It’s because greed is a one way street to the greedy.
Comment on Google loses app store antitrust appeal, must make sweeping changes to Play Store
gray@pawb.social 7 months agoThe case was that Google paid apps to not be on competing stores and only be on the Play store. It’s not a lawsuit around Android sideloading.
Still ironic though that Epic games is the main proponent, but yet they do the exact same thing on their store paying for exclusives.
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Zak@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The tactic only becomes illegal when it confers the ability to exclude competitors from the market.
Google has successfully excluded all meaningful competitors from the Android app distribution market. Even big companies like Samsung and Amazon have been unable to operate a profitable app store. Epic is not likely to exclude competitors from the game store market in the near future.
aphonefriend@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
Give em a minute. They just got their lube jar opened.
Zak@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh, no doubt they would if they could. I’m not saying they’re more ethical than Google; I’m saying they’re less powerful than Google.
namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 7 months ago
You’re probably right in a legal sense, but I think that’s a bit stupid. It’s very difficult to draw a line that delineates between when a company has the ability to exclude competitors or not. It requires a lot of costly legal battles and a length appeal process to prove, and nobody will create that court case without significant financial means to be able to prove all of it. And if the court rules against you, all of that time, money and effort achieved nothing and just leaves you with a heavily damaged reputation.
From a practical perspective, it sounds like a very weak legal framework.