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by oddx 4133 days ago
> Is it a news that corporations are creating "ecosystems" to make money, not to benefit third-parties?

Corporations do their job to make money of course, but it's better to limit harm they can create when making money. Regulations are productive in many ways including regulation of possibility to destroy or significantly limit competitors and competition.

> What if something wrong with the "strategy" of being able to be a very successful third party in someone's else ecosystem?

Nothing wrong with it. The problem is that ecosystem owner can significantly limit competitors.

> Google is no monopoly. There is windows mobile, of course.

Strictly speaking yes, it isn't monopoly, but it is close enough to it, so it can use his position to harm competition.

1 comments

This is very good rhetoric. I really appreciate.

How, how does "significantly limit competitors" relate to the requirement to make an explicit, conscious choice by the user instead of allowing a quiet change of device settings?

Not allowing any third-party search apps or not allowing to change the default app by the user could be considered as a "significant limit", but there is no such restrictions.

Competition can be limited not only in "hard" way (like not allowing any third-party apps), but also in many "soft" ways.

Google uses his position to set default options for apps and this mean he gets all "unconscious" (and too lazy) users. This is unfair (not backed by any real superiority of his apps) advantage. Yandex tries to change default options for some vendors and Google again uses his position to limit it (limit competition). I'm totally for users making conscious choice, but with status quo it is unconscious choice and skewed in the way that gives Google unfair advantage.

In generally this Yandex vs Google reminds me AMD vs Intel case [1] when Intel used his better position to limit competitor without having real superiority.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v.....

Should everyone in the market, including malicious vendors, have the ability "to change default options", or this is only for Yandex?

I am sorry, but Yandex is by no means AMD. It is ridiculous to suggest that Yandex "is second only to Google".