I think you might want to include the deception Fairsearch is trying to pull
off. Android itself is free for anyone to use, modify and redistribute. The
Google Play Store, Google Maps and so on, are not. They aren't part of Android,
they're proprietary apps belonging to Google that run on top of Android.
To get the right to redistribute them, you need to have a contract with Google
allowing you to and you have to agree to Google's terms to get them to agree to
that contract. Ditto for using Google's trademarks like their name on your
product. That's hardly a novel situation. But Fairsearch wants to confuse the
issue by conflating including those proprietary apps and using Google's
trademarks with using Android itself. But saying "Google won't let us include
Google Maps unless we make it the primary map provider app on our handset.", or
"Google won't let us use their trademarked logo on our device unless we make
their services the primary ones.", would get them laughed out of the office. So
they make their claims about Android, hoping you'll miss them substituting the
phone OS for the applications that run on that OS.
Just saying "They're
wrong." may be a strong argument to us who know what's going on, but "They're
pulling a fast one, and here's where they palmed that card on you." will make
more of an impression on the bureaucrats involved. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|