Google will stop bundling its apps on Android phones in response to EU fine - Page 3

fjtorres · 10-22-2018, 11:39 AM

Zdnet thinks the ruling opens a door for a competing non-Google android ecosystem run by an Amazon/Microsoft alliance.

I'm skeptical of market acceptance but in theory...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-am...96500774529668

Quote:

Amazon has built a substantial following with its Prime service and its Music and Video platforms are now some of the best in the industry. It's also making tremendous headway in the IoT and home automation space with its Alexa intelligent assistant and is building a very large partner hardware ecosystem around that platform.

And while its Fire OS tablet hardware is not a huge ecosystem compared to the overall Android space, it is not a slouch either. The Amazon Appstore user experience has improved greatly over the last several years, as has their Fire OS UX itself.

In essence, Amazon has created a parallel Android universe with its own hardware and apps.

Microsoft, for its part, has developed more of a symbiotic relationship with Android. In the last several years it has built a large stable of apps for the platform, for both consumer and business use, which are free to use (aka "freemium") but are more useful when paired with the company's paid subscription Office 365 and other cloud services such as OneDrive and OneDrive for Business.

It now has over 100 apps for the Android platform. This includes its excellent Outlook email and calendaring software, its fast and modernized Edge browser, its Cortana intelligent assistant, and its Swiftkey keyboard which is considered by many to be one of the best on the Android platform.

The company has also introduced an updated version of its Launcher that replaces the default program manager on Android devices and is fully integrated with the Windows 10 timeline, OneDrive cloud storage, the Bing search engine, news content, and Office 365 services.

More at the source.

Dopedangel · 10-23-2018, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Zdnet thinks the ruling opens a door for a competing non-Google android ecosystem run by an Amazon/Microsoft alliance.

I'm skeptical of market acceptance but in theory...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-am...96500774529668

More at the source.

The best search the best assistant most used video, maps and email services are googles. Any competing non google android ecosystem wont get complete access to these services and will be hobbled because of it.

GlennD · 10-23-2018, 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rcentros

Meh. Every SINGLE time Windows 10 updates my wife's laptop, she starts getting BSODs. UNTIL I disable the nVidia driver. (This is a laptop that has two video chips, Intel and nVidia.) When we first bought the computer it worked great, after the first major Windows 10 update, it has never worked right — unless I disable the nVidia driver (which isn't really working right). Windows 10 won't let me update to the newest nVidia driver for this chip ("not compatible with this computer model"). What I really don't like about Windows is my wife continually tells it NOT to update, but it does it anyhow — after so many times it just updates, regardless of her wishes. And it (the update) decides what should and shouldn't be enabled. So it's constant work-arounds to keep the thing running. I guess I'm used to Linux, which just works.

I should mention that the desktop (where I installed Windows 10 for my wife from scratch) works fine. One time it did something funky with Microsoft Office and WordPerfect during an update, and both had to be re-activated, but that's the worst it's done. The laptop is running on OEM version of Windows 10 software from HP.

This sounds more like a driver/BIOS issue (ie, HP's problem) than a Windows issue.

fjtorres · 10-23-2018, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

The best search the best assistant most used video, maps and email services are googles. Any competing non google android ecosystem wont get complete access to these services and will be hobbled because of it.

Google has already gone to some pretty extreme lengths to keep Echo Shows out of Youtube, even blocking browser traffic. There's no reason to expect anything less for non-licensed android phones.

ZodWallop · 10-23-2018, 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Google has already gone to some pretty extreme lengths to keep Echo Shows out of Youtube, even blocking browser traffic.

The Amazon/Google spat is a shame.

rcentros · 10-23-2018, 06:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlennD

This sounds more like a driver/BIOS issue (ie, HP's problem) than a Windows issue.

Except it worked when I first bought the computer and quit working when Windows upgraded the system.

fjtorres · 10-23-2018, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

The Amazon/Google spat is a shame.

The Alexa vs Google competition is good; how Google plays it is less so.
Amazon retaliation not much better.

ZodWallop · 10-23-2018, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The Alexa vs Google competition is good; how Google plays it is less so.
Amazon retaliation not much better.

It's nothing to do with Alexa/Google Assistant. It goes way back to 2015 when Amazon was backdooring their own app store on to Android devices. The Amazon app was banned from Google Play for a while.

Amazon responded by blocking Chromecast from their store and the feud has gone on since then.

fjtorres · 10-23-2018, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

It's nothing to do with Alexa/Google Assistant. It goes way back to 2015 when Amazon was backdooring their own app store on to Android devices. The Amazon app was banned from Google Play for a while.

Amazon responded by blocking Chromecast from their store and the feud has gone on since then.

Dragging users into the fight is all about Alexa.
The fight over storefronts didn't mess up users until Google released their speaker.

ZodWallop · 10-24-2018, 10:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The fight over storefronts didn't mess up users until Google released their speaker.

Chromecast users who couldn't access Prime Video and Fire TV users who couldn't access YouTube would beg to differ. That happened before there was Alexa. Maybe it only affected you when the speakers were released.

fjtorres · 10-30-2018, 07:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Chromecast users who couldn't access Prime Video and Fire TV users who couldn't access YouTube would beg to differ. That happened before there was Alexa. Maybe it only affected you when the speakers were released.

I never had a problem getting to youtube with the FireTV stick, first gen.
The catfight started after the release of the Echo Show, not the speaker.

