Modi government to set up app store alternative to Google Play, Apple App Store
deccanherald.com
deccanherald.com
If you think I’m being hyperbolic, just wait for Reliance Jio to announce its own App Store as the first one. It’ll come with the full force of the government behind it (who in a government wouldn’t love a telecom and network provider that loves slurping all data and is against end to end encryption when it’s done by other competing apps like WhatsApp?)
I feel bad for all the poorer people who already are forced to buy cheap Android phones that don’t get updates and are loaded with crapware and what not. As much as I despise Google for tracking users, I believe Google will look like a saint in front of these companies.
It is weird they’re making it so that each game you’ve bought needs a separate App Store entry, especially since the local code is all the same and a thin shim. That being said, the same rules are in effect for Apple’s own game platform so maybe there’s a specific reason (eg uniform experience for any app, they can properly promote individual titles in the App Store instead of allowing walled gardens within its platform that it can’t see into.
https://www.engadget.com/apple-app-store-google-stadia-xclou...
With Stadia/xplay you have your subscription which covers server costs but then you also buy each game individually. That could be the difference here.
Having each game as its own app means each game gets its own app-store age rating; its own star-rating, reviews, and install metrics; its own parental-control settings (e.g. screen time limits); its own corporate MDM blacklist-ability; and the ability for Apple to block that individual game from being installable, either temporarily because it’s breaking App Store policy, or permanently within some country whose regime doesn’t allow it.
Also, Apple haven’t mentioned exactly how they’re implementing this just yet, but I would guess that the game streaming services are going to be required to have each client version paired 1:1 with a particular release of the streamed game, such that you must update the app to connect to an updated streaming backend. This would put Apple’s App Store review team back in the critical path for approving changes in app content.
Many here seem to believe this will open up opportunities for them to start app stores. It won't. It will open up opportunities for governments around the world to do what they've been contemplating for a long time. Part of which is to specifically preclude you from opening an app store in their jurisdiction.
If governments get involved, we’ll have a government monopoly and government regulated software sales forever.
A US antitrust ruling that Apple can't constrain the user from installing apps from competing stores while Apple is still selling the device and not loading it up with crapware by default is very different than a requirement from China or India to install the government's store as root on everybody's phone from the factory.
The difference being that you choose which stores you trust instead of having them imposed on you against your will.
As soon as Apple is constrained, everyone else who can impose requirements will do so.
This idea about choosing which stores you trust, is a complete fantasy. Even in the most free market of countries, you’ll end up with a small set of corporations you don’t trust as he only viable stores.
But that's precisely where the distinction matters -- there can be a hundred stores with onerous requirements, but if there is nothing requiring you to use any of them, you don't.
It's obviously a problem if you're required to use a specific store instead of the one you want to, but that's the problem today -- it's the thing requiring them to allow anyone to open a store would address. If Apple is the only store on your device and the government pressures Apple to reject an app you want, you can't get it. If anyone can open a store and the government pressures Apple to reject an app you want, you get it from a store that government can't pressure, or side load it.
Allowing someone to use another store and forcing them to use it are independent actions.
> Even in the most free market of countries, you’ll end up with a small set of corporations you don’t trust as he only viable stores.
How does that make any logical sense? We already see on Android that there exist stores operated by trustworthy entities, like F-Droid. Opening up to other stores wouldn't cause Apple's store to cease to exist, if you trust them. And if you don't then having alternatives available still wouldn't be any worse than the status quo.
Do you think some of them would end up using the store?
And enough people wouldn't that Facebook would still feel a lot of pressure to have their app in Apple's store under Apple's rules, or at least some store and some set of rules that the users actually trust.
And if Facebook bought some exclusive content, Users would be forced to use both stores if they wanted access to the full catalog.
There clearly are choices, though at varying levels of convenience.
Controversial opinion here, but this is part of the reason I like that Apple makes (practically) all purchases run through them. They don’t sell my information, and they have an incentive to not change that.
Also, Android is not to be blamed here. The openness is why privacy-minded people can use F-Droid.
30% cut is a very real one
If this store is actually true, a law will definitely be passed to make sure this app is preinstalled with root access for updates.
Apple deciding to allow or not allow third-party app stores is irrelevant in the face of a government that has decided to pass a law that requires a particular app to be on all phones. If that law is passed, that app will end up on phones, regardless. The only alternative is that Apple would give up a market consisting the second-most populous country in the world, which isn't likely.
