A pretty well written analysis. I think the author is mistaken on two important points though.
The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android apps are in fact Google Play apps and couldn't be used on a non-Google version of Android without a significant rework. I believe there's already a significant body of work on providing drop in replacements for Google Play Services, e.g. microG [1]. There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out.
Secondly, the author complains that:
> More broadly, the European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop.
There's a huge rift in how most Europeans and Americans see the role of regulators but without getting into that, I want to note Android was not Google's effort alone and hardly a significant risk. Android as a software stack is built on the back of the Linux Kernel and a dozen other open source frameworks (Java, sqlite etc). Equally, Google is hardly responsible for the hardware. Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did. The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices...
> There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out.
Except that microG doesn't work. It is even far behind Amazon's own implementation of GMS, and Amazon has dumped piles of money into it.
> The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices...
Surprisingly, the manufacturers aren't the ones filing the anti-trust complaints in this case. The case was brought initially by Oracle, Microsoft & company.
But isn’t this reasonable since Samsung bringing up this lawsuit could be disastrous in harming their partnership with Google.
The Microsoft case wasn’t brought about by Compaq and Dell either even though they were being hosed [0]. While the case was brought by states and DOJ, there was lots of pressure from Netscape/Sun. Not really their hardware partners.
Why can't you? You can concede they would get more screwed by dirtying their relationship, without conceding that they are in a great relationship now.
But that is a different route. Claim that they don't have evidence. Or refute that the relationship is truly bad. This line was specifically "You can't make the claim that Samsung is then being screwed over by Google." Sure you can. Just provide evidence.
So, change that refutation to "what is your evidence taht they are getting screwed over by Google?" On that, you have my complete agreement.
It's very very simple to understand, but I do recognise your name from your repeated and tireless defences of Google and the morally bankrupt spyware/online ad business. And once again I'll have to correct some misconceptions.
Samsung / Sony / etc are companies with a lot to lose, and they correctly calculated that "better the enemy you know". Their entire mobile business depends on a good relationship with Google, so it's blindingly obvious that they won't bite the hand that feeds them.
Internally, they're probably throwing parties that the big bully is punished by the headmaster.
Also I can't really muster any sympathy if a company is punished for having spent "billions of dollars at significant risk" to develop something intentionally anti-competitive.
That's like saying "but we spent a lot of money on really expensive lawyers to evade those taxes" when charged with tax evasion.
The Google Android skeptics would prefer exactly that. Their ideal is that Android - as we know it today - collapses and Google loses its position with the product and in the mobile market. The fantasy is that then a truly free, pure, saintly solution can spring up and smite the evil money grubbing commercial interests. That's likely to have about as much success as desktop Linux among mass consumers (and for the same reason).
The sole thing that collapsing Google's Android position will do, is redistribute a lot of that market power and tech ecosystem benefit to a few other US tech giants, some Chinese tech giants and possibly to a lesser extent to some European players and Samsung. The US would net lose a considerable hegemony. As such, the US Government - State Dept, NSA, CIA, et al. - should get involved on a strategic economic security basis, and attack a very large EU company in a manner that is crippling (something worse than the Volkswagen emissions hit). We're in the midst of an economic war with the EU, the more vicious parts of the US Government need to start getting involved. At a minimum, find an excuse to perhaps take down eg Deutsche Bank, it's particularly weak, so a $10 or $15 billion invented magic fine would probably be enough to force its collapse and nationalization.
The US has already fined Deutsche Bank $7.2bn and BNP Paribas $8.9bn. At the time, many in Europe felt that the fines were excessive and that the existential threats used to discourage the use of the courts amounted to extortion. It was also seen by some as a form of protectionism.
If we don't want to descend into nationalist mudslinging (or even war mongering) we have to consider each individual case based on its own merits. I think at least here on Hacker News we owe each other as much.
That's why I said "at least here", i.e not opposed to everywhere else, but my expectations of a very international community like this one with an analytical bent are higher than of some other places I had in mind.
Anyway, you are right of course that we do owe each other that everywhere.
> The Google Android skeptics would prefer exactly that.
Citation needed.
> The fantasy is [..] evil money grubbing commercial interests.
What are you even on about?
>desktop Linux
What does "desktop Linux" have to do with anything in this context?
> The US would net lose [..] hegemony [..] State Dept, NSA, CIA, et al. - should get involved [..] an economic war with the EU ...
