- Judge James Donato intends to dismantle Google’s Android app store monopoly, following an earlier ruling declaring it illegal.
- Google argued that opening its store to competitors would be too costly and complex, but the judge dismissed this claim, emphasizing that barriers will be removed.
- Proposed remedies include banning discriminatory practices against rival app stores and setting up a committee to monitor compliance and report regularly.
So, you’ve always been able to sideload apps on Android, Google is just using unfair practices to stop other people’s app stores from being popular.
When does this ruling affect Apple, who actually has a monopoly on their store?
It doesn’t, although Epic simultaneously sued Apple over this in a separate suit. Their arguments against Google and Apple were different, and in the Apple case the judge sided with Apple on practically every count.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
Notably, the one aspect that was not ruled in Apple’s favor was their “anti-steering” policy, which prohibited developers from informing users about different app stores or payment methods within an iOS app. The crux of the ruling boiled down to Apple not having a monopoly over the smartphone market or mobile gaming in general since people can “just” go out and buy an Android device and do business with Google instead (while avoiding mention that Google has near identical policies re: the Play store and takes the same cut of a developer’s revenue).
Needless to say, pretty much every sane person on Earth plus a pretty wide spread of other tech companies can clearly see that the ruling in the Epic v. Apple case was complete bullshit, especially in light of this ruling in the Google one.
The judge was probably an Apple fanboy and/or in their pocket.
The amount of times I’ve heard arguments on Apple forums/news articles being pro-Apple-walled-garden is too high.
Yeah, I was about to say. Was it even SCOTUS? They could have been frugal and bought the judge a mid-sized SUV instead of an RV.
Google is feeling robbed at the moment. I really want the same judge to dismantle Apple’s grip
Just out of curiosity, are you an Apple user, looking for alternatives to Apple’s AppStore?
No. I’m an Android user who wishes for freedom for his (half) brethren who for whatever reason want to use a closed garden
You’ve always been able to side load apps you are correct.
However, this is not what Google wants. Over the years, Google has started to enforce more restrictions on third-party applications. They’ve been slowly making these options more difficult to find in the settings of certain OEMs. Just because they give you the freedom, doesn’t always mean they care.
But yes you are correct that Apples monopoly on their app store is way worse. But Google would absolutely remove more user choice settings if certain things like the GPL didn’t stand in the way of the Android OS.
If Android had never been open-sourced, they would absolutely not have any options for third party installations mark my words.
They only thing standing in their way is Linux and the GPL.
Google is just as malicious as Apple. They are just better at hiding it.
Google is just as malicious as Apple. They are just better at hiding it.
I feel like they came from a position where that wasn’t immediately transitionable.
Even tho Apple comes from a BSD background, it seems like Google was more core to the internet and open-source background when they first released Android.
Since then, they have slowly transitioned all of their captured market to more closed ecosystems. But they have done it slowly out of fear of shedding their more devoted original followers (I dunno how to phrase that).
These days, I agree that Google is predatory as fuck. In some ways, Google is better than Apple, but Apple is better than Google in others. Neither are clean in regards to user privacy or security.I really hope the recent rumblings of a lawsuit against Google regarding OS attestation becomes a real thing and goes through. This would allow things like OS projects like GrapheneOS to provide even better user experience. I would hope that this could then be leveraged against iOS.
I can’t wait for the plateau where software and hardware is generic enough (well, for phones) that OS and hardware can be actually created by separate projects/companies.
Here’s a comment from yesterday that explains it much better than I could. Quick and dirty tldr is that this has nothing to do with consumer impact, it’s like a business to business thing.
https://lemmy.world/comment/11794585
Side question, is anyone aware of how to properly link comments on lemmy? I know I can link communities with !technology@lemmy.world and users with @borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com, but I’ve just realized I have no idea how to post instance agnostic links to comments or posts.
is anyone aware of how to properly link comments on lemmy?
As far as I know, there is no way right now. There’s some discussion of having a more agnostic identifier here, but seemingly no movement yet.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2987
The best you can get right now is using an extension like Instance Assistant for Lemmy, but that only helps you, not the person you’re responding to.
That said, if you use a mobile app (I use Thunder) it will usually handle post/comment links in-app, so it doesn’t matter what instance they link to.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions! I had found that GitHub issue and actually tried the tilde link even though there’s no commits that mention it, just because the bang and at formatting work.
I do mainly use the Arctic app to interact with lemmy which also handles the url in app fine, but I like to do things the “right” way whenever possible.
!technology ?
I’m not sure what your question here is? I wanted to link to this community, since I’m here and it’s just an example. You have to include the instance after the community regardless of your own home instance, so an example for you that isn’t on your home instance would be !cybersecurity@sh.itjust.works.
