You’re probably thinking that Android updates are boring and somewhat dull—but this was not one of them.

Here’s one excerpt.

And finally concluded the blog post with this note:

You probably have no idea what’s going on, so I’ll explain. 

Back in October last year, on Diwali, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) lit a firecracker and handed it to Google. It took the form of a penalty of Rs 936 crore (~US$113 million) on the company for abusing its dominant position with respect to its Play Store policies. The crazy part was that it wasn't even the biggest fine that the CCI levied on Google that week. A few days before, it had fined Google Rs 1,338 crore (US$166 million) for anti-competitive practices in relation to Android mobile devices. 

In addition to the fines, the CCI also issued a cease-and-desist order and listed several corrective measures that Google needed to implement to make up for its anti-competitive practices. I’d read about this back then, and I didn’t bother writing about it because I believed Google would appeal the order, and go to court, and well, we all know how long that usually takes. 

I had good reasons to believe this—the same thing happened to Google in 2018 in Europe. It was fined €4.125 billion (~US$4.5 billion) for antitrust violations for almost exactly the same reasons, and it spent nearly four years appealing the penalty. To be fair, Google did implement some policy changes once it was fined, but I didn’t expect them to do the same thing for India as well. 

And to an extent, I was correct. Google didn’t change its policies right away. It first went to the NCLAT to seek interim relief… and got rejected. Then, a couple of weeks ago, it decided to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court of India… and got rejected.

So finally, last week, Google disagreed… and committed. 

For over a decade, Google’s dominance in smartphones has been led by one product—Android. It’s arguably its most successful, so much so that the person who developed it inside Google later went on to become the company’s CEO. In India, particularly, Android has been front and centre of Google’s strategy and expansion. If you make a list of the most influential and successful consumer platforms created by any company anywhere in the world, anytime in history, it’s hard to imagine a product that beats Android. Android is Google’s moat. It’s Google’s drawbridge. It’s Google’s crown jewel. Without it, Google would just be a website you’d go to sometimes to search for links. Android changes everything.  

And last week, Google was finally forced to make sweeping changes to it. Changes that would significantly undo a decade of dominance and would weaken that moat considerably. In the company’s largest market in the world—India.

It’s hard to predict what’ll happen next, but we can try. Not by asking what will change, but instead, by asking: who wants things to change? And why?

Let’s dive in.

1. Google’s apps had to be pre-installed in all Android devices. In fact, Google even dictated where these apps would be listed on the user’s mobile screen.
2. Smartphone manufacturers were prohibited from developing or offering devices based on “forked” or alternate versions of Android. Essentially, they could only offer one version of the operating system (see point above).
3. Google paid these smartphone manufacturers to exclusively pre-install Google Search on every Android device they made.

Through these three instruments, Google maintained a stranglehold on mobile for over a decade. One by one, smartphone manufacturers lined up and signed these agreements with Google, and abandoned plans to compete with them. And Google grew. 

And nowhere was this strategy more successful than in India. Where, in 2021, Android had a market share of 95%. 

Well, enter the CCI. 

The CCI ruling last year struck at the heart of Google’s moat, especially these three agreements. It said that Google couldn’t tell smartphone manufacturers to pre-install its apps as a condition to giving access to the Play Store. It also said that Google couldn’t offer these apps as one single bundle, and that manufacturers could pick and choose what they wanted. It ruled that Google couldn’t pay manufacturers to make Google Search exclusive on their phones. And most significantly, it also said that Google couldn’t stop them from making phones based on other versions of Android. 

This wasn’t just a blow—it was complete annihilation. 

The CCI did it because it believed Google had become far too powerful, and that it now needed more competitors to emerge. Which brings us to the key question I asked earlier: 

Who really wants things to change? 

You could argue that the smartphone manufacturers (OEMs) would welcome this ruling. I imagine they’re probably tired of Google telling them what to do, and they can’t wait to shake off the yoke and build their own fancy versions of Android and their own App Stores and make lots and lots of money. 

Well, if you believe that, I have a story for you. 

Back in the 2000s, when Android started becoming popular, Samsung, one of the largest and most powerful OEMs in the world, tried developing an OS of their own, which they called Bada. That didn't work out too well, so they decided to use Android instead. For many reasons, Samsung didn’t do this integration very well, and even degraded the performance of Android. In 2012, they decided to build an OS called Tizen—meant to be an Android rival. The long term strategy was to slowly switch over to Tizen and possibly even sell it to other OEMs.

