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Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

accc.gov.au

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Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#31

Post by insert_coin »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

> You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple?

You can buy an Android Phone, and install whatever app store you want.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#32

Post by diogenesjunior »

hugi wrote: post #30
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

Google is an ad company. I do not understand why people would choose to use an operating system created by an ad company, designed to harvest their personal information. I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google.

>I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google

LOL. Instead of bowing down to one master, you chose to bow down to the other?

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#34

Post by [deleted] »

dlgeek wrote: post #5

> The ACCC has put forward a series of potential measures in response to its findings, including that consumers be able to rate and review all apps, that consumers have the ability to change any pre-installed default app on their device, that app developers be allowed to provide consumers with information about alternative payment options and that information collected by Apple and Google in their capacity as app mar…

[deleted]

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#35

Post by hugi »

diogenesjunior wrote: post #32
hugi wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is an ad company. I do not understand why people would choose to use an operating system created by an ad company, designed to harvest their personal information. I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google.

>I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google LOL. Instead of bowing down to one master, you chose to bow down to the other?

I choose to spend my money on devices from a company that's explicitly and repeatedly stated that their mission is privacy.

But if you choose to buy phones from ad companies, it's your decision.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#36

Post by mburst »

This reminds me of the Internet Explorer antitrust issue. Eventually Microsoft had to give users a choice on start up. Not sure if it directly led to better browsers or not, but it certainly didn't hurt. I could see the outcome being the same here where users will get to choose which store(s) they want on their device during setup rather than defaulting to the play or apple store

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#37

Post by Drew_ »

tmarsden wrote: post #14

It’s a shame we are reliant on (2) app stores. It would be nice if there was a way to safely implement browser plug-ins that would bring some of the functionality offered by native apps. Not sure if WASM/WASI might save the day here eventually, but the path we’re on now is looking pretty grim if the status quo wins out.

Plenty of web APIs that offer native functionality. Apple will not implement them in Safari for obvious reasons. Apple will also not allow non-Safari browsers for the same reason. Apple knows that even simply allowing Web Push on iOS would noticeably eat into their services revenue.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#38

Post by [deleted] »

insert_coin wrote: post #31
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

> You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? You can buy an Android Phone, and install whatever app store you want.

[deleted]

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#39

Post by encryptluks2 »

hugi wrote: post #30
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

Google is an ad company. I do not understand why people would choose to use an operating system created by an ad company, designed to harvest their personal information. I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google.

You may feel you're safer, but there is no proof that Apple implements better privacy practices than Google. There are a lot of different vendors that provide Android without Google services and you can also unlock your bootloader and install a custom ROM:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distrib...

Last, Google allows you to disable their activity history and other options that may be concerning from your Google Account. Apple has very few options to limit your amount of data sharing.

Re: Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers

#40

Post by paxys »

hugi wrote: post #30
encryptluks2 wrote: post #23

You can have third-party Android app stores. Can you say the same about Apple? While I agree that Google has market-dominance, they are not anti-competition or anti-consumer in the same sense as Apple. Android is open source, Chrome OS is open source, etc. Google is actually providing and contributing something back to the community. Apple intentionally locks people to specific hardware and to their app store.

Google is an ad company. I do not understand why people would choose to use an operating system created by an ad company, designed to harvest their personal information. I'm happy to use an iPhone, knowing my personal information is safe and it reduces my chances of being Harvested by Google.

It is possible for a company to do multiple things, sometimes even conflicting with each other.

Google is an ad company, and a hardware/smartphone company, and an enterprise collaboration company, and a cloud hosting company, and lots more.

Similarly Apple is a hardware company which is getting more and more of its revenue from digital sales, subscriptions and even advertising every year. They can and do track their users exactly like Google.

It is naive to think that any company at that scale has your best interests at heart. They will do whatever it takes to make more money, period.

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