Or, less bat-shit insane, the US government could look at how different blocs implement anti-trust and consumer protection, and extend those to its own citizens.
> invented magic fine
Or Google could just have obeyed the law, American.
I personally enjoy how Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al are American companies when Europe fines them, and then are magically Irish companies when it's tax day in the US.
Android is a massive, massive undertaking by any measure, and it doesn't matter that it uses Linux and other things.
"Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did"
I totally disagree (edit: I disagree that they are spending 'massively more' but it's of course a lot) as most of what they are doing is commoditized, and the hardware aspects that they are actually competitive on ... those are differentiated in their models and they can capture the surpluses generated by that differentiation, which is to say those competitive aspects are not going back into 'Android' or any 'community' etc..
Nope, Android v1 was a no-name product from a highly competent web service provider without any track record whatsoever in mobile OSes.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a good product, so it needed to be open source to gain traction, since no one in their right mind would pay for it. Furthermore, it needed the device manufacturers on board, since Google had zero mobile HW experience, as can be seen on how they handled their Motorola acquisition.
So Google actually owes device manufacturers quite a lot. It couldn't have done it without them.
And you completely fail to appreciate how complex and important the Linux kernel is. Look at their Fuchsia effort: it was published in 2016 and was in dev for a couple of years probably. Still not ready for production.
Now try to imagine what would happen if Apple had 3 extra years to develop iOS before Android was launched. Android would be stillborn.
That's what Linux brought to the table.
It doesn't matter who invested the "most", Android is a joint venture and would not exist without the efforts of manufacturers and Linux itself.
Furthermore, Google gained a lot of money through Android, it's in no way a charity or a gift.
And given that they gave it for free to destroy all competition, charging money all of a sudden for it might attract some regulatory attention even in the US.
There's no discussion about 'who invested the most', because it's besides the point.
The point is that Android is a massive investment - full stop.
Linux is irrelevant to the equation.
There is definitely a giftable aspect to Android in that manufacturers can use the software for free and leverage most of Google's investment for free without a cent to Google.
Of course Google is making money, and that's their objective, (nobody is going to state otherwise) however - because of the EU's directive, Google can't make money using their current business model, ergo, cannot recoup their cost or make a profit, ergo - the product is dead in that zone. Were this ruling to happen for North America as well ... either Google starts to charge for Android - or Android is put on the shelf.
Google invests heavily in Android, and if their current business model is not allowed, then they'll have to charge for it, which may mean all those who use Android 'for free' may not have the option, which is not good either.
The EU's ruling is kind of stupid and self defeating:
Is Apple allowed to bundle all their money-making crap? Of course?
Nokia? Of course!
MS? Of course?
So if Android is made totally private, and it only comes as 'one version' i.e. 'with all their crap' - is the EU really going to force Google to separate the products? It's completely stupid.
If the EU wants to force Apple to sell iOS separately from the iPhone, and force them to also remove all their bundled crap ... well then they can do that but the stupidity is even more exposed.
The EU should focus on getting their companies to make great products instead of stopping fairly benign innovators from doing stuff - and holding their own consumers back.
More to the point, the EU didn't say "Google can't monetize Android". It just said that this tying arrangement between Google Search and Android is too anti-competitive.
Android could find other, more transparent and competitive, revenue models.
Google does not even want or need to make money from Android they were/are afraid that iPhone and Windows mobile devices would not default to Google search, having all the mobile devices not defaulting to google gave them nightmares.
Remember that article about how they acted like a toddler to Microsoft when the latter wanted to have a YouTube app?[1] All to keep WP from being viable enough to have a significant market share of users, especially users that didn't know or care enough to swap out bing search for Google.
Google not allowing WP to have a YouTube app that purposely stripped out the ads and ignored various other aspects of the ToS is nowhere near the reason why WP wasn't viable.
Careful now, can't be criticizing Google too much on HN, they send the wolves for you.
I'd love to know how many of the people rallying around Google's defenses now were anti-Microsoft back in the day for doing what is basically the same damn thing they were doing with Internet Explorer, only IMHO worse because Google didn't even develop Android, they just picked it up and filled it to the brim with their software.
>Google didn't even develop Android, they just picked it up and filled it to the brim with their software.
What Google initially bought was no where near a commercially viable product and any remnants of that legacy code probably don't even even exist in the Android code base of today.
