I can take the point with Google on transferring already installed apps from the Play Store to a 3rd Party store. That is a real issue which warrants further scrutiny, because the vectors for potential abuse.
I think the free ride of the Play Store having back links automatically in 3rd party app stores to “fill the gaps” is also problematic for representation reasons and is actually bad for users, as origin becomes obfuscated and so does support. If you want apps as a 3rd party store you need to recruit developers to publish to it. This is a clear and transparent attempt by Epic to undercut the Play Store while simultaneously benefiting from it at the same time. It’s not a pro consumer move.
I have trouble siding with them on the claims of distribution.
Distributing 3rd party app stores via Google Play Store isn’t hard, it’s just another app, effectively. It would actually allow them to police for exploitation and malware more transparently I would think, since the store itself would have to get approved like any other app.
I feel like any security issues could be solved by just letting app developers sign their own app bundles again. Then you could ensure an app is legitimate whether from the Play Store, F-Droid, or Shady Free App Store. Currently, Google makes it so painful to try to use independently-distributed software because apps signed by Google can't be upgraded by independently built versions and vice-versa. (Plus Play Protect pops up and disguisedly asks if I want to delete all F-Droid apps like every month.)
I'm not sure where play protect is supposed to come in. I haven't had a single play protect pop up ever and have been using fdroid and my own apps for years. This was on a pixel and now an Asus.
I am in the EU tho, so maybe there's difference policies?
What Epic is asking for goes beyond just moving your stuff though.
They're simultaneously asking for complete transparent access to every app published on Play Store and for Google to be forbidden from doing anything to encourage or promote publishing on Play Store.
This does not work the other way.
Google will not be able to show Epic's apps in Play Store, Epic is free to do whatever they want to secure exclusives like they do already, and Epic doesn't have to allow transferring apps to Play Store or any other store.
This is crazy. The case against Apple is much stronger than the one against Google.
Android devices don't even require the Play Store. Tons of devices out there are sold without it. Android is on far more than just phones. Google doesn't have as much control over its presence on devices as Apple does with the App Store on iOS.
The comparison is a good idea, but your conclusion from it goes in the wrong direction. What should have happened, is that Apple got slapped much harder.
I would encourage you to read more about the two cases and the differences between them and the rulings. Stratechery has some good articles though some are paywalled.
> "Google has a history of malicious compliance and has attempted to circumvent legislation and regulation meant to reign in their anti-competitive control over Android devices," Epic said of its demands of the search behemoth. "Our proposed injunction seeks to block Google from repeating past bad-faith tactics and open up Android devices to competition and choice for all developers and consumers."
Sorry forgot to quote what I'm talking about.
I agree Google tightly controls the Play Store specifically with regard to popular apps such as games. They do not have "anti-competitive control over Android devices" though. Epic's quoted claim is categorically false.
If they want to compete they need to release their own phone with their own store to sell games for it. This was in fact common practice on a lot of early Android devices.
Play Store might as well be a games console and if Epic wins then they probably would want to go after Nintendo and other licensed platforms next. That's ridiculous.
> If they want to compete they need to release their own phone with their own store to sell games for it.
This isn't realistic. Nobody wants to carry two phones, and no one will choose to carry Epic's phone instead of Google's if they can't access the full Android ecosystem with it.
Google has very intentionally used this to gain a monopoly on Android users even though the platform is ostensibly open source. They say to phone makers: If you want the Google Play store, you have to prohibit other stores (and bundle the Google apps, make Google Search the default, and N other things that benefit Google). Phone makers have to agree because you just can't sell a phone these days that doesn't have access to at least one of the Play Store or the Apple Store. No one would buy it. There used to be manufacturers that tried, back when the ecosystem was smaller, but they failed, and it has only become harder since.
This policy is 100% designed to prevent competition from taking hold, leaving Google in complete control of the Android app ecosystem. Sure it's not as bad as Apple, but it's absolutely anti-competitive.
There is a simple solution: Allow users to install competing app stores. Few people mind carrying multiple app stores on their phone (compared to carrying multiple phones). Competition will be able to grow incrementally and then maybe, someday, it will have grown enough that you could actually have a phone with only Epic's store and not Google's.
> This isn't realistic. Nobody wants to carry two phones, and no one will choose to carry Epic's phone instead of Google's if they can't access the full Android ecosystem with it.
Why can't Epic just release a device with both the Play Store and their games store? Then remove their games from the Play Store if they're so upset about it.
Why not get other publishers onboard with their shiny new gaming device to sell through their competing store?
No matter how you slice this, the anti-competitive entity is Epic.
The iOS ecosystem has a much stronger claim to "might as well be a games console" specifically because it was so vertically integrated, which is why their business model looked essentially identical to one from the launch of the App Store. Yet the market evolved and it's clear that "might as well be a game console" is no longer an adequate defense for these leading smartphone platform owners.
