Comment by xnx a day ago
It continues to baffle me that Google gets harassed by the courts for being a better actor in almost every area it participates.
Open source Android vs. closed iOS
Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
Easy switch of search provider in Chrome vs. countless dark patterns pushing Edge and Bing on Windows
The requirement that amazes me they never gone absolutely done for was that to get certified (to carry the Play Store) you must not release any Android devices which are not certified.
i.e. a given manufacturer would not be able to sell Google based Android devices and separate non-Google based Android devices.
It's as if being able to bundle Windows OEM licenses was reliant on not selling any models with Linux.
Perhaps not "absolutely done for," but there was meaningful action here that resulted in a 4.3 billion EUR fine (of which only 200 million was reversed on appeal).
The action was based partially on the Anti-Fragmentation Agreements (AFAs) mentioned above: https://www.clearyantitrustwatch.com/2022/09/the-general-cou...
IMO there should be mechanisms that prevent this kind of thing from ever occurring, but regulating this in a way that doesn't meaningfully impede other (benign) certification programs is a complex design space indeed!
As long as it's not sold as "Android" to the mass public I don't think there is a meaningful problem. For example, if you go to the trouble of hacking the Play Store on to a Kindle Fire you do know it's your responsibility if it works or not. Google would probably tacitly approve because such activity reduces the need for the Amazon App Store.
I didn't think Huawei had released a certified Android device in many years now, as I don't believe Google would be allowed to act as a supplier to them even if they wanted to.
Back around the Nexus 6P they probably got an exception as Google tried to promote more competition for what was rapidly turning into a Samsungopoly. Samsung later themselves negotiated a position where they could make other changes in ways Google didn't approve of, and that was by leveraging the threat of going all-in on Tizen.
Camera apps on Android are very loosely coupled to the OS. They are intentionally left to OEMs to provide because that's the most visible aspect of hardware differentiation, and that differentiation probably depends on software support. On top of that, it would be hard to design an API for every possible camera hardware, apart from a high level API for apps to acquire an image.
>On top of that, it would be hard to design an API for every possible camera hardware, apart from a high level API for apps to acquire an image.
APIs themselves are hard to make, but why is a camera one especially so? The language is well understood, the math and science are well understood. There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work.
Why is it hard?
In advance -- No, Sony/Panasonic/Toshiba/Apple/Whoever locking functions behind magic numbers and proprietary blobs and other 'un-Gentlemanly' things shouldn't count as difficulty in making a Camera API; that's just shit companies being shit to people, not an API problem.
>There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work.
Have an infrared camera that augments the image from a normal camera?
Have a rotationally pop up camera that allows using the same 3 cameras for back and selfie, but also use it to take panoramas. (I miss my Asus ZenPhone flip)
Create photos that allow users to change focus when viewing?
Have two cameras back to back and allow capturing simultaneously to create 360 photos/videos?
Have two cameras side by side and allow stereo vision?
If you have a 0.7x, 1x, and 4x camera, and the user is zooming at 3, use the 1x to fill the frame, but the 5x to have better image quality at the center?
Use the optical stabilizer to take several shots with micro shifts and do super resolution?
We can go on and on. Cameras and even smartphone cameras allow a lot of possibilities. Some of them are already explored by some manufacturers.
> However, the thing the courts have gotten very angry with is that in order to use the Android trademark, you have to get certification, which requires you to exclusively ship a series of Google applications (Chrome, Gmail, Youtube, the Google Photos app, etc) even if you have your own replacement (e.g. Samsung's browser, a native photo app, email client, etc.) and you Must ship with the Google account system up front.
The Daylight Computer doesn't ship with Google applications like this from what I can remember, and I noticed it doesn't actually mention Android on their home page, just that it can "run your favorite apps". It only mentions Android on the specs page under software. I wonder if they did that because of this.
> Open source Android vs. closed iOS
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
This article lays out in painstaking detail in one place most of the criticisms about Android you'll find in this comment thread.
And this was published in 2018! That Google still maintains "a better actor" aura despite all that we know now is the greatest trick they ever pulled.
It's open-source in the same way TiVo was "open-source" back in the day: yeah, you get the code, but you can't do anything with it in a practical sense.
