[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.