FTC Probes Android and Google Search 139
bonch writes "The FTC is investigating claims that Google prevented Android smartphone vendors from using competing services (covered previously), whether Google preferentially places its own services above others on the search results page, and whether Google scraped content from competitors for use in its own services. FTC lawyers are also asking how Android may be helping Google maintain its massive web search lead. Google denies all allegations and blames jealous rivals for the growing number of probes. The European Commission's own antitrust probe is ongoing."
Is it just me... (Score:1)
Whenever I see the word "probes" in a headline, it seems like the first thing that occurs to me is anal probes. It seems like they'd just as easily be able to use "investigates" and avoid this connotation.
Of course, the little green man graphic didn't help that any either.
"investigates" is twice as long as "probes" (Score:2)
It seems like they'd just as easily be able to use "investigates" [instead of "probes"] and avoid this connotation.
They use "probes" to save space, the same reason people use "M$" instead of "Microsoft" in Slashdot comment subjects, and the same reason you use "V." and not "Vorokrytin" in your Slashdot username. Let me open Python:
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They weren't running short of space by any stretch, though. Just looking down the homepage I can see several stories with much longer headlines:
FTC Probes Android and Google Search
'Electronic Skin' Grafts Gadgets To Body
Review of IBM's Original Personal Computer
US Energy Panel Cautiously Endorses Fracking
Why Companies Knowingly Ship Insecure Devices
BitTorrent Trial Makes Australia's High Court
China Catches Up With Google's Driverless Car
Researchers Make Graphene From Girl Scout Cookies
Scientists Modify Orga
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Your anal fixation is not the submitter or editor's problem.
Where was FCC when Bing did? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just like Microsoft Windows pretty much is? How did that anti-trust case turn out?
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Bing isn't a monopoly or a market leader. Google pretty much is.
Excuse me? The US Department of Justice has something else to say about that.
Bing (Which is not even a company name, the company name is Microsoft) is most Certainly a convicted monopoly!
It's been in a few papers.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft [wikipedia.org]
Care to show me the same court case for Google? Oh right, you can't, because that case never happened.
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Maybe he was including Bing in the Google market share, as Bing uses Google :)
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Bing is not a dominant search player
Dominant is not what is at issue. The question is one of monopoly and Google is not a monopoly at 65 percent share in the US.
Furthermore, RIM released their smartphones with Google because they wanted to. Asking Verizon to change it costs money so of course MS had to pay. Do you think Vzw would change Bing to Google on their windows phones for free? You are basically saying anybody should just be able to waltz into Verizon HQ and get the default search on all of their smartphones changed on a whim. G
Google paid Apple for the same thing. (Score:2)
Google paid Apple $100 million a year to be the search provider on the iPhone. [businessinsider.com]
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Re:Where was FCC when Bing did? (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember this very thing. When I complained to Verizon, their reply could be summarized as "Tough cookies!" When I got my new phone, all the Verizon stuff went into a folder labeled "VZ crapware", and I installed the Google apps instead.
Verizon is remarkable for their ability to annoy me just shy of the point where I will change carriers.
Whatever... (Score:1)
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Yeah, Microsoft allows no options to change that. Oh wait, no one is forced to use it because it is trivial to change.
Group Policy (Score:3)
Oh wait, no one is forced to use it because it is trivial to change.
Trivial for the user, or trivial for the Group Policy administrator and locked out for the user?
Re:Whatever... (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless of course your company locks down any one specific thing (from what I can tell) you cannot change your default search provider. I've tried and I keep getting a little alert box that says the default cannot be changed. I had to go into the registry to set it to Google, and that wasn't necessarily a fun task (had to get UUID for Google search, remove Bing one, etc.)
with Google (tm) (Score:1)
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I agree. Though Microsoft basically did the same thing with Internet Explorer and got into a lot of hot water, so it's hard to say.