Also, that article was published in 2013 and only received light updates in 2018 -- and its core arguments haven't really aged even with the additional five years.
the comment doesn't say that is good, it says that it is better than ios. do you think android is more closed than ios?
There are de-Googled phones based on AOSP, and not just in China.
Google used to be more permissive with OEM "customization" and the result was lots of Bad Product Differentiation. Phone OEMs suck at software.
Huawei has a phone OS not based on AOSP, but you can't easily get it in the US.
Making a coherent OS product that doesn't get horribly mutated by OEM licensees is not easy. Vide Windows bloatware.
The mistake Google is making with the courts is that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have an open OS while simultaneously flexing your other business units to dictate how other people use it.
Google flexing in this way, arguably for the benefit of the user, is nonetheless anticompetitive and the courts are reaming them for it.
For the record, none of those are objectively "better". You and I may think they're better. Lots, lots, as in billions of people, couldn't care less:
> Open source Android vs. closed iOS
Almost no one outside specific tech circles cares, and even if they understood what it meant, still wouldn't care.
> Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
That's one of the primary reasons I suggest that my relatives buy iPhones. I have older family who would absolutely install an APK from hackerz.ru if they got a phishing email claiming they won the Facebook Lottery and that's how they claim the prize. For that matter, I'm glad my bank has to publish their app through the App Store, because otherwise they'd almost certainly be hosting it on sketchysounding.bankservices.biz if no one made them.
The walled garden is an enormous advantage for a huge chunk of the world. I understand why it's a PITA for others. I'd love to install unsanctioned software from GitHub on my iPhone, but I'll happily accept that tradeoff in exchange for my uncle not being able to install "Real Actual Gmail.apk" from god knows where.
> Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
I might agree with that, although part of me is glad that there's at least one major platform that Chrome hasn't taken over.
> Easy switch of search provider in Chrome vs. countless dark patterns pushing Edge and Bing on Windows
Five years ago, I'd have agreed. Today Chrome seems like the King of Dark Patterns because it can get away with it. It's the one single app on my Mac that makes me specially configure cmd-Q to quit it. Manifest v3. Web Integrity API. Etc., etc., etc. Google does this because they can. They haven't been the better actor in ages.
I would agree with that in principle if it were remotely true, but on my iPhone, when I searched for chatgpt or openai when they came out, I got half a dozen fake apps before the real one. And that's been the case for so many search terms for popular apps or areas. There are 1.8 million apps on iOS app store! How do they get this aura and image of safety and reliability? Or, how do I find that safe walled garden? :)
First, yes, I totally agree with the premise. I still think there's a big difference between scammy software like you described and flat-out malware. App Store review can identify and reject lots of malicious syscalls. If you get a fake ChatGPT app, it might very well have in-app purchases that don't actually do anything server-side, but it probably won't exfiltrate your email to North Korea.
You're right. It's not "safe" in the sense that things clearly, demonstrably make it through that shouldn't. I do believe those are the exceptions that stand out, though. It doesn't mean that scammers can't still get malware into the store. It does mean they have to work harder for it than most scammers are willing or able to.
By analogy, Fremont, CA isn't "safe". They still have robberies and thefts and assaults and murders. But with a crime rate literally 1/10th that of St. Louis, I'd forgive people for describing it that way.
And those fake apps are still subject to the sandbox.
But yes, the App Store is a shit show
> I might agree with that, although part of me is glad that there's at least one major platform that Chrome hasn't taken over.
> Five years ago, I'd have agreed. Today Chrome seems like the King of Dark Patterns because it can get away with it. It's the one single app on my Mac that makes me specially configure cmd-Q to quit it. Manifest v3. Web Integrity API. Etc., etc., etc. Google does this because they can. They haven't been the better actor in ages.
One of my biggest fears with the EU coming down on Apple is that they'll force Apple to allow "real" Blink-powered Chrome (vs. the current shell around WebKit), and that we'll wind up with another late-90s/early-00s browser monopoly. Blink is already at something like 90% market share on desktop and 60% on mobile (basically everything not iOS/macOS), and Google is already acting near-unilaterally on new features.
Me too. Right now Safari is damming that river of awfulness because no one wants to break their site for iPhone users. So many of the new Chrome "features" sound like end-user nightmares that I want no part of, like:
Chrome: Our new feature lets websites write files directly to your desktop without user intervention!
