Aptoide wins court battle against Google in landmark case
uk.reuters.com
uk.reuters.com
Android would not have been so big if it were not an open platform. There were many other closed source OS's available ie. Windows Phone.
If Google backs off, it would be a bait and switch, and this tactic should be illegal.
Imagine if Samsung had its own OS, Apple with its own, Nokia (now with Android) and others with their own. We would not have much choice if Android were not open between phones because many of our apps would not be compatible.
iOS from the beginning was not open. It was known, so everyone knew. Android is expected to remain open because it was initially open.
TL;DR: Android would have been dead it were not an open platform. No device manufacturer should have give up control to Google, which Samsung regrets to date.
So if this is Samsung "pushing", they're truly a very sucky company.
This is lack of will on Samsung's part, not some magical market advantage on Google's part.
If google wants to make a phone that’s locked to an operating system with only their store they can do that, no issue. But that’s not what they are doing. They are distributing their operating system across the market and abusing that to force out any competing stores. That’s not ok.
If Ford decides to sell all their cars with Michelin tires that’s not an issue, however if Michelin decides that every company who uses their tires must also use their new expensive brand of windscreen wipers that’s a problem.
(You can't buy a license for any Apple OS for use on other hardware. You can buy a Android OS phone from any participating vendor. The vendor can refuse to pay Google and install any store.)
Tying is legal for non monopoly’s.
I don't see Pixel phones being exempted from this judgement, so I don't understand why you're claiming this.
Now if someone created an app store on MacOS (Homebrew for example) and Apple started prompting users to uninstall Homebrew I'd reason they'd be subject to losing a lawsuit.
Not completely true: corporate users can get special distribution licenses to be able to distribute to their employees. https://developer.apple.com/programs/enterprise/
Microsoft had the problem a few years ago with bundling their Internet Explorer on Windows (and making it hard for the competition to have a chance). For Apple, the situation is a bit easier, as they don't allow any third party app stores at all, so any competition would probably encourage their users to break Apples 'Terms of Use', which in turn would make a lawsuit even more difficult.
In my opinion, platform providers should be obliged to open their platform for all kinds of third-party services & tools but I am sure, Apple/Google/Microsoft/etc. will find other ways to discriminate others on their platform and push their services.
1) the ability to install their own apps, no restrictions (IF approved by owner)
2) the ability to get apps from wherever they want
I would be much happier.
You might argue Google is dominant in advertising worldwide, but Facebook is a contender in many countries (e.g. in the Philippines, Facebook is "the internet" as an approximation).
If you want to pick and choose subsectors, I am sure we could pick markets where mobile is one of the words and the second word is also something Apple absolutely dominates.
The world is a big place to make sweeping generalisations about.
Edit: parent article is about Portugal, not the world. A friend said to me: working in antitrust, on either side, a key is defining the market.
Having a smaller market share doesn't mean you can get away with breaking the law.
It's an entirely different game to remove a competitor's application that's eating market share from your cash cow—regardless of the possibility of it allowing you to install malware—which under the same criteria Google's Play Store should be removed as well since it isn't immune to distributing malware.
I think it would be more worrisome to have applications disappear silently because Microsoft decided so. They should definitely provide messaging.
Every feature that makes computers less of inscrutable black boxes, the better. If you're making a change that a user can see without getting an explicit command from them, tell them about it and explain it!
Note all the high profile apps like Google Photos, Nest, WhatsApp, Instagram? None of these have been uploaded by Google, FB, etc. These could easily have been modified to include additional malicious code to steal your personal data.
None of this is mentioned of course in the press. But it seems like this company mainly survives on copyright infringement and serving malicious apps.
According to the comments below currently the only way to notice a malicious but signed app would be updating an existing version from the play store. That requires access to the play store and installing an app from there first.
Allowing random 3rd parties to publish high profile apps stolen from the Play store seems a very bad idea. Especially if the OS doesn’t check apk signature against that same play store.
