<story><title>European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case</title><url>http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ajedi32</author><text>So it&amp;#x27;s only against the law once the company becomes big enough?&lt;p&gt;If, for example, BMW _did_ become an extremely successful car manufacturer to the point where they were capturing &amp;gt;80% of the market, would they suddenly no longer be allowed to bundle their own entertainment system with their cars?</text></item><item><author>Dayshine</author><text>&amp;gt;And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system&lt;p&gt;Because BMW don&amp;#x27;t have market dominance in either the car industry or the entertainment system industry. If they used dominance in one to affect the other, they would be in breach of that legislation.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;This is absolutely not at all clear cut. It is incredibly nuanced&lt;p&gt;So how do you explain Google&amp;#x27;s non-compliance when explicitly and clearly informed that they were in breach over two years ago?</text></item><item><author>endorphone</author><text>&lt;i&gt;How is that not clearly breaching d?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re a part of the same suite of apps that provide the &amp;quot;Android experience&amp;quot; (Google experience, whatever -- the thing that most consumers think of when they consider Android). They manifestly have a &lt;i&gt;profound&lt;/i&gt; connection with each other.&lt;p&gt;And let&amp;#x27;s be clear here lest there be any confusion -- zero customers want a vendor to do anything different, and the only reason some vendors wanted to is because they could double dip: Pitch the Android experience and get the market inroads, while getting some Bing or whatever payola to &amp;quot;force&amp;quot; that on a consumer.&lt;p&gt;The same is true of the other claim-&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Then they said &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t use Google Play if you try to help develop any android forks.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Google&amp;#x27;s argument, whether honest or not, is that if you need a consistent representation of the Android experience that you&amp;#x27;re selling to consumers. If the GS8 has the full Android experience, but then the GS8P has the Android Fun Store and Bing Search, this can seriously dilute the market opinion of Android and cause consumer confusion.&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely not at all clear cut. It is incredibly nuanced. And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system? Why couldn&amp;#x27;t I choose Alpine at the dealer? An entertainment system is not an engine, right? I don&amp;#x27;t want to go down the road of absurd analogies, but if you&amp;#x27;re seriously presenting the notion that this is clear cut, you are not really thinking about it much.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, Google has had the same policies regard their suite of apps since day 1 of Android. Since the very beginning. When iOS absolutely &lt;i&gt;dwarfed&lt;/i&gt; it. When Blackberry reigned supreme. When I was hefting around my sad little HTC Dream and listening to the John Gruber&amp;#x27;s tell us how doomed it was.</text></item><item><author>Dayshine</author><text>Let&amp;#x27;s read the law: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&amp;#x2F;legal-content&amp;#x2F;EN&amp;#x2F;TXT&amp;#x2F;HTML&amp;#x2F;?uri=CELEX:12008E102&amp;amp;from=EN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&amp;#x2F;legal-content&amp;#x2F;EN&amp;#x2F;TXT&amp;#x2F;HTML&amp;#x2F;?uri=CEL...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Article 102&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;b) limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;d)making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts&lt;p&gt;Ok, so, Google said &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t use Google Play unless you force users to have Google Search installed&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;How is that not &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;clearly&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; breaching d?&lt;p&gt;Then they said &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t use Google Play if you try to help develop &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;any android forks&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;How is that not clearly breaching b?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;but simply saying &amp;quot;Surprise....enormous fine&amp;quot; is ridiculous&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve had at least two years notice, so could have reduced their fine by complying when they were first warned. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europa.eu&amp;#x2F;rapid&amp;#x2F;press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europa.eu&amp;#x2F;rapid&amp;#x2F;press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm&lt;/a&gt; The article literally warns about the exact things they&amp;#x27;re still doing.</text></item><item><author>endorphone</author><text>This is a dangerous ruling that pushes the world further into the potential for trade wars by proxy.&lt;p&gt;Contrary to numerous posts-&lt;p&gt;-no, the law isn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;clear&amp;quot;. This is an incredibly nuanced situation, and the notion that Google was just overtly flouting (ed: thx sjcsjc) the law is outright nonsense. Google has a huge litany of bad practices (I personally recently switched my daily driver to an iPhone for that reason), but simply saying &amp;quot;Surprise....enormous fine&amp;quot; is ridiculous.&lt;p&gt;-the fine is &lt;i&gt;enormous&lt;/i&gt;. Various &amp;quot;well it&amp;#x27;s only a quarter&amp;#x27;s earnings across all of Google&amp;quot; are outrageous. Over 6 years Google spent a grand total of $1.1B in all expenses for Waymo, for instance. $5B is an enormous, enormous amount of money for any company.&lt;p&gt;I highly doubt this will be a &amp;quot;pay it and forget it&amp;quot; fine, but is going to ring across all multinationals as a warning.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>orf</author><text>No, they would be able to bundle their own entertainment system with their cars, but they would not be able to force &lt;i&gt;anyone else&lt;/i&gt; who wants to use their engines in &lt;i&gt;their&lt;/i&gt; cars to bundle the entertainment system as well, as a contractual precondition to be able to use those engines.&lt;p&gt;Of course the size of the company and the market dominance comes into play here. It&amp;#x27;s not a monopoly if people can go elsewhere to get their engines, it is if there is only one realistic choice of supplier (Android).</text></comment>