Don’t get me wrong — I want there to be 3rd party app stores, even if only because of the sexual Puritanism that Apple displays. That don’t mean there aren’t valid reasons to be extremely skepticism about any attempts to do so.
Apple just currently has little incentive to do the former, because a) it's more difficult, b) they have a financial benefit to keeping everyone in their own app store.
Given that, it's naive to think that Apple's main motivation here is to protect users. Sure, that's a part of it (maybe even a big part!), but they could protect their users in other ways, but those other ways would likely hurt their bottom line.
And I think that is why people cry anti-trust all the time when it comes to this: in a perfect world where no one was motivated by profit (and consumer lock-in), we can imagine that Apple would find a way to open up the platform a bit more.
I’m not saying that, I’m saying “be careful”.
I vehemently disagree - in the name of "protecting privacy" Apple has been fooling users to believe that only Apple can be trusted with user data, and the biggest lie they sell is that they don't do anything with your data, unlike other corporates. From crippling Safari by allowing full cookies by default, and claiming to block trackers and browser fingerprinting (which a Google study itself has busted), to collecting user data in "anonymised" form Apple has been disingenuously mining its user's data with users given no choice.
Whenever you install/update iOS/OSX they specifically ask you if you want to send anonymised data to Apple which details how you are using the OS. They couldn't be more upfront and clear about it.
And when I was working at Apple years ago they were using a very old and clunky SAP system for all of their customer purchases. It would be pretty common sense to ETL this to a data lake in order to do reports e.g. which apps are popular.
Because of all the browsers they have led the way in reducing the ability for advertisers to track you.
"Apple dropped plan for encrypting backups after FBI complained"
Certainly when compared to Chrome, but Firefox? Brave? Tor Browser? No. Which is why it's so unfortunate that you can't get a real third party browser for iOS.
[citation needed]
The exit node can't do anything your ISP can't. Meanwhile you can choose the exit node, which you often can't for your ISP, which means you can choose one operated by someone you trust.
And even if you don't, what are they going to do to a TLS connection?
> and I don’t think Firefox started doing tracking prevention before Safari did
Tor Browser is based on Firefox, so the anti-fingerprinting work they do regularly gets merged back into Firefox proper. Moreover, Firefox has had some of the best anti-tracking addons since forever, but you can only have those if you actually have Firefox.
But Tor Browser is still more stringent about certain things, e.g. they always reset the window to a standard size when you open it so the page can't track you based on that, which Firefox itself doesn't do because it's kind of annoying to the user. Which is another reason why there is benefit in having multiple browsers -- they each have different trade offs.
> They have a different business model but I’m not entirely clear on what their technological innovation is?
They do a lot of good work on ad blocking, and are willing to be a lot more aggressive about it, since it aligns directly with their incentives.
You misunderstand me. Tor Browser is based on Firefox ESR, which means it lags with security updates: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/tor-and-its-discontents-ef51648...
Tor itself is not what I was referring to, although it has its problems as well, mainly that it's extremely identifiable. Tor is not a good idea for most people to use full-time.
The rest of this doesn't really answer my question about Safari vs Firefox, and I'm pretty much uninterested in appeals to Tor Browser as something that should be universally adopted.
The main point your link is making is that Tor Browser is purposely a monoculture to avoid fingerprinting and monocultures are bad for security because it gives attackers somewhere to concentrate their attacks. You're using this to argue in support of Safari as a monoculture on iOS?
Meanwhile, Tor Browser is based on Firefox ESR, but that doesn't mean they can't backport patches, which they regularly do.
> Tor itself is not what I was referring to, although it has its problems as well, mainly that it's extremely identifiable. Tor is not a good idea for most people to use full-time.
It's extremely identifiable as Tor, but that's exactly why most people should use it more of the time, so that it isn't regarded as suspicious when somebody has a more serious reason to.
> It's extremely identifiable as Tor, but that's exactly why most people should use it more of the time, so that it isn't regarded as suspicious when somebody has a more serious reason to.
No. That’s just not going to happen, for a number of reasons, and hoping it does happen is not a strategy for helping the significant number of people who are already using it because they do have a serious reason to, and are consequently at risk because of how vulnerable their browser is.
The same part that has Microsoft doing it -- they can make additional money from it regardless of whether the user is paying them already.
Which isn't to say that Apple is actually doing it, but if they're not, that's not why.
Even if Apple can’t be trusted with my data, I’d rather that it lie with them.
> and the biggest lie
According to?
