal in the event of a (wrong-way, against the intent, about-face) decision against them in respect of this complaint from Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle.
Edited 2013-04-10 10:37 UTC
Okay, the theory sounds better. In practice, though, there are always ways to present damage to competitors as potential damage to customers, usually in the form of reduced choice as competitors go out of business.
Exactly, and I don’t think it can be fixed. IMO, once you abandon respect for private property and contract in favor of nebulous concepts of market dominance, anything goes.
From the fact that the law is broken, it doesn’t follow that the appeal would succeed. Broken laws lead to broken results, until the law is changed. I do agree that, in this case, the complaints seem to be without merit, even within the current legal framework. I don’t see the EU siding with Microsoft against open source.
What I find interesting is that no-one is making the comparison between this and the antitrust case against MS about bundling IE with MS Windows.
If I recall correctly, complaints were made to the EU that MS was abusing Windows’ monopoly position by bundling IE with Windows, putting other browser producers at an unfair disadvantage. And they won.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/what-is-the-browser-choi…
People seemed to be pretty happy with that ruling (though I’m not sure what MS is doing about it nowadays). This one doesn’t seem all that different.
With IE on Windows there were web-facing features like ActiveX which were strictly Windows-only.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActiveX
If a web service used ActiveX, as many chose to do, then they required anyone wishing to utilise that service to be running IE on Windows. Hence IE was an attempt (one of many by Microsoft) at consumer lock-in to Microsoft’s Windows platform.
The Android OS has no similar characteristics whatsoever. There is absolutely no lock-in to any app at all. Unlike other smartphone OSes which one could name, Android is the exact opposite of a walled garden.
http://www.howtogeek.com/106175/the-top-5-alternatives-to-the-andro…
Nobody that developers modern websites require ActiveX, it is mainly used on bespoke intranet systems.
ActiveX is usually used for Browser plugins (Java and Flash).
The bolded statement is total bullshit. ActiveX is a client side tech not server side. You can expose a legacy ActiveX dll as a WebService but that no way ties you into IE.
Please don’t tell lies.
The antitrust violation was that IE was bundled with Windows. In anycase, lets forget back at the time people actually wanted IE because it was better than netscape (IE4 was downloaded by a huge number of people on launch, which considering the speeds at the time is astounding).
Edited 2013-04-11 10:04 UTC
This is why I used the past tense. Not the bold words above and below.
It does, however, tie you into Windows, no bullshit. “ActiveX” and “dll” are Windows terms. They have no place in web-facing services.
No problem. Please refrain from them yourself.
The anti-trust problem was not only that IE was bundled with Windows, but also that it was not offered for any other platform other than Windows, and that it included non-open methods such that some web services could only work if the client’s browser was IE running under Windows. For quite some while I was offered Internet Banking services from my bank only if I was prepared to buy a Windows machine to access the Internet with. In the end I changed my bank.
To this very day, if I want to interact with some slow-to-change government departments in my country, such as the tax office to file a tax return online, then I am required to use a Windows machine and IE as the browser.
Utterly unacceptable.
Edited 2013-04-11 11:58 UTC
Choice of developers of said websites/web-application. At no point did Microsoft mandate them to write code this way. Also as we are using the past tense I think you mean “It did tie you into Windows”.
I wasn’t speaking utter rubbish.
A web-service cannot be windows specific. If it is then it isn’t a web-service.
What you actually mean is that their client side code would only work with IE.
This has nothing to do with Microsoft that your previous bank’s web developers didn’t know how to write cross browser code.
Also it actually makes sense why there is that requirement because most banks have very tightly controlled internal computing environments and they are probably only allowed to use IE, thus the site is only tested against IE and the bank can only probably guarantee the site works with IE.
Anyway wouldn’t it have been easier to change your UA string than your bank?
Edited 2013-04-11 12:21 UTC
In requirements engineering (an important part of software engineering) says that mathematically it cannot be the same if it doesn’t fulfil the same set of requirements.
For example, we use Use Cases to specify requirements. If not all the use cases for a project is not fulfilled then our code is deemed to not be implementing that feature. In the same way, if something does not fulfil all the requirements that makes something “Android Certified” … then it cannot be Android.
I actually think this would be a bad thing because then we will have several different (but almost similar versions of the same code base). It will essentially be the unix wars all over again. There is a enough problems with what a webkit browser can be defined as in mobile … imagine various different versions of Dalvik and the NDK.
Where I work we have different code branches based on the feature set we are adding the the product. We have 11 different versions of a very similar code base … and merging back and forth from production usually takes one developer about half a day and it is pretty easy to make mistakes. I could only imagine the headache if there was several operating systems that is similar to Android.
Edited 2013-04-11 20:24 UTC
They all do the same thing and its not Android but the operators that bundle bloatware
I am happy to see that MS and Oracle are complaining about google! Why? Because it just shows how the tables have turned! Few years back everyone was targeting MS and was asking to provide Software choices on their windows platform. Now things have/are changing, like it or hate it… google android has become kind of what Windows was in 90’s and 20’s in mobile domain.