Comment on Google originally did not want to make any money from Android's app store

logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It is not a monopoly. They have Apple as a major competitor and Google allows sideloading within their own ecosystem.

  Apple is the one where a monopoly is starting to become a concern, especially as their app ecosystem is completely locked down.

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  • Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Real talk: sideloading is allowed on android in the most maliciously compliant way possible.

    Google restricts what other app stores can be included with devices that ship with play services

    User-sideloaded app stores can’t auto-update apps

    Play protect will flag any app that the play store has hashes of, but was installed by another app store. (Developers cannot, for example, upload a list of valid hashes for their apps to Google to prevent false positives here, effectively making other install routes appear as malware if they’re different.)

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    • n2burns@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      User-sideloaded app stores can’t auto-update apps

      I think they’ve changed this in recent versions. While I disable auto-update everywhere, Neo Store (my f-droid app) has a setting for auto-update.

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    • iopq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      My phone didn’t come with Google play services, I installed them myself

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  • logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is from wikipedia: “In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus.” As a side note, I find it really distasteful when people say, “It is not a monopoly,” because it adds nothing to the conversation, and is almost always wrong.

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    • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And tossing a Wikipedia quote at me doesn’t make what I said incorrect, either. Google allows (and has) numerous third-party app stores on their devices, some of which are completely free. The app store that Google themselves operate also has lower fees and looser restrictions than Apple’s own store. Android is also an open-source platform that allows sideloading of thirdparty applications. Most device manufacturers heavily modify it to suit their needs.

      Anecdotally: I have used Android phones for most of my smartphone-owning life and have recently been using iPhones for the past few years. Apple’s app situation is an absolute joke. It is so incredibly expensive and locked down that the app store is almost completely useless unless you are ok with paying monthly sub fees for even the most basic of apps. Apple is literally fighting a court battle with the EU right now over their app store in which the court branded it as a monopolized service.

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      • bort@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Google allows (and has) numerous third-party app stores on their devices,

        to be clear: you don’t think, that google has a monopoly on android apps?

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      • logicbomb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Google allows (and has) numerous third-party app stores on their devices, some of which are completely free. The app store that Google themselves operate also has lower fees and looser restrictions than Apple’s own store. Android is also an open-source platform that allows sideloading of thirdparty applications. Most device manufacturers heavily modify it to suit their needs.

        There is nothing about any of that which has anything to do with whether Google is using their market power to unilaterally charge more than they would in a fair market.

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  • n2burns@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It is not a monopoly. They have Apple as a major competitor

    Thank god! Where can I download the Apple App store on to my Android phone? I can’t? Then it’s irrelevant to this conversation around Google’s monopoly.

    Google allows sideloading within their own ecosystem.

    As @logicbomb points out, just because a ecosystem is open, doesn’t mean a monopoly doesn’t exist. All the other stores are pretty niche and Google controls 90%+ of the market, so by definition it is a monopoly. A monopoly on it’s own isn’t illegal or even bad, and we have to dig in further to determine that. As you pointed out, it’s pretty clear-cut that Apple has a forced monopoly where users have to actively work against the system to load apps outside of Apple’s ecosystem. While Google’s case isn’t as clear many have argued that Google’s Android has kneecapped alternative stores like Amazon’s, possibly in anti-competitive ways.

    I personally love f-droid, Google does not make it an easy process to sideload!

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    • synae@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The fact that it is called sideloading implies the monopoly. It’d just be “installing” otherwise

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    • iopq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Your device can’t run the iPhone apps, and the Apple app store is an iPhone app

      I downloaded this Lemmy client from an alternative store called IzzyOnDroid and I’m using it to type from my Android phone

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      • n2burns@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Your device can’t run the iPhone apps, and the Apple app store is an iPhone app

        I think you missed the sarcasm in my comment.

        I downloaded this Lemmy client from an alternative store called IzzyOnDroid and I’m using it to type from my Android phone

        Technically IzzyOnDroid is an f-droid repository, not the store itself.

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  • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Apple isn’t really a major competitor when android has 80% of the market.

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    • ABCDE@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It has most of the paying customers/revenue though.

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      • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I don’t know what the numbers are in that regard but that’s quite possible.

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