>only IMHO worse because Google didn't even develop Android
Sort of like how Microsoft bought MS-DOS, the foundation for Windows 1.0, from Seattle Computer Products. Except for the part where Microsoft then tried to screw them over by suing them and ultimately settling out of court.
You neglected to mention that Microsoft employees reverse engineered the YouTube API's and then, for good measure, prevented ads from appearing in the app. They also had no permission to use someone else's IP.
>All to keep WP from being viable enough to have a significant market share
This is a company that not only had to pay developers to write apps for their platform, but would also offer to write it for them. They were never going to have a significant market share because of their incompetence.
I can't see how this microG is at all helpful. Sure it has a replacement to GCM but every app backend would have to be rewritten to support it. It's hardly a drop in replacement if every chat app doesn't support push notifications.
But if I, as a developer, want to send push notifications, I would have to send them somewhere else. I couldn't use the stuff I'm using for everyone else.
Yes, but you can't replace the parts that rely on Google's cloud infrastructure, such as push notifications. If a feature literally requires that you send a HTTP request to a Google web API, you can hardly use that app without Google's support.
And that's the issue the EU is having. Play Services is pretty much essential to having a successful smartphone product in much of the world (at least the US and the EU). Many, many Android apps are only distributed through the Play Store, and many of those rely on Google Play Services. So trying to ship a phone in those markets without Google Play Services is a non-starter. Google knows this, and so they have added anti-competitive restrictions to that contract. That is the behavior the EU is objecting to.
"There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out."
I would be shocked if 1). The licensing agreements with Google to get the Play Store in the first place allow that, and 2). If MicroG would be production ready. It might be fine for some enthusiasts and hobbyists, but I highly doubt it's ready to be shipped by default.
The API of Google Play Services is not really open to re-implementation by third parties. The fact that microG exists doesn't invalidate the author's point. Google allows microG to exist because it is something of a niche, it is not threatening to their model.
The second point you are trying to make is not really clear.
Putting billions of dollars and hundreds of engineers' time into Android for years rather than something else does seem like the definition of a significant risk to me. Not to mention all the legal issues.
What exactly would the EU be spending that money on? Where does this kind of punitive fine revenue go into? Is it the general slush fund, or is it earmarked for some purpose?
No it's not. It's contributed to the general fund of the EU.
If you fully follow the money, it's mostly used to make local EU agricultural products cheaper, and for the government offices and jobs in Brussels and Strasbourg.
They would build a really nice app store and then it would sit empty because it is not preinstalled and the network effects of Google Play make it pretty much impossible to gain any traction for an alternative.
The idea is that with microg as drop in replacement all the apps would still work without the play services and be as good as. Putting your app on this additional store would cost you just a click.
The vendors can preinstall that and ship google-less phones.
It will not happen, but if they really care about what they claim to care about, this is what they should spend the money on.
Not sure if just putting a few on Google will help to get a better, healthier market.
>Second, Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft's dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers. Compare this to the mobile market, where Microsoft cannot tie Internet Explorer to a dominant operating system, and its browser therefore has a much lower usage.
By the way, I think it's absurd for Google to threaten that they may now charge a license for Android [2]. They're effectively saying that now that they've eliminated all competition over the past 10 years and achieved a dominant share of the market, they're going to raise prices. That's a slam dunk case even in the US's broken antitrust system.
Subtract the iOS market share from the overall base, and is at 75% market share of remainder. The only strong competitor is UC Browser at 13.3%. This is an AliBaba product localized to mainland China. Remove that from the global market, and we end up with ~90% share for chrome in the rest of the world. That's antitrust territory.
Well, on my LOS+microG device I use Firefox, but my apps use SystemView and that's basically Chrome (which skews these stats). By using Firefox I use two different rendering engines, increasing my attack surface.
If other browsers are also included by default, it is not antitrust to include that browser by default too. The only reason the share of Chrome would be interesting for antitrust would be if that share were leveraged to promote a product in another market, which nobody is claiming.
Actually that's exactly what the claim is: That Chrome being mandatorily included and set as default is used to promote Google Search unfairly. That's directly in the EU's statement.
No, the claim is that they're using Android's dominant position to push Google search and other Google products. Chrome's default in itself is not an issue.
