[HN Gopher] Google blocked Motorola use of Perplexity AI, witnes...
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Google blocked Motorola use of Perplexity AI, witness says
Author : welpandthen
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-04-23 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| welpandthen wrote:
| https://archive.ph/tAGxc
| bearjaws wrote:
| Why wouldn't they?
|
| 1. Already in anti-trust related to ads, AI is probably in the
| clear.
|
| 2. If they are thought to violating a law they will get like a
| $10,000,000 fine and pay it, still less money than they will make
| from harvesting data.
| islewis wrote:
| > Already in anti-trust related to ads, AI is probably in the
| clear.
|
| "Already in trouble for committing monopolist behavior in
| market A, Google should be fine committing even more monopolist
| behavior in the very related and overlapping market of B"
|
| This makes claim makes pretty little sense to me. AI search and
| Google web search (ads) are already stepping on each other. I
| see no reason that Google wouldn't be worried about antitrust
| on AI search if they're worried about antitrust action in
| general- which they clearly are.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Seems like the real issue is that Google is using proceeds
| from the core illegal monopoly to fund a dumping operation in
| another market in order to establish a monopoly there.
| They've been able to dump a free browser on the market and
| smother any potential competition in that space in the same
| fashion.
| darknavi wrote:
| I wonder how the relationship is after Google sold Motorola to
| Lenovo in October 2014.
| kazinator wrote:
| "Google blocked phone-making also-ran from preinstalling crapware
| their own users don't want, doing them a big favor."
| epolanski wrote:
| Not Google's decision to make.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Perplexity setting up talks with phone makers is itself an anti-
| competitive behavior to curb an already anti-competitive
| behavior. Either this should be banned in entirety or let the
| free markets prevail.
| malfist wrote:
| Why can't business talk to their leads?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| That's not happening. Everything that comes with a computer
| could be possibly construed as anti-competitive. Even the Start
| Menu - after all, if Start11 and StartIsBack exist, why should
| Microsoft have the right to ship their own start menu? How
| about calculators (Desmos)? The system that puts maximize,
| minimize, and close on windows (after all, WindowBlinds
| exists)? The login screen (LogonStudio)? What about the Task
| Manager (Process Explorer)? File Explorer (Total Commander)?
| The Media Player (VLC)? The PDF viewer (unfair competition
| against Adobe!)?
|
| I agree that at some point, it crosses a line. Perplexity is
| nowhere near powerful or influential enough to cross that line.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Could draw the boundary based on average worldwide usage rate
| (total hours per hour).
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| The Start Menu and Taskbar components of Windows Explorer
| is probably the most-used program in the world, and it's
| not even close.
|
| It also unfairly competes and damages competition from
| TaskbarX, Tabame, ObjectDock, RocketDock, Start11, and
| countless other small businesses.
|
| As a result, Microsoft enjoys a near-monopoly on the
| world's most used program, and even has the audacity to
| break compatibility with these competitors regularly.
|
| And how can we be sure that the EU's silence on the lack of
| competition, isn't because Microsoft crushed all
| competitors before they even had a chance?
|
| In my competitive world, in my competitive dream, car
| dealerships will be offering free taskbars when you
| refinance. The market for the world's most used program
| should be open to competition from anyone.
| lostmsu wrote:
| I am not sure what is your point here. In Windows these
| components can be replaced. You even mentioned
| alternatives.
|
| UPD. ah. I see. But Perplexity is an assistant. On
| Android AFAIK you can't just install another assistant.
|
| UPD2. Actually, turns out on Android you can install a
| 3rd party assistant. AFAIK Alexa can just be installed
| from Play Store.
| econ wrote:
| The most capitalist thing to do here is to have the parties
| gathered in an app on the device and have the companies bid
| on the user and have the user pick their prefernce. That
| way the user can enjoy many dialogs and be paid for their
| time. You pick, ebay 10$ temu 12$ Amazon 2$ aliexpress 15$
| etc or all 20 shopping apps for 80$
|
| Should be fun to install 500 games for 60 cent each. It
| might even push storage forwards.
|
| Who knows, maybe there are enough parties out there to fund
| the entire device.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| No, what's anti competitive is Google making an open source
| operating system that is worth absolutely nothing without the
| Google play services, and locking these play services behind
| contract that contains anti competitive rules, like << you have
| to set Google Gemini as default assistant >>, or << you can't
| ever sell a phone without the Google play services or with any
| alternative than the Google play services >>.
|
| Android at its core is free and open source, every company can
| ship it. But Google hold one key thing in its hands, the Google
| play services, and use that to force others to do whatever they
| want them to do.
|
| Else they can go the huawei direction, good luck making a
| Google play services competitor outside of China. Maybe in
| Russia ? That's nothing.
|
| Maybe perplexity ai is just better than Gemini and that's one
| of the reason Motorola wanted to ship it. Maybe it's for money.
| Whatever the reason, Google is abusing its dominant position to
| prevent competitor from competing with them.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| So if Google closed sourced their OS and access to their
| store is only via their OS, is that anti competitive ?
|
| Trying to figure out the argument.
|
| As opposed to Apple, Android is free and open like you said.
| It's the Google Play Store that has limited access.
| anonym29 wrote:
| Google/Alphabet's corporate death penalty (forced dissolution by
| the state) cannot come quickly enough.
|
| Live by the sword (secretly cooperate with state-run intelligence
| agencies against the interests of their own users), die by the
| sword (swift and merciless forced corporate dissolution, by the
| state).
