If there’s one thing I hate about the European Union, It’s the way they
keep coming up with irrelevant policies every now and then.
I
can still understand the fact that Android is one of the most widely
used mobile operating system on the market, hence, it is subject to
scrutiny and constant assessment by regulators from the countries where
it is present. However, now according to the latest reports, Google will
charge $40 per device for Android.
This is coming as a result
of a fine imposed on Google by the European union. In case you don’t
know what happened, in July the European Commission fined the tech giant
Google because they felt the company took advantage of Android’s market
leadership to force distribution of the search application and Chrome
on the various smartphones manufacturers. In exchange, Google provided
these companies with a license to access the Play Store at no cost.
The
European Commission allegedly considered this anti-competitive,
because, it “denied rivals the chance to innovate and compete on
merits.” Although it is appealing the fine, the tech giant Google
decided to change its licensing rules to comply with the determinations
of the European authorities.
This
is where the issue of license collection appears. Android itself, when
treated solely as an operating system, has open source and zero cost as
long as there is no Google app in pre-installation. But to make it
minimally usable to the user, you need to include applications and
services. But these tools are not free or open source, hence, it is
necessary to license them
Before the fine, the manufacturer
who wanted to insert a Google application into their device (for
example, the search engine) could do so if it installed everything else
like Chrome, Maps, To Do, among many others. In return, there was no
charge for licensing.
But that was not the only rule, as the
tech giant, Google allowed the installation of competing applications.
If a manufacturer wanted to distribute the Bing app, for example, it
would have to position the Google search engine on the Android home
screen. This is what the European Commission has played, essentially As
a precaution, the tech giant Google is treating the matter with
secrecy, but the documents obtained by The Verge indicate that this
licensing scheme will be kept optional. If a manufacturer wants to
install Google applications but does not follow the conditions of the
company, it can do so, but paying for licensing.
If companies end
up paying for licence for Google products expect the price of each
phone released by smartphone companies to go up a bit. Unless Google
decides to restrict the law to Europe else you’ll be paying more for an
Android phone soon.
