Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

I believe that Google wanted in-app purchases in Fortnite to go through Play Store so that Google would get 30%. And Epic wanted to setup their own in-app billing and keep it all.

I wonder how that's going to play out with Apple and their monopoly.
- A lot of this case hinged on the fact that Google wasn’t treating everyone the same. They had a lot of private details for big companies.
  
  Unless Apple also has secret deals, then this isn’t going to impact them.
  
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  Apple wouldn't need to have secret deals. They're running a walled garden over there. You can't side load, and you can't run payments through the app without Apple's approval. That case was about Apple forcing developers not to even talk in the app about the possibility of making a purchase elsewhere, like through their websites. It wasn't a deal, it was Apple strong-arming a developer because they could.
  
  The problem is Google wanted to have what Apple has: a closed ecosystem they can exploit. But they don't have that, at least not to the same degree. Android is not "theirs", even if they've increasingly managed to make the Play Store more inseparable as time has gone by, and getting worse about that all the time.
  
  The most they can do is scare people away from using third party app stores or doing anything with Android they don't approve of, and when it comes to things like Play Integrity and Play Protection, they can punish you for stepping outside their bounds by breaking certain functionality (for having the audacity to want to control your own device).
  
  But they can't outright control anything.
  
  Which is where the deals come in. They're making shady deals to keep Android as their money maker and no one elses.
  
  It's anti-competitive, because to spite Google's efforts, there is an actual opportunity for competition on Android, where as on iPhone, there isn't.
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- By enforcing a rule that says apps on the app store cannot have an external paid app store. So that's why you download FN on sideload instead of the store.
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- No I think Google tried to tell Epic they couldn't have their own processing for in-app purchases. That's what Epic sued over.
  
  There are multiple entities with their own payment processing mechanisms running on Android. Epic was definitely able to run their own if they wanted to.
  
  Many of them are either exceptions made by Google through shady deals or apps that were overlooked by Google before they published the app.
  
  That’s exactly what sunk Google’s case though. They’re inconsistent. Had they most likely shown they’re consistent to other apps they could have been more likely to get a jury on their side (like in the case with Apple).
  
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  Google and Apple both banned Fortnite from their respective app stores and that's what caused Epic to sue both of them in the first place.
  
  Well, Epic instigated them to ban the app so they could claim the ban as a tort under competition law.
  
  It's more that Epic added their own payment system to the app (and offered, IIRC, a roughly 30% decrease in Vbucks price for people who opted to use it instead), Google and Apple both responded by removing the app, and then Epic sued them both and even aired a special presentation in Fortnite. All in the same day. Epic intentionally did this.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  special presentation
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- No, then you won't even be able to use in-app purchases.
  
  Android supposedly has an option to side load, and even install another store, but in order to do it, you get through a series of warnings, and such stores can't even be on the play store. So for an ordinary user you feel like you are hacking the phone. So naturally there aren't many alternatives. The only one that lasted is F-Droid, but it seems to be only used by advanced users who want to run open source software.
  
  So simply, theoretically they should be able to do whatever they want practically everyone has to stick to play store.
  
  Play store has a rule, that additional charges need to go through them (and they of course charge 30%). This probably would still be ok, but then certain vendors don't need to follow the same rules.
  
  No, then you won’t even be able to use in-app purchases.
  
  That's not true - they wouldn't be able to use the Google Play APIs for payments of course, but if the app is sideloaded they can definitely use any payment processor / method. If the app isn't on the Play Store then Google has no say over it.
  
  Android supposedly has an option to side load, and even install another store, but in order to do it, you get through a series of warnings
  
  It's really not as difficult as you make it seem.
  
  Send a link to the user somehow (SMS, email etc); or user goes to the website
  
  Click on the Download button
  
  Open the APK
  
  In the dialog box that pops up, click on the Settings button > then allow Samsung Internet
  
  Click on the Install button
  
  That's it. There were no "series of warnings" to go thru, no need to flip between multiple screens or anything. I literally just went thru this process to install the Epic store my Galaxy Fold 4 - which took only a few seconds in total - and it was in no way complicated or "scary" at all. And bear in mind that the audience in this case are gamers - people who are already familiar with the concept of downloading and installing programs on a PC, so it's not like you're targeting some tech-illiterate people here.
  
  The only one that lasted is F-Droid
  
  Not true again. Aurora Droid and Droid-ify are both reasonably popular, at least in the OSS/enthusiast communities. Yes they use the F-Droid repos but they also subscribe to other repos (Guardian Project, Izzy etc), so you're getting your apps from multiple sources.
  
