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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

#291

Post by peterkelly »

Shubham28 wrote: post #265
anaganisk wrote: post #256

The silence of googlers when articles like this come up is funny. They jump in like a rabbit, about every google post. Showing off all their google stuff. When things like this come up they pretend they’re busy coding (something something api to help their ad company). We as devs made them mega corps, seriously. Even the worst privacy nightmare inducing API, was coded by someone. Money sure drives everything, people…

Googlers can't reply to posts like this, irrespective of where they stand on the issue, because this is an ongoing legal matter. Disclaimer - I am a Googler. P.S. Rather than passing snark comments about what others do, maybe try talking to any of them. Any employee of a significantly sized company could have guessed that.

You could just use a throwaway account.

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

#292

Post by XorNot »

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?

People don't care about brands, they care about functionality. There's a reasonable problem in the market that every company is now trying to take over the gatekeeper role, which kills the value proposition - Netflix made a heck of an inroad on piracy, then everyone else launched their streaming services and suddenly it's almost back to the bad old days - and certainly it's very hard to discover where to watch things now.

This is also why Steam has mindshare: I just plain don't really want multiple "I am your games platform" apps - to the point I ignore new releases till they're on Steam.

So if someone creates a decentralized platform that can provide those things more easily, that'll win - but, I'm pretty skeptical it'll happen: decentralized platforms have been atrocious at providing the type of services companies actually need, like a payment system that is just "I enter my credit card number and you give me services I requested" or "being easier to use".

But one place to get everything? That's a killer app.

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

#293

Post by craftinator »

Renaud wrote: post #288
solarkraft wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been reports and speculation that they’re doing just that. Of course it’s worth it for the negotiation threat alone, but Apple also really doesn’t seem to like depending on Google. I personally can’t see them switching any time soon, as DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible and I’m not sure they can do much better without collecting more data.

>DuckDuckGo’s search results are something between worse to terrible I would like someone to make some objective research on that. My experience is the reverse, so I strongly suspect our reticence is just one of changing our habit more than an real thing. I switched to DDG years ago and it took a few weeks to wean out the tendency to compare searches, usually brought on by the fear of missing out something. I very ra…

I've found it's very dependent on what I'm searching for. DDG results tend to match my search patterns better, but it often seems they are missing pages with all the correct keywords that google returns. I suspect it just comes down to Google having crawled more pages, and having had more resources to invest in optimizing result hierarchies.

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

#294

Post by frumper »

simfree wrote: post #215
frumper wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux wasn’t a viable alternative to windows in 2001 and I don’t think a Linux phone would be considered a viable alternative to google or iOS. There are 2 mobile OS’s, which admittedly is twice as many as desktop OS’s in 2001. As for hardware, there were a ton of options on 2001, probably more major brands than what phones have today, that’s not even including mom and pop custom built PCs.

Did you ever use Linspire? It had a posh, user friendly app store with a ton of useful apps, Firefox, Flash Java and most other things worked without issue. Not a bad experience in the early 2000s on a Pentium 3!

I believe I tried out their live cd, which was a neat concept. Mostly I ran redhat though.

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

#295

Post by pjmlp »

IncRnd wrote: post #230
Forge36 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you saying that Safari requires hardware-level apis?

Nope, all PCs came with Windows and OEMs willing to sell alternative computers didn't had volume discounts.

It was a choice, but most decided to cave in and only sell PCs.

Here that isn't the case, most shops selling iPhones also have other brands available. Customers aren't forced into buying iPhones.

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

#296

Post by Godel_unicode »

anaganisk wrote: post #280
squarefoot wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm neither a Googler and definitely not a Google fan, but it seems pretty normal to me. At every company I worked for (nothing even close to a fraction of Google) the contract I had to sign contained clauses that would give them enough rope and bullets to hang and shoot me if I did anything that could harm the company in any way, including comments, and there were no social media back then. Googlers might be forced…

If voicing our opinion is controlled by the corporate. Im not sure how free we are. Yes I understand the life changing implications of this. But, we every step taken back, is a mistake we might regret.

You're free to not sign. You're free to resign in protest. You're free to comment and accept the consequences.

And, you're free to not care about pointless comment threads on the internet.

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

#297

Post by ocdtrekkie »

makeitdouble wrote: post #194
noptd wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. I disagree - governments legislate their markets so it is absolutely punishable if defined as such.

I think parent’s point is that a one time slap (as big as it might be) as we do with other crimes wouldn’t solve the issue. The punishment has to be more structural, legislating for instance as you suggest, or dramatically changing the entity’s structure as we did with past monopolies.

I disagree: Shatter monopoly platforms with extreme prejudice, jail the CEOs of Google and Apple, and the market with self-correct. Investors will be wary of harmful business models and CEOs will hesitate to make monopolizing decisions.

Right now, tech companies are massively overvalued because the risk of government regulation is viewed to be nonexistent. A market correction is overdue.

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

#298

Post by anaganisk »

adtac wrote: post #290
anaganisk wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you as humans are controlled from voicing your opinion by your corporate? So your moral compass depends on your employer? Edit: I did not mean to dictate what anyone must do, but as a person you are entitled to have an opinion, to stand up. If you are going to base your moral compass based on what others decide. May be one day, you wont even bother having it. Im not hatching a big conspiracy here, but we must alwa…

no, all he said is you can't comment on ongoing legal matters. I have no idea how you went from that to "humans are controlled from voicing your opinion by your corporate". this is pretty standard. even in personal matters your lawyer will probably ask you to shut up.

I made an edit to my original parent comment. Please do refer it.

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

#299

Post by wellthisishn »

dalbasal wrote: post #133
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.

>> 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite. Better to just take your share of…

> https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

I don't think this analyst is aware that DDG already has a lot of Google influence and isn't for sale right now...

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

#300

Post by sombremesa »

Shubham28 wrote: post #265
anaganisk wrote: post #256

The silence of googlers when articles like this come up is funny. They jump in like a rabbit, about every google post. Showing off all their google stuff. When things like this come up they pretend they’re busy coding (something something api to help their ad company). We as devs made them mega corps, seriously. Even the worst privacy nightmare inducing API, was coded by someone. Money sure drives everything, people…

Googlers can't reply to posts like this, irrespective of where they stand on the issue, because this is an ongoing legal matter. Disclaimer - I am a Googler. P.S. Rather than passing snark comments about what others do, maybe try talking to any of them. Any employee of a significantly sized company could have guessed that.

> Googlers can't reply to posts like this, irrespective of where they stand on the issue, because this is an ongoing legal matter.

Is this true? I know this to be true for actual parties involved, and I'm sure you can't speak on behalf of Google, but I'm not aware of any law or even company policy where private citizens are barred from voicing their own opinions, without divulging non-public information, in a legal matter where they aren't a party (though their employer may be).

As for "fear of retaliation" from your employer, that applies regardless of whether this is an ongoing legal matter or not.

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