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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

I think in the last thread a bunch of people were adamant Google wasn't a monopolist because plenty of phones shipped with app stores outside of Play. Seems like Google picks and chooses which of those are okay.

It's time to stop lying: Google will absolutely abandon every single rule in the book to ensure they get 30% of Fortnite purchases. It's too lucrative, and Google is too greedy.

This has nothing to do with safety or security. It has nothing to do with playing fair and following their terms. It's about the money.

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TBF, this is bleeding fresh new information; I expect most of those arguing in good faith were unaware of this behaviour.

But yes, let's stop pretending that Google is an altruistic, benevolent and freedom-loving company. It's not.

But information wants to be free. And Google wants information to be free too. Especially wants your information. To use, and monetize, and exploit in ways we probably don't know about*

*To be fair, Google provides various conveniences and services in exchange for your data, so it doesn't get it completely for free. But there are three general categories of people on this: 1) People who like those conveniences and services and have little idea or thoughts about what pays for it. 2) People who understand this exchange, and make it willingly, eyes open. 3) People who understand this exchange, don't like it, and avoid as many aspects of it as they can.

I'll be honest: With every purchase at every web site, every account created, every app installed that asks for this little permission or another, I begin to feel more & more that it doesn't really matter, and fall further into #2.

Apple and Google chiming together: "we're not a monopoly, we're a duopoly and that's perfectly legal"

Epic did their homework on the lawsuit, they make it very clear that Apple and Google are each separate monopolies. Because they have exclusive monopolies over app stores on devices that a large portion of people have. But the Play Store and App Store are not competitors: They control different markets.

Furthermore, Epic helped highlight a very important point about Android and iOS: They're not actually competitors. For an OEM building a phone, Android is the only option, it has a complete monopoly on mobile OSes with respect to the market of OEMs who might choose it.

The supermarket on the corner also has a monopoly on what gets on their shelves, and which persons are allowed to get in to buy their stuff.

I don't think your analogy is making any strong points, because there aren't just two supermarkets in the whole world.

I can choose from 4 different supermarkets within walking distance, and an additional 3 if you count online supermarkets that deliver to my area. That is not the case when it comes to choosing a mobile OS/app store.

I bet each one of them has exclusive products not available on the other ones.

Having more than one to choose from is still an option.

Yes, and I know several of my friends and family who shop in different supermarkets for that reason. How many do you know that have both an iPhone and an Android phone?

Plenty, I am one of them, I am Windows/Android user, and get Apple gear from work.

And I also know a few that still use and buy feature phones with their OEM only apps, with "by invitation only SDKs".

Which makes the choice bigger than two actually, when one looks at the actual market distribution, something that a judge will care about.

are anecdotes data, now? does fortnite run on feature phones? how many cases have you tried in federal court?

As many as the wannabe lawyers in HN driving their Apple hate agenda without any legal understanding.

In technical terms, they're not even a duopoly.

Apple has maybe 25% of the market. I say "maybe", because that percentage is decreasing every day. Especially globally. The reality of the situation is that Google is killing Apple in terms of marketshare. And Apple is eating Google in terms of profit. It's a situation that is a bit unprecedented.

did any of these alternatives also ship google play side by side with alternative stores?

unless a company has a special deal with google, then it's either google or alternatives but not both.

i think the only reason there could be a special deal is that google made some concessions when trying to convince a manufacturer to use android. but that would be an older deal.

Samsung can generally fight for special concessions because they're A. One of the largest OEMs and B. Actually have the technical capability, monetary resource, and customer loyalty necessary to fork or replace Android.

Everyone else has really no choice, and Google gives them the my way or the highway approach.

even samsung is limited. they have their alternative OS, but they are not allowed to support android apps on that OS because that would violate their android license which they need on other devices.

other alternative systems have more freedom than samsung because they are not bound by a license from google.

Samsung does have an app store though.

Samsung has the Galaxy Appstore on their Android devices.

> they have their alternative OS

This is Tizen, and it doesn't support Android apps at all. It's a completely different operating system, so not entirely clear why Sumsung would want Android apps on it.

> This is Tizen, and it doesn't support Android apps at all. It's a completely different operating system, so not entirely clear why Sumsung would want Android apps on it.

It would be impossible to launch a new platform without compatibility for existing apps. There's no way to gain enough developer mindshare to become a serious alternative otherwise.

