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Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

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Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#81

Post by simion314 »

threeseed wrote: post #30
oblio wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walled gardens are just security theater. The App Store revenue was $72bn in 2020, yet the review time for an app is a few hours. App reviewers barely have any qualifications, they're just "call center operators" running off a script.

a) Apple has invested heavily in automated review methods over the years. b) I don't know what qualifications you think an app reviewer needs. They are not looking through the code but simply playing with the app on a range of devices. c) It is only a few hours for updates. Initial app submissions often take days/weeks and are very thorough.

> a) Apple has invested heavily in automated review methods over the years.

There was a news here where malware was found on the Apple iOS store, and Apple changed their mind in the last moment and refused to inform the victims.

The reality show you (if you want to see) that

- malware happens (you can't make automatic analysis code to detect all possible issues )

- Apple users will mostly have a wrong image of the Store security due to Apple not informing victims when bad things happen and a big PR budget to paint a fiction.

The reviewers are there mostly to make sure you do not put a link to your website and buypass the Apple payments and make sure that the app does not crash and use the approved UX. I really hope you are not that navie to think they are opening the app in a debugger and checking for weird code.

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#82

Post by riffraff »

KMag wrote: post #71
speedgoose wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google leaves the Italian market, Italy could have a chance to create a local Google. Google's scale is huge and they have a lot of products, but a subset of these products, such as tracking, ads, search, emails, and videos, is achievable for a country like Italy in my opinion.

Maybe. I worked at Google on the indexing team from 2006-2010. During that time, I vaguely remember some announcement of a government-funded search engine project in France to beat Google. If I remember correctly, it wasn't the first time France tried a government-funded search engine. I suspect it's more a problem of network effects than it's a problem of money. Google just has so much data at this point that it's r…

I think you're thinking of Quaero[0], as I remember it nobody in the ITC industry thought it had a chance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#83

Post by simias »

oblio wrote: post #25
bsdubernerd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a quick reminder to everybody else that walled gardens don't actually help the consumer. They only arbitrarily restrict choice, they don't actually improve security (if any, that's provided by the sandboxing, not by the store "review"). If this company (ENEL) wasn't a huge state-wide electric company (inheriting their power and ties from the previous state-owned monopoly) how many chances do you think they had to…

Walled gardens are just security theater. The App Store revenue was $72bn in 2020, yet the review time for an app is a few hours. App reviewers barely have any qualifications, they're just "call center operators" running off a script.

If we judge by the result these app store seem to do fairly well security-wise, no?

Compared to Windows as a case study of what happens when you let users install anything they want from untrusted sources, it seems that the app stores do fairly well at culling obvious malware. At least that's what I experienced comparing the number of time I had to cleanup a friend or family member's computer filled with malware and browser toolbars vs. iphones and androids.

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#84

Post by easytiger »

mikro2nd wrote: post #60
genericacct wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that ENEL is owned by the employers of the ruling judges is just a coincidence.

Are you suggesting that the Italian judiciary is incapable of acting independently and impartially?

Italy is about as broken and corrupt as many African dumps

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#85

Post by ripdog »

dalbasal wrote: post #52
oblio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, we need some way to declare a company "Big" and apply special rules to them. If those rules are onerous, that might create some organic pressure to split and/or help smaller incumbents compete. Past a point, they should be regulated like an utility.

IDK if it's "past a point," but in some cases maybe. I'm torn on that though. EG, what would it actually mean if FB or twitter became "regulated like utilities?" Interoperability? Portability? IMO, these are pretty finicky problems for a regulator. I think it would likely look like the mandated personal data dumps we have today. Some clunky feature that few use, and don't change the structure of the market. Useful tr…

Generally good comment, but if search is separated from ads, how does it make money? I'm totally on board with splitting up Google, but losing Google search (or search becoming notably worse) would not be worth it for me. The competition is just so bad, and always has been.

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#86

Post by zimbatm »

simias wrote: post #83
oblio wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walled gardens are just security theater. The App Store revenue was $72bn in 2020, yet the review time for an app is a few hours. App reviewers barely have any qualifications, they're just "call center operators" running off a script.

If we judge by the result these app store seem to do fairly well security-wise, no? Compared to Windows as a case study of what happens when you let users install anything they want from untrusted sources, it seems that the app stores do fairly well at culling obvious malware. At least that's what I experienced comparing the number of time I had to cleanup a friend or family member's computer filled with malware and…

A large part of the stability can be attributed to sandboxing. This is what prevents apps from gaining unprivileged access and destabilizing the system. This is the time where relatives will call you.

What you don't see, is all the apps that steal the user's data.

Curation obviously helps but it's difficult to measure to what extent.

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#87

Post by gruez »

evidencebased wrote: post #79

This is a huge reason why China imposes certain rules on foreign corps if they wanted to operate there. The media and politicians makes it all about politics, but it is an entirely reasonable way to deal with foreign mega corps. Local competitors would not survive against something like Google without government protection. 100 mil fine every once in a while is just the cost of doing business for them. How many simil…

>Local competitors would not survive against something like Google without government protection

So you want them to be protected. In other words, protectionism?

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#88

Post by ocdtrekkie »

dalbasal wrote: post #26

The way antitrust is working in recent years is kind of ridiculous. Google in Europe is becoming a rich case study in antitrust meh. You find that adwords engages in a blatant "monopolistic abuse" in some specific sense. In the Adwords EU case for example, Google was both monopsonising (google search) and monopolising search advertising. But, the actual violations are specific, like exclusivity requirements and other…

The fix isn't the fines, it's the requirement to stop given behaviors. Google won't care about the fine it just got, sure, but it also can't block competing apps in this way again, at least in this jurisdiction.

It's a small victory, but it's also a hole in the armor. One of many, as various antitrust cases handle various abuses. Unfortunately, progress is slow but we're making it.

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#89

Post by ajsnigrutin »

simias wrote: post #83
oblio wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walled gardens are just security theater. The App Store revenue was $72bn in 2020, yet the review time for an app is a few hours. App reviewers barely have any qualifications, they're just "call center operators" running off a script.

If we judge by the result these app store seem to do fairly well security-wise, no? Compared to Windows as a case study of what happens when you let users install anything they want from untrusted sources, it seems that the app stores do fairly well at culling obvious malware. At least that's what I experienced comparing the number of time I had to cleanup a friend or family member's computer filled with malware and…

There is a lot of phone malware, showing random ad notifications, collecting gps data, sending it to whoknowswhere, some even sending premium sms messages, etc. There are less drive-by installs, but more intentional installs (eg. flashlight app with a gajillion permissions).

Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance

#90

Post by Lutzb »

dalbasal wrote: post #26

The way antitrust is working in recent years is kind of ridiculous. Google in Europe is becoming a rich case study in antitrust meh. You find that adwords engages in a blatant "monopolistic abuse" in some specific sense. In the Adwords EU case for example, Google was both monopsonising (google search) and monopolising search advertising. But, the actual violations are specific, like exclusivity requirements and other…

The fix is not fines. Threat to split the company.
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