> From crippling Safari by allowing full cookies by default and claiming to block trackers and browser fingerprinting
It works, even if it’s not perfect and it’s certainly better than nothing or Chrome’s defaults.
> a Google study
/cough
May I ask why? If hypothetically Apple isn't trustworthy with your data, why would you prefer them over any other company with a hypothetically similarly-bad level of trustworthiness?
I'm sympathetic to this, because I do think it's great that Apple values user privacy. But I think it's unfortunate that the perception is that the only way to get that privacy is to use a heavily locked-down device that the user doesn't actually have control over, and that the entity protecting your privacy has to impose strict restrictions on what you can do with that device.
Obviously Google will never be a good example of a company that protects user data and user privacy; their entire business model depends on the opposite. But that doesn't mean that the concept of a company selling a premium product that protects user privacy by default couldn't also allow users to do whatever they want with their device.
Nah, give me expensive, locked down products (as long as they work). Clearly its something the consumers want, hence Apple's monstrous pile of cash.
Except that the stores have to compete with each other, so who is going to choose the one with all the apps that trade user data? Certainly not the users who are allegedly patronizing Apple only because they don't want that.
> and in the process you created a fragmentation hell.
I don't understand what this is supposed to be about. Is it "fragmentation" that you can get books from a book store and a library and online and a thrift store? How is that a problem? If the books in the thrift store are torn up and written in, why not just buy from a different one?
> Clearly its something the consumers want, hence Apple's monstrous pile of cash.
People keep saying this, but the fact that you have no alternatives to Apple's store on their devices is precisely why you can't prove it that way. We have no data on how many people are buying their devices for the store vs. despite the store and for the hardware or the OS or iMessage etc.
They will when many of the key apps are only available through the privacy agnostic stores.
Key apps have zero incentive to try to get people to switch to Android. Even if there was, there is a prisoners dilemma - it would only work if many of them switched at once.
This is absolutely nothing like the situation with multiple app stores, where not all apps have to switch at once.
Most users do not refuse to use Facebook. New people take up smoking daily. The idea that users would ‘refuse’ to buy apps from a store run by Facebook (or worse) is an idealistic fantasy.
As for why apps would switch to other stores? Paid exclusives, just as with every other media type - TV, Movies, Books, Podcasts.
People who have hits get paid a huge premium for exclusives, because it forces customers to use the new store or platform.
Epic is already buying exclusives. Amazon and Facebook, and TenCent et all would obviously do so too.
The only choice for users would be to install all of the stores.
The only choice for developers will be to deal with all of the stores.
Apps will be the new TV. Costs will rise. Almost everything will be funded by the store networks.
The long tail of small developers will be absolutely decimated.
Users won’t care and will barely remember the difference. The ten years of Apple’s store will be a quaint memory from the early days.
Google Play is less stringent about privacy than Apple (right?), so the same incentives would exist.
> Even if there was, there is a prisoners dilemma - it would only work if many of them switched at once.
Which would still be true with alternate stores. Nobody wants to be the first to switch to a shady store that customers don't trust and abandon the one they do.
> Most users do not refuse to use Facebook. New people take up smoking daily. The idea that users would ‘refuse’ to buy apps from a store run by Facebook (or worse) is an idealistic fantasy.
Then what's stopping them all from switching to Android right now? Why haven't they done it already?
> As for why apps would switch to other stores? Paid exclusives, just as with every other media type - TV, Movies, Books, Podcasts.
That only gets the user to use the store to install one app which they're already familiar with. It doesn't require anyone to trust the same store for apps they're not familiar with. For that to happen the store would still have to establish a reputation for trustworthiness, which would require it to not carry shady apps.
> The only choice for users would be to install all of the stores.
> The only choice for developers will be to deal with all of the stores.
These are obviously contradictory positions. If all the apps were in all the stores, a user would only need to use one of them (presumably the one they like the best). If all the users had all the stores, a developer would only need to be in one of them (presumably the one users like the best, to maximize competitive advantage over alternative apps).
The stores still have to compete with each other for users.
None of your conclusions make any sense. Competition reduces costs because all else equal people will choose the alternative which takes a smaller profit margin and passes that money to the user or the app developer, which either makes apps less expensive for the same amount of developer revenue, or increases developer revenue at the same price to the user which leads to more and better apps.
Monopolies are abusive and inefficient, so removing them makes things better. It's why we have antitrust laws.
Do you know what a paid exclusive is?
