A Google-Android breakup would be terrible for my Miami app company | Opinion

Following an August court ruling that deemed Google’s search business a monopoly, the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed a number of “structural remedies” to correct the situation.

The DOJ’s chief recommendation? Forcing Google and Android to split into separate companies.

I’m no antitrust expert, and I have no idea if Google engaged in anti-competitive online search behavior. But as chief operating officer of Miami-based Visual Blasters, a small, successful app company, I am an expert in Android’s functionality and value to app developers — and I’m alarmed by the potential consequences of the DOJ’s proposed Google-Android breakup.

Android is the Google-made and -maintained operating system that ensures different manufacturers’ smartphones and devices work. It is not, as people often think, a type of phone.

Android’s underlying code is public, which makes it easy for entrepreneurial developers to create and distribute apps for Android-powered devices. DOJ officials’ assumption that a standalone Android would function as well as it does now suggests a failure to understand how the app ecosystem works — and why changes to the ecosystem would be particularly damaging to small app developers like me.

My company, which I founded with my two brothers after emigrating from Argentina to the U.S., makes multimedia mobile apps.

Our most popular offering lets people create animated movies in minutes. With a few clicks and minimal expense, we could put our app in the Google and Apple app stores, where potential customers could view and securely purchase it. We currently have more than 6 million unique, active monthly users.

So, how would businesses like mine be impacted if Google is forced to spin off Android? I can’t predict the future, but I’m concerned about a number of serious potential problems.

First, if Android were forced to operate as a standalone company, it would be hard to see how it would have the resources to continue operating as an open-source platform. Google constantly updates Android’s code so new apps perform well on users’ devices.

Importantly, it regularly makes changes to ensure people’s security and privacy. That’s a critical issue for us since most of our users are under 18, and we serve a number of schools. How could an independent Android continue innovating and upgrading if it remained free and open-source?

If Android became closed-source, like Apple’s iOS, developers would face a range of new challenges. Significantly, we’d likely lose access to Android’s technical support. That would entail huge losses of time, money, and critical know-how, because Android’s experts often walk us through the underlying Android code line by line to help us troubleshoot. It’s far more difficult to manage compatibility and updates with iOS, and I fear a closed-source Android would be equally challenging and costly to navigate.

Lastly, and most importantly, I’m concerned the breakup will lead to an ecosystem populated by dozens of operating systems, requiring developers to create different app versions for each one. You might think all that competition would be good for developers, but I know from experience that that’s not the case. In China, where Android doesn’t operate, each device maker has its operating system.

It’s far harder to grow an app business when you’re dealing with scores of operating systems rather than just a few trusted ones, as we currently do here in the U.S. More app companies would mean far higher development and marketing costs, which would be crippling to thousands of small businesses like ours and stifle countless startups.

Is Google perfect? Definitely not. Did the court make the right ruling in the DOJ Search case? I don’t know. Is the solution to blow up the Android ecosystem? That seems like a totally disproportionate response that’s tailor-made to harm consumers and devastate thousands of small app businesses like mine.

I urge the DOJ and the judge overseeing the case to seek a less destructive “remedy.”

Adri Ofman is the chief operating officer of Miami-based Visual Blasters, maker of the animation app FlipaClip. The app is available on Android and iOS-powered mobile devices.

This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 6:51 AM.