Last I checked Apple controls their platform pretty tightly aswell and forces you to use the iTunes store for everything. Why isn't Apple being investigated for not allowing competiting app stores (without jailbreaking). Why is Apple allowed to tie their services to their platform and Google isn't? Seems a bit ridiculous to me.
In related news (Score:1)
Getting suspicious (Score:1)
I'm starting to ignore Google's pleas for understanding. These are not legal defense arguments. They're red herrings, and they're terrible ones at that. They're
Google does, sort of (Score:3, Insightful)
Google does block competitors from Android phones, but it's not because they're Android phones. Anyone can make an Android phone and use any search-engine default, any advertising network, that they want. What Google does is say that if you want to use the Google brand on the phone you can't use non-Google services on it. To me that seems to be a completely valid use of their trademark, and has nothing to do with their position in search. You want an Android phone that doesn't put Google front-and-center? Look for one that isn't Google-branded. And as far as I know Google does nothing whatsoever to stop anyone from making a non-Google-branded Android phone, correct?
AT&T had all droid devices Locked to Yahoo (Score:4, Informative)
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Just don't buy your phones from your cell phone operator (at least you can do it with AT&T)? Doing otherwise is practically inviting to be raped eventually. Good example is AT&T ripping out tethering from their Android phones, or Verizon blocking tethering apps in the Market.
Shock horror (Score:2)
A phone which says powered by Google on the back which has the Google logo on it, runs an operating system that was created by Google, uses Google search as the default?
Say it ain't so!
Mind you there's absolutely nothing stopping competitors, nothing stopping you installing an alternative browser, nothing stopping Samsung or HTC installing a Bing search bar in the phone, nothing stopping the ISP from including different defaults in the CSC.
Completely unlike Microsoft which says you will install windows on y
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Your screed is only relevant if they are actually doing this whole "tying" thing.
Otherwise, it's all just a lot of hot air.
Web Search is the ultimate commodity free from vendor lock. It doesn't get much better than that in computing.
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Yeah? Google is so very keen to get people's wallet-names in Google+ that they're going to bias their search engine toward people who sign up. Really [webpronews.com] - corrupting their search engine to try to extract more identity data.
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Web Search now is the ultimate vendor lock
If that were true, Google would have a similar monopoly on web search in the US that MS has on the desktop. Last I checked, Google only has about a 65 percent share. That is not even close to what you would expect from "ultimate vendor lock".
So to compete with Google and improve your search engine you need at least as much of that data as Google
Bull. There are many ways to compete. Offer better services, better interface, more convenient searching, better sorting of the data you have, so on and so forth.
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better sorting of the data you have, so on and so forth.
That's exactly why you need that huge amount of user data. If it was just the case of algorithms Google wouldn't be collecting all that data and there would be much more competition. As for "better services, better interface, more convenient searching", how exactly would you improve that? It's already pretty much as convenient as it gets.
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That's exactly why you need that huge amount of user data.
Yeah, and if it weren't for the high cost of steel, labor, and know-how, anybody could be building and selling aircraft carriers. Some things are hard to do and require an enormous investment. It is not society or government's job to make it so every tom dick and harry in their garage can get into any business they want and be on equal footing with incumbent players. What you are asking for is prima facie ludicrous.
If it was just the case of algorithms Google wouldn't be collecting all that data and there would be much more competition
Let's see, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, Ask.com, Baidu, whatever they have in Russia. And everyone o
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Yeah, and if it weren't for the high cost of steel, labor, and know-how, anybody could be building and selling aircraft carriers. Some things are hard to do and require an enormous investment. It is not society or government's job to make it so every tom dick and harry in their garage can get into any business they want and be on equal footing with incumbent players. What you are asking for is prima facie ludicrous.
Now that's just idiotic comparison. Cost of steel, labor and know-how is a fixed cost. You pay it, you get it. The data that Google has compared to competitors can't be bought.
