Google is Microsoft 2.0

Who would have thought, back then?

Yesterday many organisations published an open letter asking Google to take action against exploitative pre-installed software on Android devices.

The letter complains about Android Partners - who use the Android trademark and branding - who are “manufacturing devices that contain pre-installed apps that cannot be deleted (often known as “bloatware”), which can leave users vulnerable to their data being collected, shared and exposed without their knowledge or consent.

The letter then asks Google, among other things, to make it possible for end users to permanently uninstall the apps on their phones.

The rest of the letter, and the place to sign it, is here, but before reading it please re-read the parts I highlighted. Pre-installed apps that cannot be deleted? Public action to allow users to permanently uninstall some software on their own phones?

I confess I knew nothing about this problem, before reading that letter. But when I read it, my jaw dropped. Because of how similar this is to the “Removal of Internet Explorer” proposal made almost twenty years ago, during the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Quoting from Wikipedia, back then:

Google is Microsoft 2.0 /img/google-vs-microsoft-browser.jpg

“Internet Explorer came as an integrated component of Windows that could not be uninstalled… The idea of removing Internet Explorer was proposed during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. case, because that very bundling was alleged to have been responsible for Microsoft’s victory in the browser wars".

Get it? Google “don’t be evil” 2020 = Microsoft 2001. Interesting, isn’t it?

Image source: Federico Fieni via Flickr