<story><title>European Commission fines Google €4.34B in Android antitrust case</title><url>http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-4581_en.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Ajedi32</author><text>So it&amp;#x27;s only against the law once the company becomes big enough?&lt;p&gt;If, for example, BMW _did_ become an extremely successful car manufacturer to the point where they were capturing &amp;gt;80% of the market, would they suddenly no longer be allowed to bundle their own entertainment system with their cars?</text></item><item><author>Dayshine</author><text>&amp;gt;And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system&lt;p&gt;Because BMW don&amp;#x27;t have market dominance in either the car industry or the entertainment system industry. If they used dominance in one to affect the other, they would be in breach of that legislation.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;This is absolutely not at all clear cut. It is incredibly nuanced&lt;p&gt;So how do you explain Google&amp;#x27;s non-compliance when explicitly and clearly informed that they were in breach over two years ago?</text></item><item><author>endorphone</author><text>&lt;i&gt;How is that not clearly breaching d?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re a part of the same suite of apps that provide the &amp;quot;Android experience&amp;quot; (Google experience, whatever -- the thing that most consumers think of when they consider Android). They manifestly have a &lt;i&gt;profound&lt;/i&gt; connection with each other.&lt;p&gt;And let&amp;#x27;s be clear here lest there be any confusion -- zero customers want a vendor to do anything different, and the only reason some vendors wanted to is because they could double dip: Pitch the Android experience and get the market inroads, while getting some Bing or whatever payola to &amp;quot;force&amp;quot; that on a consumer.&lt;p&gt;The same is true of the other claim-&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Then they said &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t use Google Play if you try to help develop any android forks.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Google&amp;#x27;s argument, whether honest or not, is that if you need a consistent representation of the Android experience that you&amp;#x27;re selling to consumers. If the GS8 has the full Android experience, but then the GS8P has the Android Fun Store and Bing Search, this can seriously dilute the market opinion of Android and cause consumer confusion.&lt;p&gt;This is absolutely not at all clear cut. It is incredibly nuanced. And if we just go around clubbing everything coarsely, why does my BMW have a BMW entertainment system? Why couldn&amp;#x27;t I choose Alpine at the dealer? An entertainment system is not an engine, right? I don&amp;#x27;t want to go down the road of absurd analogies, but if you&amp;#x27;re seriously presenting the notion that this is clear cut, you are not really thinking about it much.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, Google has had the same policies regard their suite of apps since day 1 of Android. Since the very beginning. When iOS absolutely &lt;i&gt;dwarfed&lt;/i&gt; it. When Blackberry reigned supreme. When I was hefting around my sad little HTC Dream and listening to the John Gruber&amp;#x27;s tell us how doomed it was.</text></item><item><author>Dayshine</author><text>Let&amp;#x27;s read the law: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&amp;#x2F;legal-content&amp;#x2F;EN&amp;#x2F;TXT&amp;#x2F;HTML&amp;#x2F;?uri=CELEX:12008E102&amp;amp;from=EN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;eur-lex.europa.eu&amp;#x2F;legal-content&amp;#x2F;EN&amp;#x2F;TXT&amp;#x2F;HTML&amp;#x2F;?uri=CEL...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Article 102&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Such abuse may, in particular, consist in:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;b) limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;d)making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which, by their nature or according to commercial usage, have no connection with the subject of such contracts&lt;p&gt;Ok, so, Google said &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t use Google Play unless you force users to have Google Search installed&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;How is that not &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;clearly&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt; breaching d?&lt;p&gt;Then they said &amp;quot;You can&amp;#x27;t use Google Play if you try to help develop &lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;any android forks&lt;i&gt;&lt;/i&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;How is that not clearly breaching b?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;but simply saying &amp;quot;Surprise....enormous fine&amp;quot; is ridiculous&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;ve had at least two years notice, so could have reduced their fine by complying when they were first warned. &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europa.eu&amp;#x2F;rapid&amp;#x2F;press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;europa.eu&amp;#x2F;rapid&amp;#x2F;press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm&lt;/a&gt; The article literally warns about the exact things they&amp;#x27;re still doing.</text></item><item><author>endorphone</author><text>This is a dangerous ruling that pushes the world further into the potential for trade wars by proxy.&lt;p&gt;Contrary to numerous posts-&lt;p&gt;-no, the law isn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;clear&amp;quot;. This is an incredibly nuanced situation, and the notion that Google was just overtly flouting (ed: thx sjcsjc) the law is outright nonsense. Google has a huge litany of bad practices (I personally recently switched my daily driver to an iPhone for that reason), but simply saying &amp;quot;Surprise....enormous fine&amp;quot; is ridiculous.&lt;p&gt;-the fine is &lt;i&gt;enormous&lt;/i&gt;. Various &amp;quot;well it&amp;#x27;s only a quarter&amp;#x27;s earnings across all of Google&amp;quot; are outrageous. Over 6 years Google spent a grand total of $1.1B in all expenses for Waymo, for instance. $5B is an enormous, enormous amount of money for any company.&lt;p&gt;I highly doubt this will be a &amp;quot;pay it and forget it&amp;quot; fine, but is going to ring across all multinationals as a warning.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eastendguy</author><text>Exactly. That is the whole point of anti-monopoly laws.</text></comment>