Or... what if Windows charged software developers 30% of sales of any product. And Microsoft wouldn't let you give away free software, in the name of "privacy" whatever that means for Apple.
India today has no eBay equivalent or even Alibaba or Taobao equivalent, without these I don't see b2b or even exports growing much.
eBay used to be the only way to find stuff like rare metal, or niche tools and spare parts.
This app store is all about forcing every android sold in India to have a system installed govt driven app, which will report back to the govt on tons of private information about the device and owner. Information that Indian govt will be too incompetent to keep safe and given its authoritarian nature, should never have access to.
This is an authoritarian nightmare abut to happen. Modi wants India to move in the direction that China chose. And this scares me a lot.
while it's not the best solution, there is merit to it.
one of the role of governance could be to help setup an environment for healthy competition. Well it took decades of work at NASA before one private player like space x created momentum outside government.
The Indians clearly want more control. The Chinese obviously are never going to relinquish any control. Even the South Americans and especially the Africans are starting to look at regionally fenced mobile and internet services as a method of both more control over social media and growing their economies. (As well as providing jobs for their youth.)
I think the saying was something like freedom dies to thunderous applause.
That is probably too little too late at this point though. Google, Facebook, Apple et al. have shown they will not stop until they dominate digital markets worldwide. Aggressive intervention by governments is the only way for them to wrestle back control.
At least with the "Indian Government App Store" there is no smoke and mirrors with regards to who has access to the data. Tech companies hand over whatever governments ask for anyway.
Closing loopholes is a problem and it just becomes a war of attrition with accountants and lawyers. Maybe there does need to be the global coordinated effort on tax reform that is the typical excuse for why nothing is ever changed.
I can see why punitive action against foreign corporations could be seen as the easier option.
I think that's unfortunately true, but there must be a point of diminishing returns. Close enough loopholes (intentional loopholes or otherwise) and companies end up spending more money on tax lawyers than the value of the actual tax break. Even if some companies are able to use some loopholes, closing many of them still means more tax revenue for states. We don't need to get to a "perfect" state here.
That or government will mandate the Libertarian Wild West on our phones where anyone can install anything from any store. Mobile operators alone will balk at that.
This is a fever dream from a new generation of publishers and developers that have to learn how this worked in the past: the market evolved, the old platforms withered or became irrelevant. Consent decrees don’t fix things, at best they add a counterweight on the scale. See: Microsoft, still making money hand over fist due to the PC monopoly that no one cares about.
It's a little disconcerting to me that you would see allowing me to install whatever software I want on a device I fully own as a "Libertarian wild west."
> Mobile operators alone will balk at that.
Why? Don't fixed-location ISPs have the same issue?
> the market evolved
I think the concern is it didn't evolve naturally.. it evolved to this configuration due to the whims of a few companies in strong monopoly positions. Believing that we have the best solution available is again, a bit disconcerting.
> due to the PC monopoly that no one cares about.
They were sued for this. The government won. Then the next administration basically vacated the actions against them. People care.
There will be no wild west. If you're in India, you will be using the Indian government approved service. In China, you will be using Chinese government approved services. In Africa, you will be using ECOWAS, EAC, or SADC approved services. In Brazil, you will be using.. well, you get the idea.
Material point being, none of these services will be made by developers outside of those regions. There will be no wild west, what's forming up is very much the opposite of the wild west. It is governmental control with radical reach. Worse, it's forming up to be balkanized governmental control with radical reach.
First of all, this is only about app stores. When it comes to “services” in general, people in China already do mostly use government approved ones; the Great Firewall makes sure of that.
Today, you use Apple’s App Store, but Apple blocks whatever apps the Chinese government tells them to. Is that really such a great situation? Under a sideloading model, at least you’d have the technical ability to opt out of whatever app store anyone told you to use.
As for legal ability, who knows, but any legal restrictions on where you can get apps from would be hard to enforce. And why would phones be any different from desktops, where such restrictions don’t currently exist?
> I think the concern is it didn't evolve naturally.. it evolved to this configuration due to the whims of a few companies in strong monopoly positions.
What’s “natural?” Markets are not created by god, they’re created by customers. Apple didn’t build the most successful product line in history because of monopoly practices - they built it because customers wanted it. And, Apple isn’t a monopoly by any historical definition of the term. Google is one in search and have tried to parlay that into Android. Illegally? We will see.
> Believing that we have the best solution available is again, a bit disconcerting.
