If apple literally hadn't won their own case 2 years ago you'd be right.

If the company that literally doesn't allow users to install ANY application, yet alone a whole store, is in the clear, it's mind boggling that Google's situation is the one they took issue with.

Apple literally has a higher market share in the US.

Sure, but I would argue that Google's platform was open enough in that it was possible to download and install alternative app stores. They shouldn't need to do most of the things that are being requested here, like distribute play store apps in those alternate stores or change their requirements about what payment systems are used in apps downloaded through their app store. For the most part I think they should still be able to do what they want to do in their own app store, just like Apple.

It's not a court of public opinion. This isn't a popularity contest; they're not running for public office or something here.

In real court (with real lawyers and real judges), precedent often matters (often, it matters quite a lot).

Informing the court of [what may be] meaningful precedent is important; without this deliberate informative step, the court might not know about it at all. The court cannot take anything into consideration that it has no knowledge of.

(Despite the black robes and literal ban-hammers, judges aren't all-seeing or all-knowing.)

I can see why they'd want to say "our competitor does it worse but we're the only ones being regulated". Sure, they'd rather not be regulated at all... but, if they are, then they want to be regulated no worse than their competitor.

The issue is that the precedent they point to was categorically ruled _not_ an illegal monopoly in a similar court case. I don't disagree that there should be more competition in for platforms, but I also can recognize that the legally binding opinion on that disagrees with mine.

Two 'monopolies' in app stores aren't a monopoly. They are at most a duopoly..

Sure, but I think it's fair to say "why are you regulating us significantly more than you are regulating our similar competitor?" Android is already more open than iOS; you can already install third-party app stores, where the only hoop you have to jump is agreeing to a warning about installing things from "unknown sources".

But yeah, Google doesn't allow rival app stores to be distributed through the Play Store, nor does it give access to the full Play Store catalog to third-party app stores. Frankly I'd never even thought of the latter thing as something I or anyone would want, but sure, ok, make them do that.

Meanwhile, Apple gets to keep their App Store monopoly (in the US at least), a situation that is even more locked down than Android's has ever been.

I absolutely agree that Apple's platform needs to be opened up too. And while I'm often not sympathetic toward Google on a lot of things, I can absolutely be sympathetic toward them feeling like they are being treated vastly unequally by the law.

But it is. For the savvy user you can run whatever you want on an android device.

Ebay sellers already can do this [1] [2]

[1] https://www.edesk.com/blog/ebay-fulfillment-amazon-fba/

[2] https://sell.amazon.com/fulfillment-by-amazon

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 Apple in their parallel case, there's a clearer line to how Google is being unfair compared to how Apple is being unfair.

In short, Epic sued and won because Google got between them and Samsung.

In general, in the courts, it's a lot easier to ask a judge or jury for someone to stop doing a thing (blocking their software from being pre-installed) vs. forcing someone to do something they're not currently doing (allowing any third-party app stores).

Since Android 12, third party app stores can auto-update apps

This might explain (or be related to) why when I installed an Amazon app through Amazon's store it would get hijacked by the Play Store version eventually.

This is not true, I get automatic updates with F-Droid just fine.

If Google had tried to make an iPhone style ecosystem, all evidence is clear that they would have utterly failed, like almost every other consumer device that Google has tried to promote, and we would have had at least a few more iOS competitors (maybe Windows would have lived? Maybe Samsung would have finished Tizen?). The reason Android succeeded was precisely because it was open and available to multiple OEMs. But that also opens Google up more to anti-competitive scrutiny.

From the TFA

> 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.

> I've never run into any of the anticompetitive problems people claim are so damaging

That sounds like you either haven’t heard all of the indie developers complaining or are inclined to find reasons to say problems with “your side” have some other explanation. For example, this was just a couple weeks ago where Google’s “open platform” blocked a popular app from doing what their mutual customers wanted:

https://ia.net/topics/our-android-app-is-frozen-in-carbonite

If you chose Android because it’s open, then the judge has just forced Google to make it more open for you.

