[briandear]

Is the consumer being harmed? That’s the only question that matters in anti-trust. That mom and pop can’t compete isn’t a symptom of a monopoly, it’s a symptom of mom and pop not doing more to be the best choice. Mom and pop could compete if they had a better, cheaper product. If you want to compete — be better than the competition. Many startups are not — that isn’t the fault of Google.

[xg15]

Yes, e.g. by stiffling sale of alternative Android-based operating systems, as the EU just concluded. Google uses their market power and control over Android to give competing OSes a disadvantage, whether or not they would be better than Android/Google Play.

[TomMarius]

Using the EU as an argument is like bringing a friend that agrees with you to confirm your statement. Use actual arguments, please.

[xg15]

It seems a bit ridiculous to call a multi-year investigation by the EU's anti-trust agency "calling in my friends", but ok.

The most severe thing they did was give retailers a hard choice: Either they only sell phones with Google's Android distribution (AOSP+Google Play) or they only sell phones with no-name AOSP distributions. They cannot sell both.

As missing out on the revenue from Google Play-based phones would be financially irresponsible, this choice had only one viable option: Not selling any other AOSP-based OS except Google's.

Therefore Google effectively made competing AOSP-based projects extremely hard to sell, regardless of their quality.

[ionised]

So you're not interested in hearing arguments you don't like?