Well, the bundling has been there since day one so it's not like they are really raising prices. If the EU won't let google make money for android through search, then it seems reasonable to me for them to shift their revenue generation through licensing.
While I understand that the law is not required to be a mathematical statement and requires case by case interpretation, I wonder if these leaves several burning questions on the table:
1. Was it illegal for apple to force install apple maps on iOS users, stiffling competing maps apps? 2. Is it illegal for apple to not provide other browsers JIT capabilities, effectively forcing them to be a skin on top of Safari?
I understand that iOS has no market dominance. But if iOS reaches 60% shares in a country, can the country demand substantial changes to iOS to encourage competitors? 70%? 80%?. Does a company need to make its product more open as it starts dominating the market.
Also, how would such market segments be defined for market domination? Phones? Smart phones? Phones with a particular characteristics? Phones with a particular OS(as phone inter operability is widely within OSes only)
As the press release of the commission says "market for .... licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system.". It seems using this vocabulary even Apple can be branded a monopoly, dominant in "unlicensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the iOS mobile operating system". Then isn't even apple using their dominance of "app store for iOS" to dominate other market segments?
As Apple enthusiasts love to point out, a huge chunk of Android sales are low end feature phone replacements. If you exclude those then the two platforms are much closer to parity in marketshare. And Android's hold is precarious. Pretty much only Samsung is making any money on Android and even they are seeing declining sales for their flagship phones. I'm convinced if Apple ever offers a decent (not iPhone SE) iPhone at around the $300 price point it will be a bloodbath for Android OEMs.
I'm convinced this decision will one day seen as a mistake by the EC. Hopefully it won't destroy what is a now a healthy & competitive marketplace with a lot of meaningful choice for consumers.
Exactly, this decision will benefit apple a lot, as they would be free to integrate their platform and offerings in all sorts of ways, continuing to charge their premium, where as the "dominant" mobile OS will have to keep itself open and not force anything on users or makers.
I don't see how "unt[ying] the Play Store from Search and the Chrome browser," stopping "paying OEMs for portfolio-wide search exclusivity," or letting OEMs sell "devices with Android forks" helps Apple that much [1]. Android will still exist. Play Services and Store will remain Google's castles. OEMs will continue selling Google's bundle. All that changes is now they don't have to.
Worst case, Google adds a Play Services licensing fee. If this doesn't result in American antitrust action (for raising prices after forming a monopoly), all it will do is increase some phones' prices. If that matters to consumers, OEMs will be free to release non-Play Android phones at a lower price point.
Sadly, the worst case is not google charging some fee. The worst case is that iOS can become the only mobile os with deep platform integration(apple music, safari, apple maps, app store), where as Android will become more fragmented. Part of the appeal of iOS is the seamless experience among all iOS devices. If your cousin has an iOS device, you can turn to him/her for help. You can seamlessly buy an iOS device and assume more or less the same experience.
Android? Your cousin's Android may share nothing with yours, and so may your next Android phone with your current. You may not count on the same browser, assistant, mail, or maps being available in all Android devices.
You may argue that people will be sure to differentiate between Android A and Android B, but sadly, people have enough going on in their lives and want their phone to just work. Guess which OS provided the most consistent experience among devices and the most homogeneous app ecosystem?
From what I have learned with my interactions with non tech friends of mine, they don't want to know why such and such app is better than the default one. They just want things to look and feel the same and just work as long as possible.
You can argue that android already had custom skins on most brand's phones, but at least some platform apps used to be common. This may change even that.
My wife is upset every time there is an iOS update. No non tech users really don't want to have to relearn how to operate their phone on a semi regular basis...
I can say I really hated iOS11 as it killed a lot of my 32-bit apps. Some took many months to get a 64bit replacement or update. A minor few but important ones still have no replacement and I had to abandon and change how I was doing things.
There are deeper factors driving homogenization than Google Play Services. Those will probably remain, driving most Android users to a single fork. What this ruling does is make it possible that the next Android isn't dominated by Google.
It's not just about google play services. Once manufacturers are free to custimize things as they want, why will they not want to install something like UC browser by default which may pay money. Similarly for a mobile assistant of their own. I know people who had mywebsearch as their default search engine and didn't want to change it to google as they didn't think their was any difference. Given that all of these are solid monetisation opportunities, why would any of them bother to install google apps? Not saying this is bad in itself, but the fragmentation is going to happen.
