Epic is asking a court to stop Google from yanking Bandcamp off the Play Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Epic is asking a court to stop Google from yanking Bandcamp off the Play Store

#131

Post by RC_ITR » Mon, May 02, 2022, 5:22 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #81

RC_ITR wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which Google certainly has You’re conflating some ideas here. A marketplace owner always has “dominant market power” over the market they own. That’s the nature of marketplace, the owner gets to set certain rules like the types of payments accepted at the marketplace, because that is literally the job of a marketplace. Google also has dominant market share, since their App Store is the best for android, but that’s l…

No, Google is attempting to engage in a vertical restraint of trade. That is one of the behaviors generally considered to violate antitrust rules, if the company is using its leverage in one market to attempt a vertical restraint of trade in another market. In this case, the leveraged market is the app store, and the restrained market is mobile payment processing .

>No, Google is attempting to engage in a vertical restraint of trade.

My friend, does Lyft take Mir as a payment method? Can you choose to use Stripe to pay for your Airbnb (vs. their in-house processor)?

I really am curious about the legal precedent you're relying on - when has a marketplace ever been found to be acting anti-competitively by choosing the payment rails they use?

Re: Epic is asking a court to stop Google from yanking Bandcamp off the Play Store

#132

Post by parkingrift » Thu, May 05, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #127

parkingrift wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither side-loading nor community skins are supported, and that is my point. Epic prefers complete monopoly control over their platform.

It's not a platform, it's a store. The term monopoly does not apply. It's not a clever gotcha, it's just you not understanding the difference.

Again, Epic is the one who has made that decision. Epic has decided to be the exclusive vendor of skins and emotes for Fortnite.

The only reason it’s a store is because… Epic wanted to be the only vendor. Whereas you’re acting like it’s something inherent to the product category. No, it was a decision Epic made.

Re: Epic is asking a court to stop Google from yanking Bandcamp off the Play Store

#133

Post by spywaregorilla » Thu, May 05, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

parkingrift wrote: post #132

spywaregorilla wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a platform, it's a store. The term monopoly does not apply. It's not a clever gotcha, it's just you not understanding the difference.

Again, Epic is the one who has made that decision. Epic has decided to be the exclusive vendor of skins and emotes for Fortnite. The only reason it’s a store is because… Epic wanted to be the only vendor. Whereas you’re acting like it’s something inherent to the product category. No, it was a decision Epic made.

This is not a noteworthy observation. Opening a marketplace for third party skins is basically entering an entirely new business. You need suddenly to manage obscenity censorship, ip infringement, fraud, aml for vendors, rendering issues with the skins.

Epic doesn't want to be in that business. That's fine. We can regulate them like a store. Apple wants to be in that business. Also fine. Let's regulate them like a marketplace.