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The latest woes of the European Union could Google mean opportunities for developers of applications blocked by contracts that pre-install the US giant's own services on phones and Android tablets, according to analysts and companies. should face an antitrust fine on Android in the coming days that could exceed the record penalty of 2.4 billion euros ($ 2.8 billion) last year for excluding its rivals from its shopping search service. support order releasing phone manufacturers to choose non-Google apps to install on Android phones. This would provide crucial real estate for application developers as 80% of smart mobile devices use Android.
"That would help us a lot," said Gabriel Weinberg, Paoli's CEO, DuckDuckGo Inc., Pennsylvania. ., a search engine that does not follow users. "It's clear to me that people would choose other options if the choice was easier to make." DuckDuckGo said that he has not complained to the EU about Google, highlighting the effort involved.
19659008] Google Fine is the largest antitrust penalty of the EU so far
Source: European Commission Data
Google dominates mobile search in Europe, with 97% of the market, while that its Chrome browser has a 64% market share on mobile, according to the StatCounter web traffic analysis company. The company's control over millions of Android phones will help it capture one-third of global mobile ads in 2018, generating sales of around $ 40 billion outside the US, a declared the company eMarketer
. smartphone manufacturers who want to install Google Play Store to add a set of Google services, including search, web browser, email and mapping. European officials are worried that users are sticking to the default value of their phone.
Email is probably the most vulnerable for Google if device makers could install their own default email application or add Microsoft Outlook. , said Daniel Gleeson, a senior analyst at the research firm Ovum Plc. There is a "certain potential in the cards" where any loss of advertising revenue for Google from location services would be very serious, he said, citing Here Technologies as a potential competitor
Google Play
Source: App Annie
Google and the European Commission based in Brussels refused to comment on this article. Microsoft declined to comment on possible opportunities for its services. Here, Technologies did not respond to a request for comment
OsmAnd, an offline mapping application, reported "a really huge difference" when it was preinstalled on a small manufacturer's tablet in 2013, a said Victor Shcherb. Shcherb said his company competes only indirectly with Google Maps, as its application tends to cater to users looking for specialized mapping services, such as hiking. The EU decision could help the application to reach a wider audience, he said.
Google gave a market share to the Russian search engine Yandex NV after agreeing to allow users in the country to choose search engine on Android phones. Yandex says he's now nearly 48 percent of the search market, compared with about 37 percent. Google also paid a fine as part of a settlement of an antitrust investigation by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia last year.
Nudging computer users to choose their own Internet browser was also the preferred way of the EU more than a decade of antitrust disputes with Microsoft in 2009, which helped to pushing some Internet users to shine new web software made by Google – at that time just a new child early on the block.
Android is "a highway multi-lane of choice" and people can download competing applications at any time, the company's general attorney Kent Walker said in a blog post 2016. The applications Google accounts for less than one-third of preloaded apps on a device, he said, and "a consumer can scan any of its apps at any time."
Why is Google still in the antitrust? 19659002] Google also argues that its actions to monitor the Android ecosystem and prevent multiple versions of Android – also part of the EU probe – help application developers to manufacture products that run on millions of devices. Giving free Android also reduces the costs of smartphones, he says. Google relies instead on advertising to make money from Android.
People are downloading a lot of other applications, according to a survey by the Developers Alliance, an association of 70,000 developers, which counts Google as a member. surveyed in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, about 28% download additional search applications, 29% download at least one new app store and 23% download at least one alternative web browser for pre-installed applications, according to the # 39; alliance.
Critics say it's hard to challenge Google. Aptoide, an app store competing with Google Play, filed an antitrust complaint with the EU in 2014 about contracts that prevent device makers from participating.
Paulo Trezentos, general manager of Aptoide, said that so much in the manufacturing side [handset]. It depends more and more on the users who download the store via the web browser. The app store is rarely preinstalled, in part because it can not counter Google's offer to device manufacturers to bundle its app store with other Google apps.
Some analysts see little hope of increased competition in markets where Google is good
"This order will arrive too late because the user's reliance has been transferred from the store [Play] Google services, "said Richard Windsor, owner of the research company Radio Free Mobile. This is going to be "difficult" for anyone to come up with a better range of products than Google
– With the help of Mark Bergen and Ilya Khrennikov
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