| ein0p wrote:
| Someone at Google should sic an llm at the trove of documents
| from the Microsoft antitrust trial. This is directly from the 90s
| Microsoft playbook. I'm sure I'm by far not the only one with a
| sufficient attention span to remember that.
| xnx wrote:
| It continues to baffle me that Google gets harassed by the courts
| for being a better actor in almost every area it participates.
|
| Open source Android vs. closed iOS
|
| Install apps from any source on Android vs. total restriction on
| iOS
|
| Switch default app for browser (and many other things!) vs. No
| choice but Safari tech on iOS
|
| Easy switch of search provider in Chrome vs. countless dark
| patterns pushing Edge and Bing on Windows
| setsewerd wrote:
| Aren't those first two points being phased out?
|
| E..g. Google recently announced that it will be moving Android
| development entirely to its private internal branch, no more
| development sharing. They say they'll still be open source, but
| Google has been caught lying about a lot of things lately.
|
| (Sent from my Android.)
| disiplus wrote:
| i have a pixel phone, but google is not the good guy here. Like
| in this example, it basically bundles stuff in a way, so if you
| want for example the store, you have to take other stuff also
| and that other stuff has its own requirements.
| xnx wrote:
| Right. So the courts seem to prefer not offering the user any
| choice in hardware or software like Apple.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| They're being harassed for lying about being a better actor.
| Apple gets to be a controlling asshole because there's no legal
| requirement for tech companies to not be. Google tried to have
| their cake and eat it too.
|
| iOS is a package deal: you use our OS on our phones with our
| App Store and browser. Very straightforward and honest, even if
| we rightly hate the deal. This all relies on basic protections
| of IP law that the state is so far unwilling to roll back.
|
| Android is a confusopoly[0]. For every point you mentioned,
| Google has a hidden deal or catch that subverts the intention
| of the words in question and makes it as bad as iOS.
|
| Yes, Android is FOSS, but the app store everyone uses is
| proprietary; and Google's licensing terms for the proprietary
| store contravene the licenses on the FOSS portion. You
| specifically agree not to ship devices with "Android forks",
| even if you don't put the proprietary store on those specific
| devices. And what's actually released in AOSP shrinks every
| time a Google engineer puts a Google client in an app. Let us
| also not forget Android Honeycomb, which actually _was not_
| released to AOSP. There is no legal requirement for Google to
| ship source, and they 've already tried out a fully-proprietary
| release of Android in the past.
|
| Yes, you _could_ install non-Google-Play apps on Android, but
| updating them required you to manually approve every update.
| Third-party app stores were a nightmare to use until Epic sued
| about it and Google provided APIs to actually deliver updates
| in the same way that Google Play can.
|
| Yes, Google Play lets Mozilla ship Gecko. But Google is also
| paying phone manufacturers lots of money to make Chrome the
| default. Oh, and to not ship any third-party app stores.
| Combined with Google Play not letting you distribute other app
| stores through itself, it makes actually finding and using an
| app store a pain.
|
| And Chrome is specifically designed to make you use Google
| Search with the same dark patterns Edge uses.
|
| Please do not fool yourself into thinking that _any_ actor in
| this industry is good. They all suck, and you should be happy
| when any of them get their noses bloodied.
|
| [0] A term coined by the writer of Dilbert, Hatsune Miku, for
| deliberately confusing marketing intended to make you sigh in
| frustration, open your wallet, and let the sales guy decide
| what product you buy.
| cyberax wrote:
| At this point, an Android phone without Google Play Services is
| mostly useless. You can't use maps, you can't even use
| notifications!
| pedalpete wrote:
| With Apple, they are the manufacturer of the phone and the
| software, so they get to decide what goes on the hardware.
|
| Google makes the OS, but not the hardware. Why should they be
| able to decide what another company puts on the hardware.
|
| This is exactly the same playbook Microsoft tried in the 90s,
| and it is going to court for the exact same reason. It's using
| your market power to prevent competition.
|
| We've decided that just because you are the maker of a piece of
| software does not mean you get to decide what runs on someone
| else's hardware.
| ivape wrote:
| Everyone's trying to fight for a piece of the AI walled-garden
| pie. I guess it's only getting divided up between a few players
| all over again. Nice try Perplexity, and I do see it as
| forewarning for the power play OpenAI will attempt (we just don't
| know what it will be yet).
| braebo wrote:
| Buying Chrome apparently.
| nativeit wrote:
| "Google Tries To Be Microsoft, According To Witness"
| mkhalil wrote:
| Did anyone read this article? The headline is misleading.
|
| It clearly states in the first line:
|
| > "Google's contract with Lenovo Group Ltd.'s Motorola blocked
| the smartphone maker from setting Perplexity AI as the default
| assistant on its new devices"
|
| They didn't block Perplexity AI from Motorola's devices, the
| agreement states that they allow them to preload the devices with
| Perplexity, but the agreement, that both parties signed, does not
| give Motorola the permission to set it as the default.
|
| > "Motorola "can't get out of their Google obligations and so
| they are unable to change the default assistant on the device."
|
| They signed the agreement, and now are going to courts to claim
| they had no choice.
|
| I understand the premise, that they think they had no choice, but
| this article is misleading in its headline, and plenty of the
| comments here clearly show that a lot of "readers" didn't bother
| to read it.
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(page generated 2025-04-23 23:00 UTC)