Margrethe Vestager, Member of the European Commission in charge of Competition, on Antitrust holds press conference with press Q&A announcing the fine on Google of €4.34 billion ($5 Billion) for illegal practices regarding Android mobile devices to strengthen dominance of Google’s search engine, Google’s exclusive app-bundling policies illegally blocking competition in the Android based hardware device space over the last decade but especially since 2011. Google forbids manufacturers to pre-install any competitor to Google Search, Chrome, Google Maps, Gmail, Google Docs and other of the core Google apps on any Android device if such manufacturer wants to pre-load any such Google app on any device. Google must fix this within 90 days or be fined further daily up to 5% of their daily global revenue.
I have been complaining about Google’s app bundling policies in Android over the past decade, I think those Google policies are anti-competitive but also counter-productive for Google itself. I think Google should support and encourage as much innovation around the Android OS as possible, they should let the manufacturers customize Android devices as they wish, Google should encourage their competitors such as Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Yandex, Baidu, Alibaba, Amazon, Rakuten and many many other large tech companies should be invited to subsidize Android device by pre-loading whichever other search engines and apps that they would like to pre-load, and they should also be encouraged to adjust, customize, enhance and even to fork Android to add new functionalities to the Android operating system, for example support for other app platforms inside Android, for example support for Windows apps in Android, support for iOS apps in Android, support for Linux apps in Android and much more. I also believe that Google will make more money also when Google opens Android up much more and better, to allow device makers to work with Google’s competitors when it comes to apps that are pre-installed, and including also to develop Android fully in the open source space sharing dailies of all daily Android development.
