[_stephan]

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."

[bduerst]

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.

[_stephan]

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.

[bduerst]

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.