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Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

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Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#161

Post by scarface74 »

ineedasername wrote: post #156
scarface74 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He disliked the direction Android was going and then started a company to sell Android phones?

Plenty of people don't like Microsoft very much but still develop software for it or hardware to run it on. OEM's have had a rocky relationship with them over the years. Rubin may simply have wanted to work on what he saw as an excellent direction for mobile hardware, and Android was about the only option for the OS. Regardless, my point stands: At the time that Android was undergoing this shift, Rubin was moving awa…

So which time in Androids history was Google’s services like the Play Store and Maps part of AOSP and didn’t have to be separately licensed with conditions?

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#162

Post by scarface74 »

ineedasername wrote: post #157
scarface74 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you wanted to sell a phone in China, where you couldn’t use Google Play Services anyway, or you were one of the world’s most valuable companies who could afford to rewrite all of Google Play dependencies, you were set? Are you also as lenient about iOS? Since the core of it is open source? WebKit? The EU doesn’t agree with you. They ruled against Google for its practices. Google wouldn’t let a manufacturer both…

So it's groups with a lot of resources that have the most successful Android forks, so what? What do you think it takes you wanted to start up a new business based on a custom version of Linux? That's a pretty hard market to break into also, but that doesn't mean Linux isn't an open OS. So yes, it makes plenty of sense that deep pocketed groups are the ones that have been most successful at it. There's plenty of othe…

So Google cared about “openness” with Android, but as soon as a manufacturer took advantage of its “openness”, Google threatened them? You don’t see this as “openness in name only”?

Would you be okay if Apple threatened companies that forked WebKit on other devices that they were forbidden to list their apps on iOS?

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#163

Post by Const-me »

jojobas wrote: post #158
Const-me wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IPhone sales are profitable as they are The numbers don’t add up. Apple sold 6 million of iPhone 1 in 2007-2008 season before app.store launch. Assuming the average price was $550 that generated $3.3B turnover. According to rumors spread by Bloomberg and other sources, Apple spent $2.6B on R&D of iPhone 1 from the moment the initial research began. Not a good business at all, this means Apple paid most of manufactu…

By "before" I mean "before you account for royalties from the app store. Of course you wouldn't expect R&D to pay for itself in the first year. Apple doesn't rely on the royalty revenue to make iPhones profitable (and shouldn't be allowed to).

App store being exclusive to Apple is the main reason why people are buying these devices.

Without that lock, Apple wouldn’t be able to sell $500 worth of hardware for $1500, in huge quantities: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-much-does-it-cost-t...

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#164

Post by jojobas »

Const-me wrote: post #163
jojobas wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "before" I mean "before you account for royalties from the app store. Of course you wouldn't expect R&D to pay for itself in the first year. Apple doesn't rely on the royalty revenue to make iPhones profitable (and shouldn't be allowed to).

App store being exclusive to Apple is the main reason why people are buying these devices. Without that lock, Apple wouldn’t be able to sell $500 worth of hardware for $1500, in huge quantities: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-much-does-it-cost-t...

Very few apps are ios-exclusive.

Do you think that the ability to use other stores would make iphones less valuable for their users?

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#165

Post by Const-me »

jojobas wrote: post #164
Const-me wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App store being exclusive to Apple is the main reason why people are buying these devices. Without that lock, Apple wouldn’t be able to sell $500 worth of hardware for $1500, in huge quantities: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-much-does-it-cost-t...

Very few apps are ios-exclusive. Do you think that the ability to use other stores would make iphones less valuable for their users?

> Very few apps are ios-exclusive

Many cross-platform apps work better on iOS, due to lack of fragmentation.

> Do you think that the ability to use other stores would make iphones less valuable for their users?

Initially, I answered to this: “Hardware/OS vendors should not be allowed to include app stores out of the box, much less prevent sideloading.”

Now on your new question, yes, I think this may actually happen, here’s how.

