> Fear of anti-competition lawsuits and complaints.
They could just create an open source variant that suddenly shows up top when people search for QR or barcode scanner. It would be in their best interest, and it would not violate any anti-competition laws, nobody can demand to see how these apps are ranked I guess?
> How are they going to do this without generating more criticism?
From the people who make those crummy apps; criticism surely cannot hurt Google all that much?
> But then you’d have to get an OS update to heaps of phones.
That's not a viable option, this requires tons of work from OEM's that Google would have to pay for. I've rarely ever gotten any OS updates at all on Android - apart from my latest phone. But I think the only reason I get OS updates now is due to the fact that Nokia just ships stock Android under the "android_one" brand.
They could just create an open source variant that suddenly shows up top when people search for QR or barcode scanner. It would be in their best interest, and it would not violate any anti-competition laws, nobody can demand to see how these apps are ranked I guess?