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Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

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Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#231
I wonder if Lina Khan will be able to finally get her anti-trust case through against Google.

It’s interesting how the judges in Apple vs Epic stayed with Big Tech, same with Microsoft on the Blizzard acquisition.

Almost if the Judges are scared of Big Tech but the Jury composed of lay people see the monopoly for what it is.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#232
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, apple’s position as both phone manufacturer, iOS manufacturer, and App Store maintainer resulted in them being able to successfully argue that their control over the App Store was a feature that was expected by users and was needed to maintain a smooth and secure operating ecosystem

Google, on the other hand, just got pilloried because they are not the phone manufacturer (for the most post), but instead were using their position as the producers of android to pressure phone manufacturers and companies to not compete. Their own internal docs showed the extreme lengths they were willing to go to stop companies from producing third party apps stores. It was this stifling of completion that just got them reamed by the court

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#233
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the same company suing Google and saying that allowing third party app stores is the same company that actually introduced a vulnerability by doing so? The entire value proposition of the App Store is the sandbox. But Android security sucks either way

Sandboxing had nothing to with any app store, and Android security empathetically doesn't suck.

I just had a coworker say that he surreptitiously installed an app on his son’s phone that allowed him to see everything his son was doing remotely and listen in to his son’s conversations. He showed it to us in action.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#234
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. When someone comes to your store and says "I made the streets and regulate the power, water supply, sewer, and everything else in this place, cut me 30% of your revenue in taxes" that's the government. And you'd do well to not confuse those so haphazardly. Apple didn't come to your app and with no…

Wait a second are you saying Apple is a government unto itself?

They govern the iOS platform.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#235
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

Right, which is not something Apple "needed" to do because they didn't allow competition in the iOS phone manufacturing business.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#236
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Google should have never allowed competition to begin with like Apple. That doesn't seem like a great answer to me.

No, Google shouldn’t have given Riot Games $10m in marketing to prevent launching a competing android store, or give OEMs 20% cut of Play revenue to prevent them from bundling competing stores. Or cut a special deal with Spotify where it pays 0% while still using Play Store billing.

You mean just like Epic got special marketing deals from console manufacturers?

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. When someone comes to your store and says "I made the streets and regulate the power, water supply, sewer, and everything else in this place, cut me 30% of your revenue in taxes" that's the government. And you'd do well to not confuse those so haphazardly. Apple didn't come to your app and with no…

> When someone comes to your store and says "I'll wreck your store unless you cut me 30% of your revenue" that's the mafia. That's exactly what Apple does. If you make a mobile app (for example, a presentation manager) you _have_ to support iOS, or you will go out of business. As a developer, you simply don't have a choice. You have to either support iOS, or get out of mobile apps entirely.

You could, however, give as much of the product away as you can for free (less $100 a year for developer account) and then Apple is basically paying you to distribute it on their platform. That's definitely not the mafia.

If you want to charge money, Apple will collect it for you and take a cut. If you don't want that deal, you can still distribute your app for free, you just can't charge money for it in the app. You can still charge money for the service, but you have to do that on your own website and infrastructure (a la Netflix, etc.), not Apple's.

Re: Epic vs. Google: Google Loses

#240
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the walled garden model won against the (almost) open backyard model?

The open model has won more openness, which is good for open models

But bad for incremental opening of things. It isn't like Apple will see this and think "oh, I want to to happen to me as well!".
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