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 and Symbian. When anyone can modify your code, how do you ensure there’s a common, consistent version of the operating system, so that developers don’t have to go through the hassle and expense of building multiple versions of their apps?”

“To manage this challenge, we work with hardware makers to establish a minimum level of compatibility among Android devices,” he continues. “Critically, we give phone makers wide latitude to build devices that go above that baseline, which is why you see such a varied universe of Android devices. That’s the key: our voluntary compatibility agreements enable variety while giving developers confidence to create apps that run seamlessly across thousands of different phones and tablets. This balance stimulates competition between Android devices as well as between Android and Apple’s iPhone.”

One must ask, if fragmentation is so bad, then why allow Android handset makers to endlessly modify the OS on their own devices in the first place? Why not just offer one Android? According to Walker, it’s because “Android’s compatibility rules help minimize fragmentation and sustain a healthy ecosystem for developers … The Commission’s proposal risks making fragmentation worse, hurting the Android platform and mobile phone competition.”

That’s interesting. By allowing partners to modify Android’s default (Google) apps and services, Google would be in effect allowing Android to become more fragmented. Sounds like the type of argument Microsoft might have made in its own antitrust cases from the early 2000s. Sure, dictactorships suck. But the trains all run on time.

The funniest part of this post? He actually claims that Windows phone is “competition” to Android.

“We offer manufacturers a suite of apps so that when you buy a new phone you can access a familiar set of basic services,” he explains. “Android’s competitors, including Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s Windows phone, not only do the same, but they allow much less choice in the apps that come with their phones. On Android, Google’s apps typically account for less than one-third of the preloaded apps on the device (and only a small fraction of device memory). A consumer can swipe away any of our apps at any time. And, uniquely, hardware makers and carriers can pre-install rival apps right next to ours. In competition-speak, that means there’s no ‘foreclosure’.”

He offers a cute graphic to make the point.

(He’s sort of right on the Windows phone front: The lack of apps means that users of that platform are indeed “more stuck” with the built-in apps and services.)

I will say that since Android is in fact so open, users can indeed do virtually anything they want to the system, though some actions on some devices require a bit of technical acumen. It is this openness, I think, that attracts Windows users to the platform, in particular. Just like it is Apple’s walled garden approach that really rubs some people the wrong way.

“Many pre-installed apps don’t succeed,” Walker writes, “and many have been extremely successful through user downloads — think of Spotify or Snapchat. Our apps suite approach explicitly preserves users’ freedom to choose the apps they want on their phones.”

That sounds fair on the surface, but it ignores the unfair advantage Google gets by its bundling. Which he tries to side-step as an efficiency, not something anti-competitive.

“Distributing products like Google Search together with Google Play permits us to offer our entire suite for free — as opposed to, for example, charging upfront licensing fees,” he writes. “This free distribution is an efficient solution for everyone — it lowers prices for phone makers and consumers, while still letting us sustain our substantial investment in Android and Play.”

Sure. It also allows Google an unfair advantage when its apps and services are bundled on most phones and are always set as the defaults. This is actually the crux of this issue, just as it was for Microsoft previously. And this is where Google’s protestations fall apart. Because Google, even more so than Microsoft 15 years ago, has a much better idea of what people are doing on the platform, thanks to both search and Android’s mobile domination. And as usage changes, Google can adapt its own in-box offerings more quickly and more efficiently than competitors, and thus can squeeze out competing apps and services more easily.

It doesn’t help that Android continues to grow market and usage share despite being dominant already. This mobile OS is used on almost exactly 90 percent of mobile devices in the world. And that’s a monopoly. It also undercuts Walker’s claim that “today’s mobile devices show all the signs of fierce competition with a wide range of business models.” Because that’s only true within the Android ecosystem itself. Which, again, Google controls.

Put simply, the maker of the monopoly mobile platform is arguing that it should be able to bundle its monopoly Internet search product, as well as many other apps and services, on that platform. Because choice.

Sorry, Google. But I think you’re going to lose this case.