  There are also proprietary stores such as Aptoide which are quite popular in the Asian markets. Finally, you're completely ignoring other stores which are bundled out-of-the-box on many non-Google phones such as the Galaxy Store on Samsungs, Mi Store on Xiaomis, AppGallery on Huawei etc. Of course, in the western market the Play Store is the most dominant, but the Samsung store is reasonably popular among Samsung users (as they have regular deals on games and various other apps + some exclusives like Good Lock and other Samsung-specific apps), and of course, the OEM stores are also quite popular in Asian markets.
  
  Not OP, and, correct me if I'm misremembering, but you did actually used to have to enable developer options to be able to sideload at all, and Android doesn't tell you how to do that.
  
  You seem too certain that it's still simple, but everytime I'm installing a new APK my Xiaomi makes me wait 10 seconds and puts a big, red, scary sign saying how dangerous it is to side load, then finally the ok buttons unlocks and I install my app.
  
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  No, then you won’t even be able to use in-app purchases.
  
  I didn’t realize that. Never actually tried to buy anything. You can’t even make purchases in the Samsung store? Or Huawei?
  
  OP is mistaken - you can make purchases in side-loaded apps, only thing is that app can't use the Google Play APIs for that (obviously) - but they're free to use PayPal or stripe or w/e payment method. Google has no way of preventing sideloaded apps from doing that, and it's not like they can ban them either.
  
  You are put through a series of warnings just like you are when downloading an executable in the browser, or installing it on Windows.
  
  Actually, there isn't even any actual "warning" - at least not on my Fold 4 - there was just one dialog to enable installation from unknown sources, with a "Settings" button that takes you directly to the page where you need to tick the box next to your browser, and as soon as you tick the box, you can click on the "Install" button to install it. That's it. None of the dialogs you interact with has any actual warnings.
  
  But we're not talking about Play Store...
  
  Epic is, in the law suite they just won.
  
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  I believe that is the crux of it. And apparently part of the trial exposed that some big players have special deals such that don't have to pay those in-app purchase commissions, or at least have a smaller commission. And that's what makes it an abuse of their market position.

But Epic v. Google turned out to be a very different case. It hinged on secret revenue sharing deals between Google, smartphone makers, and big game developers, ones that Google execs internally believed were designed to keep rival app stores down. It showed that Google was running scared of Epic specifically. And it was all decided by a jury, unlike the Apple ruling.

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- They obviously aren't forcing everyone to use Google billing, but it seems like an antitrust case gains a lot more ground if the accused pays money to quite a bit of people to prevent them from using competitors. That's what's getting Google here, apparently, not real forcing.

On top of what Aatube says about secret unfair deals, Google's Play Store is necessary to run essential social services. In my case I need it to download my banking app and to sign into my university's online studies.

Even something as simple as the Wikipedia app checks to see if Google Play Services is installed and running before it'll let you use it.
Needing an app to sign into uni

Jesus fucking hell. Bet it's propriety.
- Need an app to configure good ol' eduroam wifi too, but that one's on F-Droid at least
  
  Need an app to configure good ol' eduroam wifi too
  
  I'm pretty sure you don't, or at least didn't, it's just much more of a hassle to configure
  
  In theory you don't. In practice I couldn't get working with the 6 page step for step tutorial.
  
  It is almost impossible to get it working without the app.
  
  Ah, well in that case, even better
But that won't necessarily change with this ruling right? Your government doesn't need to change how their apps function because of this.

Phone makers weren’t allowed to include other app stores by default

The Galaxy store app on my phone says otherwise.
- The Galaxy Store was a special exception made for Samsung. Generally, Google is pretty "persuasive" about being the only pre-installed app store on the phone.
- What's in the contract between Google and Samsung? What exactly are the conditions for including both stores? Can any phone manufacturer get the same deal? What are the requirements for licensing Android? What number of phones on the market don't include Play Store by default? What % of applications are only in Play Store?
  
  Monopoly is not about exceptions but about market control. Until you know what companies have to do to use Android and function on the market you can't really tell if it's monopoly or not.
  
  I have to imagine the contract that Samsung has is "We're Samsung. We basically ARE Korean technology. We can build our own mobile OS if we want to and cut you out entirely. That's a lot of spying on customers you wouldn't get to do. We get our own app store or we walk. Oh look, LG just exited the smart phone market. Do what must be done."
  
