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Google must pay €4.1bn fine for using Android to 'block' rivals (www.bbc.co.uk)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 49 points 4 months ago (41 children)

👍🏽great stuff. BTW, stop using google products, there are enough good alternatives.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (22 children)

    Is there a good alternative for maps?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (9 children)

    It depends on what you use Google Maps for. For straight-up navigation, CoMaps is good. And I mean it's good at the navigation itself for the most part. Although sometimes when you enter in an address it thinks you're referring to the entire street. But most of my favorite restaurants and a lot of locations that have been open for a while aren't on it, which I've been happy to add. Locations that have been closed for a while are still on it, which I've been happy to delete.

    But if you use Google Maps for discovering places or looking at pictures or seeing reviews of businesses, or if you do a lot of multi-stop trips, comaps doesn't have those features even in the littlest, tiniest bit, and in that sense there is legitimately no (Foss) competitor. For instance, if you're out and about on a vacation and you're trying to find a restaurant, nope, comaps is useless for that. If you're trying to plan a trip by seeing what's around somewhere, nope, useless for that too.

    It really just focuses on navigation itself, and it does a pretty good job of that. I use it to get around when I drive.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    I really want CoMaps to be a valid choice. Its maps look are absolutely great, like Ordnance Survey Maps. But I don't normally use it for the reason I experienced again just today. I use Android Auto in the car with my GrapheneOS phone, but my phone SIM reader failed the other day, so this phone has no internet. Google Maps refused to work without internet. So I just used CoMaps again today. This is in the UK, and lack of traffic info matters. It does routes down the little country roads that are technically 60mph, but you literally can not drive that fast down them. Even with a death wish. But it plans them in assuming that speed. This results in bad routes and inaccurate times. (Though I do enjoy country roads, when used well.)

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    On the plus side, it worked without internet!

    So you're saying that you can't drive this speed limit on those roads because of the amount of traffic, right? not because of some sort of geographic feature or shape of the roads?

    Yeah...hard to imagine much of a way to get traffic updates in comaps, or any OSM project honestly. It seems like it would have to be a separately maintained service. And either way, I'm guessing the number of users that would buy into something like that just wouldn't be enough to get meaningful data most of the time. Especially since it pretty much relies on tracking people's locations, which I feel like is counter to the purpose of most people's reason for getting into those services.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    Oh it's not traffic. They are often quite empty. British country roads are narrow and often stone wall lined, or tree lined, or embankment lined, or all three. They are winding and can be quite steep. Corners can be almost back on themselves. Often there are bits down to a single lane for both directions, with passing points for someone to wait for the other direction to pass. If you encounter someone who can't reverse, you might have to reverse quite a way.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I think they do mean that the layout of the road means you can't drive at the speed limit. In the UK we have quite a lot of rural roads that are technically legally 60mph limit roads, but they are in reality very narrow, windy roads that you couldn't safely drive on at 60mph. I guess CoMaps goes by speed limit for estimates so it measures these roads as if they are 60mph but in reality you may only be able to go 20mph without dying

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah, this is a misunderstanding of speed limits by the app developer. In the UK, as far as I remember, these national speed limit roads have just never had a speed limit put on them. Things like accidents, petitions, zoning etc. is how everywhere else has gradually added speed limits.

    So although you could say “well, national speed limit on a single carriageway is 60mph” by default, that has almost nothing to do with how fast people are able drive on them. To work that out, you’d probably have to do some Waze-type stuff.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    I've very sympathetic to the developers. It's a stupidly hard problem to know what speed is likely, at what time of day, on these roads. Far far easier to just have the data of what people are actually doing on these roads. That's what Google do.

    Though if you can detect country road, you could safely assume half the speed advertised.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It's also cultural. Country roads in my country are 90 km/h and unless it's dangerous, that's what you would do on them. Which means speed is lower than posted in tight spots and curves, but not normal roads.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    That's pretty much the UK really. Only you are very rarely able to get close to the 60mph limit at all, let alone safely.

    The are more dangerous by statistics. Some random links:

    I love these roads and the British countryside, but it is definitely an eyes wide open environment. Certainly can be a shortcut, but often SatNavs without traffic info, use them when they really shouldn't. You used to often see signs telling people to ignore their SatNavs and not take this road, but it's less of a thing now as everyone just uses Google Maps. Basically, I want that traffic info as public access for all SatNavs. Not locked away.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    No, everything I have tried is worse in significant ways. Let me know if you find a genuine alternative.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Comaps is actually not bad. It's limited in info to what's on OSM, but good news is you can help by updating the spots you frequent!

