Google Makes a Poor Case for Android Choice

In tandem with a legal brief filed in an EU antitrust case, Google has gone public with its defense: That Android stimulates innovation and increases choice for consumers. Ha!

That's not the message that EU regulators have delivered, of course. In April, the European Commission charged Google with with violating antitrust laws by forcing its hardware maker and wireless carrier partners to bundle its own apps and services in the dominant Android mobile OS.

Google absolutely does do this. But as it turns out, there are really two main Android forks, a barebones AOSP (Android Open Source Project) platform that is devoid of Google apps and services, and then the thing we all think of as Android, which of course does include Google apps and services, including the Play Store. If a hardware maker opts for the former, they can't get the latter. And if they opt for the latter, Google forces them not just to bundle their apps and services but to feature them prominently and specifically, and make them the defaults.

This sounds like choice ... and it is, sort of. But as I noted back in April, it's also illegal in the EU because Google has an Internet Search monopoly. So when it requires handset makers to configure Google Chrome as the default web browser in Android---even if the handset maker installs other browsers---then it also means that Google Search is configured as the default search engine. So Google is attempting to extend that monopoly artificially by ensuring that all Android devices utilize that service out of the box. (And it's worked: Today, Android is on about 90 percent of all mobile devices.)

So, what is Google saying about this today?

In a new post to Google in Europe blog, Google general counsel Kent Walker says that there are now over 24,000 different Android devices in the world from over 1300 brands, and that the cheapest of them costs just 45 euros.

"Android is not a 'one way street'," he says, echoing the EU complaint, "it's a multi-lane highway of choice. Android hasn’t hurt competition, it’s expanded it."

The most interesting argument he makes, possibly, regards Apple. And I admit to being confused to his point: The EC doesn't think Android competes with iOS? Really?

"The Commission’s case is based on the idea that Android doesn’t compete with Apple's iOS," he writes. "We don’t see it that way. We don’t think Apple does either. Or phone makers. Or developers. Or users. In fact, 89 percent of respondents to the Commission’s own market survey confirmed that Android and Apple compete. To ignore competition with Apple is to miss the defining feature of today’s competitive smartphone landscape."

Mr. Walker also tries to use the Android fragmentation issue to his advantage.

"Any phone maker can download Android and modify it in any way they choose," he writes. "But that flexibility makes Android vulnerable to fragmentation, a problem that plagued previous operating systems like Unix a...