Before, FireTV had youtube access, even in 4K.
2016:

http://www.aftvnews.com/youtube-app-...ra-hd-support/

Afterwards, Google griped about the Echo Show interface and started blocking it:

http://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-resto...d-dailymotion/

http://www.aftvnews.com/google-to-pu...uary-1st-2018/

Quote:

Amazon and Google have been at odds for years. Their clash has reached a new level today. Google has issued a statement announcing that the company was pulling support for YouTube on the Amazon Echo Show immediately and will pull support for YouTube on Amazon Fire TV devices on January 1st, 2018.

Google’s official statement on the matter is:

“We’ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other’s products and services. But Amazon doesn’t carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn’t make Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of Nest’s latest products. Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV. We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon.”

Amazon and Apple had a similar conflict but Apple never blocked Amazon services for their users and Amazon never blocked apple users from their services or Google users from their devices.

Google went after users to pressure Amazon.

There's a difference.

ZodWallop · 10-30-2018, 01:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The catfight started after the release of the Echo Show, not the speaker.

I guess I just made those articles from 2015 up...

DiapDealer · 10-30-2018, 02:17 PM

The Youtube/Prime Video fight's been on again off again since the Fire TV/Stick first came out in 2014.

GtrsRGr8 · 11-01-2018, 05:26 PM

Sounds like a good development to me. The Google apps take up so much storage space that I ran out of internal storage pretty quickly and had to add external storage to my phone just to be able to install all of the apps that I actually wanted, and store some items that I wanted to. And I didn't want most of the apps that they had included--it was just bloatware (to put it civilly) to me. When I tried to uninstall some of the Google/Android apps, the apps all gave me the dire warning that uninstalling them could mess up my phone.

The thing that I wonder is why Google/Android/cell phone makers couldn't make a specific phone for "export to the EU only" or "use outside the EU only." Electronics of other similar things, at least ebooks and videos (via "codes") can do that. The only reason that I can think of is that Americans do travel to Europe, and the authorities there might do who-knows-what if a person actually used, or tried to use, their U.S. cellphone.

Pulpmeister · 01-12-2019, 02:23 AM

Updates are always a pain, because so many times they are not for the benefit of the user but the company. I'm using XP still, right now, because I didn't want to have anything to do with the 10 spy system. So guess what? After an XP update I found it took ages for the system to stop churning so I could use it, followed the "processes" lists down, and found that all the Windows 10 spy stuff was now in XP, working overtime. It took several trips to the internet, and most of a morning, to shut it all down. And then, cream of the jest, another update caused my Dreamweaver 4 software to stop working. It's heritage software all right, but I was used to it and could use it for all sorts of stuff from websites to html editor for ebooks. I reloaded Dreamweaver but no, it's gone for good. Won't start any more. Now I'm using Kompozer freeware, ancient, but simple, in its place. But both websites I run use Frames, and Kompozer can't handle frames. Oh the fun coming up with a workaround. I finally blocked updates all together. Unless I know what they do and what they affect, I don't want them, and MS don't give you a clue in advance.

As for my android phone, it's just a mobile phone. I don't use it for anything else at all. Oh, sorry: I do a little texting, but not much.

It;s nice to grumble occasionally.

11-01-2018, 05:26 PM	#44
GtrsRGr8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,334 Karma: 27815322 Join Date: Aug 2012 Location: Southeastern U.S., ya'll Device: Kindle; Kindle (10.1.1) for PC; Kindle Cloud Reader	Sounds like a good development to me. The Google apps take up so much storage space that I ran out of internal storage pretty quickly and had to add external storage to my phone just to be able to install all of the apps that I actually wanted, and store some items that I wanted to. And I didn't want most of the apps that they had included--it was just bloatware (to put it civilly) to me. When I tried to uninstall some of the Google/Android apps, the apps all gave me the dire warning that uninstalling them could mess up my phone. The thing that I wonder is why Google/Android/cell phone makers couldn't make a specific phone for "export to the EU only" or "use outside the EU only." Electronics of other similar things, at least ebooks and videos (via "codes") can do that. The only reason that I can think of is that Americans do travel to Europe, and the authorities there might do who-knows-what if a person actually used, or tried to use, their U.S. cellphone. Last edited by GtrsRGr8; 11-01-2018 at 05:32 PM.

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10-30-2018, 02:17 PM	#43
DiapDealer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 27,549 Karma: 193191846 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD	The Youtube/Prime Video fight's been on again off again since the Fire TV/Stick first came out in 2014.

01-12-2019, 02:23 AM	#45
Pulpmeister Wizard Posts: 2,502 Karma: 28893796 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Perth Western Australia Device: kindle	Updates are always a pain, because so many times they are not for the benefit of the user but the company. I'm using XP still, right now, because I didn't want to have anything to do with the 10 spy system. So guess what? After an XP update I found it took ages for the system to stop churning so I could use it, followed the "processes" lists down, and found that all the Windows 10 spy stuff was now in XP, working overtime. It took several trips to the internet, and most of a morning, to shut it all down. And then, cream of the jest, another update caused my Dreamweaver 4 software to stop working. It's heritage software all right, but I was used to it and could use it for all sorts of stuff from websites to html editor for ebooks. I reloaded Dreamweaver but no, it's gone for good. Won't start any more. Now I'm using Kompozer freeware, ancient, but simple, in its place. But both websites I run use Frames, and Kompozer can't handle frames. Oh the fun coming up with a workaround. I finally blocked updates all together. Unless I know what they do and what they affect, I don't want them, and MS don't give you a clue in advance. As for my android phone, it's just a mobile phone. I don't use it for anything else at all. Oh, sorry: I do a little texting, but not much. It;s nice to grumble occasionally.

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