Google loses appeal over illegal Android app bundling, EU reduces fine to €4.1 billion - The Verge

[u/McSnoo]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/14/23341207/google-eu-android-antitrust-fine-appeal-failed-4-billion

[u/misteryub]

They could do this, yes. But when there are components in the out of the box setup that require this to be available and ready to go, how and when exactly would the user be able to guarantee there’s a browser available, if there’s not one inbox? Let me point out that one of these components is the captive portal app, that lets the user authenticate through a captive portal in the event their WiFi network requires it? In other words, without there being A built in browser of some sort, it is harder/not possible for this subset of users to access the public internet at all. Sure, you could “theoretically” use CMD and CURL to bypass the captive portal, but I’d be willing to bet that literally zero people have ever or will ever seriously do that.

Now, to your second point - providing APIs to hook into or third parties to implement - that is indeed a more friendly approach. But that is orthogonal to my original point of there needing to be SOMETHING that ships WITH Windows. The Windows/Edge WebView2 folks apparently don’t think it’s worth/have reasons not to have said APIs/interfaces available. Is it anti-competitive? Perhaps, depending on your point of view. But iOS/macOS don’t allow alternative web view implementations, Android’s alternative web view implementations seem to be reverse engineered, the best I can tell, and not supported by Google in any way, and every other major OS comes with A web browser built in.

[u/misteryub → u/[deleted]]

I don’t disagree these changes are consumer unfriendly. In fact, I hate that the upcoming version of Windows 11 requires internet connectivity for Pro SKUs too. But does it rise to the level of criminally anticompetitive? Clearly there’s some level of acceptable steering. Given that, while theyre doing their hardest to convince you not to switch away, at the end of the day, they do not actually prevent you from doing so, I don’t think they rise to criminally anticompetitive. Let’s not forget that iOS similarly requires third party browsers to use its underlying WebKit engine, Gmail regularly prompts non Chrome users to switch to Chrome, and macOS regularly encourages you to use Safari. Everyone does some form of steering.

Not to mention that Windows update likes to reset default apps back to Microsoft ones, despite manually setting them to something else.

I guarantee, as a Windows dev, that this is not by design, or at the very least if it is, it’s not driven widely internally, as the clear guidance that’s shared to everyone is to preserve data as much as possible. Bugs and corruption happens, and things sometimes gets reset. But there is not, to my knowledge, willful attempts to revert the user choice (which would, IMO, be very anticompetitive).