Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight
Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight
Victory Royale.
Well, I’ll be damned. They finally won one it sounds like.
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So odd that the open source platform that allows sideloading and doesn't even come with an app store by default is the one that is a monopoly but the locked down one with total control over your device is not.
Some Android flavors even come with other app stores. Samsung phones have their own Samsung app store that even includes Fortnite.
problem here was that Google was doing deals to undermine those things
Apple has no such “deals” because apple owns the entire stack.
Welcome to law, Apple is less monopolistic than Google legally simply because Apple built a better monopoly, by denying competition in the first place.
They do control Play Services, however. That's not open source and includes proprietary apps basically essential for an operating smart phone such as Google sign in, Maps, and of course the Play Store. Google used their market dominance in those fields to prevent third parties from launching or installing competitors to the Play Store by denying Play Services to those who didn't comply; paying them off directly or brokering sweetheart deals. That's appears like an obvious abuse of their market position.
They do control Play Services, however. That’s not open source and includes proprietary apps basically essential for an operating smart phone such as Google sign in, Maps, and of course the Play Store.
Wtf is this? You do not need google sign in for running a smart phone. Hell, one of the features of stock AOSP Android is being in no way tied to Google.
Not just the degoogled open source Android disros either. Amazon has a commercial fork of Android with its own app store. There was Oppo's AOSP derived ColorOS which was not based on Google's stock Android. I don't think Google should control the core apps as tightly as they do on stock Android but on the other hand those apps sort of define stock android and the default user experience in the marketplace. Epic could roll their own fork if they wanted and substitute apps.
On the subject of Oppo, I think Tencent went after them and other Chinese manufacturers as well to get into their platforms. Tencent are the guys who push their own app store and one app to rule them that Musk has wet dreams about. I sometimes wonder if they are using Epic to wedge open US based app stores for a future WeChat/MyApp like approach. Not that the US government would allow that.
Valve created their own console and helped fund Wine development, presumably as a strategic move to counter Microsoft's platform control. I might be missing something but I don't see similar effort or innovation from Epic.
I believe Microsoft and Nvidia did deals with hardware manufacturers for years that helped exclude competition and those sorts of deals probably pose more difficulty in court. Google might have fallen into a trap and done something similar. Being vertically integrated Apple doesn't have to do deals with other manufacturers but presumably they have some deals with developers. Obviously Sony, Nintendo have exclusives, agreements with developers and tight control of their platforms as well that go far beyond anything I can see with Google so I do find it a bit confusing.