The European Union sure has some balls to hit Alphabet with an antitrust fine of $5 billion. They say that Android abuses its dominance by forcing companies that sell phones with Android installed to use the app store ‘Play’ and to keep the ‘Chrome’ and ‘Search’ apps installed also. Apparently, they are also prevented from forking the Android codebase and using modified versions.

As an owner of a Pixel 2 and a person pretty much all-in on the Google ecosystem I constantly see people with 3rd party phones that complain about the Android experience and then swear off all Android devices. For the most part these people dislike Samsung. I’ve never seen a time where a company modifies even what they can in Android and it turns out well. I suspect the EU has a bone to pick either with the US and is to chickenshit to start a war or it’s hard up for cash OR they are just simply jelly they don’t have a bunch of successful tech companies. On a technical level this could never go anywhere. Install Mozilla’s mobile offering! Use anything else other than Android if it’s bothering you so much. But while you’re at it EU, sue Apple for me so I can install MacOS on my desktop please. Oh, but MacOS comes pre-installed with their app store. Did you know that iOS does the same? So maybe it’s not about the apps hmmm? Maybe it’s about the ad revenue Google gains from the OS itself along with those apps?

No matter. What the EU really wants from this is technically shaky at best. The EU should learn to communicate better and deal with it’s feelings in a more constructive manner instead of throwing off threats that make only some slight sense to the layperson. It’s popular right now to throw vitriol at the tech industry but you can’t do it with unsound claims.

The EU is not on our top “Buy” list, but these 10… 🤡