Clowns to the left to me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with EU: Google faces antitrust war with America, China

Google is about to face an onslaught of antitrust artillery from both the United States' Department of Justice and China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, all while feeling the squeeze from Europe. Uncle Sam has not been on friendly terms with big tech lately. Last year, the Dept of Justice launched a monopoly …

[Anonymous Coward]

If Huawei will avoid doing their own slurp then screw android

Huawei make phones and whilst currently they do have their own slurp it doesn't seem quite as bad as google's, if they commited to zero slurp then Android will be in real trouble and thus so will the US intelligence agencies if new phones do not have their backdoors and spyware.

The existing cases against google in the US do not actually seem to have much in the way of teeth or prospects, more like lets make it seem that the US Gov is doing something when in reality what they are critisizing google for what is common practice for most of the US companies and so the cases will fail in the long run.

As to access to apps if huawei continue with their policy of giving the user control of what apps can access then I would say that Android is dead in the water and the playstore an anachronism, what good things about the OS been eroded and massively overshadowed by the ever increasing invasion of privacy for using the OS.

People are already dodging google search and ads if they loose android what do they have left? services that noone wants to use and hence no adversting since noone will see it

They should ahev stuck with "do no evil"

[naive]

Re: If Huawei will avoid doing their own slurp then screw android

Uhhhm.. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-data-to-china-government-if-asked-experts.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If Huawei will avoid doing their own slurp then screw android

So pretty much the same as Google receiving a National Security Letter under the PATRIOT Act? I have trouble seeing either government as the good guys. Many (most?) governments seem to have similar laws.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatives exist

With every month that goes by, Linux phones get better and better.

Give it a year or so and they'll be better than Android. No-one will need to put up with the Android slurp any more and Google will be hoist by their own petard.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Alternatives exist

Sigh.

Android is a Linux distro.

And, sad but true, non-Android phone distros are a negligible force as things stand. In a world where user as product is the dominant business model they don't stand much chance of not being squashed by Google.

[Naselus]

Re: Alternatives exist

Yes, and next year will definitely be the Year of Linux on the Desktop, for all the same reasons. Again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Alternatives exist

I'd dearly love that to be so, but most people would disagree with your definition of 'better' if you're being realistic about the rate of development. I'd settle for mobian reaching a state I can use as a reliable daily driver.

[WanderingHaggis]

Perplexed and enraged

And now, according to Reuters, the department could file a lawsuit against Google as early as next week, which will focus on the web goliath's sprawling search operation. The US government's legal eagles will accuse Google of screwing "rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing by depriving them of the data about users and user preferences that they need to improve and to advertise to people," the news wire reported.

Am I reading this correctly -- uncle Sam want Google to give its GDPR protected information etc that it has worked hard to harvest on all of us to other companies so they can target us. And if the don't break the European laws they will be fined?

[DS999]

Depriving Bing of data about users preferences?

I'm all for busting up Google's monopoly, but not by making them share data with others. Talk about the cure being worse than the disease!

I think it is probably far too late to keep search from being a monopoly. It isn't practical to break Google Search up into smaller companies. What they can do is limit Google's ability to collect data about what people are searching for, who they are, etc. and correlating that with all the other data Google collects.

If it were up to me I'd force them to divest Chrome and Youtube, and bar them from offering a web browser or video service for a period of time. They'd also have to divest either Android or Search, their choice, subject to the same rules about entering that market in the future. They'd also be barred from making any agreement to receive or share data with third parties for a period of time.

I think this sort of split would keep Google from being able to amass too much information about people by not having so many independent sources to correlate, while leaving the spinoffs able to compete on their own.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Depriving Bing of data about users preferences?

You have the right idea. I'd add a law that prohibited any and all search engines from selling or transferring any data to any company or internally.

[Michael Habel]

And Google can go drown in the ice cold Atlantic for trashing Google Play Musci, and the ability to purchase Albums from their tat mart. Because they want to make that sweet Spotify Chedder.

Personally both Google and the EU can fork off!

Prayers to the most powerful leader in the western hemisphere, may he get well soon. So he can combat the World's one true cancer. Global Socialism.