If such cross-platform third-party store would be allowed, and would gain traction, many developers gonna stop writing native iOS apps for 2 reasons: development/porting is expensive, and Apple taking their cut from sales.

Apple’s app store has rather strict policies about software quality in general, malware, user’s personal data choices, even battery use (years ago I’ve developed for iOS on my day job). Apple won’t be able to enforce equivalent policies for other stores. For one they can’t technically do that. Even if they could, they are not going to get paid for moderating apps on other stores. Currently, they collect their cut from sales, and collect money from developers for developer program membership. These 2 sources of income pay for these reviews.

Therefore, quality of apps available on iOS is going to decline. Along with security: it’s very hard to design a secure system where users are allowed to run arbitrary native code, the only somewhat reliable way is hardware-assisted hypervisor. Being able to enforce policies by reviewing and rejecting apps helps a lot with that, among other things these policies forbid usage of private APIs or running downloaded code.

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#166

Post by ocdtrekkie »

copp wrote: post #99
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #25

I think in the last thread a bunch of people were adamant Google wasn't a monopolist because plenty of phones shipped with app stores outside of Play. Seems like Google picks and chooses which of those are okay. It's time to stop lying: Google will absolutely abandon every single rule in the book to ensure they get 30% of Fortnite purchases. It's too lucrative, and Google is too greedy. This has nothing to do with sa…

I think we are missing the point here. I might be wrong, but this is my take on this. Google has an agreement with OEM not to install any app store. What google objected was not default app of Fortnite. However, it was a Fornite's game store kind of. Still Google does not object the user to install anything on their phone, though that is getting a bit difficult with Android 11. TLDR; this article SEEMS to talk about…

Basically, if you get Fortnite from the Play Store, you get Fortnite. If you get Fortnite outside the Play Store, you get the Epic Games Launcher, which installs Fortnite. The Epic Games Launcher on Windows was updated into the Epic Games Store, when they added support for third party titles.

So yes, Google put a kibosh on an OEM pre-installing a competing store, not just the game.

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#167

Post by Hnrobert42 »

scarface74 wrote: post #160
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it like it’s a bad thing. Perhaps if MS had remained so all-powerful, we would not have seen the rise of other US companies, including Google. If Google lost its monopoly stranglehold on Search and mobile, what interesting and useful innovation might emerge?

So an anti trust schedule that ended in 2001 stopped Google’s emergence during the same time period when they had to convince people to come to their website using IE? You could say the same for FB, Amazon and Apple’s resurgence. None of them were helped by the government’s actions.

How do you know? Had MS remained all-powerful, perhaps those entities may not have emerged. That’s the justification for anti-trust legislation. But if you like your markets saturated with monopolies, you’re in luck. The world is full of them and under the current administration anyway, they aren’t going anywhere.

Re: Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games

#168

Post by scarface74 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #167
scarface74 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So an anti trust schedule that ended in 2001 stopped Google’s emergence during the same time period when they had to convince people to come to their website using IE? You could say the same for FB, Amazon and Apple’s resurgence. None of them were helped by the government’s actions.

How do you know? Had MS remained all-powerful, perhaps those entities may not have emerged. That’s the justification for anti-trust legislation. But if you like your markets saturated with monopolies, you’re in luck. The world is full of them and under the current administration anyway, they aren’t going anywhere.

It’s easy.

Google - came to dominance on top of most people using IE. The consent decree did not stop MS from entering the search engine business and there was no indication that the federal government would have stopped them from buying Yahoo if Yahoo had accepted their offer v

Apple emerged from going almost bankrupt by selling music players. MS tried repeatedly to get in the music player business - partially by leveraging Windows Media Player and failed. MS was also early in the smart phone market and failed - not because of government intervention.

Amazon - how did anything that the government do against MS help Amazon?

Facebook - Facebook became popular almost a decade later when no one was worried about MS.

What exactly do you think the government consent decree did that helped any of those companies?

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