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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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Huh?? They won this one but not the Apple one??
Different case. This hung on the anti-competitive nature of Google’s backroom deals with big players. That’s what fucked Google. Different rules for different developers.
Apple: this is our system and we've always been upfront about it. We're dictators of our ecosystem. You can't compel us to open up. Yes there's less customer choice, but we have a right to say how our own system is run, and we've always made that clear to everybody. Forcing us to open up our system is like forcing Nintendo to allow Microsoft games on the Switch, bypassing paying Nintendo anything.
The courts say fair enough, that's correct.
Google: we claim to have an open ecosystem, but actually we don't. We're using our market position to impose terms on phone makers, if they're big like Samsung we might give them permission to have their own app store, with certain concessions. We have backroom deals not to take revenue from some large companies, but to take it from others. We have power over OEMs and we use it to further consolidate our monopoly. They will agree to our terms because they have no other choice than to comply.
The courts say whoa that seems like an abuse of your dominant market position.
You're looking at it from the perspective of user choice. That's not what the courts care about, they care about the law. The Google case was always more likely to be a win for Epic, despite Reddit and Lemmy not realising it.
The thing here is that you don't have to use play billing for in app purchases outside of the play store. The biggest example of this is Fire tablets, where you don't even have the option of play billing on your app even if you wanted it, and I'm sure Huawei isn't using play billing either. Let alone the fact you can sideload apps that have their own verification methods. When I bought gravitybox it was verified based on your PayPal invoice #. The secret revenue sharing, while "designed to keep apps down", is nothing more than an incentive to stay on their billing platform. If Epic isn't offered that deal they're still free to make deals with other app stores.
Meanwhile on camp Apple, there are no alternative vendors using different stores and you're unable to sideload apps without a developer account. There is no alternative to Apple's billing if you want to charge for something inside an app, which is precisely what Epic did to get banned in the first place.
I 100% the verdict to be appealed by Google. I'm not a big fan of Google as a company, but when they've specifically made it possible for customers to have the ability to sideload while Apple doesn't and they get spat in the face for it, why would they continue to make pro-consumer choices?
Google made back room deals with other development firms to help suppress the use of other app stores.
That's the issue here. The collusion aspect.
It's very different than Apple.
* Allegedly.
What exactly is evidence that Google has suppressed other stores, and in what manner ? If you consider say, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo etc - all have their own stores in parallel to the Play Store. And on all/other phones, you're free sideload any third-party app store.
Taking my Samsung phone as an example, I don't see the Play Store being promoted any more prominently than the Galaxy Store, nor do I see any blockers for using the Galaxy Store. I believe this is the same for other OEMs as well who bundle their own stores.
So tell me, where exactly is the suppression here?
While I agree, it seems like antitrust lawsuits gain a lot more ground if the defendant was paying people to switch from competitors which is what got Google here.
And they probably won’t.
iOS is only on Apple devices, therefore it’s allowed to have a monopoly or something.
Much like Nintendo’s allowed to have a monopoly on Switch systems and games even though the Steam Deck exists with the ability to install a huge amount of games.
i hope this one also smashes Apple's business to tiny pieces. All these companies are horrible horrible destructors of humanity.
I'm not sure how them losing a part of their potential revenue stream does that...
It's not as if Google or Apple rely soley on IAPs for revenue.