Well, I’ll be damned. They finally won one it sounds like.
I don’t understand. Android already allows other apps and app stores to be installed, and Epic already has an Android app store you can download and install without issue. What was the argument here?
Edit: tldr: apparently it is not good enough for Epic to have their own app store, they want to have their app in Google’s app store and still not pay them money for purchases made in the app.
Google paid off other OEMs to make Google Play the default app store (much like they paid off other companies to be the default search engine) which the court decided was anticompetitive.
Didn’t Epic lose the fight against Apple? How is Google more of a monopoly than Apple? It is incredibly easy to sideload apps on Android compared to iPhones, and there are multiple dedicated unofficial stores. These verdicts are not coherent at all between them. I understand they are two separate judges, but the law should be the same for all, not at the interpretation of whichever judge you get.
Edit: for future reference, Verge answers this very question here https://www.theverge.com/24003500/epic-v-google-loss-apple-win-fortnite-trial-monopoly
EDIT: Added source from where I read it.
From some other comment I read,it apparently was due to google paying companies to set Google’s stuff as their default. Something Apple does not (have to) do.This comment by AnalogyBreaker on the article seems to explain it pretty well:
The “this doesn’t make sense” crowd are missing the point. Android is open source, anyone can use it. Google licensed it that way to spur adoption and (in theory) not solely be responsible for its development. They could make their own closed OS, kept it exclusive to Pixel phones and have a closed app store… but we can can all guess how well that would have went… not well. So the open source route makes sense.
Because Android is freely licensed to anyone, there is a market for apps that Google theoretically doesn’t control and resides on non-google produced devices. They do control Play Services, however. That’s not open source and includes proprietary apps basically essential for an operating smart phone such as Google sign in, Maps, and of course the Play Store. Google used their market dominance in those fields to prevent third parties from launching or installing competitors to the Play Store by denying Play Services to those who didn’t comply; paying them off directly or brokering sweetheart deals. That’s appears like an obvious abuse of their market position.
If Google wanted to be treated the same as Apple, they’d have to develop phones the same way as Apple. They didn’t do that, instead they rely on third parties and those third parties have protections from Google abusing their monopoly position against them. To suggest they should be treated the same as Apple is akin to wanting to have your cake and eat it too. For the record, I’m not a fan of the Apple ruling, but there are clear differences between the two cases and seeing different outcomes shouldn’t be a surprise.
There was another comparison I read using an example if Microsoft paid stores to not sell PlayStations, but I can’t find it anymore.
I guess it makes sense that google lost here, but what doesn’t seem to make sense at all, at least for me, is how on earth apple won when on their platform you literally have no other option than to use apples stuff.
Yeah it still doesnt feel consistent to me. Apple is a large enough marketshare holder for a handheld computer and doesnt even give you an option to sideload another market place. The explanation doesnt make any more sense just because google is more open.
Someone else commented that the Google trial was jury decided, where the Apple trial was (assumingly) not.
Great! Now do Apple
It was ruled previously that Apple don’t have a large enough market share
But if they force Google to open their app store, I hope that do it for fucking everyone.
At least on Google devices you still can sideload apps, and fairly easy TBH. My biggest annoyance is the “you can’t buy stuff in apps without giving us a cut” which fucked up stuff like ebook apps etc
Huh?? They won this one but not the Apple one??
i hope this one also smashes Apple’s business to tiny pieces. All these companies are horrible horrible destructors of humanity.
This is so wild. Google allows side loading and 3rd party app stores…and that is the reason they were found guilty.
Unlike Apple, Google allows people to download apps onto phones running its Android operating system without going through its official app store, but the company strikes deals with phone manufacturers to favor Google’s official app store.
So because they strike deals to favor their store, even though they allow 3rd party stores to begin with, they’ve violated the SAA.
Meanwhile, Apple who refuses to allow competition or 3rd party app stores is sitting pretty because…well, they haven’t “favored” their own store over rival stores. BECAUSE RIVAL STORES CANT EXIST. I don’t know how you could favor your store any harder than that??
The legal shenanigans around all of this are frustrating to watch as a lay person.
thats ok with me. Wouldnt buy a ios device anyways. Exactly, because they dont allow third party apps.
About the only benefit I can personally see from this is the ability to fully integrate F-Droid as an app store in my device, with proper automatic background updates, and without requiring root solutions that void my work’s security measures for mobile devices. On the other hand, I can see Huawei, Amazon, and Epic jumping to the fray with their own app stores and system services, and maybe Google Play being far more lenient with subscription services like Spotify’s in their own App Store. Altogether, I personally loathe Epic’s approach, but appreciate the consequences of their lawsuit.
Droidify with adb or Shizuku can already do that. But it needs Android 12+. Then it can do unattended updates.
Problem is, ADB requires enabling developer mode, and guess what - my company also blocks access to devices with developer mode on! (Also, the fact that Shizuku doesn’t work correctly over mobile because it requires stable Wi-Fi to fake a wireless debug connection doesn’t help matters.)