So what did Google do? 

It went ahead and bought Motorola for nearly US$13 billion. Cash.

In its blog post announcing the deal, it said that “Google is great at software; Motorola Mobility is great at devices. The combination of the two makes sense and will enable faster innovation”. 

The message to Samsung was clear. If it went ahead with making Tizen, Google would raze the earth by releasing Motorola phones with its version of Android, which it would give away at a discount, killing Samsung’s market share. Samsung tried to build a mobile operating system, and Google went after them where it hurt. Finally, Samsung caved and signed an agreement with Google indicating its continued commitment to Android. 

Two days after Google signed the agreement with Samsung, it sold Motorola to Lenovo.

The threat had worked, and Google didn’t need Motorola anymore. 

My point of telling this story is essentially this—are we sure that OEMs want to take on Google again? Sure, the CCI can tell Google they cannot stop OEMs from building their operating systems based on Android. But maybe Google doesn’t need that agreement anymore. If any OEM tries to get too ambitious, Google can simply go to another and offer it Android and Play Store at favourable terms. 

This also leads to other considerations for OEMs, and many aren’t sure they want to go there.

What about app developers? 

You may argue that app developers are tired of Google’s monopoly (and 30% cut on transactions) and would probably love to find other distribution channels outside the Play Store. 

But there are also several disadvantages. 

I’m old enough to remember a world with fragmented operating systems, especially on Windows. Software couldn’t just be downloaded and installed. You needed the right version for the right OS. And if you had an OS version that hadn’t been updated for a while, well, many developers simply didn’t make software that worked for you. All of this sounds alien now, and that’s because developers are working in a consolidated market—they need to build apps for Android, and for iOS. That’s it. In a world where there are multiple versions of Android, compatibility is going to be a nightmare. 

When Google appealed against the CCI decision, one of its arguments was that the CCI had "copy-pasted extensively from a European Commission decision”, claiming that the copying was often “word-to-word”. 

Well, I don’t know if that’s true, but there’s one interesting point here. Back in 2018, commenting on the European Commission ruling, Ben Thompson, writer of Stratechery, the technology newsletter, noted that the “the real antitrust issue is Google contractually foreclosing OEMs from selling devices with non-Google versions of Android; the only way to undo that harm in 2018, though, would be to make Google Play Services available to any Android fork.” As he pointed out, the European Commission did not order this in their ruling. 

But the CCI did. 

However, the ruling also adds a potential loophole for Google. It indicates that Google must do this for any OS that “complies with compatibility requirements of Google and Android Forks”. 

And who decides who is compatible? 

Google, of course. 

And in the past, Google has used this definition to mean anything and everything with OEMs. As one of Google’s engineers wrote in an internal email, “we are using compatibility as a club to make [OEMs] do what we want”. 

Which brings us to the final set of stakeholders. 

The users themselves. 

Who are the users asking for Android to be broken exactly? 

Depending on who you ask, breaking Android’s dominance in India can either make smartphones cheaper, or more expensive. Right now, the loudest voices celebrating this decision appear to be “home-grown” OS companies like BharOS and IndusOS—these aren’t products with a strong, cult-like user base, and they’re hoping to expand and grow as a result of this ruling. 

Then, there’s the problem of security, fraud, and malware. Today, you can download apps from the Play Store and have a degree of confidence that it isn’t a virus that’s going to delete everything from your phone. Once again, I am old enough to remember what it felt like to not have that certainty when you installed software on your computer. I don’t think it’s an era that people are nostalgic about. 

So, to summarise…

Google wants things to stay the same. 

OEMs tried changing things a decade back, but would prefer it if things just stayed how they are right now—where they just sell phones and don’t worry about other things like moderation, security testing, etc. 

App developers probably prefer not to release too many versions and variants of their apps, which’ll increase development costs, and they certainly don’t want to make decisions based on which are the top 5-10 operating system versions at the moment. 

Users probably just want an experience that’s safe, comfortable, and not too complicated. 

In fact, the more you examine the CCI decision, the more it feels like Google, the OEMs, and the users are locked in a form of equilibrium—everyone seems to get what they want right now, and I don’t think anyone has a clear incentive to shake things up too much. 

I’m not saying that there aren't companies that are worse off as a result of Google’s policies. But right now, I’m not able to picture a future where the new world is better than the current one for most of us.

Disclaimer: The Ken has been part of multiple programmes initiated by Google for news organisations globally, including, most recently, its 2022 APAC Innovation Challenge.