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by roasm 2649 days ago
Non-European here. Does iOS have to do the same thing?
4 comments
jdietrich 2649 days ago
No, because Apple do not have a dominant position in the smartphone market within the EU. Google pay Apple billions of dollars a year to make Google the default search engine on iOS devices, which was a significant factor in the European Commission's ruling against Google.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_competition_law...

http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

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saagarjha 2649 days ago
This seems like it would be interesting, given that Google reportedly pays Apple billions of dollars to remain the default on iOS.
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azernik 2649 days ago
Definitely not for search engine, since Apple isn't a potential monopolist in that market. Possibly not for browser either, depending on how popular EU competition authorities think a browser/OS pairing needs to be before looking askance at the cross-promotion.
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sigzero 2649 days ago
Probably not since Apple doesn't license iOS to anyone else and solely controls it.
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roasm 2649 days ago
Does that matter? I would think it would have to do with market share more than any licensing. iOS has ~28% share in the EU.

http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe

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ucaetano 2649 days ago
It matters, the EC defined the market as "licensable mobile operating systems", and not "mobile operating systems".

If they were looking at "mobile operating systems", their antitrust ruling would make no sense.

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snrji 2649 days ago
Therefore, if Google and all the Android OEMs merged, no antitrust action would be taken with regards to Android apps. Is that correct?
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ucaetano 2649 days ago
You're assuming that the action was based on policy, not on politics.
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