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Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

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Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#191

Post by gjsman-1000 »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #186
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government does not (and legally cannot) give a darn on "dominance in market profits." If it isn't hurting consumers or illegally propping up market share, that's just called good business. As it should be, otherwise you end up with very bad incentives. For example, what's stopping Samsung then from using the world's most inefficient and old manufacturing techniques, and then complaining Apple's more efficient (b…

Ok but apple is hurting consumers with their 30% fee. I would not have bought an iPhone if I knew about that. Now Im locked in.

A. That's not exactly secret information, so your ignorance is not an excuse when you could have easily found that information if you cared. It's not a secret contract.

B. Android also charges 30%. Developers making under $1M per year pay only 15% (initially announced by Apple, copied by Google). You can't argue you'd save a penny going to Android.

C. You can always sell your iPhone, if it matters to you now, and buy an Android.

D. It is no secret that the 30% fee has nothing to do with consumers, but will instead be used to increase the developer's profit margins. Expect to pay the exact same after the fees are lifted.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#192

Post by wvenable »

LordKeren wrote: post #172
jefftk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but in a weird way: Apple doesn't allow competition for phone manufacturing for their ecosystem, so the equivalent of "deals with manufacturers" are entirely internal. Fostering a phone ecosystem that overall has more competition has hurt Google here.

No, paying off phone manufacturers and companies to not create or preinstall third party app stores on to devices is what hurt Google here

Which is similar to what Microsoft did with PC manufacturers to kill off alternative operating systems.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#193

Post by LordKeren »

Racing0461 wrote: post #162
LordKeren wrote: post #2

It will be extremely interesting to see how this shapes android going forward. Google didn’t just lose some point— they lost every point > The jury unanimously answered yes to every question put before them — that Google has monopoly power in the Android app distribution markets and in-app billing services markets, that Google did anticompetitive things in those markets, and that Epic was injured by that behavior. Th…

> The jury These cases always goes like this. Jury awards 1 billion dollars etc. It always gets revised by the judge later on. Is this any different?

Epic didn’t sue for damages. They sued to get the rules changed. The jury did not award Epic any money. The judge will be deciding how Google must remedy the situation

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#194

Post by martimarkov »

shmerl wrote: post #53
vlozko wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s because Google did a lot of things that Apple didn’t that was found to be anti-competitive. https://www.theverge.com/23959932/epic-v-google-trial-antitr...

I'm sure they did their own stuff, but Apple got away with a very nasty one. So I don't think competition law works. Results look completely random, like tossing a coin.

Being sued for different things - yeah you tend to get different results.

And what is the definition of nasty here? It's very subjective. Apple doesn't own the mobile market and are below 50% control of it so they are not really a monopoly. I'm also not sure how you can use anti-trust or anti-monopoly against them when they have been found again and again to not be a monopoly.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#195

Post by gilgoomesh »

martimarkov wrote: post #169
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #22

I wonder what the remedies will be -- sideloading is already allowed, so allowing third party in-app billing? That seems to be the actual thing the juries said -- that Google used their dominant position to do anticompetitive things, among which is taking their 30% cut on everything. Hope that this happens to Apple eventually too.

Hope it doesn't happen to Apple as I like and prefer that I can only buy stuff and most importantly have a single place to cancel all my subscriptions without dark patterns like having to talk to a person to cancel. I'll again make my argument that the developers should respect the choice of the users. If the user chose iOS maybe they chose it because they wanted the curated experience and the locked it product. I ce…

> really don't understand the negative sentiment against Apple

I just want them to be better.

They take 15-30% of my gross revenue and are the source of most of my stress (through regular rejections of my app updates). It would be nice if they charged less and stopped rejecting me for mentioning Android in my app copy.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#196

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

madeofpalk wrote: post #139
Spivak wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the fact Epic lost so handily against Apple for the same thing is pretty chilling for the future of open devices. Lock down your platform tight as a drum and you may employ all manners of anticompetitive practices because you legally forbid the existence of competitors and you're "curating your experience" but open yourself up to any competition and your behavior becomes anticompetitive.

Problem is that Google tried to have it both ways. Android is technically much more open, but then they would make deals to squash any other competition. It’s exactly the un-openness that Google’s gotten in trouble for. This article lists a bunch of the special deals Google made with various companies in order to prevent competition https://www.theverge.com/23959932/epic-v-google-trial-antitr... > One Google Play exe…

Do we know for a fact Apple made fewer deals like these? I don't think we do.

Apple makes a lot of deals. A lot. I'd expect them to be about even.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#197

Post by iknowstuff »

foolfoolz wrote: post #127
aaomidi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is there this assumption that third party apps are going to be so unsafe? We already run untrusted executable code in the form of JavaScript. Why does the android system need to be different? Why can’t we say the OS needs sandboxing, api permissions, etc. I really don’t want the only thing protecting my phone being the fact that a human sometimes reviews an app.

because this is what computing used to be. you would download some random executable off some random website and hope you didn’t get infected with malware except the stakes are much higher on your phone than your 1998 computer because your phone is more powerful: your phone has more personal data, financial info, and can consume costly telecom resources

No. The APIs are vastly different between modern mobile OSes and win32 from the 90s.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#198

Post by summerlight »

Looks like Epic is getting almost everything they wanted from both Google and Apple, given that EU is giving their hands to do all the jobs necessary for the Apple's case. Those two stores will remain dominant (>95% share) for a foreseeable future, but at least customers will have a choice.

Now I wonder what if Google/Apple decided to decrease their cut to a more reasonable level, around 10~15%? App store/Play store fees are not their primary revenue stream so this must be a reasonable cost for them to mitigate this kind of legal risks, but they choose not to do so.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#200

Post by nerdix »

LordKeren wrote: post #149
nerdix wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google is punished because they made their platform more open. Well, that certainly will bode well for the future.

They got punished for paying companies off to not compete on their open platform

But they are the ones that allowed those companies to compete in the first place. And I'm not saying that they should have won. Both Apple and Google losing would have been the best outcome. However, Google losing and Apple winning is the worst. Because its makes open platforms even less attractive to businesses.
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