Shizuku only requires WiFi once per boot. But it also needs ADB, so it sadly won’t work for your company phone.
I think the Session Installer mode allows updates without a dialog for apps already installed by Droidify without dev mode or adb.
While I understand the concern over the single appstore monopoly that we have on any device, I think it’s worth remembering what ecosystem android and IOS came into.
The old multimedia phones that were sold in the mid 00s were effectively “smart”. Many of them ran java and you could install programs, and freely install ringtones, and browsers that actually worked like opera mini/mobile. The thing is you couldnt by default. At least not in the US. The devices were locked down and everything you did went through the carrier’s store. And US telecom services are some of the greediest and scummiest companies out there so you couldnt even use your own mp3 files as a ringtone.
Apple combated this with their closed off ecosystem, but android did face issues with fragmentation in the early days and needed a way to prevent the telecoms branded phones from stinking up the ecosystem. They did this by leveraging the play services and play store. From the playstore they can also since mainline release various peacemeal updates which helps resolve their other issue with fragmentation and thats android device being abandoned.
Sure enough you can still release your own version of android without it, amazon’s tablets and tv sticks do pretty well.
That said I do think it’s a good to help people move past the default and open up the platforms more, I just wish it would apply to all smart devices,
Thanks, ChatGPT.
I don’t think so
Absolutely worth the downvotes. It is a paragraph worth of nothing. Literally nothing of value or relevance added to the thread.
Well thats just mean for no particular reason.
Well thats just mean for no particular reason.
Your comment was a nonsensical history lesson, and didn’t serve the current conversation of the topic being discussed.
A little more tact could bring your comments a long way, my friend.
Nah, call them as you see them. No need to F around when it comes to people polluting the Internet.
Absolutely worth the downvotes. It is a paragraph worth of nothing. Literally nothing of value or relevance added to the thread.
Agree. Smells like a ChatGPT flavored comment.
Thanks, ChatGPT.
I don’t think so
Sure smells like it.
Nobody was asking for a history lesson of the past that doesn’t draw any real conclusion to the current situation, at the end of the comment.
Epic never sued for monetary damages; it 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
This seems like a poor choice instead of monetary damages. I have the Epic
Games Launcherfree game downloader for games I forget I own. I’m very unlikely to start using Epic’s services over Google’s.I’d have taken the money and run
I’d have taken the money and run
That would have been penny wise, and pound foolish.
Sometimes it’s okay to swing for the fences, even if you end up missing, it’s usually worth the try.
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You don’t know what you’re talking about do you.
Computers don’t come with steam automatically installed, do they? So it’s not in any actual sense of the word of monopoly.
You are been downvoted because your comment is idiotic.
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Steam has several competitors, they all just suck, most of all EGS.
You mean like Play Store?
No, not even a little.
What? Oh FFS. Context. Yes, Play Store has competitors, so yes absolutely a lot.
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but when he gets all the properties for himself
Then he has no competitors.
Look what Microsoft and google and hundreds of other companies did to become Monopoly.
What exactly did they do that Steam has also done?
Steam does nothing to prevent others from competing, to my knowledge, other than just being the best at what they do.
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If you’re thinking steam isn’t a monopoly then why is it nearly impossible to create a gaming platform that competes with these giants?
Depends on what you mean by “monopoly”. In the strictest sense it means they have zero competition (hence the prefix “mono”,meaning one), which is clearly untrue because we have Epic, GoG, Origin, Battlenet, Meta, etc. etc.
In the case of Google, it means they take anticompetitive measures. I’ve asked you what anticompetitive measures Valve takes but you don’t seem to want to provide an answer. Why is that?
If you mean “big business that other companies have trouble competing with”, that does not fit any definition of a “monopoly”.
It’s not “impossible” at all. It is very difficult because you’re fighting established brands that are not regional, and have decades of experience and brand recognition on you. Competing with them would require a fuckton of money and also some sort of novel features to bring to the market that they’re not. These are not anticompetitive measures, it’s just effective business.
How would you go about even trying to rectify that? Would you force Valve to give money and promotion to a competing service? Or would you just go full CCP and ban them entirely in favor of the state-sponsored Bytedance option?
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If I wanted to start a power grid company, I would need a fuckton of money as well. It’s called a natural monopoly.
That’s simply not what a monopoly is. You’re confused.
A monopoly is when there’s only a single energy company available, which is not the case here.
Tell me why no one is trying to overtake steam and why companies that actually try, are being flushed.
I already have. Lots of companies are doing that right now, but they all suck. I mean GoG is great as a simple game store but most publishers are not willing to sell without DRM and their store is mostly nothing more than just a store, where Steam is so much more than that.
Epic has a long history of anti-consumer behavior that has earned them a bad reputation. They’re also partially owned by the CCP.
You mean nuking the only major contributor who’s bringing games into linux ?
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Linux is open source, why won’t you do it yourself 😂😂😂
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Ironic considering you’re supposedly against market monopolies
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