The European Commission versus Android
A pretty well written analysis. I think the author is mistaken on two important points though.<p>The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android apps are in fact Google Play apps and couldn&#x27;t be used on a non-Google version of Android without a significant rework. I believe there&#x27;s already a significant body of work on providing drop in replacements for Google Play Services, e.g. microG [1]. There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out.<p>Secondly, the author complains that:<p>&gt; More broadly, the European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop.<p>There&#x27;s a huge rift in how most Europeans and Americans see the role of regulators but without getting into that, I want to note Android was not Google&#x27;s effort alone and hardly a significant risk. Android as a software stack is built on the back of the Linux Kernel and a dozen other open source frameworks (Java, sqlite etc). Equally, Google is hardly responsible for the hardware. Manufacturer&#x27;s like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did. The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices...<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microg.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;microg.org&#x2F;</a>