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Luckily Microsoft have once again innovated, and started to fight this monopoly by monitoring how their customers interact with Google
How? Citations please. Whose scripts load on most web pages? ..MS web bugs/beacons/cleargifs, LSOs, Silverlight or?
Are they running people through proxies and their own DNS?
(and do you mean on the desktop/laptop? There are hardly enough MS phone customers for the related ad/search traffic to match much at this point.)
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You make it sound like it is simple linear relationship between click data and what is the better search result, it isn't that simple. Take your example of a click stream. Now I have to sift through massive amounts of click data all the while trying to make sure the click data is actually valid, and not some botnet trying to screw with the click stream, some idiot that doesn't know how to search. Now I have to correlated that data to indexed web page data also.
Now do this index
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Yeah - as far as I know the only Android phones that don't let you choose your search provider are the ones that Microsoft have paid providers to use Bing on...
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Exactly. There are android phones that come with bing. In fact I complained at length to a verizon sales rep about it and told him, "What's the point of android if Bing is integrated. The whole point in buying this phone is Google."
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Your screed is only relevant if they are actually doing this whole "tying" thing.
Otherwise, it's all just a lot of hot air.
Web Search is the ultimate commodity free from vendor lock. It doesn't get much better than that in computing.
It's only free from vendor lock in as long as there isn't a prohibitive barrier to compete with alternatives. The investments necessary to be competitive with Google in search now is in the range of several billion dollars yearly (which Microsoft is the only ones left able and willing to do after Yahoo throwing in the tovel). You can't come out of the basement with a more clever search algorithm anymore, because so much of what we take for granted of speed and features are dependent on enormous infrastructu
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It is not Google's job to make web search any cheaper to get into. Should GM help out every tom dick and harry trying to build a car in their garage? How about Intel? Should they start leasing out their fabs to all various and sundry to appear "competitive"? Get real.
I didn't say or think this is Googles job. I was just pointing out that the " it is so easy to switch search provider" argument is a bit naive as it is dependent on there actually being alternatives.
What is the case though, is that at some point lack of competition, barrier to entry, cross-funding of services to extend dominant position, etc. becomes a regulatory issue in many markets and a job for the government agencies charged with securing healthy competition in the marketplace. And the rules are differ
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I was just pointing out that the " it is so easy to switch search provider" argument is a bit naive as it is dependent on there actually being alternatives.
Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com, are all alternatives. And that's not even counting engines like Baidu and whatever they have in Russia that is kicking everybody else's ass. Just because Google makes a better product and people prefer it doesn't make it anti-competitive. Sounds like a case of sour grapes more than anything else.
What is the case though, is that at some point lack of competition,
There is no lack of competition as I mentioned above.
barrier to entry,
Running with the best of the best in search will never be cheap. I'll bet building aircraft carriers isn't cheap too. What woul
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Bing, Yahoo, AOL and Ask.com, are all alternatives. And that's not even counting engines like Baidu and whatever they have in Russia that is kicking everybody else's ass. Just because Google makes a better product and people prefer it doesn't make it anti-competitive. Sounds like a case of sour grapes more than anything else.
Yahoo gave up and is using Bing. AOL is using Google. About Ask.com, Wikipedia says "In late 2010, facing insurmountable competition from Google, the company outsourced its web search technology to an unspecified third party and returned to its roots as a question and answer site.["
There is no lack of competition as I mentioned above
You mentioned Bing and Google.
Running with the best of the best in search will never be cheap. I'll bet building aircraft carriers isn't cheap too. What would you suggest we do to "fix" that? Oh, nothing? Hypocrite much?
Not sure where the personal attack came from. You keep arguing against strawmans. I didn't say what you are attacking here.
cross-funding of services to extend dominant position,
This is not even close to against the law. Google has a dominant position not a monopoly. You are confusing the two. Apple dominates the iDevice ecosystem but it isn't illegal because they have competition just like Google does.
