Rethinking the App Store

No they didn't. Choosing whether there is a walled store and choosing what gets into the store are two different things. And on top of that, you didn't even get the first choice independent of a hundred other variables like hardware, operating system, app availability, the network effect of peers with iMessage etc.

To really drive this home, keep in mind that the same argument could be applied to giving Comcast control over which websites and video streaming services you can use. If you don't like it, just choose to move out of their service area. So if you choose to subscribe to Comcast then you must want that, right?

> They didn't ask me to ratify their agenda, but they did require me to pay dues!

Actually they did. Union members get to elect the union leadership. Apple customers don't get to elect the Apple leadership. And if a union set your union dues at 30% of your salary, how long do you think it would take for them to get voted out?

I can't. If I'm going to distribute my apps outside of Google Play, I need to tell my potential customers to crawl through their phone's settings page, clicking through various menus, then ignore the scary warnings that strongly imply I'm about to infect them with malware and steal all of their personal data. And I would have to do that in every single language I want to support, and of course would lose sales from people who don't want to bother following these long instructions, especially since they have to close their web browser (and hide the written instructions) to actually do it. And I also have increased support costs because I need to respond to emails from people who couldn't figure out how to do it (in all languages), and I have to constantly worry about being blocked by the "Play Protect" program, which scans apps installed outside of Google Play, sends them to Google's servers, and then decides to block them at Google's discretion. And if I happen to get big enough to where I potentially become a competitive threat to Google, then I have to worry about their "white hat" hit squad finding exploits in my software and sending it to major news outlets to ~~tarnish my reputation~~ I mean protect users.

Or I can avoid all of those Google-created problems by giving Google 30% of my business.

So while technically you could distribute your apps outside of Google Play, it is not practical at all thanks to all of the anti-competitive barriers Google has put up. Anyone who thinks that Android is a healthy environment for competition is being naive, or has no experience with consumer products.

> * Steam is a very specialized case: Not quite an app store [Apple credits itself with inventing the App Store, despite Steam existing since 2003, so Apple agrees with me on this], but they all but created the Linux game market, and got in before the Windows Store was created. Yea, if you create the market or get in in advance or on stuff the official store doesn't include, you can survive, but the general rule is that the official App Store wins.

What do you mean? Steam is 100% an app store. It's a store where they sell applications (although mostly games). Also, Steam was not at all the first game/app store on Windows or Linux. It was simply the best back in the day; so good in fact that it beat straight up piracy. Even today they're pretty great, despite the 30% cut (although that situation is completely different to the one Apple and Google are in)

I suppose 20+ years has erased a collective memory of the conflicts with IE.

Here is a relevant 1998 excerpt[1] from DOJ's own official website:

>The Department today filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction that would:

>-- Require that if Microsoft insists on including its browser on Windows 98, it must also include Netscape's browser so that consumers will have a real choice. Computer manufacturers would have the option of deleting either browser. If Microsoft does not want to include Netscape, it must unbundle its own browser and let it compete on the merits.

As we now know from the 2001 final settlement, the above scenario didn't happen and Microsoft won that IE battle.

Can one do a mental search & replace with s/Microsoft/Apple/ and s/Netscape/Epic/ such as:

"Require that if Apple insists on including its App Store on iPhones, it must also include Epic App Store so that consumers will have a real choice."

If Epic's lawyers (not even the intimidating government DOJ lawyers this time but just a private video game company's lawyers) want to argue the same idea as forcing Netscape onto IE, what would be the new legal argument this time? The previous one failed.

EDIT to sbuk's reply about context: your excerpt trying to show context is itself also missing context. That part about PC manufacturers licensing was the past actions that got the DOJ up to that point of hauling them into court. My excerpt was about the DOJ's proposed future remedy (e.g. must unbundle IE) to reduce Microsoft's future monopoly power -- and that didn't happen. See the very next bullet point below your "context":

>• Microsoft now intends to tie unlawfully its IE Internet browser software to its new Windows 98 operating system, the successor to Windows 95.

DOJ wanted to stop the future IE bundling to Windows 98. They failed.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/19...