- New regulations will target six major tech companies to improve consumer experience and data privacy. These include Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft.
- Pre-installed apps like weather and email that are difficult to delete will be disallowed, aiming to promote interoperability and reduce “gatekeeping” activities.
- Companies will be prohibited from monetizing user data collected from phone apps for advertising purposes.
- The regulations will encourage competition by allowing alternative payment systems, benefiting startups and consumers.
- The European Commission aims to empower consumers and ensure tech giants adhere to European rules, providing immediate accountability for any issues.
First of all, phones aren’t sold with AOSP. It’s not really relevant for the EU authorities.
As for Android versions that are actually used, you can’t install an app the same way Google Play can. Every other app store needs to get multiple confirmations, while the Play Store can update in the background. When you’re updating 20 apps, you need to give special install permission for every single one, in order, while you can’t do anything else with your phone or you’ll cancel the process. That’s not what Google is doing right now.
As an F-Droid user, this is quite annoying. I’ve managed to get around it by rooting my phone, but that broke Netflix and various other apps.
I doubt the changes on Android will be that shocking. App stores will probably get some kind of special permission to do the things GPlay can also do and that’s about it.
iOS is going to be a different story, though.
They’re not. But my point is that EU manufacturers / start-ups could easily make their own flavour of Android based on AOSP and launch that as a product. Why don’t they? Case in point Huawei.
I think the argument is that the monopoly is present because it’s basically pointless outside of China to launch a phone without play services. So while you can release a phone based on AOSP, it’s not going to be successful financially without the Google apps and tweaks from Play Services