[ephbit]

> What's the difference between Sony requiring you to buy headphones together with the tape player, or Android requiring Google to be the default search?

Sony and headphones together with tape player ... there's a synergy there, when they can sell them together, it's a small one though. (Selling two pieces of hardware together generates more turnover with one transaction.)

With Android requiring Google to be the default search ... in comparison to the headphones there's a huge synergy here, I'd say. Collecting data (via non search software on the Android phone) and adding to it more data from search, makes all data more valuable in a very non-linear way. With the tape player I'd say it's more linear.

So for me, the search data is a quite obvious non-neutrality issue.

[crazygringo]

I just meant it as a rhetorical question... just to point out that what is obvious for one person, the opposite is obvious for another. And so just "following regulations" doesn't always necessarily have any kind of objective way to do it -- as evidenced by courts often disagreeing with each other in specific situations.

[ephbit]

I think I understood what you were after, giving an example, that is.

When I read the example though, I immediately thought it didn't quite ring true. So I tried to explain to myself why and came up with what I wrote.

Even though there are obviously many examples one could give, where it'd indeed be difficult to see a difference, I didn't want to let this specific example go unchallenged. Why? Because it is so close to the actual topic (Google).