If all you see is what you typed, maybe your app is being weird because you and this community are on the same instance? If that’s the case I typed
!technology@lemmy.world.
When Google Play services is required from many devices to operate, I’m not sure it matters where you get the apk from
That ruling will make it easier to apply the same thing to Apple
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Who cares about what you or me like to use? The point is that Google is under fire for their closed system while Apple is far stricter. They should be the first to get forced to open up.
They already got forced in the EU
FWIW, Apple has 28% of the global market share compared to Google at 70%. By the numbers, one is far closer to being a monopoly than the other.
Since this is happening in a specific country, we need to look at the numbers from there. Not some average over the world. Obviously with most people being poor they are not going to have an iPhone.
i remember the days of the ibm clones,
Sidenote: those clones, and eventually the entire standard PC architecture we know and love today, were possible because IBM fucked up and used common, off the shelf components, with the only proprietary item being their BIOS, which was quickly reverse-engineered. It’s not like IBM wanted to shower the world in third party PCs that weren’t theirs. That’s why they tried again to lock down the market with the PS/2, but failed to dislodge the PC.
In a different universe, we might all be using Acorn or Amiga today.
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Well, I guess it’s time for a Halt and Catch Fire rewatch again.
Commodore’s management were way too incompetent for the Amiga to survive, unfortunately.
The ghost of Acorn kinda lives on, in our phones and smart toasters.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s…
As someone else who has never owned an Apple device, only watched other people using them. What the fuck are you on about?
Are you seriously complaining about people complaining that Google’s main rival seems to be immune from the same punishments, despite the fact that they, as you have said, are the most draconian and locked down system? Do you not see why this might be a relevant problem that Apple is just immune to legal repercussions because “lmao they’ve always been evil 🙈”?
Dude complaining about a dude complaining about apple being proprietary in 2024, when apple has built their entire business from day one by being the most draconian closed loop proprietary hardware/software model since personal computers were invented…
You just made the same argument, but in an aggressively dumb way.
Everything you do to become a monopoly is legal (or at least should be - there are lots of illegal things you can do along the way but for discussion lets assume/pretend they don’t do those things). However it is not legal to be a monopoly.
Just because you’ve built your company with the goal of being a monopoly, doesn’t make it legal.
So if something is shitty, the solution would be to shut up about it and pray that the 40%+ of the world who buys the shitty thing suddenly has an epiphany that they’ve been buying shitty things? Excellent logic.
40%+ of the world
That’s dillusional American-centric thinking. Apple only has a 28% market share globally while Android still dominates over 70%.
Ok… the off-the-cuff number was not the point in the least. The point is that MILLIONS of people happily use those shitty products and they’re not going to just suddenly stop doing so.
But sure, all that matters here is that you despise americans.
Umm… I am an American, and never said anything about hating the place. I dislike the American attitude I encounter daily that everything happening here has more importance and everywhere else is irrelevant.
If I was really as “America centric” as you think I would’ve said 60%. I’m sorry if you think my meaningless stab in the dark to make a completely different point means that you think I don’t care about the rest of the world. It doesn’t.
Either way, you missed the point if all you’re focused on is a random guess that wasn’t even meant to be accurate. The fact that it was a round even number without a source is a clue that it was a guess.
Ngl I like how the courts have been changing their response to Google et al’s “but that’s expensive and hard” defense from “oh, ok, nvm” to “to bad, do it anyways motherfuckers”
Moar!
it’s too hard and costly? oh no problem! we’ll take that headache right off your hands so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about it. is there anything else that’s causing too much trouble for you that you’d like nationalized?
i know it wouldn’t happen but I’m allowed to fantasize
All marketplaces should be nationalized. App store, Amazon, food delivery apps. They are inherently anti-free market.
They created it the way it is very intentionally. “It’s hard to work with” is their problem, and has absolutely nothing to do with the relevant regulation.
I want my phone to be more like a computer and install what I want on it. But, I recognize the walled App Stores has maybe protected the common folks from turning our cellular network into a large, out of control, botnet.
With that said, I recognize computers exist. I guess I just hope it’s done with thought and care.
For what it’s worth, both Android and iOS are vulnerable to zero click RCEs, see NSO Group and their Pegasus spyware.
One of the reasons we don’t really have zombie phones in botnet swarms is because selling the RCE on the grey market is way more lucrative than burning it to infect some devices for a botnet since phones are way more attractive targets than computers if you’re actively targeting an individual.
