Google's SECRET contracts: Android lock-in REVEALED!

snoopy · Feb 14, 2014

Google's SECRET contracts: Android lock-in REVEALED!
Details of secret contracts that Google signs with phone manufacturers have become public for the first time, revealing the extent of the restrictions Google puts on Android smartphones.

In an email in 2011, a Google Android program manager injudiciously described the OS as a "club" to make phone makers "do what we want". But hard evidence has been lacking until now.

Many manufacturers, particularly in China, and most prominently Amazon in the West, use Android software without signing Google's Mobile Application Distribution Agreement (MADA). But that means they are locked out of Google's Play store and must source their own applications and find their own app store.

The MADA requires the licensee to preload all Google apps, and even specifies where they should appear on the Android phone's home screen. Academic Ben Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School who has been paid by both Google and Microsoft for his research, discovered two MADA contracts with HTC and Samsung, made public when they became trial exhibits in the Oracle vs Google lawsuit. The contracts were submitted to open court but are not available online through PACER
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Read full details here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/13/googles_secret_android_lockin_revealed/

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