Below is the Greek translation of the blogpost, published today at 4:00 PM on Google's European blog about the Android case, signed by Kent Walker, Vice President and General Manager of Google.
The content of the blogpost responds to complaints from the European Commission, which issued a Statement of Objections, raising concerns about how Google handles Android compatibility issues and how it distributes its own applications.
In 2007, we launched Android, a free, open-source operating system. At the time, smartphones were expensive and limited. Our goal was to change that – to drive innovation and increase consumer choice – and we did.
Watch the video of the history of Android
Because of Android, manufacturers are not obliged to buy or build expensive operating systems. As a result, smartphones are now available at much lower prices – from 45 euros – and have become more accessible to more users. Today, over 24,000 devices from 1,300 different brands run the Android operating system. In addition, European developers have the opportunity to offer their applications to hundreds of millions of users around the world. In other words, the Android operating system is not a “one-way” system, but a platform with multiple options for the user.
Last April, the European Commission issued a Statement of Objections, raising concerns about how we manage Android compatibility issues and how we distribute our own applications. The response we submitted today shows how the Android ecosystem aligns the interests of users, developers, software creators and mobile network operators. Android has not harmed competition, but has promoted it.
First, the European Commission's case is based on the idea that Android does not compete with's iOS. We do not see it from that perspective. We believe that neither Apple, nor mobile manufacturers, developers or users do. In fact, 89% of respondents to a market survey conducted by the European Commission itself confirmed that Android and Apple compete. Ignoring competition with Apple is like not taking into account the specificity of the smartphone competitive landscape.
Second, we are concerned that the European Commission’s early findings underestimate the importance of developers and the risks of fragmentation in the mobile ecosystem. Developers – who numbered at least 1.3 million in Europe in 2015 – rely on a stable and coherent framework to do their work. Any mobile phone manufacturer can download Android and modify it in any way they choose. But this flexibility makes Android vulnerable to fragmentation, a problem that plagued earlier operating system projects, such as Unix and Symbian. When anyone can modify your code, how can you ensure that there is a common and unfragmented version of that operating system, capable of ensuring that developers do not have to deal with the hassle and cost of creating multiple versions of their applications?
To address this challenge, we work with hardware manufacturers to establish a minimum level of compatibility for all Android devices. More importantly, we give device manufacturers plenty of leeway to build devices that exceed this minimum level, which is why you see so many different versions of Android devices. That’s the key: our optional compatibility agreements offer a variety of solutions, while also giving developers the confidence that their apps will work seamlessly across thousands of different phones and tablets. This balance fuels competition among Android devices, as well as between Android and Apple’s iPhone.
Android's compatibility rules allow it to minimise fragmentation and maintain a healthy ecosystem for developers. 94% of respondents to a Commission market survey on fragmentation said it harms the Android platform . Developers are concerned about this and our competitors with closed platforms (and who do not face the same risk) often criticize us for it. The Commission's proposal risks increasing fragmentation (of the mobile market), which would harm the Android platform and competition in the mobile market.
Third, the Commission argues that we should not offer some Google apps as part of a suite of apps. No manufacturer is obliged to pre-install any Google app on a mobile phone running the Android operating system. We do offer manufacturers a suite of apps, so that when users buy a new mobile phone, they can access a range of basic services that are familiar to them. Android competitors, including Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's Windows phone, not only do not do the same but also allow less choice in the apps that are installed on their phones. On Android, Google apps typically account for less than a third of the pre-installed apps on the device (and take up only a small part of the device's memory). The consumer can uninstall any of our apps at any time. And hardware manufacturers and carriers have the unique ability to pre-install our competitors' apps right next to ours. So in terms of competition, this means that there is no "foreclosure".
There is also plenty of evidence to show that consumers can easily choose the apps they want – something the European Commission has also acknowledged in other research. The average Android user in Europe downloads an additional 50 apps over the lifetime of their device. Downloading and replacing an app or widget is simple – you can do it in thirty seconds. Users downloaded 65 billion apps from Google Play in 2015 – that’s over 175 million apps a day on average. Since 2011, apps offering similar functionality to those in our suite have been downloaded almost 15 billion times. Again, there is no evidence of foreclosure.
Many pre-installed apps fall short of their intended purpose and many were ultimately highly successful through user downloads like Spotify or Snapchat. Our suite of apps offers users the freedom to choose the apps they want for their phones.
Finally, distributing products like Google Search with Google Play allows us to offer our entire suite for free—as opposed to, for example, charging an initial licensing fee. This free distribution is a win-win solution—lowering prices for mobile manufacturers and consumers, while still allowing us to maintain our significant investments in Android and Google Play.
Today's mobile devices show all the signs of intense competition, spanning a range of business models: from vertically integrated operating systems like Apple's iOS to open source systems like Android. The rapid innovation, wide variety, and falling prices we see in smartphones represent the hallmarks of intense competition.
Android has ushered in a new generation of innovation and cross-platform competition. No matter how you look at it, it is the most open, flexible, and diverse operating system platform for mobile devices.
But open source platforms are fragile. They survive and thrive by balancing the needs of all stakeholders, including users and developers. The European Commission’s approach would upset that balance and send an unintended signal that it favors closed over open platforms. That would mean less innovation, less choice, less competition, and higher prices. That would not only create a bad outcome for us, but also for developers, mobile phone manufacturers, and carriers, and most importantly, for consumers.
This is our position, which we are submitting to the European Commission today.
We look forward to continuing the dialogue.
By Kent Walker, Vice President and General Manager