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Does the Amazon store, Galaxy Store, AppGallery, Mi GetApps, and AOPPO app market not exist?
- Are those all on the phone by default?
  
  Edit: I didn't ask if some of them are installed by default, I asked if ALL of them are installed by default.
  
  I can't speak for the others, but the Samsung Galaxy Store does come pre-installed. However, Google paid Samsung for the Play Store to be the default action for app installs. So you get both stores and can pick which one you want.
  
  That's just two options from two big players who cooperate, and only on some devices.
  
  That's just two choices from parties that have a deal, and only on some devices.
  
  The Samsung galaxy store comes pre-installed on Samsung phones, I haven't heard of it being pre-installed on non-samsung phones.
  
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  But they're only default on their respective devices right?
  
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  As a reminder that was in fact not the comment I replied to.
  
  Yes, depending on where you buy them from. My Samsung came with Galaxy store by default.
  
  Amazon store and Galaxy store are absolutely installed by default on many devices.
  
  So what you're saying is that two of them are installed by default on some phones, but not all of them? Because the comment they replied to was talking about app stores being installed by default, so I'm asking if all those app stores are all installed by default. Because it seems like only some of them sometimes get installed by default on some phones.
  
  I don't know what's on every phone. But I can confirm those 2 are defaults on some devices through personal experience.
  
  And there are also devices without the Play store by default. Amazon products are probably the best example, but they're not the only ones.
  
  Don't get me wrong - Google does some terrible shit. But they're better than pretty much every other major software company on this issue. All the major game consoles and Apple require the use of their stores exclusively. Microsoft requires the Microsoft store to be installed on any modern Windows machine.
  
  Yeah - the Play Store is the de-facto default and by far the most successful on the platform. And yeah - Google likes it that way and encourages it. But so does everyone else. The difference is that Google is the best actor in this area.
  
  Google allows sideloading. They allow other storefronts. They allow other stores to be installed by default by manufacturers. They allow manufacturers to not include the Play Store. And they allow the removal/disabling of the Play Store by users.
  
  Mi app store is, and on Chinese models is the only one.
  
  The jury settled on the relevant geographic market being "worldwide excluding China".

“Impairment means something is there, it’s being used, it just isn’t as good. Prevented means you shut it down.”

Epic’s expert Bernheim argues that Google’s expert Gentzkow “ignores four critical aspects of Google’s conduct,” including:

Google impairs competition without preventing it entirely

Google’s conduct targets comeptition as it emerges

Google is dominant

Google shares its Play profits with its competitors

“When push came to shove, he talked about whether competition is prevented” rather than impaired, says Bernheim.

The upshot of that: Bernheim believes Epic doesn’t need to prove Google actually blocked competition entirely. In his opinion (for Epic), Epic only needs to show there were no good alternatives to Google Play and Google Play Billing. It doesn’t need to show there were no alternatives at all.

For example, says Bernheim, Gentzkow presented a chart titled “Was Fortnite Blocked?” showing that revenue tanked on Google Play after the app was kicked off the store, but didn’t tank for Android phones that got Fortnite a different way.

But “If off-Google Play was a good substitute for Google Play, you’d see when one drops, the other goes up commensurably.” That didn’t happen: demand stayed stable outside of Play, according to the bar graph we just saw. “There’s no indication that any of the people here are substituting to off-Google Play.”

Google effectively has a monopoly on the Android app ecosystem and this trial brought to light mountains of evidence that they maintain this through extremely anti-competitive means.

None of those are allowed on the Play Store. And when you try to side load an app, it warns you about it being dangerous.

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- The Play Store doesn't allow other app stores.
  "4.5 You may not use Google Play to distribute or make available any Product that has a purpose that facilitates the distribution of software applications and games for use on Android devices outside of Google Play." - Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement
  
  Computers have had warnings about installing software since the beginning of computers
  
  I think "Computers" go back way farther than you're imagining. There was a time when you didn't even install software on computers. You just put in a disk and ran what was on it. We don't even need to go back to when "Computer" was an actual job title. Something that humans (mostly women) did.
  
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  ...huh? Why would there be an app store inside an app store?
  
  To make it easy to access other app stores of course. You can use one web browser to download another can't you.
  
  No I was just speaking simply. You know what I meant.
  
  Maybe too simply, because I really don't. Windows didn't give any warnings about installing any programs until Windows 10 I think. And even then it's only the truly esoteric and unknown to Microsoft.