I don’t claim we have the best solution available, I claim that government regulation of app stores or forced disaggregation of app stores would make the current situation far worse.
Want a better situation? Build a new and better ecosystem. It wasn’t even 6 years ago that Apple and iPhone and iPad was declared dead by most pundits, about to get trammelled by Samsung and Chinese Android makers. Now we want government to turn them into a utility? These decisions and laws take decades.
> The government won. Then the next administration basically vacated the actions against them. People care.
There was a second consent decree. It arguably didn’t really matter, because the next generation was mobile.
And I’m sure some people care about Microsoft’s continued dominance of PCs, but not enough to convince a government to do anything about it.
The same likely goes with iOS and Android. I see a lot of devs/publishers complaining and not a lot of users.
The problem is it's chicken and egg. To get users you need apps, to get app developers you need users. To overcome that you don't just need something which is as good as the status quo, you need something so much better that people will switch to it despite the apps conundrum.
Apple got there by being first to market with a modern smartphone. Google got there by undercutting the competition on price. Neither of those are a possible path for a new competitor. They can't be first to market anymore, and they can't undercut Android on price because its price is already zero.
The usual way underdog platforms avoid this is by establishing compatibility with the competitor's apps. Sun created Java so that people would write their apps in Java, which would then run on Solaris/SPARC as well as Windows/Intel. Wine allows Windows programs to run on Linux.
But that doesn't work here either, because of the very problem the new platform would be needed to solve. Even if you created a competing platform that could run Android apps or iOS apps, it wouldn't have Google or Apple's store, which is where all the existing apps are. The user of your new platform can't go to the developer's website to get the existing app and run it on your new platform because the existing platforms don't allow apps to be distributed that way. So you have to convince all the existing developers to use your store, and avoid use of Google Play Services etc., before you have any users that would give developers the incentive to spend their time doing that.
Moreover, the incumbents are vertically integrated. If I think I can make a better OS than Apple, to capture their customers I don't just need to convert all their developers, I also have to make competitive hardware. Where do I get the money to develop a CPU competitive with Apple's? I would have to be a company as big as they are to do that, or bigger to overcome the advantages of incumbency, but nobody is as big as Apple. Microsoft, which is nearly as big, tried and failed. Amazon's Fire line is just an Android fork running on commodity hardware.
Who do you propose has the resources to unseat the incumbents at this point?
> I see a lot of devs/publishers complaining and not a lot of users.
That's a big part of the problem -- the users lack visibility into the inner workings. How many iPhone customers even realize that competing stores are prohibited, or that Apple bans things they may want? They don't see the apps they want that Apple prohibits, because when they're prohibited they don't exist. When they're prohibited the developers are starved of access to their own customers and destroyed, or never exist to begin with, which means they can't campaign to the users for their inclusion.
The developers can't even show the users how much they're paying, or offer discounts for purchases made through other channels, because Apple prohibits it.
So of course it's the developers complaining, because they're the ones who can see what's happening behind the scenes. But the users are still being harmed, even if that's being hidden from them.
And the lack of user awareness is another impediment to establishing a new competing platform.
I didn't say it would be easy. :-) It is a huge can of worms to declare the current smartphone + app store design as a public utility to be preserved for 50 years, when this industry is barely 12 years old at this point.
> To overcome that you don't just need something which is as good as the status quo, you need something so much better that people will switch to it despite the apps conundrum.
Yes. I don't think it will come from "the smartphone" market which has already been won. It will come by some disruptor that eats into adjacencies: AR, VR, wearables, etc. Apple actually has a good chance to retain their position because everyone has underestimated how important Apple Watch could become, plus their investments in AR.
> Who do you propose has the resources to unseat the incumbents at this point?
Alibaba group, Facebook, Valve, Tencent, Huawei, Amazon, and Microsoft.
> That's a big part of the problem -- the users lack visibility into the inner workings. How many iPhone customers even realize that competing stores are prohibited, or that Apple bans things they may want?
I think most users are broadly aware that Apple control things and take a cut. Most people have to deal with Kindle or Audible and having to buy that content via a different app or the browser. IMO the current legal argument is broadly not about banned apps, it's about profit margins.
> The developers can't even show the users how much they're paying, or offer discounts for purchases made through other channels, because Apple prohibits it.
So does every other platform provider though. Publishers and retailers can't discount Nintendo switch games unless Nintendo approves it. This goes back 40 years to Atari.
> And the lack of user awareness is another impediment to establishing a new competing platform.
