[jefftk]

Yes, but in a weird way: Apple doesn't allow competition for phone manufacturing for their ecosystem, so the equivalent of "deals with manufacturers" are entirely internal. Fostering a phone ecosystem that overall has more competition has hurt Google here.

[LordKeren]

No, paying off phone manufacturers and companies to not create or preinstall third party app stores on to devices is what hurt Google here

[jefftk]

Right, which is not something Apple "needed" to do because they didn't allow competition in the iOS phone manufacturing business.

[LordKeren]

Google didn’t need to pay these companies either. They chose to do it so they could keep their play store monopoly. And they may have just burning billions in profits because of it

[jefftk]

Right, which is why I put the term in quotes. But Apple got that for free, since they didn't open up manufacturing.

[Dylan16807]

I think you mean "and", not "no". The semi-open ecosystem is a prerequisite to the payoffs.

[wvenable]

Which is similar to what Microsoft did with PC manufacturers to kill off alternative operating systems.

[aidenn0]

So the moral of these decisions are "Go vertical, or go home?"