Google has managed to avoid huge fines by coming to a deal with the European Commission over its search engine business practices. However, it still faces a probe by the EU's antitrust body into Android, and this will scarcely be helped by new light shed on the rules governing its supposedly open platform.
Google distributes the Android operating system free as an open source, which stimulates a broad developer and device community. But when it comes to important Google services, there are strings attached. If Android OEMs want to use these apps and services - including Search, Maps, YouTube and the Play store - they must sign a 'Mobile Application Distribution Agreement'.
The terms of this agreement were actually presented as evidence in the Google-Oracle copyright trial in 2012, but have only just been published - by a Harvard Business School professor, Ben Edelman, who is also a consultant to Microsoft, which has launched numerous patent attacks on Android players in recent years. The Wall Street Journal asserts that the agreements are still used by Google, though some terms may have changed since 2012.
Some Android OEMs, especially in China, bypass the Google services altogether, but in western markets there is strong consumer demand for native support for YouTube and other apps. Amazon is the only company which has made a serious attempt to create a Google-free Android environment in the US. For the companies which do want to use the search giant's offerings, the agreements look restrictive. For instance, handset makers can be required to make Google the default search engine, to preinstall certain apps, and to place them in a particular place.
The publication of the documents will reignite the debate about how open Android really is. Google has always faced a difficult balancing act. Open source brings creativity and good PR, but it needs its services to be central to Android in order to monetize it, and it wants to create a unified and high quality user experience for a platform whose biggest weaknesses have been fragmentation and unpredictable QoE.
These issues have been highlighted before, in the Oracle trial; when Google restricted its initial tablet release of Android, Honeycomb, only to a few partners in order to control quality; when the firm put paid to Acer's plan to launch a device running the Chinese OS, AMOS, on the basis it contained elements of Android and infringed the rules of the Open Handset Alliance, the trade group supporting the Google OS.
The agreement states that OEMs who make Android devices with Google apps may only distribute those products if the specified apps are preinstalled and if Google Search is the default. The Search and Play icons must appear "immediately adjacent" to the homescreen and other Google offerings must be no more than one screen swipe away.
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