They aren't serving the apps, and you would expect ads if that were there business model. They developed free software to make app stores, and their business is making app stores for people.
Most people accept that "free" apps should be able to be installed any way that people like. The difference is that Google doesn't consider their apps to be "free", they're a licensed component of Google Apps, which manufacturers license for their phones.
That doesn't make it legal or safe. Re-distributing copyrighted material is questionable even in Portugal.
But more importantly there's no guarantee the app binary was not modified and repackaged to include malicious code.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/06/google-pla...
They specifically cite being able to do this peer to peer.
Legality of distributing "free as in beer" stuff that isn't "free as in speech" is always an interesting topic, in the case of Europe, I suspect we'll see more revision on that front as these cases regarding the Play Store and the license changes develop. It's possible, for instance, that the EU might feel that preventing sideloading of a Google app "ties" it to the Play Store in a way they find distasteful.
It's interesting to me that as of yet, Google has tolerated APKMirror, likely because it's run by Google/Android enthusiasts, and not intended for circumventing Google's business model. I'd be very curious how Google distinguishes Aptoide as something to be stopped, but APKMirror as something to be permitted.
https://www.xda-developers.com/google-blocks-gapps-uncertifi...
As Google seems to explicitly allow that, does it actually matter if I download opengapps and flash it myself versus getting it from APK mirror or Aptiode?
Google's behavior would also generally lead one to believe they are not concerned about what enthusiasts/tech pros do with their phones, as that's a niche quantity of users who don't really negatively impact their bottom line. They're chiefly concerned with ensuring manufacturers are only selling devices with their apps installed and set as default.
I mainly bring it up as if an app is "free" (as in beer), does it really matter where you get it from (assuming it is untampered with)? I know they can forbid redistribution in their ToS, but is that actually enforceable legally?
I'd be pissed as well
It still boggles my mind that organizations like keybase and protonmail refuse to shove an APK on an S3 bucket somewhere, it makes me feel like they don't really understand their audiences that well...
Anyway, for closed source free apps, aptoide has my back.
[1]: https://f-droid.org
F-Droid the ecosystem is far more than that though.
You end up having complete control over your APK distribution and users can receive updates through F-Droid.
F-droid certainly isn't perfect, but it's the best Play Store alternative I've seen.
It's definitely the best alternative, but that doesn't make it a good alternative right now.
I can understand Google/App-developers not liking that, but why would they use this approach? Is there no way to stop/challenge this though the court system?
fwiw tho, I still don't think this matter is settled. Perhaps google shouldnt remove aptoide, but I wouldnt have a problem with google removing pirated apps & patched games at the developers request. There are devs in this thread who are seeing their work being distributed by aptoide without permission and have little recourse. Also people are not simply using these cracked apps for private amusement; they use them to, for example, cheat in multiplayer games. If it becomes a regular occurance to come across accounts playing in god mode, this can harm a dev's entire ecosystems and erode long-term trust. So i think google should at least have the leeway, at the developer's request, to brick a pirated app. Or perhaps less controversially, google could block the pirated app from using any of their web/cloud services.
Is that too harsh? What do you think?
Too often I see people using the excuse that tech companies lock us out of our own things for their own protection. I saw a comment saying apple is right to block people from repairing things themself because a bad repair could get sold on ebay and then someone buys it and thinks poorly of apple. This in my opinion is completely ridiculous how we let the idea of personal ownership go out the window so Apple or Google can make a few more $ out of you by having full control over what you can do.
What I'm talking about is whether google/developer should be able to brick a pirated app on your phone. I've done my fair share of pirating, and I would much rather have that be the outcome than the developer taking legal action against me. I have a friend who was sued for 10k by the music industry for pirating 1000s of songs. If there was a way for them to just render those songs unplayable I think she would take that option in a heartbeat.
