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)欧洲业务总裁马特•布里廷(Matt Brittin)上周抱怨称，欧盟(EU)官员“本可以更懂行一点”。如果谷歌没有在与手机制造商所签协议的每一页上都标注“机密”字样，或许会有利于欧盟官员更懂行。

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.

对谷歌的母公司Alphabet而言，这是其又一次在布鲁塞尔吃苦头的一周。针对在搜索结果中给予用户“被遗忘权”(right to be forgotten)、网络购物领域的竞争手段以及在欧洲缴税等问题，谷歌已经遭受过痛击，而今，它又面临欧盟对其安卓(Android)移动操作系统提出的反垄断指控。互联网搜索领域的主导地位给谷歌带来了很多烦扰。

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.

总的来说，我比较同情布里廷。正如他所言，“欧洲某些地方的……第一反应通常是保护过去不被未来碾压”。在显示购物搜索结果以及保护欧洲公民移除自己不喜欢的搜索链接的权利方面，谷歌都遭到了苛刻对待。但在安卓这个或许对谷歌未来最重要的案件上，他错了。

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.

谷歌比微软(Microsoft)更高明。比起微软在2000年代初为扩大其对台式机的垄断而采取的强力方式，谷歌对手机如何运行安卓系统施加影响的方式更不易被觉察、更处心积虑。微软通过随意所欲地在Windows系统中捆绑安装各种软件，强硬地坚持其打击所有竞争对手的权利，而谷歌则留出了一定的自由选择余地。

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.

谷歌的安卓战略是缜密构思的典范，适合作为商学院研究如何不露痕迹地进攻的经典案例。谷歌董事长埃里克•施密特(Eric Schmidt) 2011年在美国参议院委员会再三坚称，安卓系统“在移动市场的各个层面都促进了竞争”。然而，不知为何，谷歌最终依然实现了对市场的牢牢控制。

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.

值得我们研究的是，谷歌是如何做到这些的——去年，安卓占到了全球智能手机市场的81%，欧洲多数安卓版手机都安装了谷歌搜索等谷歌应用。谷歌确实下了一盘妙棋，但欧盟竞争事务专员玛格丽特•维斯特格(Margrethe Vestager)应该仔细研究一下帮助谷歌实现了这一结果的那些协议。

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，谷歌于2005年收购了安卓，那是一家小公司，设计了一款基于Linux开源软件的操作系统。如今看来似乎难以置信，但当时谷歌担心，谷歌搜索可能会被黑莓(BlackBerry)等强大的手机制造商封杀（确实是很久以前的事了，久到黑莓还很强大）。

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.

虽然谷歌一直未对使用安卓系统收费，但其开放源代码的承诺却经不起推敲。谷歌控制着软件开发，让任何想使用安卓商标的手机制造商都得遵循它的标准。任何对安卓系统进行“分支”(fork)、也就是用自己的方式使用源代码的公司——如亚马逊(Amazon)在Fire手机上尝试的那样——都无法再使用安卓这个品牌，也就丧失了这个品牌附带的市场影响力。