You are very very sure of your evaluation of this. The people actually runni
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barrier to entry,
cross-funding of services to extend dominant position,
What is the case though, is that at some point lack of competition, barrier to entry, cross-funding of services to extend dominant position, etc. becomes a regulatory issue in many markets and a job for the government agencies charged with securing healthy competition in the marketplace.
Then you have the gall to say
I am not and have never said anything about if I think they are right or not.
Fucking liar.
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Speaking from personal experience, my Galaxy S had Yahoo! as the default search bundled in the stock ROM from my provider...hell...it didnt even have all of the usual google applications. I dont see either Samsung or Telcel suffering or being locked out in any way from any google things...hell, there are even updates for the phones being rolled out right now...
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My Droid X had Bing...oh god the pain...
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Speaking from personal experience, my Galaxy S had Yahoo! as the default search bundled in the stock ROM from my provider...hell...it didnt even have all of the usual google applications. I dont see either Samsung or Telcel suffering or being locked out in any way from any google things...hell, there are even updates for the phones being rolled out right now...
Informative! Crap, replying to fix accidental moderation. My apologies.
Chitika (Score:3)
So what other ad network can I use if I want to make a free but ad-supported program besides Google's?
Wikipedia has a list of ad networks [wikipedia.org]. Companies as big as Yahoo! have recommended using Chitika [wikipedia.org].
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The Millenial ad network claims that Android ad impressions exceed iPhones:
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/08/12/millennial-android-beats-ios-in-ad-impressions-apple-top-manuf/ [tuaw.com]
This SDK gives you easy access to multiple ad networks on Android (and iPhone too):
https://www.adwhirl.com/doc/android/AdWhirlAndroidSDKSetup.html [adwhirl.com]
Does that answer your question?
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No, being a monopoly is not illegal. But if you are using your market dominance as a way to push out competitors in other areas it can become illegal. Or do we just pretend that everyone on here wasn't complaining about similar tactics of Microsoft using their dominance in OSes to push IE?
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As a user I'm more concerned with "d3velopers" throwing tons of ads at me in a trivial app, than I am their choice of ad provider...
But to answer your question, there is at least one non-Google (AdMob) option: AdChoice from Yahoo.
Re:Finally (Score:4, Informative)
the 'lock' is probably going to be reduces support if you replace the google pieces with Bing. That would make sense for something like the maps/locations the API might be Google Maps specific and zero effort is made to allow third party replacements of these services.
Pure and utter bullshit. I develop for Android. There is a generic intent that any map displaying on Android can listen for.
String uri = "geo:"+ latitude + "," + longitude;
startActivity(new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uri)));
In what way is this locking anyone out?
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It's not force bundled for one.
That seems to be the key thing that all of the Lemming and Fanboy whiners here seem to be missing.
It's a free product. Search engines are based on open standards. What leverage can Google possibly have?
Google is not even engaging in the same tying Microsoft was. Plus Google doesn't have the leverage too.
Microsoft was able to bully it's OEMs through price discrimination. Free Software kind of takes that idea off the table.
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Preventing Android smartphone vendors from using other services than Google's is exactly the same kind of deal and is highly anti-competitive, as is their favoring of their own services above competing ones.
I'll bite, until you get modded as troll.
Explain how Samsung phones have Bing. Also, are you suggesting that a company bundle all services from competitors? I'd love to see how the WinMo phones do that.
Most of their marketing is really wise social engineering, the best example of being constant bombardment to download and switch to Chrome if you use IE.
Anyone still using IE has no idea other browsers exist, or are MS fanboys. What sort of constant bombardment? You mean marketing? I fail to see how people using Google complain that google advertises their products. Don't like those, try another search engine, there are a plethora to choose from.
Just because Google offers services for free and gets paid for them via advertisements and privacy violating data mining doesn't mean they can get away with everything. Most slashdotters seem to be blinded by the whole free and supposedly open thing, while most of their products are actually closed.
Open how? Fr
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Anyone still using IE has no idea other browsers exist, or are MS fanboys.