If someone chose iOS because it’s closed then the judge has decided it can stay mostly closed.

Also Google is where it is because they pitched a platform that was friendlier for carriers to load up with crapware than Apple was. It wasn’t really openness for openness’ sake. If Google hadn’t done that we might have been in a world where Palm or Microsoft were the secondary or primary player next to iOS.

"I chose Android because it's open"

But it never was. You were defrauded and everyone who made that choice for those reasons were illicit market gains because of the secret agreements Google exerted over the entire ecosystem around you.

It was never really open but you also never really knew about that because all of the real options were taken out back and killed before you saw them.

The problem is that we will have proprietary software (distributed for free) doing bad things, and people blame their phone being slow.

I don't like that app stores engage in rent seeking behavior when it comes to payments, but that is a separate issue.

Better to say Apple failed to lose. The court explicitly left open the question as to whether they are a monopoly. They just didn't provide any meaningful injunctions as a result of that case.

The core difference is Apple had a bench trial and Google let actual people decide in a jury trial, which is a lot harder to swindle with legal technicalities, and also much harder to overturn on appeal.

I agree with you. First decision needs to overruled and Apple sued to hell until they comply.

One is a Federal criminal case.

The other is a Civil damages case.

Their format, rulings, and outcomes are not comparable.

Nothing in the civil case precludes Apple from receiving a criminal complaint.

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) can't make a product with a fork without getting into hot water...

To be clear I hate them both and miss the future that could have been with Maemo. As it stands however Apple is just being consistent and having full ownership, whereas Google is arguably strong-arming other manufacturers in a way that limits consumer choice, even if it is a bit more open.

[0] - AARD Code, anyone?

[1] - Smells of MSFT/Intel Bundling/exclusivity Rebates that resulted in various levels of antitrust action/settlements

It's only dangerous if Google has better judgment than the end user. This may be the case for the majority of users, but there's a significant subset for whom it's not the case. It'd be nice if there were a way for the end user to nudge Google to step aside.

For starters, it's the "O" in "AOSP":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#Ope...

So, 2007-present, that's when.

Android is acknowledged as a Linux distribution. Linux, also known as GNU/Linux, incorporates significant GPL-licensed code. By contrast, Apple has used BSD derivatives for a codebase, and BSD licenses, while F/OSS, are not "viral" in the way the GPL is, so Apple is not required to redistribute source code, or submit their patches upstream, and they can make proprietary additions anywhere they like.

They actually did promise you could get the source code for Android.

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"

>a partisan aside about a judicial decision on a case between private parties is off topic.

Given the FTC going after Amazon, I think it's a relevant question to consider. these cases will inevitably influence if Apple is gone after, but who goes after them will depend a lot on the US's government.

> But a partisan aside about a judicial decision on a case between private parties is off topic

Surely politics has something to do with this decision? These things don't just happen in a vacuum. The judge presiding over this case was appointed by Barack Obama and generally government deregulation is something that Republicans advocate for.

Android 12 was what fixed what I meant to refer to: unattended updates with third party sideloaded stores. It's from 2021 and probably didn't get 50% marketshare until ~2023 or so. Developers for those app stores had to deal with their users being out of date all the time to a much bigger extent than Play store and officially partnered stores.

And Android WearOS is still hard for side-loaded stores to work with at all without developer debugging mode I think and is tightly integrated with the phone stuff.

There weren't scare screens, at least I don't remember any, but the upgrade flow was comically bad for apps installed outside of the Play Store.

Let's say you install 15 apps on F-Droid. Every time you want to upgrade your apps, you were forced to manually initiate, and then sit through, each app update as they're installed in the foreground. This was because of deliberate limitations in Android.

Whereas on the Play Store, you could hit one button to update all of your installed apps and the installations happened in the background.

I believe it was after Google was threatened with lawsuits that they modified Android to be less tedious when it comes to managing and upgrading apps outside of the Play Store.

