Android is at its most dangerous moment in Europe

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Google Search alone and even Google Android are embroiled in antitrust cases in Europe.

After nearly three years of investigating Android, the European Commission officially sent a notice to Google on April 15, accusing Google of forcing mobile phone manufacturers to accept agreement terms that are not conducive to market competition and bundling Android mobile phone applications and services to obtain unfair profits. Of course, Google opposes the above accusations, saying that the Android operating system is a free and open source platform.

In fact, Android's European monopoly case was not without foreshadowing. The matter can even be traced back to the patent dispute in 2010 when Oracle accused Android of infringing its JAVA APIs copyright. At that time, it was determined that Oracle's JAVA APIs were not protected by copyright and Android did not infringe. However, in 2014, the retrial took a turn for the worse. This time, the US Federal Circuit Court ruled that JAVA APIs were protected by copyright and Google had to pay compensation.

In April 2013, FairSearch, an organization formed by Microsoft, Oracle, Nokia and other companies, collectively accused Google of using anti-competitive means to dominate the mobile market to the European Commission. In 2014, Portuguese application store company Aptoide complained to the European Union, accusing Google of monopolizing the mobile application market with its Android system. Then, this month, the European Union began an antitrust investigation into Android.

This is not the first time that Google has been targeted by the EU. In November 2014, the European Parliament passed a vote to "split up the European operations of Google and other Internet technology companies." Although the vote has no legal enforcement effect, it allows the European Parliament to put pressure on the EU antitrust agency. On April 15 of this year, the European Commission also formally accused Google of deliberately giving priority to its own Google Shopping service in search results, oppressing other competitors.

Google Search, which accounts for 90% of the entire European search business, has undoubtedly been targeted by the European Union long ago, and this time the war has also spread to Android.

In fact, as a free and open source operating system, Google does not make money directly from Android, but indirectly through the application services built into the system. It can be said that although Android is free, it is not free.

The EU's Android investigation showed this situation: in order to use Google services (such as Google Maps and Google Play), mobile phone manufacturers had to pre-install other Google applications and use Google Search as the default search. This directly led to competitors such as Oracle, Microsoft, and Nokia accusing Google of violating fair competition.

The EU also announced that it will investigate three key areas: first, whether Google hinders the promotion of competitors' apps and services on Android devices by pre-installing its own apps and services; second, whether Google hinders smartphone and tablet manufacturers using modified versions of Android to run Google products; and finally, and most importantly, whether Google bundles its own apps and services in Android devices.

If the European Commission really rules against Android, we will see Google pay a huge fine, but the fine is not the most painful thing for Google. The most painful thing is to order a ruling to dissolve the contract between Android and mobile phone manufacturers. If this really becomes a reality, Google will not be able to pre-install its own applications and services in Android to obtain indirect profits.

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