Comment by bilekas
5 days ago
No, these are anti-trust fines. If you want to participate in the EU zone, you can't have monopolistic behaviors. It might sound strange for the US, but you can't simply corner a market and then claim it's innovation and 'good for the customer'. The EU has a LONG history of these regulations, it's nothing new but the more rich a company becomes the more these fines are just the price of doing business.
Instead, here's a wild take. Why don't they just follow the regulations and continue to make profits.
> Instead, here's a wild take. Why don't they just follow the regulations and continue to make profits.
Far more likely that Google is just going to follow Apple's lead and stop releasing new features in the EU that the rest of the world gets to enjoy.
From The Washington Post:
> Behind all this lies the dream that Europe could be a “regulatory superpower.” It wanted to create a market too big to skip that would, by virtue of its heft, end up exporting its rules to the rest of the world. That hasn’t worked out.
> When adapting a product for Europe costs more than European market access is worth, companies no longer comply. They simply leave out the feature.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/14/apple-wit...
Fine with me. You think the EU should change its regulations because foreign companies might not release some features directly? sounds like a non issue
> You think the EU should change its regulations because foreign companies might not release some features directly?
I don't think anything about the EU, I don't live there. Just commenting on what the most likely outcome is going to be.
Google made Android open source for free and you can even see this on this on HN as everyone glazes GrapheneOS. Without Android there would not be an entire ecosystem of software. Google even complied with a previous rulings about search engine choice and browser choice. In fact Android has always allowed you to set those things.
As usual Europe can't innovate so just taxes people out of their market entirely. Why would anyone want to locate their business in Europe after reading a headline like this? Have you guys ever considered making your own operating system? Your own tech companies?
The EU's concern is less "is it technically possible?" and more whether Google's licensing and commercial agreements discourage effective competition.
In particular:
- Google forced every manufacturer to have search and chrome on every android phone if they wanted access to Google Play. No technical reason, just forcing their position. This is why Samsung, despite investing on their browser, was still forced to ship with Chrome. Browser competition on mobile was rigged by default.
- Manufacturers signed agreements making it de facto impossible to ship Android forks not approved by Google. If you want Play Services, you can't ship a fork Android did not approve, no matter whether you're Sony or Samsung. Again, no technical reasons, just forcing their hand.
- Google paid manufacturers so Google Search was going to be the only search option on that phone, preventing competition.
None of these practices make the landscape better for the user or incentivize competition when the game is rigged at contract level.
As for the rest of your post: Europe (but also Japan or South Korea or pretty much the whole world) does not enjoy the corporate laws, abundance of capital and risk prone mentality the US does. Those are problems. Over regulation (or better, inconsistent one across EU) is also a plague.
But that's unrelated with the fact that companies living in monopolies commercially abuse their positions. US regulators themselves have found the practice of paying Apple to ship Google as default search engine to be questionable.
The point of those agreements is to make sure those phone manufacturers didn't basterdize android with their garbage crapware like they all want to do. Google is actually protecting the average user in this situation by mandating some standards. They could simply lock Android down as closed source forever and move on from all of this.
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I think you might need to reconsider how open Android actually is given the recent moves.
You don't even know how good you have it. With incentives like this what company would make anything open in the future? You're punishing them for it. They're gonna make it like iOS precisely because of rulings like this.
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> Google made Android open source for free
And Hitler built the highways in Germany. What does that even prove? They can still abuse Android for vendor lock-in, or as a sales funnel to their commercial offerings, or as a data source for a myriad of things users did never really consent to.
> As usual Europe can't innovate so just taxes people out of their market entirely.
Yawn. Last time I looked, big tech is still wholly present all across the EU, only that I have the option to install apps from alternative stores on my iPhone. Also, the EU as an institution isn't the same thing as European companies. Go check the machines in any factory near you, and I can pretty much guarantee you'll find a German one in it.
> Have you guys ever considered making your own operating system?
You might want to look up where Linus Torvalds created Linux.
> Go check the machines in any factory near you, and I can pretty much guarantee you'll find a German one in it.
It is always interesting to see how underestimated the EU is in terms of manufacturing and pharma for example, they're unsung and not always glamourous industries, but nobody does them like the EU.
The tech innovation does happen more in the US, there has always been simply more private capital thrown around there and thats fine. Comparing the EU and the US in terms of economic activities and procedures is a futile exercise. They're just not the same, and thats by design.
> You might want to look up where Linus Torvalds created Linux.
He also immediately relocated to the US and made the Linux Foundation an American company though.
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