this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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I don't understand. Android already allows other apps and app stores to be installed, and Epic already has an Android app store you can download and install without issue. What was the argument here?
Edit: tldr: apparently it is not good enough for Epic to have their own app store, they want to have their app in Google's app store and still not pay them money for purchases made in the app.
Google paid off other OEMs to make Google Play the default app store (much like they paid off other companies to be the default search engine) which the court decided was anticompetitive.
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.
Apple doesn't need to make any deals at all because you simply can't install any other app stores, or any apps outside of the Apple app store.
That's the crazy thing, that they lost their case and Apple won, despite Apple having WAY more control.
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.