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Comment by GeekyBear

7 hours ago

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.

    • Again, even accepting all that, Android remains more open to competition within its own ecosystem than it's main (heh) competitor. And being outraged in only one direction is a smell that tells me... we aren't talking about competition.

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