I think the bigger issue is if users actually prefer the current curated arrangement.
Who is making it a public utility? Just prohibit anyone from restricting users from using alternative app stores or sideloading their own apps. It's the opposite of making it a utility -- it's ensuring that competition exists.
> I don't think it will come from "the smartphone" market which has already been won. It will come by some disruptor that eats into adjacencies: AR, VR, wearables, etc.
You also have the problem that the successor need not be any better. If one of those things replaces the smartphone, but the new incumbent still restricts users in what apps they can install, unseating the old incumbents hasn't actually solved the problem.
> Alibaba group, Facebook, Valve, Tencent, Huawei, Amazon, and Microsoft.
Microsoft and Amazon already tried and failed, and none of those others are as big or even making an attempt.
> I think most users are broadly aware that Apple control things and take a cut.
They're vaguely aware that it happens, but not of what that means to them. The opaque and arbitrary criteria they use for rejections, or the implications for app price and quality of transferring wealth from small developers to the world's largest corporation. So it feels like somebody else's problem. And when Apple and Google both do it, something they have no meaningful choice in regardless.
> So does every other platform provider though. Publishers and retailers can't discount Nintendo switch games unless Nintendo approves it. This goes back 40 years to Atari.
And they should prohibit the lot of it. It was never different, it had just never been big enough to matter this much, because before it was only games and not everything.
> I think the bigger issue is if users actually prefer the current curated arrangement.
Which we could find out if the vertical integration was removed and the users could choose a curated store or not, independent of which phone they buy.
An important distinction is that while I can install whatever I want on my phone and you can install whatever you want on your phone, removing Apple's monopoly on distribution wouldn't make our phones world-writable to "anyone".
> Mobile operators alone will balk at that.
They didn't. We already had multiple app stores for J2ME, Windows CE and Symbian apps before Apple started the trend of locking things down.
There were no "App Stores" for J2ME apps, per se. You certainly could buy and install apps from ISVs, but they were heavily locked down based on carrier policy. I developed apps for WinCE, Palm and Blackberry and the carrier-mandatory permissions were strict depending on the jurisdiction. The devices that weren't restricted were e.g. WinCE devices that were sync'd and not network connected.
Apple just took the decades old old trend started by console manufacturers and applied it to Mobile.
But you could still install them from multiple sources, e.g. the phone manufacturer, the carrier, the software vendor directly, or even via Bluetooth. And unsigned apps were granted enough permissions to be perfectly viable in many cases.
The "carrier policy" you mention might be a US-specific problem.
I don't think that's a consideration anymore. When the iPhone was brand-new, Apple had a ton of trouble negotiating with carriers who were used to controlling what goes on their network. Nowadays, carriers have very little say beyond things like PCTRB certification and a mostly-cursory review of OS-level OTA updates. When it comes to apps (or even app stores), the carriers don't even get notified, let alone get veto powers.
No, it's absolutely not.
It's about user and vendor choice.
Nobody is suggesting that the 'US Government' make an alternative app store.
But a lot of people are suggesting that people should be able to buy directly from Epic, Adobe - or whoever.
So let me put in decreasing order of who will do a good job according to what is good for the users:
- government that knows what it is doing
- government
- authoritarian government
- authoritarian government that knows what it is doing
Seems like a pretty one-sided American cowboy version of freedom.
More accurate take I think is that privacy is often a tool of the powerful stopping collective action of citizens. Finance, taxes, and payment compensation are a pretty trivial example. The rich and powerful love their financial privacy, ordinary citizens gain little from it. Wage earners who benefit from their status love that they don't have to share their income with coworkers who may be discriminated against.
I think the opposite is true. It's not privacy but transparency that is required if groups are supposed to be able to take action against the powerful.
Additionally, CCP actually thinks through its policies whereas BJP rolls a policy out and then does a 180 degree turn. Just look at the COVID-19 epidemic. China actually managed to end it because it was authoritarian (even if you don't believe the CCP's numbers you cannot deny that they have managed the situation far better than a lot of other governments). BJP had the opportunity to do so but somewhere along the way decided that they could just follow Trump.
Just curious, who decides what's politics and what isn't in China?
Does "being an Uyghur" count as involved in politics, as that sounds difficult to avoid if you're stuck with it? The reports of torture, forced sterilisation, detention sound rather scary to me.