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Doesn't have satellite view or bus/tram navigation

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    map apps solve the first by using outside satellite imagery services. but it has bus/tram line data, so if the app supports it then it should work. not comaps but osmand supports it

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    Osmand seems more promising but you can only search for public transport leaving right now, not in two hours or the next day

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    yeah, osm does not have schedule data, but it wouldn't be feasible to keep that info in osm, because it changes constantly.

    instead bus schedules are supposed to be in GTFS datasets, normally published by the transport company. there are already services like transitous and motis, that aggregate and sanitize these sources for consumption by apps. comaps has plens for adding support, but it's going slowly.

    https://transitous.org/

    https://github.com/motis-project/motis

    Europe has relatively good coverage with these services, but as I see it the end user apps are still not ready. also, transport providers often don't publish realtime data, even if they are collecting it for themselves.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Thanks for the info. I hope someday it gets good enough that I don't have to feel like I'm making sacrifices when switching over

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    till that happens, personally I use a local transportation app I got from the play store ages ago, but has little data mining as I see it. it works with regularly updated offline databases, so my queries and location don't get uploaded anywhere

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Yes.

    I have only one of their services that I do not see replaced any time soon. YouTube. What they do there is impressive, and very, very hard to replicate.

    Not a fan of YouTube, don't get me wrong. But I see nothing comparable out there (maybe AWS, but they just run some infrastructure orchestration).

    Google will kill YouTube long before anybody else is able to pull off the same stunt.

    Or is there a service comparable for video streaming?

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago

    Been using Newpipe/Pipepipe for the longest time, but Google has been screwing with the Youtube API so the Newpipe Extractor hasn't been working properly for the last two updates. Can't keep a video playing in the background for long, can't download OPUS audio files, playlist albums from YouTube Music are still iffy.

    Genuinely about to switch to Nebula or Peertube. Fuck Google, I hope Pichai dies.

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  • [+] 2 points 4 months ago (14 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (13 children)

    Lineage OS and Graphene OS.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    If you can. The problem there is Play Integrity API, which is used as an anti-competition measure.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Revolut was the only app I had issues with on Graphene OS. I obviously closed Revolut account and continue using Graphene.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I use Revolut with no issue on GrapheneOS. Maybe things changed.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Sure, but I'm not interested in that ecosystem at all. My desktop and my tablet don't run proprietary software. My phone runs a few apps which rely on sandboxed Play, but honestly, I don't need them badly so I could stop tomorrow.

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  • [–] 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

    Both of those are soft forks of Android, meaning they still exist at the whim of Google.

    The only real alternatives are Sailfish (proprietary userland, relies on Halium for its devices to run, which means the devices have a limited lifespan as they rely on a specific version of the Linux kernel that will eventually stop being supported), UBPorts, Droidian, etc. (also relies on Halium, but the userland is open sourcs), and mainline Linux distros like PostmarketOS (has one device that is fully functional, but is extremely slow, but device support is slowly improving over time).

    All of those alternatives also support an Android compatibility layer, presuming you don't rely on device attestation DRM like Play Integrity.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    If I can't have hardware that supports open source Android forks, then it means that I won't buy it. I can work around with dumbphones, MiFi routers with tethered Linux or BSD portables. I will not use a proprietary system outside of work, full stop.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    If i remember correctly, GNU is working on a Librephone, the progress is slow tho

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    the progress is slow tho

    Just about what we should expect from the same FSF that has been developing GNU Hurd for more than 30 years now?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    The FSF isn't really putting much effort in Hurd because they already have the Linux kernel, Stallman also said that it's not crucial to finish Hurd

    Btw, if they will even finish Hurd, i hope that they also add some standards to avoid the incredible mess that is the world of Linux distribution today, we have many packages formats that are not interoperable and other stuff

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah don't use android. Use android. And android but only for google's phones. That'll learn 'em.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Use whatever nonproprietary open/libre systems that are out there. Right now, for mobile smartdevices that's Lineage OS and Graphene OS. If you want GOS, that's currently limited to Pixels. I'm not giving a shit about proprietary vendors, it's a freedom thing. If I can buy open hardware, I will.

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