Users: Yay, I can get daily newsletters right where I want them!
Safari: That's a terrible idea. Now any website can write ads or malware to your desktop.
Users: Why is Safari so outdated? Chrome's had this new feature for a week now!
a week later
Users: Why is my desktop filled with ads?
Chrome: It's a mystery unto the ages! Hey, did I tell you about our new API for allowing advertisers to watch you while you sleep?
Users: LOL, Safari is so far behind that they'll probably never even implement this.
Android is hardly open source if it’s developed behind closed doors and final version released. It’s pretending.
Are you confused between open source and open development?
Isn't the source fully open?
Edit:
If I made a movie, and made the files freely available after I make it and let you do whatever you want with it
.. would you insist that it isn't "open" because you didn't see me argue with my editor or the 100 times I iterates on the end scene or whether your idea for chase sequence was not incorporated?
No they changed their development process to do it behind closed doors and release the code after final release.
Free Software Foundation General Public License version 2:
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.
<https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html>
That's generally interpreted to mean that the build environment or build system is included in the requirements of the licence. This is included in FSF's Free Software Definition as well:
<https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>
OSI's Open Source Definition includes substantively similar language:
The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program.
Answering your question then, no, source absent build prerequisites / systems does not satisfy either FSF's Free Software Definition or the subsequent Open Source Definition by the Open Source Initiative.
The EU fined Apple a couple of days ago, because their app store restrictions violate the Digital Market Act (DMA).
Similarly the EU forced Apple to allow alternative browser engines and to add a default browser selector.
Android is source partially open, not anywhere close to true open source.
With Apple, they are the manufacturer of the phone and the software, so they get to decide what goes on the hardware.
Google makes the OS, but not the hardware. Why should they be able to decide what another company puts on the hardware.
This is exactly the same playbook Microsoft tried in the 90s, and it is going to court for the exact same reason. It's using your market power to prevent competition.
We've decided that just because you are the maker of a piece of software does not mean you get to decide what runs on someone else's hardware.
So are you proposing that Google shouldn't allow other companies to install Android? What would Samsung, Motorola switch to and do app developers have to create apps targeting all of the different mobile OSes?
This seems like a far worst path than today, and to OP's point, though Google isn't perfect, they're doing better than their competitor in providing options. Pushing Google to only offer Android on their own phones is not a win for consumers.
That's not at all what I'm proposing.
I'm proposing that Google can't decide what other hardware companies include in their devices just because they are including Android.
I think it is fine for Google to say you have to include the Play store, or you have to include Chrome, but to say you can't include firefox, or you can't include instagram, etc. etc. That shouldn't be up to Google.
This is what got Microsoft in anti-trust trouble in the 90s. They included Internet Explorer with the OS, and said that it had to be the default and only browser included by vendors. They weren't allowed to include competing browsers.
> Pushing Google to only offer Android on their own phones is not a win for consumers.
How can you possibly know that? Traditionally, competition + standards for interoperability has been a big win for consumers.
In a world without Google-android, maybe Samsung & Huawei get together and put in the polish to make https://postmarketos.org/ into a consumer-usable system? Maybe each fork LineageOS or KaiOS but collaborate on a standard apk format so developers can easily ship on different app stores?
> It continues to baffle me that Google gets harassed by the courts for being a better actor in almost every area it participates.
Doesn't mean much in a duopoly. Anyway, there's no real alternative to using google services which basically ruins the phone.
Android is not open source and has not been for years. There is AOSP that contains small part of Android source. But the product that Google sells to OEMs is not open source.
At this point, an Android phone without Google Play Services is mostly useless. You can't use maps, you can't even use notifications!
> No one is forcing these other companies to make and sell...
> I'm really struggling to see where the consumer harm is.
Imagine a world where it's illegal to grow crops unless you use a particular brand of seeds. Nobody is forcing you to make cereal, but you're going to have a bad time if you can't get the needed components for it.
It's not that far off base, either. Heard of Monsanto? Google is basically going down the same path.
Google Maps must be the biggest value-add Google has built for their phone ecosystem, full stop. I see no reason they should give that away no strings attached. I am no Google fan but it's one of the few things they have done which positively impacts me almost daily.
Yes, please break up Apple, too! Who do we have to call to start the antitrust suit?
