Tl;dr: Android is open sourced, Google Play services are not. Licenses for manufacturers to preinstall the proprietary Google Play app require them to also to preinstall Google search.
Android manufacturers aren't forced to preinstall Play services. Users can still uninstall either Play, search, or any number of the preinstalled manufacturer apps (which aren't locked by manufacturers), right? How is this different than if Google made just one app for play and search?
The legal question is whether the exclusivity terms in the licensing deals are anti-competitive given Google's dominant market share in Europe.
"handset-makers that wish to pre-install Google Play must, among other apps, also add Google Search and make it the device’s default search service; if they want to share in Google’s ad revenues they have to exclusively pre-install Google Search; and if they pre-install Google’s apps on any of their models, they must commit to install only Google’s standard version of Android on each and every one of their models."
That's a quality control clause to keep manufacturers from pushing apps that don't work to users. The Google play apps are not compiled to run on every conceivable custom configuration of open-sourced Android. Samsung installs Tizen on it's models that don't use play services.
If I understand "if they pre-install Google’s apps on any of their models, they must commit to install only Google’s standard version of Android on each and every one of their models" correctly, Google does not allow handset-makers to sell models with custom Android versions (but without Google Play) if that maker also wants to sell any model with an approved Android version and Google Play.
Tizen is not an Android derivative. Do you know enough about Google's licensing terms to be able to contradict the accusation in the article?
Btw, I entirely understand and sympathize with the desire to prevent Android fragmentation.
Yeah, I wasn't aware of restricting the specific forks. I'm not sure how that works if you open source software but then license someone to only use a specific version.
In tightly controlled ecosystems the default state is effectively what most consumers will keep and use. This is sometimes informally called the power of default. Entire billion dollar markets can rise and fall based on something as simple as an opt-out versus opt-in policy. It's a little like that Supreme Court ruling that said ''the power to tax is the power to destroy''. The power of default is not much different especially when you control the entire underlying OS. Anti-trust regulators are right to focus on what these default settings are.
If Apple had vast majority of market share, pre-installed iTunes, integrated iTunes functionality throughout the OS so that it had more intuitive prominence than other competing services, then yes, that would be close to the definition of antitrust as I understand it (using dominant control in one market to create or maintain dominant control in a second market). This is what Microsoft was penalized for, appropriately, with Windows and the browser market.
Android manufacturers aren't forced to preinstall Play services. Users can still uninstall either Play, search, or any number of the preinstalled manufacturer apps (which aren't locked by manufacturers), right? How is this different than if Google made just one app for play and search?