The comparison people will make will be against iOS, which will be able to provide a seamless and consistent experience due to the same default apps on each device.
iPhone SE is a more than decent phone, I’ve paid around 330 euros this winter for one, it does its job pretty damn well (good photo camera, reasonable hard-disk space, I do not perceive it as slow).
No, because in these instances, it's Google forcing the other OEMs to bundle or not bundle things. Apple has no other OEMs, thus they're not competing with their other manufacturers.
That's not a valid rebuttal. In order to use the Play Store, Google is requiring that OEMs bundle many other Google apps. That is abusing a position in one area to benefit themselves in another anti-competititively.
Ofc it is, no one is forcing them to use the Google app store either.
The last Android phone I bought in the UK had 4 play stores installed on it, Google, Samsung, Amazon and some other BS I don't remember.
This is just getting disingenuous you'll have huge posts claiming that you don't need gapps and that f-droid works just perfectly, the vast majority of Android phones are sold without gapps or the google store that is Africa, China, India and parts of Latin America, somehow all of these including arguably the 2 largest single markets get along just fine without it.
"no one is forcing them to use the Google app store either."
Again, not a valid rebuttal. Just because someone doesn't have to use your product (and in this case, I would flat out disagree with your statement) does not mean you get to gouge them on the terms.
Ah yes because if the OEMs gouge Google on terms it's just fine.
There are plenty of alternatives, the largest markets don't use Google, you can't cry that this is anti-competitive when it's clearly not the case since there is plenty of competition.
Google invested billions in Android it can do whatever it likes with it, you don't like it? don't use it, the alternative is for Google to either charge a feed to use Android which would be perfectly fine or to close it off to OEMs completely which again would be completely fine in this context and it would also avert the fine in both cases.
All this fine would do is A) force google to find ways to not pay it and they would likely not pay a single euro-cent in the long run, B) close the Android ecosystem even further down to the point where no other alternatives would be even possible.
No, that is just flat out not true. Not having Google Play Services on a device in the US or the EU is a non-starter. It would never take off, and it would not have a chance in the market. So no, there is not plenty of competition for that. As such, Google is not allowed to abuse their monopoly position in that area to extract extra concessions from OEMs.
If Google was not licensing it out, then sure, they could do whatever they wanted. But they are, and as such, they are not allowed to add anti-competitive terms to their contract. If they don't like it, they don't have to sell their services in jurisdictions with functioning regulators.
Apple can bundle whatever software it wants with its own hardware, as long as it doesn't force other companies to do the same. Had Google stayed within its own Nexus / Pixel lines, were wouldn't have been any fines.
I think the analogy of Google's castle being search and everything else a scorched earth tactic to protect that is perfect. It's the heart of my strongly ambivalent feelings about Google. If you take their major successes like Maps, Android, Chrome, GMail, Analytics they are all really good products. They aren't examples of a monopoly giving bad service or forcing an inferior product on consumers.
The problem is that it sucks the oxygen out of the room for so many fundamental technologies that we use today. How do you compete with the combination of massive resources and a willingness to give away things for free?
Honest question, not tongue in cheek, if there's an instance where consumer utility and ability to compete are opposing forces, which do we side with? And if, as I suspect, it is nuanced and not a binary answer, do we ever consider one of the forces while trying to increase the other? Should the one doling out anti-competitive punishments be required to recognize consumer utility/happiness? Should the one implementing consumer utility/happiness be required to recognize its competitors' abilities? To me it seems the requirement to recognize the other opposing force is only on the implementer.
I think the law is there to protect competitors, and that's it.
Why the law is there is of course another matter.
It's like if you go out and kill someone. That person may have been a really, really horrible person that our society is measuredly better off without. But unless there's some kind of self-defense involved, you're facing a sentence to prison.
I'm not trying to equate killing with monopoly abuse, but I find it odd that the principle that if you break the law, you face the consequences results in so much questioning.
These cases are meticulously prepared and come from complaints filed with the authorities. If you read all the paperwork, you'd most likely come to the same conclusion: Google abused their dominant market position.
> I think the law is there to protect competitors, and that's it.
I disagree. I think it's there (or should be there) to protect society/consumers, and that's it. I am saying that by excluding all other consumer effects and pretending that it's there to protect competitors potentially at the harm of society is invalid. Sometimes they align, sometimes they don't.