What I would have a problem with is google preventing you from doing anything legal on your android phone simply because it hurts their bottom line.
Its like asking if the police can install a camera in your house and if they see you smoking weed they can come in and take it so you don't get a fine.
Google and Microsoft are often criticized for malware that targets Android and Windows, respectively, but restrictions such as this render Play Protect and Windows Defender increasingly toothless in the battle against malware vectors.
- Be a partner and publish your paid app there. It then will be paid.
- Submit a DMCA notice: "9.3 DMCA Notices. If Aptoide receives a Notice according to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Aptoide will immediately remove the Product in question. Such notices shall be directed to Aptoide’s DMCA Agent at abuse.report@aptoide.com." They will then unlist it.
DMCA is a nuisance. You have to be big enough to dedicate resources to filing and tracking takedowns, as well as be able to take legal action anywhere in the world for sites that don't respond. It's very easy to clone a pirate site. It's much harder to play whack-a-mole to take one down.
At work, we've used MarkMonitor to try to solve similar things, which is sometimes useful and sometimes results in our secondary apps getting taken off Google Play.
I suppose you could send them an Electronic Commerce Directive take-down notice. Probably doesn't hurt them as such, but should get your app removed.
EDIT: The store seems to be somewhat decentralized, with stores being similar to APT repositories. So it may be difficult to target Aptoide directly unless there's a centralized list of stores, in which case I imagine you can get the user's store struck from it. Otherwise you may need to contact the store's hosting provider - which indeed could be a bit of a cat and mouse game.
The FOSS store f-droid also allows to add custom apt-like repositories, which for example CopperheadOS used to add a non-sanctioned patched version of the "signal" app. Moxie doesnt want forks of signal that are also using signal's servers. CopperheadOS did it anyway because signal is not compatible without Google Apps installed (removing google cloud messaging because CopperHeadOS doesnt include Google play services).
F-Droid is a fork of the original Aptoide project, it seems.
I've already had to contact a few devs to be able to use paid apps because they thought that root = pirate.
I like this. People forget that just because you agreed to a contract, it doesn't mean you have to put up with everything in it as a court might disagree with the facts and circumstances.
Every other source seems to go back to this Reuters article and the Aptoide PR.
Who knows what other modifications were made.
If someone takes the Gmail app, injects a bitcoin miner and uploads it to a third-party store, who gets the blame?
My point is that saying it's all the consumers responsibility is a highly one-sided argument in favour of the vendor/service provider.
The amount of work a person would have to do to research every facet of every product they buy is insurmountable. There is no possible way for them to know everything about a product they are thinking of buying or using.
Expecting the average user to know which apps on any given app store are ridden with malware is a mighty tall order.
The customer will always have some level of ignorance about the product, so some measure of consumer protection is required.
It's unrealistic.
The emperor has been revealed to be wearing no clothes. I wonder if Google will now start implementing DRM into Google Apps to prevent them from running on unlicensed phones.
The other place this gets interesting is that most Google Apps are just clients for online Google services, services offered free, which have (truly) free apps on iOS that aren't tied to a license fee. How long will Google be able to extract license money from Google Apps from Android manufacturers that Apple gets for free? How long will users tolerate being told this is licensed software that is just the best way to access gmail.com or youtube.com on their phones?
Google could absolutely allow users to install the YouTube app or the Gmail app with no strings attached, but they don't want to do that. They want them tied to Google Search/Chrome, like in the rest of the world, or for a fee, like in the EU.
The fact that Google can majorly affect your business by denying you access to the app store is a real problem. Apple is guilty of this too and these are problems with the entire mobile space.
I've worked in Aptoide, they aren't a virus company. They even spent a lot of resources fighting virus but that's always a cat and mouse game and given the amount of resources they have vs amount of users that can publish an apk (everyone) it gets hard.
If you think they are manipulating the published apps, you are free to fork the Aptoide client on github.com/Aptoide and create your own version.