> every Chinese has food on the table, a roof on their head and one can live an honest life
Maybe I'm misinformed, but what I read tells me "every" is a stretch here. I don't automatically trust Wikipedia on everything. But the fact the USA passed a law with strong bipartisan support makes me treat it a little more seriously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs#Persecution_of_Uyghurs...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_Human_Rights_Policy_Act
It will be messy, it will open oportunities to corruption, lobbying, crappy user experiences, unsafe apps, government abuse, nationalism, ... it is really a Pandora box.
But mess can be a fertile ground for competition and innovation when excessive regulation blocks it.
Today's app stores are just feature development labs for Apple & Google. There is no chance that anyone will be able to create a big business within any app store and keep Apple or Google out. Just ask big players as Steam, Facebook and Microsoft how they feel about Google's and Apple's stores.
If you're in the apps development business then you're just looking for golden opportunities for Apple/Google and being very badly payed for that.
Indian Government being arbiter of the app ecosystem on a phone and pre installing apps? Ominous vibes. Good luck with your desire for competition and innovation.
[1] - https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/industry/artic...
In the Delhi riots early this year, the government used data gathered from the national database to track and arrest protesters. Imagine what they could do if they could track your phones. At least Google is only selling me real estate ads (woefully inaccurate ones too) and not actively trying to imprison me or my family (bonus points if you're a minority).
The tech industry thrived precisely because there is little regulation.
If your apps have to go through the Indian government to be published, be prepared to pay bribes to pass through the regulatory hurdles and needless paperwork.
No Indian government in my living memory has worked to reduce regulations and compliance, including the current one.
This Indian government has certainly reduced regulations and compliance - if you're in the B club. I have a distant grand uncle and an uncle both in the B club. They were essentially waved through to set up shop in UP - even though they're Muslim, openly religious and practicing, and have literally been photographed very often inviting Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders to their homes right before elections.
Money talks. I mentioned in another comment on HN, that if you are in the B club, you're likely the one ordering the gangsters in the government.
iOS is a different matter but Android has always allowed this. Not sure if they exist in India, but I have seen Android phones come with non Google App Store as well.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/08/17/indian-iphone-production-begi...
What is the problem with this? If the device manufacturers don't want to preload the Indian Appstore then they can prevent sale of their devices in India. If they agree, and this is limited to India only, then what is the problem?
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2018/09/13/s...
They only collect a limited subset of taxes (VAT). The larger part of income is to the US and isn't taxed in India yet.
For Apple hell yes, maybe their government app store will be less anal than Apple is with their own app store, and e.g. allow other payment channels and allow embedding other rendering engines than Safari.
For Google though ... why wouldn't one just use the Google store instead? It's pretty open, and if their government's motive is to just create a subset of the Play store that doesn't have Chinese apps, why the hell would anyone use it?
And if the government is forcing the entire population to use its app store -- do they have the authority to do that? I thought India was a democracy with free speech.
I disagree. It's the quite opposite. So many popular apps don't even get a notice before getting banned, let alone small indie developers trying to get some users.
>> why the hell would anyone use it?
Not sure about others but I definetly don't want a US company to put nose in everything I do online. Plus I don't want to give a 30% cut for a regional app that I can publish on some local platform for local users. And I would rather deal with low quality apps than popular apps disappearing every now and then just because Google doesn't like them.
>> do they have the authority to do that?
Yes but it's not practical in country like India to enforce it. Free speech and what govt can regulate about internet are different things as far I've seen.
The First Amendment is radically unprecedented and unique, in its text, judicial upholding and cultural backing.
While India technically has freedoms of speech, in practice it is heavily regulated [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_expression_in_Ind...
The Indian government can block all other app stores, require app developers and mobile OSes install spyware SDKs and turn over data about their users, and ban encryption. Then, the "subversives," academics, and journalists can be rounded-up.
Do you have any good examples where you think innovation has been stifled on the play store? (Apple's app store aside)
examples?
At this point it doesnt seem there is any potential for making a profitable app company, the profit would be to be acquired
Apple should certainly allow alternative app stores, and Google should make it easier and safer for customers to install alternative app stores, but I never want to see governments get into that market.
Can you please share some citation for the assassination part. I don't think the Bar Council of India would be happy if a lawyer is assassinated by government.
By the way, the govt has been very active in making sure that they have their loyal representatives in bureaucracy as well as in judiciary. Recently, the Supreme Court convicted a prominent lawyer for a tweet criticizing them [2]. It is very easy for them to dismiss cases which might show them in bad light. Media has no independence either. Eg. the case of Punya Prasun Bajpai [3] who's show was blacked out and eventually cancelled because it was critical of Modi.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brijgopal_Harkishan_Loya
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/world/asia/india-bhushan-...