I believe the right thing I wanted to refer to is unattended app updates, enabled for third party sideloaded stores only with Android 12 or so. Maybe 12 added it back after it was taken away at some earlier point?

I mean, the review part I support. The revenue part is fucking horseshit.

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.

There are a myriad of points which make this metaphor a insufficient argument at best (at worst intentionally obfuscating the nature of digital publishing and digital marketplaces as having similar physical analogues) in favor of the current app store landscape:

1. AFAIK anyone can manufacture and distribute CDs

2. The argument that anything below the cost to manu CDs is acceptable only holds water if you have an inefficient market that doesn’t reflect the actual cost of digital distribution.

How generous!

That's the kind of argument that only gets a pass if you have no other option as a user. Wink wink.

> This context does indeed matter a lot. Hard to lock out competition when your competition is 8x the market share.

If you're a new company and lack any monopoly power to abuse, I don't see the issue. I wouldn't mind hearing alternative strategies to compete.

There's nothing wrong with limited exclusivity deals if you are not a monopolist. And the problem with Google was not their exclusivity, but that EVERYBODY was forced to do it or jump through hoops with side-loading.

Makes sense that privilege was taken away, given that Google is facing legal consequences for abusing their position in the mobile app distribution and payments markets.

That’s because people don’t actually give a rats ass about competition directly. They care about _cost_ AND _convenience_. Steam is great on both fronts and you don’t have to create yet another account or have another buggy pos launcher on your computer.

Because Steam is good and EGS sucks donkey balls. It's slow as shit, crashes randomly, and is missing boatloads of features. People don't object when a different store brings actual value, like GoG. They object because Epic's version of competition is just dump trucks of cash thrown at game publishers - that doesn't help the consumer any.

It's not unlike everyone here that loves to champion Apple even when the article is about Apple being the most openly evil it can possibly be, except so far Valve hasn't really done anything like that.

That's exactly the competition that keeps PC from having the hiked prices the likes of Switch/XBox/PS5 stores and having to pay $15/mo to play games with your friends online.

I'll happily have to deal with a few extra launchers on PC in comparison to what the alternative is.

> It's an extremely annoying situation for users

This is where I see how long that battle will be.

The future where this "extremely annoying" situation is fully solved is Xbox XXX being un removable and the only Game Store allowed on any PC sold, with legal threats to anyone jailbreaking.

As long as user have a choice and control on their device, and competition is alive, we'll hopefuly have different stores with different rules and you'll be extremely annoyed I think.

More fair to say Epic is money pitting from, given discoveries from Epic v Apple and Epic v Google..

No it isn't, the competition is great and is lowering prices across the board, and no arbitrary censorship exists.

The desktop games market is much heathier and less dangerous for users than the mobile app market.

I literally don't have anything but Steam installed.

> It's an extremely annoying situation for users

Is it? I regularly use Steam, Epic and XBox and occasionally Ubi, Larian and whatever the GoG one is called... and it's fine. It's just another program.

I can definitely see that happening, but there have been examples of where large companies support broader market access over exclusivity.

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.

The reason that isn't too much of a problem is that if an app is only available on one store, a significant fraction of people will simply not install it. Businesses don't want to lose customers like that, but the mere fact that they could will force Monopoly App Store to act more reasonably.

We'll probably see 3-4 major stores that manage to get enough mindshare for people to actually install them, and a lot of apps available on a 2-ish-store subset of them.

okay, so I assume those who jailbreak don't live rent free in your head? That's all that's happening on a technical level. Making it easier to have other Cydia stores.

yeah. If I want to watch a show, I pay the $10-12, immediately not renew, and watch the show and maybe a few other things. And repeat if anything interesting comes on.

I don't need everything all in one place. Piracy was always the cheapest option if you wanted to spend time fiddling, but the current official means is much more convenient than the cable contract lock-in days.

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.

Yeah, and Crunchyroll, and Viki and a lot of other services most people probably don't know about.

> I just want to install the damn software and be done with it

So use the built-in app store, like you are doing today.

can't stop business. I just want Steam to not get in my way outside of giving their share and giving clear feedback on their reviews and what is wrong with my releases. Open Source isn't mainstream, but I don't care about that.