Jolla had Android app compatibility from the launch in addition to the platform native apps, as they knew that's the only option really.

and jolla could do that because they didn't have an android license from google to begin with. tizen coudn't.

This is all true, but nevertheless this is what Samsung has done.

If you look at the linage of it (Intel Meego) and the time frame they started it (2011) the strategy of HTML5 support for apps kind of made sense.

Allegedly they are adding .NET support to it?

It is still around and actively developed. I believe it's had some success on watches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizen

well, samsung had no choice really.

on watches and appliances or tvs the android apps don't matter much so android support is less critical there.

ok, i was not aware of the samsung galaxy app store. thank you. i do believe that this is on of their early deals however, and google would not make such a deal again.

tizen needs to support android because the tizen app market doesn't offer everything needed. some important apps are only on android. (namely chat apps for example. without those a phones usefulness is very limited) i had a tizen phone years ago. technically it was very nice, but not even having access to f-droid was a problem.

maybe samsung doesn't care, but as a consumer i do care.

technically it was possible to pack android apps into a wrapper to make them run on tizen. but it had to be done separately. a third-party service could do that, leaving samsung free from violating their android license.

> did any of these alternatives also ship google play side by side with alternative stores?

Yes. Samsung and LG have both.

I think we are missing the point here.

I might be wrong, but this is my take on this. Google has an agreement with OEM not to install any app store. What google objected was not default app of Fortnite. However, it was a Fornite's game store kind of.

Still Google does not object the user to install anything on their phone, though that is getting a bit difficult with Android 11.

TLDR; this article SEEMS to talk about Epic Games App Store, rather than Fortnite.

Basically, if you get Fortnite from the Play Store, you get Fortnite. If you get Fortnite outside the Play Store, you get the Epic Games Launcher, which installs Fortnite. The Epic Games Launcher on Windows was updated into the Epic Games Store, when they added support for third party titles.

So yes, Google put a kibosh on an OEM pre-installing a competing store, not just the game.

Their customers are not your right

For example,you are not forbidden from developing for some random Linux distro

They did not build their trust and ecosystem for free,so you should'nt have access to them for free

30% is not unreasonable,costs can be managed,since you are selling a digital product

It's all negotiation on a grand, publicly viewable scale

"Their customers are not your right"

When did I become Google's property to trade and bargain with? Because it sounds like i didnt buy the phone, Google bought me.

You're not an Android user, you're an Android used.

It's kind of a shame the Ubuntu phone never really materialized. At one point a while back I put off a much needed upgrade from a nearly dead phone for about 6 months because their phone was supposed to be "any day now".

I think the OS is still kicking around and technically not dead yet, but it's really hard to believe that it would be able to break into the OEM side of things at this point. If Microsoft couldn't buy their way in to it I don't see much hope for a group that wouldn't be paying massive amounts of money to handset manufacturers and carriers to support the development & deployment. Though I'd be happy if it were simply possible to flash it onto most Android handsets with full hardware compatibility.

You might be interested in the PinePhone https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

Here it is running phosh: https://youtu.be/mjaJJ6o-mbM

It's pretty close to being a usable GNOME Linux phone

That's pretty great! I hope it gets some momentum and matures a bit. I don't insist on flag-ship level specs & polish, but this it looks a little rough around the edges for my taste.

You're not quite seeing the point: This is not a developer trying to use their ecosystem for free, not in the OnePlus example: This is a developer saying "Thanks but no thanks, we'll choose a different ecosystem"

And Google inserts itself into the relationship between the business partner for that other ecosystem and bullies them into cancelling the deal.

Off course it's important to keep in mind that as of right now, we have only Epic's highly self-interested interpretation of events, and the truth may be far different. It seems LG for example had a pre-existing contract with Google to not do the sort of thing it was about to do with Epic.

It's also worth remembeting that contracts forbidding bundling by OEMs got MS into antitrust trouble in the 90s for locking BeOS out of the market.

Ah, that's right, and excellent point!

> Their customers are not your right

> For example,you are not forbidden from developing for some random Linux distro

> They did not build their trust and ecosystem for free,so you should'nt have access to them for free

> 30% is not unreasonable,costs can be managed,since you are selling a digital product

If only Microsoft had been smart enough to demand a 30% cut of Netscape sales instead of going through all that trouble to create IE.

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