That's just Apple, Americans love their Apple overpriced junk. Situation is very different for Samsung, Google, Facebook, MS.
I think that chart would look different for Android - Apple is far more popular in the US than EU. Regardless, I think you're missing the point.. which is that even in this case 20% of Apple's sales come from EU.. that's $45B annually and if they were in the same situation as Alphabet with a $5B fine.. leaving the market would be pretty dumb. Like arguably the dumbest move of any company ever. Especially when you know that in this case Alphabet is just going to lock the EU in litigation for 10+ years until the fine becomes like .01% of their revenue in the region.
I'm the same Bro! ......I would love for Facebook to shut down for a week/ for fun... Kids crying everywhere! ...
Issue one is that android does not need anything illegal to be in dominant position and stay there. Secondly, that legal dept. consultation is standard part of risk management. You run any project and you do assess risk and if it is economically better to prevent this issue or risk it blowing out and pay for 'fixing' it later. Then there is that "Spyware" there EU can sue them all they want. GDPR is clear, data collection has to be separated from main eula. So, you agree with main usage required for device and then you must be able to disagree with data collection where disagreement should not prevent you from using standard features. MS is in this bag too, they love their telemetry and other things. But your personal information is more valuable to them than money they would be fined with. (That's scary part. Knowing you makes them so much money that fine for collecting that information is small in comparison.) In general I do agree with you, but some things are not as black as they are made to be. Especially when it is EU who is aiming fingers. Worst thing of EU government is that they dream of being US. European countries are too different for us to be put through same square shaped form.
I'm guessing Google will need to allow a choice of default search apps and will need to decouple Google services from their apps (as inconvenient as it may be). No way would they consider losing the EU market over this - just an extra headache on their part. It should be noted that you CAN use Android without Google services as Amazon does with their Kindle tablets, but if you want to use Gmail or any Google app then you will necessarily need to use Google services (all or nothing). This will lead to more fragmentation of the Android platform though, which is one of the primary complaints about Android (vs iOS). Apple tightly integrates everything in the iPhone while Google has been criticized for having too much variety and choice, but apparently the EU seems to think Google doesn't allow enough choice. Funny that. Of course this isn't the first time the EU has made major rulings against Google (or other tech companies). There was the ruling for "right to forget" (which I think was just a euphemism for hiding your criminal past) as well as the ruling against Microsoft. I didn't really agree with those other rulings and I'm iffy about this fine as well, but that's the way it goes in the EU. Overall, I think it's a good thing that the EU is taking a strong stance on consumer choice (even if it goes a bit too far sometimes). Up here in Canada we are dominated by the big three telecom companies (collusion is the order of the game), to the point where 10 GB a month plans are wildly popular. I get extremely upset whenever I hear talk about next-gen 5G connectivity (is this what telecom companies are spending my money on while they limit me to a few GB a month?) and I wish the government would take a stronger stance on fair data plans.
The more I read your posts the more they come out as generic anti-EU rambling and nothing to do with the topic at hand. Do you even know WHY Google is being sued? Seems to me like these are pretty serious issues.
Yes, let's ditch the largest economy in the world. Great idea. Apple has a 44% market share in the US, where it only has a 25% market share in Europe. A bit manipulative mate, especially considering this article is about Android and you for some reason decided to specifically show Apple rather than Android. For Android, this graph would be very different.
it required Android handset and tablet manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and its own web browser Chrome as a condition for allowing them to offer access to its Play app store I call it reasonable Request with stupid condition as way to enforce it since you can install playstore anyway. it made payments to large manufacturers and mobile network operators that agreed to exclusively pre-install the Google Search app on their devices Which tells you that operators have free hand to change software as they like, ignoring previous step. And I can tell you that I hate that crap mobile operators put there as 'default application' because those can't be removed, just disabled and may get reenabled by some updates. it prevented manufacturers from selling any smart devices powered by alternative "forked" versions of Android by threatening to refuse them permission to pre-install its apps Isn't it called: Quality Assurance? They are protecting good name of android brand. Quite a few people would be surprised if their new phone came with Cyanogenmod or other. But I know that there are quite a few official devices with very alternative builds of Android, so this is negotiable. I think it is not as one sided as you think. Nothing is for free. I would love to have my phone crap-free (here I blame Samsung and Vodafone) and rooted to do all things I want. But then I would not be able to run extended security tools required to run our business access applications.
what the eu is complaining about to me is fine what google is doing....come on have you seen when a provider and such adds their overlays and apps? their horrable and you cant remove them if you dont want them...thats why i like unlocked vanilla android phones...if i dont want google search or chrome browser, i can remove them and add what one i want....
