If you missed it, FairSearch announced a complaint with the European Union over Google's mobile strategy, specifically with how Android prevent competition.
Google achieved its dominance in the smartphone operating system market by giving Android to device-makers for ‘free.’ But in reality, Android phone makers who want to include must-have Google apps such as Maps, YouTube or Play are required to pre-load an entire suite of Google mobile services and to give them prominent default placement on the phone, the complaint says. This disadvantages other providers, and puts Google’s Android in control of consumer data on a majority of smartphones shipped today.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, the complaint says.
Um, did they miss the Facebook Phone announcement?
Let me share some of the fun comments from webmasters at WebmasterWorld:
What a load.Andoid is no more a trap than iOS w/Siri, FaceTime, etc. or Windows 8 w/Bing, Office, etc..
Microsoft of all companies has no room to talk about abusing hardware dominance as they wrote the play book that Google now uses. MS still rules the desktop nut can't get a grip on the phone like Google or Apple thru technology and customer loyalty as Win 8 is obviously not cutting it using their old arm twisting operating system methods to gain market share.
Good point that Open Source is hardly a trap unless the license requires Google junk to be installed but I'm thinking without all the Google apps vendors have nothing to offer.
The cost to the consumer would be even lower if Google didn't have to hire lawyers to deal with this stuff.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
