231–240 of 607 posts
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Meanwhile, Google can't even put their own wildly popular web browser on the Apple app store
Chrome is on there and people still use it. It’s just not using Blink. Web browser ≠ rendering engine.
I would say not.
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Yes because Google said there platform was “open” and then changed the rules. Apple buyers knew what they were getting beforehand. There is Supreme Court precedent for this
This comes up a lot but when did Google say their platform was "open"? Maybe a few times in the early days when Google was still considered "cool" in hacker circles, but probably not in consumer-facing advertising? Moreover, "open" can mean a lot of things. I don't think I ever signed an agreement with Google that promised me source code for Android or the ability to sideload on my Android phone?
From a Twitter message by Rubin in 2010.
https://techcrunch.com/2010/10/19/andy-rubin-twitter/
> the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"
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Yep. Then consumers can decide which one is best for them. Then they can compete. Then the best features with the best pricing, no only for customers, but the cut for developers, can be discovered. You pay such a high price for living in the walled garden. I honestly can't imagine why you would _want_ it.
How can I decide which store is best for me when the only store I can get Spotify from is the Spotify store? And the only store with Instagram is the Meta store? If every store had to make every app available, then sure I'd have choice and maybe that could be super cool. But nobody's talking about that. We're talking about a world where major corporations will make their apps available only through their own stores a…
For example, Google Maps isn't limited to Android, even though it could drive more Android sales. Instead, it's available on iOS because the potential market loss outweighs the benefits of exclusivity.
Companies are unlikely to limit apps to their own stores if the cost of shrinking their user base is too high. The key factor will be whether consumers are willing to switch platforms for specific apps.
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unlike Google's reply read the OEM terms that they sign....its not open like Google claims....
They got caught doing the same thing Microsoft got caught doing in the 90s with IE/Netscape -- using their monopoly position on one piece of software (Windows, the Google app suite) to prevent their OEMs from shipping another piece of software by default (Netscape, Epic Games Store) that directly competed with their own offering (Internet Explorer, Google Play Store). Since Google and Microsoft both use OEMs, unlike…
Couldn't you reword that as allowing unsigned and self signed software to be installed? You can push your own apps to your iOS device but iirc Apple artificially limits the number of self signed apps that can be installed
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To some extent it's an illusion of openness and availability. Want to actually call it an 'Android' device and/or avoid an ugly warning message to your users? [0] Gotta agree to a bunch of Google's terms including preference for their mobile app suite over others. But hey if you want some extra revenue from search you can just agree to not offer a 3rd party app store [1]. Oh also anyone in OHA (most major phone OEMs)…
Yes, Apple has been consistently bad. Google is bad too but Android is still much more open than iOS today even if it has gradually become less open over time. I think punishing the more open platform and not the completely closed one will just incentivize companies to develop completely closed platforms from the beginning. And I don't see how that's actually good for consumers. The best outcome would be to force bot…
I certainly agree, the problem from the legal standpoint is that stuff google was doing was too close to stuff that other companies have gotten in trouble for one way or another.
> The best outcome would be to force both to open up more.
Agreed.
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Amazon Prime Video... Netflix... Disney Plus... The choices are great... Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum...
Yes, they are. This competition means an enormous boom in quality content has been produced that would have never existed otherwise because of the competition. Choices are great and have resulted in far better services.
Hard disagree. The rate of quality content that I actually want to watch is no higher than it was back when I could view it all on Netflix, but the difference now is that in order to watch it all I'd have to have four different subscription channels.
I'm honestly not even sure the content quality isn't lower now that everyone is producing it with the idea of selling their still-unprofitable streaming platform. Amazon sinks a billion dollars per season into Rings of Power and it shows—the showrunners are visibly torn between trying to tell a compelling story and trying to meet executives' demands that they compete with HBO and milk the Peter Jackson connections for all they're worth.
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If you claim the platform you create is open, but use anticompetitive actions to retain control of it, you end up in a worse legal position than you would have by being clear that the platform is closed. Look at Microsoft. They have been found guilty of anticompetitive conduct related to their open Windows platform in multiple jurisdictions, but not so with XBox. Either never claim your platform is open, or refrain f…
This is a terrible incentive structure to set up for platforms. I get the reasoning, but I chose Android because it's open and I've never run into any of the anticompetitive problems people claim are so damaging. If Google had known that this was the deal at the beginning, I doubt they'd have created Android the way that they did and I wouldn't have an open platform to use—we'd just have two walled gardens. How is th…
> Stop requiring Google Play Billing for apps distributed on the Google Play Store (the jury found that Google had illegally tied its payment system to its app store)
> Let Android developers tell users about other ways to pay from within the Play Store
> Let Android developers link to ways to download their apps outside of the Play Store
> Let Android developers set their own prices for apps irrespective of Play Billing
Have you really never ran into any apps that would have hit these restrictions ?
If you've never have use the Play Store in the first place that would be the case, but otherwise I'd assume every app you got from there are subjected to those.
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Chrome is on there and people still use it. It’s just not using Blink. Web browser ≠ rendering engine.
Is a web browser still a web browser if you remove the rendering engine? I would say not.
I would say not.
And it has a rendering engine: the iOS WebKit engine. It’s not Google’s preferred rendering engine and Chrome isn’t my choice of browser well, anywhere at all actually, but it’s still a functional web browser.
Apple and Google not only control hardware, kernel, OS facilities, user land, software loading/download facilities, but also payments, code signing, and even venture into other forms of banking.
On top of that, they're actively blocking potential competitors to many (most) of those pieces.
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> You were defrauded No. I knew exactly what I was getting and I've been enjoying it for years. Is it perfect? No. But I know better than to demand perfection when something entirely suitable to my needs is already available.
Your lack of understanding of how you were defrauded does not change that you were. This is exactly why the government sometimes steps in to fix things even when a company is considered popular by consumers. Everything you have bought on Android was illegally taxed, and numerous things you bought outside of Android you also overpaid for as companies tried to absorb the abusive fees as well. You didn't "see" the antic…
I can't even remember the last time I bought something on the Play Store. Nearly everything I've installed for years has been open source from F-Droid or was my own personal code that I wrote and loaded onto my phone without passing through any gatekeeper.
You can keep being condescending if it makes you happy, but you could also consider that maybe you don't know me?