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Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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The only thing we've learned today is that Apple's lawyers are far better than Google's...
Yeah... How the fuck is Google action here "monopolistic" and Apple literally refusing to let anyone in at all somehow isn't? What a joke.
Because iOS is Apple's OS on Apple's hardware. The court ruled they could do what they want. Android is not Google's OS, even if it's mostly theirs, and they certainly have no control over the hardware apart from Pixels.
Competition is possible on Android in a way it isn't on iOS. Google was being anti-competitive in a space where others can compete, Apple was just being a bully in their own backyard.
That's a really bad way to look at it if that's really what it boils down to.
They are unfortunately correct. Its the same sort of argument that got Microsoft. If they don't allow competition from the start its fine if they do and work to undermine that competition then its by definition anti competitive and monopolistic. Crazy I know.
But what exactly did they do though? Several OEMs have their own app stores (Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo etc) and they're not restricted in any way, nor is the Play Store promoted over their native app stores on those devices. Finally, you're free to download any app store (F-Droid, Aurora, Apptoide) etc on pretty much every Android phone. So what exactly is anti-competitive here?
Google actually forces it's installation if you want to use the android trademark. It'd probably be pretty hard to market "MotorolaOS"
I don't see the issue here. Is it really that bad to bundle your own apps in your own OS? Also, even though they bundle the store, it's not like they're forcing you to use it, nor is it prominently promoted over any other native stores.
I think the issue could be that it's forcing the companies to include it, even if the company can include alternatives as well or when user can just ignore it. Not a lawyer, but back when Apple was in the courts I heard social media lawyers saying that Google actually had a worse prospect because when you force your competitors (other non-google phone makers that use Android forks) to bundle G Play/Services it can be considered "tying". Then if a company just uses the GPL code without following the contractual rules like that they can't advertise Android and it it could hurt their market share.
Just spitballing, but maybe the Google play services that lots of apps require to run? So even if you have a third party store you likely still need those services that also lump in a bunch of other stuff for Google's benefit.
You don't need to use the Google Play Services at all. Developers only use it because it's convenient, but you're not forced to use it. A lot of users here on Lemmy for example (myself included) use alt stores like F-Droid, Droid-ify etc without any issues.
Without FCM, push notifications become much harder due to the battery saving optimizations each device manufacturer uses. So not a need per se, but it makes your life MUCH harder
There are alternatives. Pushy is pretty easy to use, and it's not that hard to allow it to run in the background. See: https://support.pushy.me/hc/en-us/articles/360043423332-How-can-I-send-notifications-to-Android-devices-in-Doze-power-saving-mode-
Of course, an OEM may do aggressive app killing where the above may not work (Huawei is notorious for this), but that is an OEM-specific issue that applies to all apps in general, so as a developer it's up to you whether you want to test against, or even support such OEMs.
That's so stupid.
It's so frustrating seeing this question constantly in all these threads when this has been explained.
iOS is locked down. It is not an open, competitive market. That in itself is not against the law, and it won't be considered an anti-trust issue until the market share grows.
Android is not locked down, which means it's a competitive marketplace.
Google was not doing the same thing as Apple. Google was using shady deals to make Android less competitive. iOS was never competitive to begin with.
Apple got off on a technicality, basically.
What Apple does is shitty and deserves regulating, but apparently we have a ways to go before we reach the EU's level of understanding on this.
I've read your comment as well as a bunch of articles and I still don't understand it. From the article: "[Epic] wants the court to tell Google that every app developer has total freedom to introduce its own app stores and its own billing systems on Android". My Samsung phones comes with two completely different app stores out of the box, the Google Play one and the Samsung Galaxy one. The latter offers the Epic Games Store. I really cannot wrap my head around why in this specific case Google is being anti competitive.
To get access to the Play Store, OEMs have to bundle a bunch of additional apps and services. That I get for being anti competitive but that's not what Epic's case was about. They didn't sue about their web search being disadvantaged by the Google Search bar mandate. They didn't sue because they made a web browser nobody is using because of the Chrome mandate. They sued and apparently argued successfully that they cannot get their store onto Android phones and yet, as stated, my phone already comes with two app stores and EGS is listed in the second one.