While there are differences between Google/Android/PlayStore and Apple/iOS/AppStore when it comes to platform control and accessibility, and therefore a case to be made that they could be treated differently, this difference seems to point in the entirely opposite direction what you seem to be arguing.
> Yet the market evolved and it's clear that "might as well be a game console" is no longer an adequate defense for these leading smartphone platform owners.
Could you explain why this is the case (what evolution makes it different from the game console case)? My understanding is that the percentage take is about the same in consoles and phones.
In a practical sense, the difference is one being asserted by influential regulatory bodies and courts. You might cheer them on or roll your eyes at them, but their influence makes it so regardless.
As for their justification, I think it's rooted in the scale and scope of these devices. Over the last 15 years, smartphones and tablets have shaped the world, ended up in almost every pocket, and become a prerequisite for access to increasingly many parts of one's life and career. Game consoles, in comparison, remain a luxury with far smaller relevance to what governments are tasked to take interest in.
Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. Epic should take this case up with all the phone manufacturers that would rather just put the Play Store on their phones. If Epic didn't want their games to be locked into the Play Store that's on them.
Most apps allow the user to login and access their data from any alternative platform. Google doesn't prevent this. Why can't they just update their games to allow this? They're correct that users should be free to play their games from anywhere. So... how is Google preventing them from implementing this?
Their failure to compete is nobody else's fault. I'm still just not getting what Epic is complaining about.
Google made backroom deals, which made the OEM approach non viable, unless you expected them to also become an OEM. But if they did, Google wouldn't have allowed the play store on their device, which would've ended with the MS phone situation all over again.
Releasing your own distro of Android and rebranding existing hardware is a reasonable path to competition. The cost would just be minimal dev work and a profit sharing plan with any of dozens of hardware manufacturers. Not a big deal and probably even cheaper than the legal fees they're incurring here.
In contrast, Apple flat out doesn't allow anyone else to sell their hardware or software. Now that's a monopoly.
To prevent companies from being anti-competitive by using vertical integration.
There was once a similar thing with movie studios and movie theaters. The Hollywood anti-trust case of 1948: https://w.wiki/AWmk (HN eats the period at the end of regular links)
Another example is the car dealership system, forcing car manufacturers to sell to dealerships for them to sell.
> In contrast, Apple flat out doesn't allow anyone else to sell their hardware or software. Now that's a monopoly.
Maybe you can help me fill in the gaps as to how this is a monopoly. Now depending on where you go for a definition of a monopoly, you might find subtly different definitions. But to quote Investopedia:
> A monopoly is characterized by a single company supplying a good or service, a lack of competition within the market, and no similar substitutes for the product being sold.
Apple's iPhone is produced by a single company, you're right. But there is competition within the market thanks to Android, and other failed attempts at competition like Blackberry and the Windows phones.
Furthermore, Apple might "stop" other competition from springing up by virtue of just being a better offering, but I don't believe anyone is quite literally halting someone from attempting to start a competing phone OS and hardware business. If the only choices are Android vs iOS, and the slew of Android phone manufacturers vs Apple, should Apple be held accountable for nobody making better offerings than what already exists? In my opinion, that answer is only "yes" if you can prove they're doing anything in back alleys to cut prospective competitors off at the knees, which as far as I know, doesn't happen. Maybe you can point me to where and how they do, though.
It depends how you define the market. If there is one market for phone hardware, and a separate market for app stores, then they’re illegally bundling them and using their position in the phone market to anti-competitively win in the app store market.
If you define the App Store as a component of the phone (which Microsoft tried to do and failed with their OS and Internet Explorer) then they’re fine.
So it would be a monopoly if it's largest competition with a huge stake of the market disappeared tomorrow is your retort to me challenging accusations of having a monopoly?
Your old rebuttal didn't work so your new rebuttal is that Apple innovated faster than competitors in the initial smart phone market almost 20 years ago? I'm sorry but I don't see how that's going to make your point today. Nor would it ever really make your point, in my opinion. If you start up a company that innovates an entire technological market, and you're waiting for the rest of the market to catch up, that's not something to really hold you accountable for. You just had a vision and executed it first. Please, just admit to yourself that you really want to believe Apple holds a monopoly, and you'll do any amount of mental gymnastics to get there. Once you admit that, we can have a thoughtful conversation on how Apple is a net negative to tech culture in more valid ways.
> The Chocolate Factory filed a briefing [PDF] objecting to Epic's demands on Monday, arguing that its internal estimate of up to $137 million to implement catalog access, library porting and distribution of third-party app stores, plus ongoing charges to keep the whole thing running, was simply too much to bear.
