Comment by navigate8310 a day ago
Perplexity setting up talks with phone makers is itself an anti-competitive behavior to curb an already anti-competitive behavior. Either this should be banned in entirety or let the free markets prevail.
That's not happening. Everything that comes with a computer could be possibly construed as anti-competitive. Even the Start Menu - after all, if Start11 and StartIsBack exist, why should Microsoft have the right to ship their own start menu? How about calculators (Desmos)? The system that puts maximize, minimize, and close on windows (after all, WindowBlinds exists)? The login screen (LogonStudio)? What about the Task Manager (Process Explorer)? File Explorer (Total Commander)? The Media Player (VLC)? The PDF viewer (unfair competition against Adobe!)?
I agree that at some point, it crosses a line. Perplexity is nowhere near powerful or influential enough to cross that line.
Yeah, I don't think bundling programs by default should be considered anti-competitive for exactly this reason; there's a near infinite number of possible combinations of configurations and it would be ridiculous to expect users to have to make an affirmative choice between all of them every time they buy a product.
What should be considered anti-competitive is when you take active steps to block alternatives from existing. Like if Windows started requiring start menu alternatives to have a signed certificate from Microsoft in order to run; that would be anti-competitive. Or if they wanted to block a manufacturer from selling computers with Start11 pre-installed, that would be anti-competitive.
The most capitalist thing to do here is to have the parties gathered in an app on the device and have the companies bid on the user and have the user pick their prefernce. That way the user can enjoy many dialogs and be paid for their time. You pick, ebay 10$ temu 12$ Amazon 2$ aliexpress 15$ etc or all 20 shopping apps for 80$
Should be fun to install 500 games for 60 cent each. It might even push storage forwards.
Who knows, maybe there are enough parties out there to fund the entire device.
The Start Menu and Taskbar components of Windows Explorer is probably the most-used program in the world, and it's not even close.
It also unfairly competes and damages competition from TaskbarX, Tabame, ObjectDock, RocketDock, Start11, and countless other small businesses.
As a result, Microsoft enjoys a near-monopoly on the world's most used program, and even has the audacity to break compatibility with these competitors regularly.
And how can we be sure that the EU’s silence on the lack of competition, isn’t because Microsoft crushed all competitors before they even had a chance?
In my competitive world, in my competitive dream, car dealerships will be offering free taskbars when you refinance. The market for the world’s most used program should be open to competition from anyone.
I am not sure what is your point here. In Windows these components can be replaced. You even mentioned alternatives.
UPD. ah. I see. But Perplexity is an assistant. On Android AFAIK you can't just install another assistant.
UPD2. Actually, turns out on Android you can install a 3rd party assistant. AFAIK Alexa can just be installed from Play Store.
No, what’s anti competitive is Google making an open source operating system that is worth absolutely nothing without the Google play services, and locking these play services behind contract that contains anti competitive rules, like « you have to set Google Gemini as default assistant », or « you can’t ever sell a phone without the Google play services or with any alternative than the Google play services ».
Android at its core is free and open source, every company can ship it. But Google hold one key thing in its hands, the Google play services, and use that to force others to do whatever they want them to do.
Else they can go the huawei direction, good luck making a Google play services competitor outside of China. Maybe in Russia ? That’s nothing.
Maybe perplexity ai is just better than Gemini and that’s one of the reason Motorola wanted to ship it. Maybe it’s for money. Whatever the reason, Google is abusing its dominant position to prevent competitor from competing with them.
So if Google closed sourced their OS and access to their store is only via their OS, is that anti competitive ?
Trying to figure out the argument.
As opposed to Apple, Android is free and open like you said. It’s the Google Play Store that has limited access.
Apple never pretended iOS is free and available to all other phone manufacturer. It was always a main selling point for Apple phone.
Google killed competition by first making a free operating system that all phone manufacturer could use, lowering their production cost, and when competitor like windows phone or Samsung tyzen died, slowly tightened his grip by pushing more and more core feature in their third party services, hence forcing manufacturer to agree to their terms if they want to have a play store, Google pay service or just pass play integrity so that bank app can run.
That’s in my opinion completely different strategies, one is fair, the other is deceptive and manipulative.
Windows Phone was not killed by Google offering a free OS. Microsoft chose to charge a licence for it[0]. And every Android handset requires (or required) the manufacturer to pay Microsoft licence fees of about the same amount, so the cost to the OEM wouldn't have been that different.
[0] https://www.phonearena.com/news/ZTE-exec-reveals-how-much-th...
Why can't business talk to their leads?