> I'm not trying to equate killing with monopoly abuse, but I find it odd that the principle that if you break the law, you face the consequences results in so much questioning.
Because the law is vague and subjective. It's not like we have algorithms or robots determining guilt. The thing that is odd is confusing questioning of the law with questioning of the idea of breaking laws. And I agree they probably did abuse their position, but that doesn't relate specifically to the comment you're responding to which is more about whether abuse is all that should be taken into consideration.
Here's the problem, though: If you say, "Consumers don't seem to be harmed by this action," you don't know what the alternative could have been. Consumers could have been much better off with additional competition.
> Still, it is an unsatisfying remedy: Google built Android for the express purpose of monetizing search, and to be denied that by regulatory edict feels off; Google, though, bears a lot of the blame for going too far with its contracts.
This could be seen another way. Instead of going too far with its contracts, i.e. limiting the supplier side, the results of these regulations should entice future companies to not go too far on their distribution, i.e. limiting the demand side.
If it becomes clear that having a dominant position in a market can be problematic, a reasonable company might do things to prevent it from happening including limiting growth, raising prices, stymying third-party ecosystems/distributions, and reducing feature investment. It can be argued that these punishments are predictable and easily avoided with self regulation, we just need to be sure we're happy with the forms this self regulation may take. Being in a dominant position is rare for sure, but in these rare cases, if I had a choice, I'd do everything I can do be just under dominant.
Google might want to start realizing this with Chrome and surreptitiously support (...er...keep supporting) Firefox or not implement too many features before others can catch up.
Seeing this entire thing fold out, it seems the best monopolies for a corporation are the legal monopolies(like iOS), where there are still very high barriers for customers to switch, but you aren't dominating any well defined market segment.
Exactly. It incentivizes corporations to focus on the richer market segment, where the profit margins can be high enough to compensate the relatively low volume, and leave the lower end of the market to be dominated by cheaper alternatives. A product dominating a very low revenue segment may come to be seen as not worthwhile. Not saying such a strategy should be the goal or will be easy, but that seems the natural direction large corporations may want to take.
From the article, the European Commission requires Google to respond to these three accusations:
> 1. Tying Google’s search and browser apps to the Google Play Store.
From the user's perspective, this is not even true. For example, Samsung devices ship with their own browser on the home screen [a]. The user has to seek out the Chrome app (that is pre-installed) in order to use it. Besides, Play, Chrome and Search are Google's products and they should be allowed to bundle them as they wish. Technically, they could be one app.
> 2. Paying OEMs to exclusively pre-install Google Search on every Android device they made.
This point is moot. Google no longer does that. In fact, unbundling the Play store from search will force a bidding war for the default search engine, which will end up with Google paying to add Search on a product they are giving away for free.
> 3. Barring OEMs that installed Google’s apps from selling any device that ran an Android fork.
This feels absurd to me. Google is under no obligation to offer an open-source version of Android in the first place. If they decide to retract the OSS version, which is well within their right, how exactly are OEMs restricted ? How is EU better off in that case ? Is EU going to _force_ Google to give away Android for free ?
I thought Opera was sold to a Chinese consortium (Kunlun, Qihoo and Golden Brick) back in 2016? [1] [2] Apparently they kept the Norway office as the headquarters though, and the website makes little reference to the Chinese office and no reference I could find to their new CEO.
The Norwegian company that used to be called Opera Software is now called Otello Corporation - they also sold the name of their company together with the browser. [3]
The author writes that due to Google Play Services, most Android apps are in fact Google Play apps and couldn't be used on a non-Google version of Android without a significant rework. I believe there's already a significant body of work on providing drop in replacements for Google Play Services, e.g. microG [1]. There is nothing that stops a manufacturer from providing microG instead of Play Services and hence cutting Google out.
Secondly, the author complains that:
> More broadly, the European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop.
There's a huge rift in how most Europeans and Americans see the role of regulators but without getting into that, I want to note Android was not Google's effort alone and hardly a significant risk. Android as a software stack is built on the back of the Linux Kernel and a dozen other open source frameworks (Java, sqlite etc). Equally, Google is hardly responsible for the hardware. Manufacturer's like HTC and Samsung invested far more in making Google a success than Google did. The same manufacturers that Google has been screwing over with its anti competitive practices...
[1] https://microg.org/