But Epic v. Google turned out to be a very different case. It hinged on secret revenue sharing deals between Google, smartphone makers, and big game developers, ones that Google execs internally believed were designed to keep rival app stores down. It showed that Google was running scared of Epic specifically. And it was all decided by a jury, unlike the Apple ruling.
Comment on Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
I don’t understand. Android already allows other apps and app stores to be installed. What was the argument here?
Aatube@kbin.social 6 months ago
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
I read that but they don’t expand at all on how they’re doing that. I can buy, download and install games from EGS right now on my Android phone…
I can also buy things from Amazon or any other online store from my browser without Google Play.
Aatube@kbin.social 6 months ago
They obviously aren't forcing everyone to use Google billing, but it seems like an antitrust case gains a lot more ground if the accused pays money to quite a bit of people to prevent them from using competitors.
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Phone makers weren’t allowed to include other app stores by default
Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The Galaxy store app on my phone says otherwise.
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
The Galaxy Store was a special exception made for Samsung. Generally, Google is pretty “persuasive” about being the only pre-installed app store on the phone.
ExLisper@linux.community 6 months ago
What’s in the contract between Google and Samsung? What exactly are the conditions for including both stores? Can any phone manufacturer get the same deal? What are the requirements for licensing Android? What number of phones on the market don’t include Play Store by default? What % of applications are only in Play Store?
Monopoly is not about exceptions but about market control. Until you know what companies have to do to use Android and function on the market you can’t really tell if it’s monopoly or not.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I have to imagine the contract that Samsung has is “We’re Samsung. We basically ARE Korean technology. We can build our own mobile OS if we want to and cut you out entirely. That’s a lot of spying on customers you wouldn’t get to do. We get our own app store or we walk. Oh look, LG just exited the smart phone market. Do what must be done.”
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
What’s in the contract between Google and Samsung?
Samsung uses Google’s OS (or a fork of it anyway). One of the conditions in the ToS of using that for commercial purposes is that you have to have a certain number of Google apps and services installed and not removable.
Voyajer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Does the Amazon store, Galaxy Store, AppGallery, Mi GetApps, and AOPPO app market not exist?
Laticauda@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Are those all on the phone by default?
icedterminal@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I can’t speak for the others, but the Samsung Galaxy Store does come pre-installed. However, Google paid Samsung for the Play Store to be the default action for app installs. So you get both stores and can pick which one you want.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Amazon store and Galaxy store are absolutely installed by default on many devices.
aidan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Mi app store is, and on Chinese models is the only one.
bigFab@lemmy.world 6 months ago
On top of what Aatube says about secret unfair deals, Google’s Play Store is necessary to run essential social services. In my case I need it to download my banking app and to sign into my university’s online studies.
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Even something as simp⁶le as the Wikipedia app checks to see if Google Play Services is installed and running before it’ll let you use it.
tabular@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Needing an app to sign into uni Jesus fucking hell. Bet it’s propriety.
Cavemanfreak@lemm.ee 6 months ago
But that won’t necessarily change with this ruling right? Your government doesn’t need to change how their apps function because of this.
bigFab@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I really hope you’r wrong on that. Anyways, it’s a pleasure to see Google bleeding.
Rose@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“Impairment means something is there, it’s being used, it just isn’t as good. Prevented means you shut it down.”
Epic’s expert Bernheim argues that Google’s expert Gentzkow “ignores four critical aspects of Google’s conduct,” including:
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Google impairs competition without preventing it entirely
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Google’s conduct targets comeptition as it emerges
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Google is dominant
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Google shares its Play profits with its competitors
“When push came to shove, he talked about whether competition is prevented” rather than impaired, says Bernheim.
The upshot of that: Bernheim believes Epic doesn’t need to prove Google actually blocked competition entirely. In his opinion (for Epic), Epic only needs to show there were no good alternatives to Google Play and Google Play Billing. It doesn’t need to show there were no alternatives at all.
For example, says Bernheim, Gentzkow presented a chart titled “Was Fortnite Blocked?” showing that revenue tanked on Google Play after the app was kicked off the store, but didn’t tank for Android phones that got Fortnite a different way.
But “If off-Google Play was a good substitute for Google Play, you’d see when one drops, the other goes up commensurably.” That didn’t happen: demand stayed stable outside of Play, according to the bar graph we just saw. “There’s no indication that any of the people here are substituting to off-Google Play.”
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OscarRobin@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Google effectively has a monopoly on the Android app ecosystem and this trial brought to light mountains of evidence that they maintain this through extremely anti-competitive means.
Steve@communick.news 6 months ago
None of those are allowed on the Play Store. And when you try to side load an app, it warns you about it being dangerous.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
They’re not disallowed on the Play Store. Google just wants you to give them their cut if consumers make purchases from the Play Store.
But that’s not what we’re discussing. We’re discussing 3rd party app stores. Computers have had warnings about installing software since the beginning of computers, since no one has vetted whether it is malicious (not that the app stores are immune from malicious apps) so I don’t see that as an issue. I would see mandating the removal of those warnings as an issue.