They're being harassed for lying about being a better actor. Apple gets to be a controlling asshole because there's no legal requirement for tech companies to not be. Google tried to have their cake and eat it too.
iOS is a package deal: you use our OS on our phones with our App Store and browser. Very straightforward and honest, even if we rightly hate the deal. This all relies on basic protections of IP law that the state is so far unwilling to roll back.
Android is a confusopoly[0]. For every point you mentioned, Google has a hidden deal or catch that subverts the intention of the words in question and makes it as bad as iOS.
Yes, Android is FOSS, but the app store everyone uses is proprietary; and Google's licensing terms for the proprietary store contravene the licenses on the FOSS portion. You specifically agree not to ship devices with "Android forks", even if you don't put the proprietary store on those specific devices. And what's actually released in AOSP shrinks every time a Google engineer puts a Google client in an app. Let us also not forget Android Honeycomb, which actually was not released to AOSP. There is no legal requirement for Google to ship source, and they've already tried out a fully-proprietary release of Android in the past.
Yes, you could install non-Google-Play apps on Android, but updating them required you to manually approve every update. Third-party app stores were a nightmare to use until Epic sued about it and Google provided APIs to actually deliver updates in the same way that Google Play can.
Yes, Google Play lets Mozilla ship Gecko. But Google is also paying phone manufacturers lots of money to make Chrome the default. Oh, and to not ship any third-party app stores. Combined with Google Play not letting you distribute other app stores through itself, it makes actually finding and using an app store a pain.
And Chrome is specifically designed to make you use Google Search with the same dark patterns Edge uses.
Please do not fool yourself into thinking that any actor in this industry is good. They all suck, and you should be happy when any of them get their noses bloodied.
[0] A term coined by the writer of Dilbert, Hatsune Miku, for deliberately confusing marketing intended to make you sigh in frustration, open your wallet, and let the sales guy decide what product you buy.
The factual info in your reference "[0]" makes no sense. The writer (and illustrator) of the Dilbert cartoon is Scott Adams [1]. I have no idea what the name you referenced has anything to do with it, other than some Japanese software. Or was all of part of your comment written by an LLM?
Saying Hatsune Miku made X is a common joke on Twitter/Tumblr when the original person to do so has reprehensible political beliefs.
Worked on Android from 2016-2023.
Vouch. (modulo Chrome aping Edge dark patterns)
And it's not an accident, or just an unthinking corporation with big divisions accidentally working at opposites, or just something looks bad when someone writes it up from the outside.
Aren't those first two points being phased out?
E..g. Google recently announced that it will be moving Android development entirely to its private internal branch, no more development sharing. They say they'll still be open source, but Google has been caught lying about a lot of things lately.
(Sent from my Android.)
They said they're going to merge their private branch after their full releases, as opposed to merging many times on the way to a release.
https://9to5google.com/2025/03/26/google-android-aosp-develo...
> This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases are finished.
>Open source Android vs. closed iOS
Google have slid back on this from day one. A pure-AOSP build of Android is borderline unusable, to the point that the dialer UI, various essential apps such as contacts and the like are now proprietary Google code, stripped out of AOSP. Additionally, AOSP has gone to a source-dump release pattern, rather than an open build. Last I knew, even basic things like the Camera and clock app had been made Google-Properietary.
You have to go to a completely independent distribution like LineageOS, which has maintained a step by step fork of Android, in order to have a "google free" environment that is vaguely useful.
However, the thing the courts have gotten very angry with is that in order to use the Android trademark, you have to get certification, which requires you to exclusively ship a series of Google applications (Chrome, Gmail, Youtube, the Google Photos app, etc) even if you have your own replacement (e.g. Samsung's browser, a native photo app, email client, etc.) and you Must ship with the Google account system up front.
> Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on iOS
Going with the previous one: The apps you install then are going to require the Google services that may or may not have been shipped with your phone. Additionally, the hoops that an application must go through to get the same level privileges as a Google application -- even for things on the local phone -- are far and above what most people would be willing to go through: Since Google apps are installed on the system software end, they are given privileges that no other application could have.
> Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No choice but Safari tech on iOS
See previous: If you want to ship with Google's blessed market, you must ship with Chrome and it must be the default. The power of defaults is strong here.