Google says it pays Android OEMs to compete with iOS

Unfair competition between companies is a more common practice than we think, so it is logical to think that we only know a part of everything that is really going on. On the other hand, it seems so Google The midgets are growing, especially if we see a company employee admit in an antitrust lawsuit that deals with Android OEMs are there to torpedo iOS. That adds to complaints about profit shares from some mobile device makers and that deals with the search giant limit competition at the service level.

More specifically, Google employee Jamie Rosenberg testified in an ongoing antitrust lawsuit against his company that, based on the report The company’s revenue-sharing agreements with mobile brands and carriers are there to provide resources to help Android OEMs better compete with iOS.practically the only real competitor in this sector, if we see that Windows Phone is a corpse and that the position of GNU/Linux is excessively marginal.

The deals show how Google shares the revenue it gets from its search engine with smartphone brands and carriers. Rosenberg explained that the payments are meant to help partners promote and maintain Android products and services, but given that Google and Android are owned by the same company, Alphabet, you’d think the fine print on the deals isn’t difficult. guess.

Rosenberg went on to say that the company he works for has changed its approach to US mobile networks. The search engine still provides a revenue-sharing deal, but also offers money to companies to sell more Android devices. Ironically, in addition to the payments to mobile operators and manufacturers to supposedly compete with iOS, Google is giving Apple a large sum to keep its search engine as the default on iOS.

It is perhaps the most significant among OEMs Samsung, with whom Google signed three different contracts in 2020. Those contracts cover search, service and marketing, and Rosenberg confirmed The latter depended on the Mountain View giant’s search engine remaining the default on the South Korean corporation’s devices..

Google is focusing on competing against iOS, perhaps to divert attention from its own ecosystem, which is more open by design than Apple’s. In other words, The goal would not be to compete with iOS so much as to prevent the proliferation of alternative products and services to Google within the Android ecosystem..

What’s more, if we flip the coin, we find that Android and iOS compete in a less direct way than Google stated, because the former is interested in expanding as much as possible, but the latter tries to have a more exclusive profile that confers status, so it is not interested in being so massive. But it’s true that iOS is the majority mobile platform in the United States, and it’s in the country where the trial is taking place, so Google’s arguments may at least have some validity. iOS is also the majority platform in some Central and Northern European countries.

As Rosenberg testified, an interesting aspect of the agreements a the distribution of income is that it did not take place in the European Union due to the sanctions that fell on Google. The community body has passed tough laws on matters such as privacy and competition, and far from being just a statement of intent, they have become heavy fines for major US tech companies, with Google and Meta (formerly Facebook’s parent company) among the most heavily sanctioned. .

We’ll see how things play out, but Google looks like it could turn out pretty badly, especially when it comes to reaching new deals that will have to be more benevolent to the other parties, with better terms, more money, or both. .