Google’s rules for Android partners are unlawful, says Harvard professor.

Google’s claims in regards to the openness of Android has been called into question by Harvard Business School associate professor Benjamin Edelman, who asserts that the company’s Mobile Application Distribution Agreement suppresses competition and harms consumers.

In 2010, Andy Rubin, then head of Android, tweeted his definition of open: the commands essential to fetch the Android source code from its online repository and compile it. While which will qualify as open within the context of open-source software, it only refers to a part of Android, and it fails to explain contractual terms that Google imposes on companies looking to distribute Google’s popular mobile applications on Android hardware.

“If you want to obtain key mobile apps, including Google’s own Search, Maps, and YouTube, manufacturers must conform to install each of the apps Google specifies, with the prominence Google requires, including setting these apps as default where Google instructs,” Edelman explained in an internet post.

Such requirements run contrary to statements in regards to the openness of Android which have been made by Google leaders like executive chairman Eric Schmidt and senior VP Jonathan Rosenberg, insisted Edelman.

[Can Android help Nokia regain its mojo? Learn Why Nokia Plans An Android Phone.]

Edelman, who acknowledges having served as a specialist for Google competitors like Microsoft, usually in regards to web advertising fraud, said in an email that while it is common to take advantage of contracts to constrain partners, he believes Google’s behavior is illegal and will be reviewed by regulators.

Edelman said that Google holds a dominant position within the smartphone market and that the limitations it imposes on Android hardware makers haven’t any plausible procompetitive purpose. And he said that Google’s reliance on nondisclosure agreements to maintain contract terms out of the general public eye and its “arguably misleading statements to the general public” represent an effort to suppress a competitive response.

“What proper business objective, instead of blocking competition, is advanced by disallowing a phone manufacturer from installing just (say) YouTube, but not Google Maps, if the manufacturer so chooses?” Edelman said in an email. “Or from installing Google Play and Google Maps, but DuckDuckGo for search? Some users might prefer this, and a few manufacturers will need to tailor their offerings accordingly. Google prevents it. i do not believe we’d see many actions of similar brazenness from many tech companies.”

Google didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Edelman’s argument depends on a selected definition of the relevant market, which he defines as “the market for operating systems to install onto smartphones.” The two primary operating systems in this market are Android and Windows Phone, both of which are available to third-party phone makers. But Apple’s iOS is not part of this market, because it’s not available to other companies. If it were, the dominance of Android would be less pronounced (80% compared to 97%, per IDC figures, if 2013’s fourth quarter shipment volumes of Android and Windows Phone together define the whole market), though still substantial.

While Edelman suggested few tech companies have engaged in comparably brazen anticompetitive behavior, both Apple and Microsoft have participated in something of the sort. In Microsoft’s case, it wbecause the company’s try to eliminate the competing Netscape browser and its API restrictions, documented within the 1998 US antitrust case and similar European Union proceedings. Microsoft, as a result of its EU settlement, until later this year must display a browser choice screen in Windows to advertise competition.

Apple last year was found guilty of e-book price fixing and remains under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor. In 2010, Apple, which includes Google, Intel, Adobe, Intuit, and Pixar, settled a Department of Justice lawsuit that claimed the firms made secret no-poaching agreements that “diminished competition to the detriment of affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to raised job opportunities.”

And Apple has taken other actions which, while not subject to legal challenge and offering plausible consumer benefits, nonetheless constrain competition. The company’s iOS developer terms of service agreement ruled out the opportunity of Adobe Flash and Oracle/Sun Java on iOS devices. In 2010, Apple refused to approve the Google Voice app because “apparently to change the iPhone’s distinctive user experience.” (Facing FCC scrutiny, Apple negotiated with Google and subsequently approved the app.) And Apple limits access to its JIT-enabled JavaScript engine to its own mobile Safari browser, presumably for security reasons, though it gains a browsing speed advantage therefore.

Tech companies say they welcome competition, but they do everything they could to shield themselves from it.

Google, meanwhile, just agreed to settle one in every of three European Commission (EC) inquiries into possible anticompetitive behavior. The corporate has committed to creating changes to its search business whilst the EC continues to seem into its Android business and how its Motorola Mobility unit, that’s being sold to Lenovo, sought injunctions in response to industry-standard patents.

If EU regulators come to share Edelman’s view that Google’s linkage of its services harms customers and competitors, Google won’t settle the EC’s Android inquiry as easily because it handled challenges to its search business operations.

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Thomas Claburn have been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications comparable to New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv, having earned a not particularly useful … View Full Bio

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