EU fines Google so Google starts charging Europe for play store

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aloniv

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Fining tech companies doesn't deter companies from breaking laws - in the end the companies find ways to make the users pay the fines for them. IF EU wanted Google to stop breaking the law they should have filed criminal charges against their leaders and put them in jail, but then they wouldn't have managed to get their share of Google's pie.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/10/16/1654248/google-to-charge-smartphone-makers-for-google-play-in-europe

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/9opdsl/google_to_charge_phone_makers_for_android_apps_in/

freemedia
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so what youre saying is, the eu doesnt really care about its citizens, only money.

no, i wont put those words in your mouth. even if you said them, im totally comfortable with that level of cynicism about politics. i dont think theyre completely worthless, just mostly worthless as is. theyre still pretty good about banning food additives, props there.

hint: go and ban pgpr though. why is everyone trying to put that in my chocolate? i dont eat that.

aloniv

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What I'm saying is that EU doesn't really care about Google breaking anti-competition law - the fine is just a means of taking some of Google's money even if they know that the fine will actually be passed down to consumers.

If they wanted to damage Google they could have forced them to freely license Google play services APIs (apps which use these cannot be easily ported to competing app stores). Fining Google doesn't solve the user dependency with respect to the play store.

freemedia
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yeah, no one (in terms of countries and laws) really seems to care about companies breaking anti-competition laws.

they almost seem like the sort of thing written just so they can say its there-- like the ridiculous warnings on products that tell you things are hot, be careful, dont use this candle next to a large tank of flammable vapour, etc.

"we have strict anti-competition laws for things like this."

"which dont actually fix anything."

"but we have them!"

aloniv

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aloniv

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If EU really cared about customers they would pass the following regulations:

Make it illegal to sell devices with locked bootloaders. Similar to how people started switching mobile providers once SIM locked devices became outlawed (in some parts of the world). Also, make it illegal to sell devices without root access.

Force manufacturers to provide hardware specs for free so competing OSes can easily be ported to mobile devices.

Force manufacturers to enable removal of any of their bundled apps - punishing Google for forcing manufacturers to bundle their apps while letting carriers bundle apps which are hard/impossible to remove without any consequences just because carriers aren't monopolies seems hypocritical.

freemedia
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"while letting carriers bundle apps which are hard/impossible to remove without any consequences"

ohh, i really want to say it but im not going to say it...

but im pretty sure someone can guess what im thinking about software that is hard/impossible to remove without any consequences. on a more immediately relevant note, i agree with you to an extent though i suspect some of those things would be difficult if not impossible to write laws for. the unlocked bootloader issue would be very nice (and easy to do with a law.)

aloniv

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