That's just ignorance at its best. What about businesses? You know, IE is still the only browser that has site wide policies that can be applied organization wide easily by the IT department. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari.. None have these. And businesses are a huge market, as people need to work. Are you saying they're all either MS fanboys or don't know about other browsers?
What sort of constant bombardment? You mean marketing? I fail to see how people using Google complain that google advertises their products. Don't like those, try another search engine, there are a plethora to choose from.
Yeah, you mean just like in the 90s people could had just bought from vendors that didn't make uncompetitive deals with Microsoft, e
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Yeah, you mean just like in the 90s people could had just bought from vendors that didn't make uncompetitive deals with Microsoft, even if the damage still happened? Same situation.
The "90s" covers a 10 year period. If you are referring to the latter half, when I went into a computer store to buy a computer, the choice was essentially nothing but IBM compatible machines running windows. If I want to use another search engine, I open a tab and type that search engine's url in the address bar. The two are not even remotely similar. Google does not do anything to stop you from using another search provider in Chrome. When you install Chrome, the first thing you see is a pop-up askin
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Interestingly, that pop-up is weighted 2/3 Bing as Bing gives the results for Yahoo now so Google is actually at a disadvantage in their own browser.
Yahoo doesn't completely use Bing yet. They announced the transition in 2009 but it will happen by the next year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search [wikipedia.org]
On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[3] All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.[4]
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Powered by Bingâ
At the bottom of the search page I just opened to yahoo.com.
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world
Where did all the smart trolls go? Listen, simple-simon, TFA is about the FTC investigating Google. Last I checked, the Federal Trade Commission was a part of the United States government. Want to talk about somewhere else, find a new thread.
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Open how? Free as in beer, or speech? I use them because they are free as in beer, and work well. I've used competing products, Hotmail, Yahoo, and they're stuck in geocities age.
Sorry, what part of Google is "free as in beer", exactly? Their search algorithms? Ad placement? Gmail? G+? GTalk? Android?
None of Google's significant properties are open. None. The emperor has no clothes. Here, chew on this [computerworld.com]:
A protective order in the case restricts access to the Android source code, limiting the number of people who can review the code and requiring that Microsoft and Motorola "give prior written notice" to Google before showing the source code to a technical advisor. Google is to have 10 days to object.
Microsoft did not do that, Google alleged, as it moved to prevent Stevenson from testifying at the evidentiary hearing slated for later this month.
"The confidential source code improperly provided to Dr. Stevenson is highly proprietary source code that Google does not even share with its partners, such as Motorola," Google said.
Code. Android. "Highly proprietary".
There are reasons to like Android, but "openness" is not one of them.
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Yes, gmail, search, G+, gtalk, and android are all free-as-in-beer. Some of them are also free-as-in-speech*. Well, unless you count ad-supported as NOT free.
* I have the source code for Android sitting here on my laptop. Didn't pay a brass razoo for it. Can modify and re-compile it 'til the cows come home. W00t openness!.
There are many reasons to hate Android, but lack of openness is not one of them.
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http://code.google.com/opensource/projects.html [google.com]
In case you missed it.
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Where are the complaints? Did Yahoo or MSN/Live.com Attempt to push out an app to utilize their search engine and have it rejected? Did any other search provider ask to be listed as an alternative to google search and then get rejected?
I fail to understand exactly what is being done wrong here. If they asked to participate and were refused, then I would say they definitely have a case. I seriously doubt that is what happened.
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You obviously have no idea what your talking about, so i would hold onto your opinion. Microsoft had a real monopoly in the 90s and were caught red handed attempting to force OEMs and consumers to use only their products. However they had the ENTIRE PC market. Android has a little over half of the smartphone market and very little of the tablet market in comparison to apple.
Other differences from the eternal comparison of Microsoft and Gooogle:
Google in fact doesn't force OEMs to use their search, we've see
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Its hard to lock competing services out of a wide open eco-sytem. Take the code and write your own Android-compatible device and add all the completion you like. Isn't Bing a prominent player in one of the manufacturer's phones aout of the box? You seems really closed and bullyish to me.
Just take a step back for a moment, the fact that Google is being probed is a good thing for them and everyone else. If the probes find truly anti-competitive behaviour (which I seriously doubt based on public info) Google
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Interesting... My LG Vortex running Android came with BING as it's default search engine....
Not sure how much water these complaints against android are holding but I intentionally switched out BING for an alternative search engine :-)
Re:Finally (Score:5, Informative)
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What that doesn't mention is that that the way Motorola and Skyhook decided to set this up - by presenting the Skyhook data as GPS data - risked contaminating Google's database with data from Skyhook that they'd have no way to identify or exclude [thisismynext.com], exposing them to a lawsuit from Skyhook...
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Google gets its revenue from search (and selling our souls one bit at a time), and you're going to cry that their phone OS is subsidized by search revenue? Build your own, go with iOS or WinPhone, or some other option if you don't like it. Call me when Google starts charing outrageous licensing fees and ties some search revenue to th
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Wow. Your post made so much sense once I replace Google with Apple.
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Google doesn't have a monopoly on smart phones, search, mail or any other service. There is a pretty healthy level of competition at the moment. There is nothing stopping vendors or customers from customizing android with non-google services. Again, I fail to see how google has a monopoly on anything.
Apple ties iphones with itunes, I fail to see why google can't do whatever they
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you're missing the point, no one can tell google not to tie their products together. what google can't do is dictate what other companies do with their products.
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finally someone is putting a stop to Google's monopolistic business strategies.
I think you fail to realize that "monopolistic business strategies" are the norm for business in the US.
Anti-competitive laws are exactly this - you should not use your monopoly in another area to gain unfair advantage in other market.
That's great, but if you are going to hang one company for doing this, then hang the others who are doing the same thing. Apple, Oracle, AT&T, Microsoft; they all have their little vendor lock-in schemes which don't allow any room for competition.
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Just take a look at zget's UID and post history. It's quite obvious he's one of the clowns sent here by either Facebook, Apple, or Microsoft.
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As a consumer, I've benefited immensely from Google and if it weren't there, my life would be far worse. Nothing else matters.
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You criticized Google on Slashdot. Prepare to get modbombed.
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You need to read your own link. That survey was a hoax.
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Never under estimate the speed and efficiency of the internet hate machine.
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Yes, Apple were wrong to block other ad services. That's why they stopped blocking them, because they knew they'd get sued/investigated. Unfortunately we're talking about Google's on going behaviour here. Two wrongs don't make a right.
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Unfortunately we're talking about Google's on going behaviour here. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Yeah, except for the fact that Google isn't blocking other search or ad providers on Android phones. The Google hate runs so deep that people like you simply resort to spreading lies. So sad.
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Yeah, except for the fact that Google isn't blocking other search or ad providers on Android phones. The Google hate runs so deep that people like you simply resort to spreading lies. So sad.
Whoo there, let's not get personal. I'm not making personal attacks against you, and I don't expect to be called a liar unless you can point out were I'm factually wrong, and even then that would make me wrong not a liar.
Google blocks others services by forcing it's partners to bundle it's services if they want access
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Google blocks others services by forcing it's partners to bundle it's services if they want access to the google app marketplace
Not true. There are many Android phones sold by Verizon that have Bing search and maps preloaded yet have access to the Android Market.
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I can not comment on the verizon bing deal, as I've not familiar with it and what ever discussions between the companies where done behind closed doors. My comment is more concerning issue that have come to light, like the motorola deal with skyhook that google objected to and then forced motorola to abandon.
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You need to read the article. Skyhook was asking Motorola to break api functionality in their phones to exclude competing services with Skyhook and Google rightly told them to go fuck themselves. Please educate yourself.