Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly
Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly
“That world is changing,” says Judge Donato.
I'm sure this will be done with consumers in mind and won't contribute to enshittification of the phone ecosystem, like launching a game on steam launching a whole new launcher. Nah, companies want what's best for us
Why is the Google play store a monopoly if you can sideload apps, but the Apple store isn't one although you can't sideload apps? I'm not pro-Google, I'm just trying to understand.
Just to add, there are multiple app stores available for Android devices. I hate Google, but this seems like an odd attack at first glance
Because they make deals with manufacturers to ensure only google play is loaded on, and that the bootloader is locked so custom ROMs can't be easily installed. If they decline, they lose the right to ship w/ google play, and therefore piss of the average user.
Not just a coincidence that the only flagship devices on the market with an unlockable bootloader are made by Google. If you want to use android without them in a secure manner, you're going to have to pay them for it.
Yup, I use F-Droid for most of my apps, and Aurora as an anonymous FE to the Play store. I also have a couple apps sideloaded.
Can't answer your question as I'm also trying to understand but recently Graphene OS has been in the news.
Basically there are apps that won't work if they have not been authenticated by one of Google's APIs. Which means there are apps that won't work if it did not come from the play store.
Yeah, It's a bit more complicated than that though. The service your referring to is called Google App Service (sometimes just called App Services) and is required for certain functions. Mostly to do with API calls to Google servers, so it makes sense that they would need to be verified. It ain't as anti-competitive as it first sounds, it's actually very reasonable.
There are also some apps that have versions that don't need Google App Services in order to run, they use alternate open source solutions. The version designed to run on Google's app store requires Google App Services, the other versions don't. The problem comes if people try and sideload the wrong version.
If the app does not require App Services then it doesn't matter what platform it's installed from.
Oh, I thought it was an epic judge saying that, but it's just Epic's judge.
I wish every judge was epic 😭
Can they be both?
How about the Google Play as system app? I would like to see that gone too. Just make every app stores normal apps. No special privileges.
The problem is that there are very good reasons to have specific authoritative app stores/package repositories. and it is a lot harder to have privileged and unprivileged accounts on a phone versus a computer.
But yeah. Something has to be done about that since it is the fundamental issue with mobile devices.
Almost like those systems were designed to be monopolistic and anti-competitive from the very beginning…
Is it though? I have three profiles on my phone:
- main - all my normal apps; no Google Play whatsoever
- work - work apps; Google Play services running
- google - Google stuff (like Google Maps and whatnot); Google Play services running
This is on GrapheneOS, and they basically just ship AOSP with some patches on top.
Now do Apple.
At least you can have a third party app store on Android. Samsung, Amazon, and Xiaomi have their own app stores on Android devices. And there's F-Droid, too. But that's flat out impossible on iOS still, right?
Apple has a larger share of the US smartphone market (55-some-odd percent vs. Androids's 44) so not only do more people have Apple devices and are thus likely to be impacted by Apple's stranglehold on their platform, but you literally cannot put any app on that platform without Apple's approval and kowtowing to their policies for the same, in addition to them taking a mandatory cut. (Yes, I am aware of jailbroken devices which is a tiny statistically insignificant fractional corner of the iPhone user base). Apple has already provably stifled competition in the iPhone app space by, e.g., prohibiting any web browser that does not internally use the Safari rendering engine and previously banning emulators because they might allow "external code" to run on the device.
This case isn't a "win" for anybody except one megacorporation over another. The crux of the issue originally was that Epic thought both Google and Apple were taking too big of a cut of their revenue, and didn't want either tampering with their in-app microtransactions. Both Google and Apple retaliated by delisting Fortnite for having untaxed microtransactions in it, and then Epic sued both of them.
The decisions in the Epic vs. Google and Epic vs. Apple cases are basically opposites of each other, which makes zero sense when anyone could (and still can) sideload Fortnite onto an Android device if they wanted to and not deal with Google, but this is still not possible on an iPhone.
Apple already lost in the EU and need to allow other app stores
Other app stores that are approved by Apple while giving Apple a cut after a million downloads of an app.
You still can't install whatever .ipa file you want on iOS, even in Europe. So if you want something like Revanced (uYou+ on iOS), then you have to go through the whole rigamarole of creating an Apple developer account, resigning the ipa file, and repeating the resigning process every week, optionally using something like AltStore to automate that process, or alternatively, jailbreak, which means that you have to stay on an old, exploitable iOS version and never update.
What really needs to happen is that the consumer needs to own the device they bought. What this means in the smartphone world (also other devices, like video game consoles, car computers, smartwatches, smart TVs, tablets, laptops, etc.) is a few things: root access, an unlockable bootloader, and replacable signing keys for the primary bootloader while providing a firmware package to go back to 100% stock (so no Samsung Knox that irrevocably triggers after unlocking the bootloader or DRM keys that get irrevocably wiped when unlocking the bootloader) (all of these being optional features that the user has to explicitly enable). Anything short of that is not ownership.
Google was giving preferential treatment to certain companies and had a bunch of backroom deals going on and generally very anticompetitive behavior.
Right but is that actually illegal given the fact that you can sideload apps it's not like they're locking people out of their devices.
I don't like it but I'm not sure it necessarily meets the criteria for illegality.
This makes this decision seem stupid. I don't quite understand how US law works but I thought it was precedent based which meant that once one case had been decided that essentially decided all similar cases unless they were demonstrably different. I don't understand why that isn't the case here.
Samsung & Amazon have had their own fairly successful stores for years. Compete if you feel so strongly
This is nothing like the situation on Apple devices
Amazon doesn't sell devices with Google Play or other google apps loaded on them, they specifically don't have a deal with google, and instead create a flavor of android based on the AOSP, which is increasingly minimalistic on purpose.
Samsung does have a store, but its not like Google didn't try to stop it.
Basically your options are to do everything that google says, or reinvent the wheel trying to push AOSP.
I want this guy tearing down Apple completely
Apple had a different judge and they said that it's ok what Apple does with iOS and it's app store.
Exactly, we need to replace all tech decision-makers in the government with this guy. And pay him to rip corporate CEOs into shreds.
Good.
Don't forget Playstation, Nintendo and Xbox stores as well.
It would be nice if maybe the judge is actually knew what they were talking about. I'm not entirely clear I understand what would change here you can already sideload apps in fact if you get an Samsung phone I'm pretty sure Samsung app store is pre-installed.
No one uses it, that's because it's terrible and doesn't contain anything that isn't in the regular app store but it's allowed and you don't have to do any hacking or anything.
Apple though...
Half, if not more, of the apps on my Android phone come from F-Droid.
“We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen,” said Donato. “The world that exists today is the product of monopolistic conduct. That world is changing.” Donato will issue his final ruling in a little over two weeks.
The hero we need…
Google | Microsoft | Apple
If we can break these companies into dozens of pieces we may be able to get back the world we lost
Google can be broken up into 40 different messaging companies at least.
