It took a vitriolic blog post from Nextcloud, and a few articles in the trade press, for Google to finally offer to restore the access denied to thisGerman company on Android. This Thursday, May 15, the European start-up, which offers "open source alternatives to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365", announced on its website that Google had finally "offered to restore the authorization (denied for months, Editor's note), which will allow our users to regain the lost functionality." A relief for the company, which two days earlier had accused Google of "clearly anti-competitive behavior" towards it. The German company, which advocates "privacy and digital sovereignty," was then forced to offer "fewer features than Google Drive" because of Google, the owner of the Android operating system, Frank Karlitschek, founder and head of the company, lamented on Tuesday, May 13, on his LinkedIn account. The European company with 140 employees, which tells us it has 834,000 users on Android, accused the American giant of nothing less than abusing its dominant position. Contacted by 01net.com, Google had not responded to our request for comment at the time of publication of this article.
The new version of the application rejected for months by Google
The problems apparently began last summer, reported Christoph Weissthaner, head of communications for the European company, whom we met on Wednesday, May 14. Since 2016, their users have been able to use Nextcloud to store their files. They can notably synchronize their data (photos, videos, text files, PDFs, etc.) from their Android or Apple (iOS) smartphone to this application.
If everything went well until last year, the problems began in mid-2024. While improvements were made to the application on Android, "as has been done many times for updates, the new version of the application was this time rejected by the American giant, on the pretext that "it was no longer compliant with their regulations"," the communications manager explained to us. "Security reasons" had been cited, according to the start-up. As a result, access to download files from the device, which Nextcloud had had for years according to the company, was revoked. However, this access is essential: it is what allows the application to read, write files, and synchronize them on Nextcloud.
This was followed by several months of conversations, appeals, and back-and-forth between the startup and Google support until this Thursday, May 15, early afternoon, explains the German company.On the one hand, the American company asked the startup to use "a more privacy-friendly replacement," citing Storage Access Framework (SAF) or the MediaStore API. On the other hand, Nextcloud explained that it offers privacy-friendly storage spaces. In return, "we only received "copy and paste"," generic responses, Christoph Weissthaner lamented on Wednesday, May 14. For the start-up, it was then impossible to contact anyone else within Google to explain the situation... until early Thursday morning.
A precedent with Microsoft: the case, brought to court, has not moved for 4 years
Beyond a technical support issue that reportedly lasted several months, Nextcloud deplored yet another case of a small company deliberately paralyzed by a tech giant, which favors its own services and puts obstacles in the way of competing (European) companies. Apparently, the situation ultimately lasted only a few months. This is not Nextcloud's first standoff with a digital giant. Already in 2021, the company, along with around thirty other companies, sued Microsoft for unfair competition. And on this issue, nothing has changed in four years, lamented the communications officer, who described the application of European regulations and the much too slow legal actions against the digital giants. "Take the browser conflict between Netscape and Microsoft. Netscape won in the end, but by the time they won, they had been driven out of the market," he lamented. And that's precisely what this company wanted to avoid: being excluded from the market. While waiting for a possible reaction from Google, which finally arrived this Thursday, the Android application was running at reduced speed. To continue offering the latter, the application had to limit the type of files that could be saved on Nextcloud – namely, audio and video files. This limitation had sparked numerous complaints from users, the communications manager told us, providing links to forums.
"Big tech companies are afraid that small players like Nextcloud will disrupt them, just as they have disrupted other companies. So they try to close the door," Nextcloud wrote in its blog post. The door finally seems to have reopened, in the face of outcry from users and the small startup. This Thursday, May 15, early in the afternoon, the company announced "good news." Google will restore denied access. And "a final update with all features restored" is underway. Things should return to normal early next week.
0 Comments