[speeder]

I am OEM app developer and can confirm this.

One of our apps rely on GPS, and the manufacturers that bought that app from us could only make it work after installing Play Services, and they could not figure a way to make it work without Play Services.

[Zigurd]

Location Services is a special API, in that Google bears some costs to enable it for geocoding, for example.

It is possible to have access to basic location data from a built-in GPS receiver in AOSP, so the system is not completely dependent on Google Play Services.

[ajross]

Exactly. "GPS" data is certainly available and part of the standard open source framework: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/pack...

But access to e.g. Google's giant wifi-to-location database isn't part of that API. And it's a good service, and something that is hard to replicate and thus a competetive advantage.

But to speak to the upthread parent: it has nothing to do with "drivers". The HAL interface for GPS data is part of AOSP.

[kalleboo]

> And it's a good service, and something that is hard to replicate and thus a competetive advantage.

It's a service that Google will not let manufacturers replace even if they want to. Horribly anti-competetive. http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=14923

[king_jester]

If Google had allowed this, it would mean using Google branded android apps that use a completely different location API. I would be nervous about this if I were Google, when something goes wrong or doesn't work with the API, my apps will take the heat since the average user won't know the difference between Skyhook and Google location APIs. Further, as a consumer I would have never been able to switch back to the Google location APIs without flashing. Of course, manufacturers can still have their own apps using Skyhook's SDK.

[Zigurd]

That's not exactly correct. Amazon, for example, is free to use whatever location services they want, since they use an Android-based system that uses no part of the Google ecosystem.

So if you want Google Play and everything else Google in your device, you have to take Google's location services, too. That may not be unreasonable.

[ajross]

That may be true, but it's not an issue of denying "GPS" data, which is what the upthread parent was confused about. You can get location output from GPS (or in fact anything else that your platform has wired into the HAL -- it's not specific to GPS per se) data.

It's Google's extra, proprietary services that are, well, proprietary. And that's hardly notable IMHO. There are lots of players in this space, it just happens that Google has done it better and is using that (among other features obviously) to drive sales of its "Play Services" product to OEMs.

Non-free software is non-free. If you care about that stuff, you wouldn't use it anyway.

[kalleboo]

> Google has done it better and is using that to drive sales of its "Play Services" product to OEMs

Google aren't competing in the "Wifi to location" space on merit. They're competing on "we won't let you use our platform if you use a competitor in this space". They're becoming the 1990's Microsoft. This is exactly the shit people talk about when they say Android isn't open anymore.

[ajross]

Oh stop. Google is limiting access to their Play Services Location API (a feature so obscure that even the technical folks in this very thread don't seem to understand what it does and think it controls access to GPS data) to OEMs willing to license the whole Play Services package.

Are you seriously arguing that that is somehow equivalent to Microsoft using their monopoly position in the market (something Google doesn't even have) force OEMs into bundling their own web browser (the single most important app of the past two decades)? No. Just no.

I'm sorry, but people who want wifi-to-location data in their Android apps or devices can get it. That's simply not anticompetetive in any sane use of the term.

Your last sentence, telling, pivots your argument pretty wildly from "anticompetetive" to "not open". And yes: if you want to complain about Play Services being proprietary software, non-open, non-collaborative and ultimately freedom-denying, I tend to agree. But the idea of this being somehow an antitrust issue is ridiculous.

[Oletros]

> Horribly anti-competetive

Did the lawsuit finish?

[gbvb]

I think there might be a need for providing a decent layer between the various closed layers created by Amazon, Google et al. At least, that would allow apps to be friendly to Android without marrying Google Play.

(Is there one?)