NO CLASS: Judge chucks out two class-action lawsuits against Google A California court has dismissed two class-action lawsuits, which accused Google of bad business behavior, on grounds that the plaintiffs couldn't provide sufficient evidence to support their claims. The oldest suit of the two, which was filed by law firm Hagens Berman in May 2014, alleged that Google's habit of requiring …
Google have been pretty clever here (sadly). You can have Android if you like with no knobs on - there's an open source version but its "unsupported". However if you want the full fat version that Google support then you also have to sign up to getting the extras that keep the Choccy Factory embedded in your customers.
Sadly most manufacturers go for the "supported" option, rather than having the balls to do it themselves. Back in the day they would be doing all of it from scratch, now we have the usual lazy can't be arsed to manage our own operating system cobblers, even when it is detrimental to their product.
As to the effect that has on handset pricing? Well a judge has ruled on that now.
Sadly most manufacturers go for the "supported" option, rather than having the balls to do it themselves. Back in the day they would be doing all of it from scratch, now we have the usual lazy can't be arsed to manage our own operating system cobblers, even when it is detrimental to their product.
No, the really sad thing is that this is what customers expect and demand. If a device has no Google layered services on top, or indeed Google Play, it gets labelled as cheap or proprietary. The reviewers are no different: you don't need to go any further than this very site for e.g. this review from Alun Taylor for an example:
The elephant in the room is that all these improvements only go so far to compensate for the fact that the Amazon App Store is still short on content compared to the Google Play Store and that you have to forgo Google’s own apps.
At least not in the traditional sense. By bundling Google apps in their Android phones instead of going it alone Android OEMs save money not having to develop their own, which translates into lower prices for the phones. However, customers end up paying more in the form of giving up their data to Google, but the Sherman Act doesn't take stuff like that into account.
No, demanding bundling of the entire package effectively prevents third party subsidies for the inclusion of added services, much like the effective giving away of Windows in the form of Windows with Bing. If you could have had a subsidy but can't you are paying more.
The fact that it might not actually be a good trade off doesn't that doesn't enter into the calculation - it is for the open market rather than the courts to decide what is a "fair" price for a product or service, inclusive of intangibles such as personal data.
"...it is for the open market rather than the courts to decide what is a "fair" price for a product or service, inclusive of intangibles such as personal data."
Unless you are referring to the "open" market that is dominated by 2 players behind closed doors with NDAs, I'll have to disagree. Reality differs from vision. Just because a door is supposed to be open, doesn't mean someone didn't lock it. Comically but validly, my car keys prove that (is 'validly' a word?).
Anyhow, I agree with this...
"..."financially and creatively stagnated" the market for mobile internet and search."
In fact, I don't even see how anyone can argue that regardless of angels and devils. Googull's search is not what it used to be. Its top results always seem to be supplied by the same 15 sites. If you're shopping, you'll see the same 15. If you're not shopping, you'll see the same 15 of those. However, all 30 seem to run Googull Ads, go figure. Either way, it always feels like the same 15.
I've switched to duckduckgo for this very reason. While I do notice a few omissions of sites that seem useful with duckduckgo (I compare duckduckgo with Googull daily), I still prefer duckduckgo for the results that are omitted in Googull's search (which is A LOT).
I can't say I compared daily between DuckDuckGo and Google, but I ran the former as the default for about a month. During that period I found the results inadequate often enough, and did a secondary search using Google, that finally I reset the default back to the latter. It may be my searches are different, or that they benefit from Google retaining some data I don't care about overmuch. Adblock Plus takes pretty good care of the ads, including those that come on the Register pages.
The searches get better. I suspect it is formulating results on user usage. 2 weeks ago stackoverflow would pop up 2 or 3 times with not so relevant info. Today, it pops up 1 time and now has relevant info. However you're right about how one formulates their queries, I've noticed drastically different results with only deleting 1 keyword. I suppose it is still "learning".
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
