Comment by mkhalil

I have a Pixel with GrapheneOS and no Google anything installed, and bunq, N26, and SG apps all work flawlessly (but with no push notifications because no Google services, and I'm fine with that).

Attesting that a closed source device meets arbitrary closed source standards is a necessary evil.

One real world problem is that some existing systems are built relying on the integrity of the components within, i.e. BART in the bay area relies on the BART cards being honest and secure. If iPhones are to be allowed into the system, they also have to be honest and secure.

The capability is being over-used and abused, and we should design systems to never need it, but some do.

Don't worry, Pax China will have you giving the fingerprint to Xiaomi and Huawei instead.

In Europe, banking apps block root but still work on a custom OS (like LineageOS) without contactless payments. I guess this is because many people here buy Chinese phones and they just can't ignore them.

Have you tried on GrapheneOS?

Also, what's stopping you from using your bank's website instead... or switching to a bank which sucks less?

...literally all the things listed in the comment you're replying to.

> And there are consistent talking point among the GCP sales reps about how they "help deliver you customers" and you "shouldn't fund a competitor".

I wonder how much of it is Google asking them to do that, versus quotas and incentives that make anything else untenable.

The latter is a well-known phenomenon, if your sales reps are under enough pressure, they will eventually resort to illegal tactics that make your company look bad, even if they're never explicitly told to do so.

Another way to look at this is through an evolutionary lens; the salesmen that do the right thing can't possibly perform as well as those that don't, so they're fired / never promoted. It's not that all salesmen are evil, it's that, in such an environment, only the evil ones have a chance, all without managements knowledge or approval.

HSBC is the most famous example where this happened, to the point of their bank employees knowingly assisting gangs and cartels in laundering money.

I think that's most likely something that some sales guy came up with on his own.

I doubt it's because of that. Being a user of those msft products like Teams, it is more likely that they don't want another msft product if they can avoid it. why would you want bugs on top of bugs?

This is wildly wrong. Ever since the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 (1) companies are forbidden from using monopoly powers to force other parties to sign deals, which is the question about which Perplexity is testifying- whether Google is using it's market monopoly power in one area (cell phone operating systems) to force other companies to sign deals that unfairly hurt competitors in a different market (AI assistants). And that's been illegal for a very long time.

1: Named for John Sherman, General William Sherman's younger brother, who was a Senator from Ohio. That's how long this law has been around!

Google could be running foul of antitrust laws if forcing Gemini as default on Android OEM's is part of the standard contract required to use the Android brand.

You mean like two people agreeing to sell drugs to each other? Organs? Prostitution?

mmm, which part of the constitution? I remember one explicit delegation to the federal government of the cross border trade, plus a long list of items that people are forbidden from trading freely, plus, recently, a long list of items where the government meddles by imposing taxes on imported trade.

[flagged]

True, but this just added extra visibility to the anti trust case

On my pixel, GrapheneOS has 2x the battery life of factory android.

Of course, most commercial apps won’t run due to Google’s monopolistic bullshit. You can partially fix it by installing (sandboxed) google play services, but that halves the battery life back to what stock android gets.

Even rereading the whole thread I don't get what is misleading. Google and Motorola signed an agreement, and it blocks Motorola from using Perplexity as its core search engine.

Saying Google has no part in this would be wrong, and the fact that the agreement was mutual doesn't change the restrictions.

Who's overthinking? This is not an example of a bad title: the main message of the piece is that a (prosecuting?) witness is demonstrating how the alleged antitrust behavior of one of the signatory parties prevents them from operating as they see fit. Lenovo is not the one on the stand being accused of antitrust behavior. I guess perplexity could accuse Lenovo of antitrust behavior but that's not the case the article is describing, is it?

> The article is basically saying "if you don't use Play store and Google apps you'll have to build them yourself".

The article says a lot more. A key point about the Open Handset Alliance, OHA (emphasis theirs):

"If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. ...

The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google's Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork."

If you read the article I linked and many of the criticisms in these comments (not to mention TFA) smartphone vendors need to cede a huge amount of control to Google to have a viable product. As such, the open source aspect of Android is just a very effective distraction from the anti-competitive practices that Google has been plying with it.

Legally or illegally? If you don't care about doing it legally, sure you can make a stub Google play service and fake the device integrity by extracting certificates from other devices.

If you care about the laws though you cannot really get rid of the play services.

"The very basis of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding"