It is actually pretty surprising that the play store is the one getting the antitrust. You’d think Apple would’ve been an easier case.
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No, Apple won on some technicalities.
- They don’t have a major market share globally (despite their larger market share in the US).
- Epic’s case was focused on games, which don’t make up the majority of revenue for the App Store, apparently
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How does this have anything to do with market share anyway?
Are you serious or are you just trolling? This is an anti trust lawsuit. The definition of antitrust is preventing abuse of monopolies. And the definition of a monopoly is “controlling most or all of the market share” or something.
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I don’t understand, you can pretty much install any app store on android.
Am I missing something?
Yes, you’re missing something, IMO.
Google to OEMs: Hey, I know we market Android as an open system, but since we know the market reality is that you can’t use other software, we’re going to force you into signing these agreements saying no third party app stores and you will bundle our software and telemetry, without giving the option to uninstall. You will also make installing apps from outside the play store show a scary message and requiring changes in the settings.
Google to app providers: Hey, there’s a 30% fee on anything both through the play store, and inside your apps once you’re done with the play store. Unless we have a secret backroom deal with you giving you an unfair advantage over competing apps, like we’ve done with Spotify and Netflix.
Courts: Uhhh all of that seems like an abuse of your market position, no?
Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
I don’t think including the base store is even a bad thing. I reckon the big change from this will be that if your app is signed as an app store and preinstalled or in turn signed off by Google, the usual safety precautions are dropped and for all intents and purposes you can behave like the Google Store.
Though… I give it ~1-4 minutes until the shitstorm about malware installing their own app stores to get around all security begins. And in this particular content, Epic counts as malware, given the shit they did on PC.
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Samsung has one and they aren’t allowed to have it as the default.
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- Extra revenue stream
- To be able to sell their devices in countries not supported by Google Play (China).
- As a leverage to get better licensing deal from google. Manufacturers must pay Google to include Play Store in their device, and it can cost up to $40 per device. By having their own app store, phone manufacturers might have some leverage in licensing cost negotiation (e.g. Google offering them money to not include other app store).
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Thanks for the explanation. Very helpful and insightful.
As a similar comparison, Microsoft was found to be in violation of antitrust laws with internet explorer even though everyone could pretty much install any browser they wanted to on Windows.
Yooooo that’s actually awesome. If they hit Apple next that’d get even better.
The play store has some weird security items attached to it that blocks your bank or even some games if your phone is rooted. I’d love if Google was forced to drop stuff like that to retain users.
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that blocks your bank or even some games if your phone is rooted
That’s your bank and those games, not Google.
The games are obviously afraid of cheating/hacking. For the bank it’s about your account’s security. Root access gives a lot of power to potentially malicious actors, it’s definitely not weird for them to not work if your phone is rooted.
This is fucked up. I hate google but are they really the one getting the antitrust instead of apple?
I wonder if just this exposure will lead increased numbers to alternatives. Would that be good?
