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Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

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Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#241

Post by amelius »

bushbaba wrote: post #184
edouard-harris wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1] > Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits. This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely surprising if it was unprofit…

It’s likely the payoff is also to prevent apple from building its own search engine to compete. As googles payoff is so lucrative

If I were Apple, I would spend at least $1B of that $7B on developing a secret new search engine :)

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#242

Post by slownews45 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #156
jakecopp wrote: post #9

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." ... > This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service. Insane reading.

That’s it, right? That’s the game? There’s no way the DoJ doesn’t have a slam-dunk case with that one quote.

I thought this was public knowledge - they compete in some areas and cooperate in others?

For a long time Google was the Apple maps provider (exclusive) on Apple - they had near seamless integration there and in a variety of areas (search etc) - very much acting as one company.

They competed in other areas (google photos on iphone has always been very much second class), google music has struggled vs the apple music player etc.

All these monster players - they are so big that if they were fighting each other on every front it would be a huge mess.

Apple both bitterly competes against Samsung (who copies plenty from iphone) while simultaneously working as a big customer to them.

AWS has the same issues in many area - they will do things like cooperate in some areas with enemies (ie, they'll host Microsoft workloads and MS will facilitate) while competing in other areas (AWS vs Azure etc).

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#243

Post by commoner »

fingerlocks wrote: post #172
cartoonworld wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question to downvotes: I’ve seen people saying in these comments often that you have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right now, what am I missing?

The technical reason is that a very powerful system call is blocked on iOS that’s required to build a custom language runtime needed for a browser. This is done to increase security of the device. The trade-off is that the JavaScript engine and renderer must be shared by all browsers on iOS. But if you can’t tell the difference, does it really matter?

iOS platform restrictions prevent Firefox for iOS from supporting add-ons. That is a rather striking difference.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#245

Post by judge2020 »

stale2002 wrote: post #227
roenxi wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that line of accusation is that Apple having a monopoly on the production and maintenance of Apple products isn't a very compelling threat. In a more reasonable market, like smartphones or phones in total, Apple just does not have a monopoly. There are alternatives.

> like smartphones or phones in total, Apple just does not have a monopoly. A monopoly is not needed for anti-competitive behavior to be illegal. All that is needed is significant market power. Apple has 50% of the smartphone market. Which is around where courts have stated that anti-trust laws start to apply. 50% of a highly concentrated market is not a slam dunk anti-trust case, by any means, but it is within the r…

> A monopoly is not needed for anti-competitive behavior to be illegal. All that is needed is significant market power.

Have any references where someone was sued for antitrust while having <50% marketshare (of course, using the market determined by the court at the time)? If what you say is true, is the cutoff for antitrust action just "when media outlets report on it long enough to actually be put in sight of regulators/congress"?

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#246

Post by Sargos »

arcturus17 wrote: post #240
Sargos wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully I think Web3 (dapps made from composable protocols collaboratively developed by everyone) will form strong competition and maybe even replace Google in the next 5-10 years. Services like social media, finance, gaming, productivity, etc will all be interoperable by default providing a seamless user experience and be built by millions of developers around the world. Each company coding only what they special…

Why would my mother or yours, as internet users, care about anything that you just said, in a way that justifies a prediction that Google, Facebook or others will lose their monopolies in 5-10 years?

The UX will be much easier for normal people as they don't need to create a new account, find their friends, etc each time they go to a new website or use a new app which by itself is a pretty big driver of acceptance. Users tend to care about what we call "network effect" which is what gives websites like Facebook such lock-in. Web3 apps that use your existing social graph let you simply use new features and use cases without needing to build the entire social graph from scratch.

With an open ecosystem where anyone can add features and create new apps that complement the existing use cases the amount of utility and innovation will likely outstrip organizations like Facebook which is already becoming bogged down in bureaucracy and losing ground to networks such as TikTok. In the Web3 world the equivalent of Facebook and TikTok wouldn't be directly competing as they are part of the same network and function as networks of two different user groups while allowing further experimentation of use cases that might compose different aspects of both systems into something new without users needing to re-create everything from scratch.

The lower barrier to entry for developers to innovate and UX improvements for end users stemming from a seamless unified ecosystem seems like a better experience for everyone. It'll be interesting to see how everything plays out.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#247

Post by radley »

giantrobot wrote: post #148
mard wrote: post #18

In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system. 20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences. I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

A sibling comment pointed out that you're wrong about the Microsoft case. You're also seemingly under informed about monopolies. One of the core issues in the Microsoft case was that they're a horizontal monopoly. Microsoft's monopoly affects all players in the market because a majority of the players use Microsoft's OS. They used that leverage against Netscape and many other companies. Apple on the other hand has a…

> While their influence on iPhones is absolute, they don't have outsize influence on other phone vendors

Apple isn't exclusively a hardware/OS company. They compete horizontally with digital media services like Amazon (books), Spotify (music), Netflix (video), etc. They use their OS and APIs to squeeze out weak competitors and suck up to stronger competitors. They make more money from apps than hardware.

Keep in mind, it's not just current competitors. It's also the potential competitors that don't even bother to start due to Apple's predatory practices.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#248

Post by xxpor »

mdoms wrote: post #212
Andrex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the justification for this in Android's early life. Every Android phone having its own app store would have been a disaster for everyone: users, developers, Google, and even telcos in the long run. Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.

Has it become "a disaster" on PCs or Macs?

No, but that's not the disaster we'd have. We'd have what feature phones were like where you'd only be able to use the carriers store.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#249

Post by ethbr0 »

mdoms wrote: post #212
Andrex wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see the justification for this in Android's early life. Every Android phone having its own app store would have been a disaster for everyone: users, developers, Google, and even telcos in the long run. Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.

Has it become "a disaster" on PCs or Macs?

On PCs, we had something before app stores. We just called it software distribution.

Re: Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

#250

Post by weare138 »

Forge36 wrote: post #67
NorwegianDude wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point still stands, especially on iOS where other browsers isn't even allowed and every browser has to be basically a reskin of safari. That way others can't add features or stability, forcing developers to use the app store and give Apple a large cut. This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.

Based on this previous case Apple isn't violating the law because they also sold the hardware.

Anti-trust cases aren't decided on binary terms. It's the overall act that's illegal. In other words just because the situation with Apple is different from Microsoft's anti-trust case doesn't mean Apple could not be violating the law. Paying or accepting money for the purposes of a company receiving an unfair competitive advantage is also covered under anti-trust laws such as the Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. v. Intel Corp case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....

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