Crazy that Google and Apple are in the top 10 of game revenue companies without making any games.
Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
481–490 of 607 posts
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absent first mover advantage with the iPhone, it's extremely difficult to see Apple ending up where it is, with a closed ecosystem.
Only: the iPhone did not have first mover advantages. There were plenty of mobile phones out there before that could download and run apps, and Apple didn't even have their famous app store at the beginning of the iPhone, either.
They were the first device with a big display and a first-class web browser. That created the smartphone market you now take for granted but was completely revolutionary at the time when most devices had tiny screens and half their physical size was a keyboard.
The other big thing is more subtle: the iPhone was the first major break in the carriers’ value-extraction model. It was common that you’d get phones with half the storage used by promo apps the carrier wouldn’t let you uninstall, and the carrier app stores were both limited and unbelievably expensive. We had multiple clients who were interested in mobile apps but the cost of being in the stores was like $50k per carrier plus half of the proceeds, and that was an improvement over the time Qualcomm demanded to see the balance sheet so they could decide what percentage of their TOTAL revenue was fair – we asked and they confirmed that they expected a cut of every sale, even ones which never involved the mobile app. The energy at WWDC08 was incredible because the app stores were both terms were so much better than anyone had gotten before, and you only had to do it once. I still think it should be better now but it used to be so much worse.
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you think litigators do? Their whole job is figuring out how to elicit, marshal, introduce and connect the facts that will prove their case. That’s just what being a trial lawyer is . The facts are not just out there and whoever happens to have the better facts on their side wins. Litigators have to be able to identify and interrogate relevant facts, prepare witnesses and documents to introduce them, then sha…
> What do you think litigators do? You start off strong but for the first two and a third paragraphs maybe about two and half paragraphs in total, you wrote we’re not actually in any disagreement. So… yes. I’m not really co-signing the rest but I’m also not in any mood to argue about the off-topic jabs against SCOTUS at the moment.
Fair!
I had just read the transcripts from yesterday’s oral arguments and was feeling annoyed at a longstanding complaint I have about SCOTUS (pre-dating the Roberts Court as well). Mea culpa.
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
The important competition isn't Google v Apple. It's everyone else v Google and/or Apple. Ironically, forcing this onto Google might be the best thing for Android, as it's the openness the platform really needed to compete against Apple, but costs Google too much revenue to ever do it if left to their own decision.
> it's the openness the platform really needed to compete against Apple It’s hard to believe the best way to compete with Apple is by being more open then they are. If that worked, we would all be running some unix os on our phones. It’s clearly an utterly false premise. This is going to hurt google and do literally nothing to Apple, except perhaps scare some people into the “saftey” of its curated ecosystem.
apologies for the pendantic nitpick, but:
iOS is based on Darwin which is BSD based, and Android is based on Linux, which is heavily inspired by Unix.
So technically, we are "all running some unix os on our phones"... perhaps you mean some open-source OS? Even then, Android markets itself as being open-source (although I imagine they must add some closed source stuff on top of it).
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#485Earlier quoted context omitted.
this sounds close to: gosh, if they hadn't basically created the market for phones like this it's hard to see how they would be dominating the market for phones like this, given their behavior. because that's what first mover advantage is in this case. They created a market, in hardware - that's pretty difficult. regarding other posts saying Apple wasn't first mover in smartphones: Hey, I remember what those old thin…
I owned one. I barely used the keyboard. I barely used the internet connectivity. I even sat out the first iPhone. But I went into a store and tried one out and I knew I was getting the 3G when it came out. Phones may have had those features before, but they were strictly checkbox exercises. The iPhone was revolutionary.
The 3G was really the game changer. I held on to my Treo until then.
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#486Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been working with React Native and Flutter and every time I have to interact directly with iOS/Android, I find that Android is much easier to work with and feels much better designed from a software/api/config perspective. Where Apple wins, however, imho is in hardware. The iPhone is a masterpiece and users can tell, even ~16 years in. I feel that when Apple finally chokes on hardware, or some player in the Andr…
As of today, there is no player in the Smartphone space who has even remotely the amount of secured income to come up with a similarly volume-scaled device, and there is little incentive for anyone to enter this space. A new entrant would be unable to secure the investment, because even if he would produce the exact same piece of hardware with the same quality, the carrier distribution channels, the brand-image and (…
What would I take with me? My photos and email will move just fine. The last app I bought was a while ago, and it was an app to block Google AMP. I’m honestly not sure I use any other paid apps.
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been working with React Native and Flutter and every time I have to interact directly with iOS/Android, I find that Android is much easier to work with and feels much better designed from a software/api/config perspective. Where Apple wins, however, imho is in hardware. The iPhone is a masterpiece and users can tell, even ~16 years in. I feel that when Apple finally chokes on hardware, or some player in the Andr…
It’s highly unlikely for Apple to choke on hardware given their cash. And as someone who’s done native for both, Android’s native SDK is a mess that even Android devs actually hate it. Meanwhile, iOS’ SDK is incredibly exhaustive and coherent. I don’t know what your basis is for “better designed software”, but being able to fork a desktop OS from 20 years prior, make it into a mobile OS, then to a tablet OS, then to…
Apple is, apparently, good at marketing
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is a rendering engine still a web browser if you remove all the chrome and extra features built around the rendering engine? > I would say not. No, obviously not. If Apple were to allow third-party web rendering engines but disallow third-party web chrome that would be equally ridiculous. But just because one part of a browser is important doesn't mean that other parts of a browser aren't also important. > And it h…
> But just because one part of a browser is important doesn't mean that other parts of a browser aren't also important. Sure, but both halves are still there. WebKit is just filling in for Blink. > but it's not "Google's wildly popular web browser". You want to know the screwed up part? It actually is. There’s no gun to Google’s head to list any web browser at all for iPhones in the App Store, but they do, and they t…
> Sure, but both halves are still there.
No they're not. Google is only being allowed to distribute half their browser, frankensteined together with half of Apple's, because Apple does not allow distributing a complete browser.
> WebKit is still a top class rendering engine and only about as buggy as any other rendering engine. Blink is of the same lineage given it is a fork of WebKit and Gecko is even older.
Mainline WebKit is a fine rendering engine, but the iOS distribution is significantly outdated and buggy. "Safari is the new IE" caught on for a reason.
Re: Google must open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's the law.
Having a closed platform isn't illegal. Just ask Nintendo.
Anticompetitive behavior is illegal, even when you are anticompetitively competing in a market that you yourself chose to create by creating an open platform. Just ask Microsoft.
If Google's leadership didn't understand that legal restrictions their choice placed upon them, that failure is on Google's leaderhip.