Steve@communick.news 6 months ago
The Play Store doesn’t allow other app stores.
“4.5 You may not use Google Play to distribute or make available any Product that has a purpose that facilitates the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of Google Play.” - Google Play Developer Distribution AgreementComputers have had warnings about installing software since the beginning of computers
I think “Computers” go back way farther than you’re imagining. There was a time when you didn’t even install software on computers. You just put in a disk and ran what was on it. We don’t even need to go back to when “Computer” was an actual job title. Something that humans (mostly women) did.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
The Play Store doesn’t allow other app stores.
…huh? Why would there be an app store inside an app store?
I think “Computers” go back way farther than you’re imagining.
No I was just speaking simply. You know what I meant.
baronvonj@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I believe that Google wanted in-app purchases in Fortnite to go through Play Store so that Google would get 30%. And Epic wanted to setup their own in-app billing and keep it all.
ElectroNeutrino@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I wonder how that’s going to play out with Apple and their monopoly.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A lot of this case hinged on the fact that Google wasn’t treating everyone the same. They had a lot of private details for big companies.
Unless Apple also has secret deals, then this isn’t going to impact them.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Apple doesn’t need to make any deals at all because you simply can’t install any other app stores, or any apps outside of the Apple app store.
That’s the crazy thing, that they lost their case and Apple won, despite Apple having WAY more control.
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Apple wouldn’t need to have secret deals. They’re running a walled garden over there.
The problem is Google wanted to have what Apple has: a closed ecosystem they can exploit. But they don’t have that, at least not to the same degree. Android is not “theirs”, even if they’ve increasingly managed to make the Play Store more inseparable as time as gone by.
The most they can do is scare people away from using third party app stores or doing anything with Android they don’t approve of, and when it comes to things like Play Integrity and Play Protection, they can punish you for stepping outside their bounds by breaking certain functionality. But they can’t outright control anything.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
And how is Google stopping them?
Album@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
By enforcing a rule that says apps on the app store cannot have an external paid app store. So that’s why you download FN on sideload instead of the store.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
So even if you download, purchase and install an app via a separate app store, Google still collects a commission!?
takeda@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No, then you won’t even be able to use in-app purchases.
Android supposedly has an option to side load, and even install another store, but in order to do it, you get through a series of warnings, and such stores can’t even be on the play store. So for an ordinary user you feel like you are hacking the phone. So naturally there aren’t many alternatives. The only one that lasted is F-Droid, but it seems to be only used by advanced users who want to run open source software.
So simply, theoretically they should be able to do whatever they want practically everyone has to stick to play store.
Play store has a rule, that additional charges need to go through them (and they of course charge 30%). This probably would still be ok, but then certain vendors don’t need to follow the same rules.
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 6 months ago
That’s not true - they wouldn’t be able to use the Google Play APIs for payments of course, but if the app is sideloaded they can definitely use any payment processor / method. If the app isn’t on the Play Store then Google has no say over it. The issue was Google was pressuring Epic into using the Play Store (allegedly) so that they could get their 30% cut, but I’m not even sure how they’d do that, when
It’s really not as difficult as you make it seem.
That’s it. There were no “series of warnings” to go thru, no need to flip between multiple screens or anything. I literally just went thru this process to install the Epic store my Galaxy Fold 4, and it was in no way complicated or “scary” at all. And bear in mind that the audience in this case were gamers - gamers who are already used to the concept of downloading and installing programs on their PC, so it’s not like you’re targeting some tech-illiterate people here.
Not true again. Aurora Droid and Droid-ify are both reasonably popular, at least in the OSS/enthusiast communities. Yes they use the F-Droid repos but they also subscribe to other repos (Guardian Project, Izzy etc), so you’re getting your apps from multiple sources.
There are also proprietary stores such as Aptoide which are quite popular in the Asian markets. Finally, you’re completely ignoring other stores which are bundled out-of-the-box phones, such as the Galaxy Store on Samsungs, Mi Store on Xiaomis, AppGallery on Huawei etc. Of course, in the western market the Play Store is the most dominant, but the Samsung store is reasonably popular among Samsung users (as they have regular deals on games and various other apps + some exclusives like Good Lock and other Samsung-specific apps), and of course, the OEM stores are quite popular in Asian markets.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
I didn’t realize that. Never actually tried to buy anything. You can’t even make purchases in the Samsung store? Or Huawei?
Yes you can, and I have several times. You are put through a series of warnings just like you are when downloading an executable in the browser, or installing it on Windows. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
But we’re not talking about Play Store…
baronvonj@lemmy.world 6 months ago
No I think Google tried to tell Epic they couldn’t have their own processing for in-app purchases. That’s what Epic sued over.
Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There are multiple entities with their own payment processing mechanisms running on Android. Epic was definitely able to run their own if they wanted to.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 6 months ago
Why would they sue Google instead of just saying “nah”? Did Google do something to prevent them from having their own in-app purchases from their own app store?