Comment by ajross
8 hours ago
> The much more interesting recent news IMO is that Google is not allowing (non-Samsung) OEMs to sell devices with GrapheneOS:
To be That Guy, Apple is not allowing anyone anywhere to sell any devices with anything but MacOS/iOS.
> But this is really end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness.
It's not even the most anti-competitive in the market of 2026!
iOS was never never an OS that was open to any device maker who cared to use it.
Google made the choice to announce that Android was open to all, in an attempt to take market share from Windows Phone.
Now they want to go back on their word.
That may well be true. But the upthread point was that this was "anti-competitive", not "word-breaking". And in an argument about competition, Android is and remains by far (!) the most accessible platform. The restriction here is just that you can't get a license for Google's proprietary stuff if you also sell GrapheneOS, not even that you can't run GrapheneOS.
Google was already found guilty of antitrust, in part because they tried to contractually prevent device manufacturers from building devices to run forks of Android (like Amazon's Fire OS) if they also made devices for an OEM who used Google's Android.
> Alphabet's Google on Thursday lost its long-running fight against a record [€4.1 Billion] EU antitrust fine for using its Android mobile operating system to block rivals
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-07-02/goo...
Now they are trying block Motorola from pre installing a different fork of Android.
They will either back down or face another enormous fine in the EU.
5 replies →
To be That Guy, Apple is not allowing anyone anywhere to sell any devices with anything but MacOS/iOS.
Apple doesn't allow Apple selling Apple devices with other operating systems.
Google doesn't allow other OEMs selling the OEMs' devices with other operating systems.
Big difference.
(Yes, pedantics: I know that OEMs could sell devices with other OSes, but not being able to sell GMS Android devices would lose them most of their customers.)
> Big difference.
Not from the perspective of competition, as I see it. Like, if you want to compete with Apple by using part of its platform for your own stuff, you can't at all. But you can with Google, just not all of it and in all ways.
Point being: this is just another platform flame. People with one kind of phone in their pocket are outraged at the maker of the other thing.
No, it is different. They are using their market power over Android to prevent OEMs from selling other mobile OSs.
Apple doesn’t prevent other OEMs from selling phones.