According to Florian Mueller of Foss Patents, there was a shocking revelation of the Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA) just yesterday, from a blog post by Harvard Professor Ben Edelman. The MADA is an agreement between Google and companies using Android for their mobile devices, which requires the companies to distribute devices only if they are all the Google applications pre-installed and Google's software should run as default, such as the search engine. Only then will the companies be allowed to label them as Android devices.
According to Edelman, the MADA simply eradicates competition. Simply put, having multiple apps with the same function is pretty redundant. There is little purpose in having Yahoo or Bing searches installed, if Google search has to be the default search engine when the devices are sold off the shelf. I do agree with Edelman, even though I am happy using a Galaxy S2. Even though we can change the default settings after we download another app, most users would be contend with the existing apps, and this can mold the user preference towards Google when they are using their laptop or other non-Android devices. One feature that I think might be linked to the MADA, is that by default the Google Play store will install the new Google apps that were added on after I got my phone. Since my S2 is an old handset, the memory is extremely limited, in current terms, and I was forced to disable many of the additional Google apps which I found no use for. Although the MADA does not affect me much, its revelation will definitely affect Mueller and other app developers' opinion of Google. Their apps might get relegated when Google introduces their own app of similar functions.
Source:
http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/02/googles-once-secret-restrictive-android.html
http://www.benedelman.org/news/021314-1.html
According to Edelman, the MADA simply eradicates competition. Simply put, having multiple apps with the same function is pretty redundant. There is little purpose in having Yahoo or Bing searches installed, if Google search has to be the default search engine when the devices are sold off the shelf. I do agree with Edelman, even though I am happy using a Galaxy S2. Even though we can change the default settings after we download another app, most users would be contend with the existing apps, and this can mold the user preference towards Google when they are using their laptop or other non-Android devices. One feature that I think might be linked to the MADA, is that by default the Google Play store will install the new Google apps that were added on after I got my phone. Since my S2 is an old handset, the memory is extremely limited, in current terms, and I was forced to disable many of the additional Google apps which I found no use for. Although the MADA does not affect me much, its revelation will definitely affect Mueller and other app developers' opinion of Google. Their apps might get relegated when Google introduces their own app of similar functions.
Source:
http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/02/googles-once-secret-restrictive-android.html
http://www.benedelman.org/news/021314-1.html
I would disagree with Edelman that Android simply eradicates competition. Android users have a choice when they purchase a mobile phone--they can invest in an iPhone, an Android device, a Microsoft device, and much more. They have many options. Furthermore, there's always the ability to disable Google as your default search engine and use other search engines if you wish.
ReplyDeleteGoogle should not be penalized for spending the time and money to develop a mobile operating system. No one prevented Yahoo or other major companies from doing so. Google took the risk to make that investment in developing a mobile operating system and should be rightfully rewarded for doing so.
@Jega,
ReplyDeleteThe ratio of the number of different mobile devices and the number of different mobile operating system is definitely a different to think about "market competition". I would say customers do not have many option when it comes to mobile operating system. Android is just the right and the best tool/tube for Google to reasonably distribute their advertisement to end user easily.
Though not to say this is something terrible, I really appreciate Google taking tremendous amount of resources to provide quality software. They can really focus on taking any product to the next level as long as they can have strong financial growth.
I agree with Jega that making Google products the defaults on Android devices is something that Google deserves to do. Think of it like this, when Microsoft sells Windows as the default operating system on a laptop, all of their defaults are set (Internet Explorer, etc.) I don't see this as very different than that.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree with your points and those mentioned by Jega and Rae, I just wanted to highlight that my post relates to Android being an open source system. There is still some kind of blur over what exactly is open source. Google still get a direct channel of access to profits through the pre-loaded apps' ads, even though nobody is coerced into using those apps. Would that be considered open-sourced if they already knew in the beginning that they would able to directly profit through the free sourcing of the Android? I mean direct in the sense that the Android is a medium for them to earn money, except the money in this case comes from other companies and not the consumers.
Delete