Google Forced to Unbundle Services from Android and Open to Search Competitors in Russia (Apr 17, 2017)
The EU is currently taking action against Google over what it sees as anticompetitive practices including bundling of its own services and blocking competing ones from being pre-installed in Android. As such, this Russian case takes on more importance than it might otherwise have, because it presents one possible outcome of the EU case, which is forcing Google to unbundle its own services from Android and allow competing search engines like Yandex to be pre-installed. That’s certainly a possibility in the EU case too, and would mirror the action taken years ago against Microsoft over browsers in Windows. If that were to happen, I’m skeptical many people (or OEMs) would choose alternative search engines on an Android phone, but it would potentially threaten Google’s Android business model, which is entirely about the apps and services it runs on the device (and the advertising they enable). For what it’s worth, as I wrote in this piece at the time the EU action was announced, I still think it’s misguided.
via Bloomberg
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