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Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

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Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#71

The thing that landed Google in hot water was that they licensed Android to multiple vendors and then used anticompetitive shenanigans to control the marketplace. Look at XBox and Windows at Microsoft. XBox is a walled garden and you can't create a game for it without Microsoft's permission and giving Microsoft a cut. There have been zero legal repercussions for this. Windows is licensed to multiple vendors and Micro…

Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo sometimes lose money on hardware sales. Operating system venders never lose money on software sales because software costs nothing to reproduce (they can still lose money but the loses do not increase as sales increase). I do not know anti-trust law but I think the difference in business models should be acknowledged.

Software costs money to develop, and is largely given away for free as a loss leader in today’s market.

I know you’re probably trying to focus specifically on cost to provide the software and not the cost before that (which I’d argue is flawed) but you’re also then missing out on the support cost etc… from there on out.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#72
post #55
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one of those OSes that had a quality phone on the market with a zero-dollar-license OS in 2009. Android was first modern mobile OS to market that would run on 3rd party devices (unlike Apple and RIM). Tizen was 2013. Win phone was 2011, and had license fees to use it.

In this scenario (locked down like Apple), 3rd party devices aren't running Android.

What? Why would devices locked down at the OS-level to only a 1st-party store and only permitting installing through that 1st-party store be hardware-bound?

Winphones were bound to the Windows store, but were 3rd-party devices.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#73
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, the main problem here is that Google is activelly colluding with manufacturers to keep the Google Play monopoly, second, and more importantly, many Apps doesn't work without Google Services or whatever it is called now on Android, some apps from Banks doesn't run on "root" or "open" version of Android even with Google Services. So it is not that simple.

And what can you do with banking apps that you can’t do by going to their website? Beliefs have consequences. If you are one of the relatively few that value “openness” when the market has spoken otherwise, you have to deal with the consequences

Get instant notifications for purchases. Add card to my digital wallet.

As for your claims about markets and openness, I am not sure what are you even trying to say.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#74
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the exact definition depends on the jurisdictions, but just about any market has fair trading regulations that at least outline what is considered unfair treatment.

Well this case is in the US. What are the “fair trading” laws that force companies to treat all customers equally

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Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#75
post #5

It’s not a question of evidence, but the law. There is no “duty to deal” with other firms. But if you choose to do so, you have to do so fairly.

This is not true. There is no such thing as having to deal “fairly”. You are completely free to make different deals with different customers reason #1367 that HN commenters make horrible lawyers

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Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#76
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what can you do with banking apps that you can’t do by going to their website? Beliefs have consequences. If you are one of the relatively few that value “openness” when the market has spoken otherwise, you have to deal with the consequences

Get instant notifications for purchases. Add card to my digital wallet. As for your claims about markets and openness, I am not sure what are you even trying to say.

That in the United States, 60% of the users don’t care about “openness” and buy iPhones and pay on average twice as much for the privilege.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think the state will do a better job at preserving individual freedom than the free market will. Normally I wouldn't take that stance, but the alternative is Apple's lock-in mentality and Google's neverending advertisement/data treadmill. Given that a secure smartphone is off the table anyways, I'd prefer the state as a custodian for digital rights. Plus, then nobody's confused about who holds all the power. >…

What country are you living in? You mean the one with the highest incarceration rate in the world? Both sides are have been guilty of suppressing free speech that they don’t agree with.

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#78
post #3
post #2

Url changed from https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/12/tim-sweeney-apple-google-laws... , which points to this. Submitters: " Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks dang! I normally do this, but just thought the quote from Tim to The Verge was interesting too.

Hmm, I missed that there were two original sources, not one. Should we change the above link to https://www.theverge.com/23996474/epic-tim-sweeney-interview... instead?

Edit: since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38623158 was posted, maybe we can try that one and see if the thread turns out any better.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. There is no such thing as having to deal “fairly”. You are completely free to make different deals with different customers reason #1367 that HN commenters make horrible lawyers

Except fairly doesn't mean the same deals with different customers? It's perfectly fair to charge lower fees to someone already proven, while charging higher for someone who is just starting out. It's perfectly fair to have the same asking price for something, but sell it for less to someone who actually negotiated for it.

It's almost like this stuff has nothing to do with fairness, and actually has to do with leveraging your market position to behave anti competitively.

Re: Tim Sweeney on why Epic did better against Google than Apple in court

#80
post #6

> And I think Apple should be receiving at least as harsh antitrust scrutiny as Google. They both deserve antitrust attention, but Apple is the far worse offender. The cellphone is more essential than the car, and here are these two companies basically owning and taxing the roads, fuel, destinations, activities, and in-car entertainment. And you can't upgrade or change anything.

The problem with Apple is that while they don’t have a monopoly on cellphones, they seem to have a monopoly on good cellphone experiences. Your choice is a couple of platforms that are closed but works decently well, and other more open platforms that are much more chaotic and poorer user experiences. Linux phones or android phones not running Google’s stack being examples of the latter.

They have a monopoly on selling software to iPhone users. I can't accept that we should treat the software market as an owned component of the hardware market. And yes, that same logic should apply to Google Play devices, game consoles, and computers.
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