Given current lawsuits, Valve does neither.

> Imagine if Spotify had a Spotify store that required device id tracking for their ad network.

I’m pretty sure the likes of Adobe and Meta would be literally foaming at the mouth in excitement over the potential for this.

Streaming services what? I can download every streaming service from Play Store.

that's the funny thing. I think they still will, but the people up in Google apparently don't even want to risk the chance of losing any marketshare. That's why they spend millions to Apple to keep Google as the default search, even though many consumer's first instinct is to go to Google as is.

It's a strange strategy to me, but I guess I may underestimate however many people will just stick to whatever pops up first.

I think that's a critical piece that anyone opposing a more free and open mobile computing paradigm needs to recognize.

We point to PC gaming as a horrible state of affairs no one in the mobile world wants; but it really isn't. There were a half-dozen storefronts a few years ago. Today: Everyone is on Steam. There's EGS if you play Fortnite. I think Rockstar still has their own stuff, maybe? A couple blizzard games are still only on battle.net. Xbox has their app for Game Pass, but all their games are also on Steam. That's... it. Steam won. Its never not won.

It turns out that markets love centralization. Its an efficiency thing.

Mobile will be the same. Epic will have their store. A few others, maybe. You'll still download all the apps you care about from the App Store. Your user experience won't change (unless you want to give Fortnite a try).

What might change is: It gives a pressure point developers can leverage against Apple to negotiate better terms. Their services revenue will drop... maybe.

I say "maybe" because opening platforms and reducing prices also tends to grow the overall pie. See, there are companies like Netflix who refuse to support Apple IAP for subscriptions because the terms are unfavorable to their business. If those terms became more favorable: 10% of a million is more than 30% of zero. There are companies like Adobe and AutoDesk that refuse to build any meaningful software for the iOS and iPadOS platforms, because (in part) they would be willingly sacrificing the agency of their business to Tim Cook (for 70% of all sales; a penance). With storefront options: You might have to download the Adobe Storefront, but you'd, at least, have After Effects. No one reasonable would pick "not having After Effects" over being given the choice between using After Effects with Adobe's inevitably shit launcher/storefront and not.

I think the key deference here is that the web is open and people can build competitors on a level playing field. They don't have anti-competitive restrictions placed on them by their competitors (i.e. Apple and Google).

And what happens at the end of the 3 years? If apps are pulled, are people who downloaded the apps through those alt-stores going to lose access to updates, causing security issues or a support nightmare when the users don't see new features?

We'll see Android users needing to have multiple app stores just to get all the apps they want/need, along with the updates. From a user experience point of view, that sounds worse, even if the competition is meant to make things better.

Their local store surviving and expanding their operation during these 3 years could be enough of a benefit.

The store can plan for what they'll do 3 years later, so progressively injecting IKEA competitors in the mix and getting people to know the other options could lead to a durable business. Especially if IKEA loses enough sales that they'd want to keep selling their goods in third party stores to keep shelf space from competition.

To get out of the metaphor: if alternative app stores become big enough to thrive on their own from this initiative, app makers will keep pushing their apps other there. In particular this whole scheme assumes some level of compatibility, so the burden should be light enough.

If there 100's of alternate app stores, all with different revenue sharing agreements, payment processing systems, etc etc etc how are developers going to manage it all? Does a developer need to share their billing info with 100's of app stores? Seperatly agree to each stores terms of service? Seems like it will get awfully complicated awfully quick.

Yeah, it just feels like it's opting developers into a business relationship with third party app stores that they may not want, by virtue of their business relationship with Google.

Look at it a different way: if Google themselves did this as opt out, developers would be screaming bloody murder about how this wasn't the terms of service they agreed to.

thanks for posting the actual wording here, that makes things a lot more clear and a lot less ominous than my first interpretation.

Droidify used to be much better because the official F-Droid client had a lot of problems, but now the latter is alright