If any of the big companies would leave the EU in the meantime, it'd be a PITA for the EU. But in the long run somebody would step up to fill the void, and some rather quickly, as we'd get something made in China or Russia, or the least possible, from the EU ourselves then.
As an American that loves Google products (my smartphone is a Pixel 2 XL and I have a Google Home and Google Wifi router) and prefers Android, I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I definitely think that large tech companies like Google, Facebook etcetera need to be regulated by governments, because it's been shown time and time again that they will abuse their enormous power. However, this definitely seems like a shakedown to me. I just don't see the E.U's position as tenable or realistic. Google owns Android, and in the interest of making their products more profitable, unified, SAFE (can you imagine an Android app store not run by Google?), as well as more useful to consumers, they should be allowed to bundle their own tech into these products and make them the default. The alternative does not help consumers in the slightest, and would only serve to fragment Android even more than it already is. Also there are choices, regardless of whether consumers know about them or not. I don't have to use Google search, or Chrome on my Pixel 2 XL despite that it's manufactured by Google. I do have to use the Google play store however, but like I mentioned before, it's best for there to be a single app store that is run by a single agency, rather than multiples ones in the interest of safety. Having multiple app stores would be an open season for criminal programmers to write even more malware than they are already doing, as it would make regulation more difficult.
I just want to make something clear.. you can't uninstall google chrome or search from Android. People keep saying "you can remove it" - you can remove the shortcut and disable the app but you can't uninstall either. In fact Google's blog post just hilariously posted a video of them saying "look how easy it is to remove" then proceeds to just delete the shortcut to the app. It's honestly kind of insulting they posted that. Because Android has 75% marketshare in the EU and the argument is that they are using their marketshare to keep competing services out.
As greedy as Google, Facebook etcetera are, I don't think the citizens and governments of the E.U would be better served by using software from China and Russia, with all of the security concerns.
Yep, American tech companies have become prime back-door taxation targets for the cash-strapped, disintegrating EU. But, as long as they choose to do business in that environment they'll deserve whatever "fines" *cough* they get, imo. PS...not picking on the EU...all of this anti-corporation crap got started by the DoJ in the US with its ridiculous, politicized and wholly false attack on Microsoft, years ago. But whether it is the DoJ or the EU, the proof is in the pudding--do any of the "fines" *cough* they levy go to the people on whose behalf the governments are supposedly appropriating this money? Answer: not one red cent. These are back-door taxes disguised as "consumer aids" which do not in any case *ever* aid the consumer in any way, shape, or form. 100% of the money goes straight to the offending government kitties to be spent (after the lawyer commissions of millions of $ are paid) any way the politicians like! Neither do these fines take into consideration the number of people in those countries the taxed companies *hire* and the amount of taxes those employees pay their respective governments! Calling it "highway robbery" would not be an exaggeration.
Oh yes, the good guy American tech companies that can do no wrong. How quickly are we to forget/ignore all the shady things these greedy corporations tried to pull over the years from tax evasion, to data breaches, to employee abuse etc. We do things different here in EU. We have different labor laws, different corporate laws, different regulations. American companies doing business in EU have to uphold these laws. Just like EU companies doing business in US have to uphold their laws. This mindless worshiping and defending of Google is sickening.
Exactly this - we don't have the option to remove the software. We can indeed install alternatives and set that alternative to default but chrome and google search (and other google apps) are still there ticking in the background (I know this because occasionally, google services can be a pita due to wake locks for these services still being active preventing the phone to sleep causing the battery to drain). "Core" applications can however be "disabled" (I myself have chrome disabled and use opera instead) but they still reside in storage/memory (with some, while the front end is no longer running, still have background processes active). If we do want to remove these "core" applications, we often have to rely on either rooting the phones which while rooting gives great control over the OS and software, does leave phones vulnerable (mostly if the end user is rather absent minded) and/or install alternative roms but using these practices can often void warranty. With this in mind though, and with custom roms, it's easy to show that the google applications are absolutely not necessary to have as a mandatory option for the phones to operate so there should be absolutely no problem in google ensuing their services are optional. I believe the anti-competitive rules are coming into force because (in the way I've understood this and from what I understand of the Android OS itself) Android is meant to be customisable, being possible to set up as per the requirements of the network carrier and manufacturer and such, the finding is that Google has been pushing/leveraging it's position for phone manufacturers to implement their software and services suite for a portion of the OS that is fundamentally optional and should be left for the end user to decide should they wish to use such features.
I did not know that^ ,,,Thanks ....Google/Droid is definitely here to stay pay the fine and be done Google.