They could staff a hefty-sized team, have that team ship their deliverables wrapped in SAP middleware deployed on Oracle with metal racked by NASA astronauts on the dark side of the *fucking moon* and I still don't understand how it costs 137 million to CRUD a few models and wrap a REST API around it.
Xerox PARC operated on a budget of $12m/year in today's money. Out of that we got the laser printer, Ethernet, the GUI, much of the innovation behind object-oriented programming, etc. Just one of those innovations (laser printer) paid for the entire lab's operations 200 times over.
Back then all that stuff was basically low-hanging fruit. The time was right. If Xerox hadn't come up with them, someone else would have within a couple of years.
Also, they were all conceptually pretty simple.
Believe it or not, running an app store is massively more complex than any of those things you listed. Dealing with payments across countries, legal entities, fraud, security, hiring processes, employee performance standards, and so forth. A laser printer or a GUI is much simpler in comparison.
Also, that terminal emulator you're describing -- first, it's not just an emulator, it's adding a lot of new features. Second, developer salaries have skyrocketed relative to inflation. So even accounting for inflation, $12M goes a lot less far than it did in the 1970's.
Median salaries in 2023 were $130k. Yes, salaries are higher now but not by an insane amount, but this is a software team. They don't need an office, they don't need custom hardware. They don't need to invent ethernet along the way to make this work. They need to make a terminal emulator that people are willing to spend money on (good luck). Push the salaries up to $200k/year and total cost to $300k to cover other expenses (HR, health insurance, buying their laptops, etc.) and $23 million supports a team of about 77 devs for a year or about 25 for 3 years.
The laser printer was invented in the 70s. Back then, property prices (both rental and purchase) were much much MUCH more reasonable for both companies and their employees, with the latter being a significant contributor to the explosion in wages.
Or to rephrase, you needed way less money for any given thing 50 years ago because the associated costs were much lower.
The associated costs being higher is inflation, which he adjusted for, and there's lots of working from home nowadays, which means you need even less property per person than back then.
[ Free food is not the only perk to working at Google; the offices themselves have more than a touch of the Willy Wonkas (employees even refer to it occasionally as ‘the chocolate factory’). There’s a library with beanbags; sofa-lined workspaces; a state-of-the-art gym; a massage parlour offering treatments from facial-rejuvenation to Reiki; and a roof-top allotment area where Googlers grow their own vegetables. There’s a ball pool on the sixth floor, between marketing and events, and a ‘napping pod’ for when the fun gets too much. One of the canteens has a pool table, a fussball table, a table-tennis table and a candyfloss machine. We feel as though we’ve stumbled into a sort of open-plan Shangri-La. No wonder everyone we pass seems so chuffed with themselves. ]
The Register puts out high-quality articles but maintains its very sarcastic tone which found its fit in a much earlier internet era (Founded in 1994!). It strove to be the IT-workers own news outlet, in stark contrast to IT-capitalist trade magazines/WSJ/etc.
“The Chocolate Factory” is its sarcastic moniker for Google, and 10-15 years ago it fit quite well - satirical but descriptive. The moniker almost made fun of TheReg’s own readers as much as Google itself. Now the same name almost drips with venom in context of how much less cool Google is than it once was.
Inflation and falsehoods about costs seems like rampant corruption, honestly, especially in court filings like this.
The amount of six figure websites I've seen launched as business with very few staff and the site looking like nothing more than a basic django app has always been puzzling to me.
In an alternate universe, I wonder what would happen if we went the other way, allowing the walled groundskeepers their fences, but taking away all 'platform'-based legal protections that they enjoy; not just section 230: Apple liable for all copyright infringement, users defrauded by an app on the Play Store could claim damages from Google, etc.
These protections are also precisely what the faux-libertarian defenders of Apple and Google's rights to shine their gnomes and trim their hedges ignore.
Don't just say 'google it', show me what you're actually talking about.
All I found was "May I beg the court’s indulgence for a moment?" which isn't the context being used here, where the title says google is begging for a result.
"I beg [...] for" is a common figure of speech, not specifically legal terminology, but it's not actual "begging". The first-person part of that phrase is important context.
I think the free ride of the Play Store having back links automatically in 3rd party app stores to “fill the gaps” is also problematic for representation reasons and is actually bad for users, as origin becomes obfuscated and so does support. If you want apps as a 3rd party store you need to recruit developers to publish to it. This is a clear and transparent attempt by Epic to undercut the Play Store while simultaneously benefiting from it at the same time. It’s not a pro consumer move.
I have trouble siding with them on the claims of distribution.
Distributing 3rd party app stores via Google Play Store isn’t hard, it’s just another app, effectively. It would actually allow them to police for exploitation and malware more transparently I would think, since the store itself would have to get approved like any other app.
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