Thursday, July 19, 2018

Europe’s giant Google fine is too little, too late

Google was hit with a $5 billion fine from the European Commission over Android app bundling yesterday. While the fine is the biggest the EU has ever levied against a single company, it’s the changes to Android that Google now has to make that are far more significant. But they’re probably too little, too late.

Google will now be forced to unbundle its Chrome browser and Google search apps from Android, meaning phone makers won’t have to ship Android phones with these apps preinstalled. Additionally, phone makers will be able to fork the open-source version of Android and still be allowed to also manufacture devices with Google’s Android software, so we could see more competitive variants of Android from big phone makers. Google would...

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