Google sued for secret deals that may have increased the cost of Android phones

>driving up the cost of Android phones

The last one I ordered from Hong Kong cost about 105 €, VAT inclusive, and it can do more that the equivalent iPhone at about 450 € !!! What's this about ?

Quoting:A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses Google of strong-arming device manufacturers into making its search engine the default on Android devices, driving up the cost of those devices and hurting consumers.

This is the type of thing I am thinking of: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2011111122291296&query=htc+microsoft+android

What about the cost of Microsoft's secret deals with device makers that use Android? Why should Microsoft make money from Android devices?

Quoting:Consumers, the lawsuit contends, “do not know how to switch, nor will they go to the trouble of switching, the default search engine on their devices.

Maybe it's just me but if the user of a smartphone isn't smart enough to know how to do that they shouldn't have a smartphone.

>they shouldn't have a smartphone

I tend to think there should be like a car driving license before one could use any computing device, but I quickly dismiss that extreme idea.

>making its search engine the default on Android devices

Did they expect that Google would advise them to use Bing ? Do they expect MS to advise OEMs to install OpenOffice on their devices ?

>Why should Microsoft make money from Android devices? Google may one day investigate replacing the linux kernel by a BSD one, I'm sure they have enough technical resources to do so, to free Android from any MS claims.