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0 pointssquarefoot7y ago0 comments

This one is much worse because although Microsoft tried to get complete control of the PC platform many years ago, they never managed to prevent people from installing other operating systems on their PCs. Had Microsoft the same power Google has now on mobile platforms, I would be writing this post using Windows 10 instead of Debian because Linux as well as *BSD and others would either not exist or could never properly work due to lack of OSS drivers which is by far the #1 plague in the mobile world.

Google monopoly has very little to do with Chrome bundling and a lot with hardware being kept tight closed to kill any competition: the day we have OSS drivers is the day we can have other OSes (which have been already written) fully working; that will allow also software to be fully usable, creating more competition Google will have to respond to, hopefully with more openness and quality.

Before someone replies that drivers have nothing to do with browser bundling, think about how could Google force you to install anything or use any of their services if your underlying OS and surrounding environment didn't depend on anything from them because it wasn't even Android. Example: https://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/

0 comments

dlp2117y ago

I'm trying to understand your point. Google has nothing to do with Qualcomm keeping their hardware drivers proprietary. What am I missing?

squarefootOP7y ago

Google monopoly is a byproduct of proprietary hardware/firmware, that's what a lot of people is missing. Going every time after this or that corporation because it built a monopoly is useless when trying to build a monopoly is everyone's untold ultimate goal in the current economic system; we would better spend our energies making sure that nobody can't even attempt to build a monopoly, and open specs hardware would be one step in this direction. I can understand telcos wanting a closed layer before the radio section to prevent people from tampering with cell service, but to me everything else has to be open.

mikelward7y ago

Binary driver blobs exist because of IP concerns of the hardware suppliers, particularly the camera, fingerprint, and modem.

The fact those parts are closed hasn't stopped people releasing custom ROMs. Google and Sony even help you do this.

https://developers.google.com/android/drivers https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/

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