A fully compromised smartphone is will give access to practically all of a target’s communications: their phone calls, SMS messages, encrypted text messaging (Signal/WhatsApp/iMessages) and probably their email as well. You will also gain access to a good portion of their web browsing, and their is a very good chance you will gain access to their 2FA as well (Authenticator application or SMS) allowing you to further easily compromise any of their online accounts. Plus, you gain access to any files on their phone (which are often very good kompromat if your goal is to blackmail), their live location and the ability to spy on them covertly through the camera and the microphone.
Compare that to a laptop. You gain access to some of their web browsing, some files (often only professional in nature), and maybe access their camera and microphone some of the time, since the laptop isn’t always on and beside you.
Not really. Tons of apps are such bad quality, I’m actually wondering if there’s more shit in the app stores than anywhere else…
I don’t see what would be difficult about removing restrictions and maintaining or expanding a basic store API which they already have.
The only problem I see is Google already allows a lot of malware and junk in their store, this would only make it worse.
That’s a good mental backflip.
Can you explain in technical detail why? Because I don’t see this really being much of an issue.
- Alternative stores in the App stores would still need to go trough Google’s process of being accepted. Notices can be added to their download pages and these stores can even be forced to undergo a stricter process to make sure they are legit.
- Downloading using a different front end changes absolutely nothing in terms of malware and junk.
Google can vet the app store but they are not going to be able to vet every app that’s inside that app store.
I’m not completely clear on whether Google will just be forced to allow alternate app stores into Google Play or allow more apps into Google Play. Either way I’m not sure I see the point of an app store inside an app store. We can already install whatever app stores we want.
There’s also the existing problem of app stores like the Samsung app store updating apps that weren’t downloaded from their store, which seems to me would open things to security vulnerabilities if one of the front ends gets hacked and then starts updating apps that you didn’t even download from that app store.
App Stores are responsible for their content. If google simply vets the app store developers and their team and their product, they should have some kind of trust that whatever that app store supplies will be up to standards. But on the other hand, it’s actually none of their business to hold my hand for me when I want to do stuff with my device.
It’s more about getting the less tech-savy people away from the Play Store. It creates a road that app makers can take to remove the need of Google Services, eventually making gapps fully optional for all.
The last problem you raise seems more like a symptom of a problem than an actual problem. This kind of weird behavior is only possible because Google simply does not care about others. A simple “this app is managed by x” configuration setting would be easy enough to implement in Android.
It might get expensive fast if their Google Play Services app is affected by the ruling.
Barking up the wrong tree, to be honest. Apple are the real monopolistic dickheads here.
They’re being sued by the DOJ too.
Why go for the greater of two evils when you can take on all the evils at once?
doomslayer.jpeg
I’m not disagreeing. Fuck apple.
But the issue here is that Google offers Android to competitors but to get all the services, you need to offer the entire Google Ecosystem. Which is why you see Samsung phones offering a Samsung store AND A Google Play Store.
Apple doesn’t offer their OS to competitors.
Enough with the false dichotomy. Two things can suck at the same time.
It can be both my friend, and indeed it is both
Unlike Apple you can run an alternative app store (since Android 13(?) even with API for background updates) but on the other hand, Play Services are one big tracking engine.
Aren’t other app stores present?
It sounds like the judge believes the pre-installed Android app store, which is mandatory for typical operation (not really if you install a different ROM and tweak settings) needs to include easy ways for the end user to browse other app stores within it.
Note: I provide no sources to my claim and making a deliberately false statement to instigate someone else who knows more to post something true to correct me. Otherwise consider what I said as fact.
Reading the article does make it sound like it’s either that, or having google allow other app stores to be downloaded via the play store and give them the same level of access to other apps that the play store gets, I assume for things like automatic updates.
sorry but that seems like a prejudiced judge; a judge shouldn’t declare intent, he should listen to the facts of the case as presented.
We’re in the sentencing/remedy stage now.
Im here to link what other commenters have informed you already.
From the article:
Following a federal jury’s unanimous ruling eight months ago that Google’s Android store is an illegal monopoly in the Epic v. Google case, Judge Donato made his intentions clear during the final hearing on remedies, reported The Verge.
While Google argued that opening its store to rival stores would be too much work or cost too much, Donato has dismissed these claims. “We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen,” he stated.
Adding, “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.
I’m struggling to make this non antagonistic, but please make a habit of reading relevant info before having an opinion on any topic so we can have relevant discussions instead of this. Danke
From what i read, a federal jury already decided the case months ago. This was the final hearing on what is to be done to rectify the play story monopoly, in other words a jury has already heard all the facts and the judge even more so. At what other point should the judge declare intent? If anything the judge has heard everything there is to hear and is taking a no bs stance against a company who says it would be to expensive to do these things despite designing it that way and being worth 2 trillion dollars, they know they have the money to do it and he knows it as well.
…howso?
