歐盟能擊敗谷歌的安卓策略嗎
Matt Brittin, president of Google’s European operations, complained this week that EU officials “could be better informed than they are”. It might help if Google did not write “confidential” on every page of its contracts with mobile phonemakers.
谷歌(Google)歐洲業務總裁馬特•布里廷(Matt Brittin)上週抱怨稱，歐盟(EU)官員“本可以更懂行一點”。如果谷歌沒有在與手機制造商所籤協議的每一頁上都標註“機密”字樣，或許會有利於歐盟官員更懂行。
It is another tough week in Brussels for Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Having been assailed over the “right to be forgotten” in search results, how it competes in onLine shopping and the tax it pays in Europe, it faces EU antitrust charges over its Android mobile software. With dominance of internet search comes a lot of bother.
對谷歌的母公司Alphabet而言，這是其又一次在布魯塞爾吃苦頭的一週。針對在搜索結果中給予用戶“被遺忘權”(right to be forgotten)、網絡購物領域的競爭手段以及在歐洲繳稅等問題，谷歌已經遭受過痛擊，而今，它又面臨歐盟對其安卓(Android)移動操作系統提出的反壟斷指控。互聯網搜索領域的主導地位給谷歌帶來了很多煩擾。
In general, I sympathise with Mr Brittin. There are, as he says, “some places in Europe . . . where the first inclination is to protect the past from the future”. It is being harshly treated over how it displays shopping results and the right of European citizens to eliminate search links they dislike. But on Android — perhaps the most important case for Google’s future — he is wrong.
總的來說，我比較同情布里廷。正如他所言，“歐洲某些地方的……第一反應通常是保護過去不被未來碾壓”。在顯示購物搜索結果以及保護歐洲公民移除自己不喜歡的搜索鏈接的權利方面，谷歌都遭到了苛刻對待。但在安卓這個或許對谷歌未來最重要的案件上，他錯了。
Google is Microsoft light. The way that it has exerted influence over how mobile phones run on Android is subtler and more calculated than Microsoft’s brute force approach to broadening its desktop monopoly in the early 2000s. While Microsoft insisted on its right to repel all competitors by packing what it felt like into Windows, Google has left open a degree of choice.
谷歌比微軟(Microsoft)更高明。比起微軟在2000年代初爲擴大其對臺式機的壟斷而採取的強力方式，谷歌對手機如何運行安卓系統施加影響的方式更不易被覺察、更處心積慮。微軟通過隨意所欲地在Windows系統中捆綁安裝各種軟件，強硬地堅持其打擊所有競爭對手的權利，而谷歌則留出了一定的自由選擇餘地。
Google’s strategy for Android has been a masterpiece of craftiness, a case fit for a business school study of how to advance without appearing to attack. Android “fosters competition at every level of the mobile market”, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, insisted repeatedly at a Senate committee in 2011. Yet, somehow, Google still ended up firmly in control.
谷歌的安卓戰略是縝密構思的典範，適合作爲商學院研究如何不露痕跡地進攻的經典案例。谷歌董事長埃裏克•施密特(Eric Schmidt) 2011年在美國參議院委員會再三堅稱，安卓系統“在移動市場的各個層面都促進了競爭”。然而，不知爲何，谷歌最終依然實現了對市場的牢牢控制。
It is worth examining how Google did this — how Android ended up with 81 per cent of the global smartphone market last year, while Google applications such as search were loaded on most of Europe’s Android phones. It was quite a coup but Margrethe Vestager, EU competition commissioner, should fillet the deals that helped to enable it.
值得我們研究的是，谷歌是如何做到這些的——去年，安卓佔到了全球智能手機市場的81%，歐洲多數安卓版手機都安裝了谷歌搜索等谷歌應用。谷歌確實下了一盤妙棋，但歐盟競爭事務專員瑪格麗特•維斯特格(Margrethe Vestager)應該仔細研究一下幫助谷歌實現了這一結果的那些協議。
First, in 2005, Google acquired Android, a small company making an operating system based on Linux open source software. It seems implausible now but it worried at the time that its search franchise could be locked out of mobile by powerful phonemakers such as BlackBerry (it was long ago).
首先，谷歌於2005年收購了安卓，那是一家小公司，設計了一款基於Linux開源軟件的操作系統。如今看來似乎難以置信，但當時谷歌擔心，谷歌搜索可能會被黑莓(BlackBerry)等強大的手機制造商封殺（確實是很久以前的事了，久到黑莓還很強大）。
Although Google kept Android free, its claim to being open source is tenuous. Google controls software development and makes any phone maker that wants to use the Android trademark stick to its standards. Any company that “forks” Android, as Amazon did with the Fire phone — using the source code in its own way — loses the brand and the marketing clout that comes with it.
雖然谷歌一直未對使用安卓系統收費，但其開放源代碼的承諾卻經不起推敲。谷歌控制着軟件開發，讓任何想使用安卓商標的手機制造商都得遵循它的標準。任何對安卓系統進行“分支”(fork)、也就是用自己的方式使用源代碼的公司——如亞馬遜(Amazon)在Fire手機上嘗試的那樣——都無法再使用安卓這個品牌，也就喪失了這個品牌附帶的市場影響力。