[3] https://thewire.in/media/punya-prasun-bajpai-abp-news-narend...
Anyone in India know PPB is affiliated with AAP has pulled out too many stunts to be any credible.
GetJar - sold to Chinese
PayTM - Chinese shareholder
Flipcart - Chinese shareholder
Zomato, swiggy, + 10+ others online delivery/logistics apps. Some used to be reskins of Chinese apps. Some only have Indian C-levels.
20 something messengers - all except FB, and Twiter are Chinese
...
I believe they quickly realised that to ban Chinese apps, they have to ban a lion share of apps in daily use, and here this app store comes.
---
P.S. As I understand, a huge amount of Android phones in the third world doesn't have Google App store pre-installed, as manufacturers don't bother to go through arduous Google certification for low end phones, or provide OTA updates. This is why things like GetJar are still a thing there.
That would be such a big victory.
Personally I would not complain about the bureaucratic overhead.
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
By which you mean, pissing off power users?
Or as Google puts it in equally bullshit terms:
> They allow your users to opt-in to timely updates and allow you to effectively re-engage users with customized content.
Which countries partake in this supposed free and open web? None.
There are dozens of separately regulated prominent webs now and that's going to get a lot worse this decade. We're never going back, nations are not going to give up the control they're assuming, it will splinter further and further; complexity will grow, accessing foreign markets will become more onerous. It'll gradually fully mirror the physical world, where if you want to travel to another nation, or do business in another nation (access their market), you will have to comply with all of their myriad of local regulations (which will continue to grow rapidly in number and complexity).
Nations will fence off their citizens online, and you will have to comply to access them. We're already seeing this directional shift in many nations, it will spread comprehensively.
Turkey's web is not regulated the same as India's web which is not regulated the same as China's web which is not regulated the same as the EU's web which is not regulated the same as Brazil's web which is not regulated the same as Australia's web which is not regulated the same as the US web which is not regulated the same as Britain's web and so on.
But I'm far from an expert. What would be the benefit of a non-pw app?
* They're way faster and less janky.
* You don't to use endless workarounds to disable typical web behaviour when you don't want it.
PWAs are probably suitable for basic apps that just display information, e.g. an app for an event, or a pub or whatever. You would be insane to try and make a "real" app like Snapchat or Google Maps as a PWA though.
That said, I don't think PWAs have a good way to get background data updates, which is unfortunate for apps that could work offline. You can't do a silent push to update data, last I checked, anyway. (Use case: I want a weather app that has current/recent data without loading when I start the app, because I often start the app in dead zones; also I want to have it background fetch the data when my location changes).
It was also slower to write for me, but I've never had a good time understanding UI toolkits, so I assume that's my own character flaw.
A similar HTML layout shows up a ton faster in Chrome or a webview.
That’s exactly what I want!
I also struggle to think of a scenario in which you wouldn’t want your app published on all app stores (unless you for moral reasons wouldn’t want your app on Chinese-owned stores or something like that).
I want more competition in app stores, I want places where adult applications can be distributed which is completely impossible at the moment. I want app stores that offer different models than what Apple and google do. I want Apple to have to improve their developer experience because of competition (the google play store is way simpler to deal with in my experience). Etc.
And you’re right, it’s a pain to deal with them.
Or more realistically, it means developers will have to start paying for a middle man saas thing that distributes apps in all the stores and aggregates reviews etc.
For non-savvy users it mostly solves the “evaluating installer maliciousness” problem. For all users it enhances convenience (unified method for installing and uninstalling software) and software discovery. It is not a perfect solution to any of the above problems, but IMO it’s very good.
There's certainly a discovery benefit to Google Play, but anybody could build an app discovery site and make an app from that with an embedded browser, open the downloaded apks with the system intent and get the permissions prompt etc. You don't even need the special app management permission if you embrace the system tools that are already there. You would lose automatic updates without that though (but then, a lot of people in India have auto-updates off to conserve bandwidth or storage space).
Google play certainly does some small curation function, but I don't know how useful that is, and you could still have Google Play services running background scans and malware blacklists.
Not sure if this stands true for the current Indian government.
And believe it or not a Store does not have much to do with covering your ass when it comes to malware. There is the same security check on mac regardless where the application comes from (its done at the OS level) The only thing the App Store does is verify the developer because they have to be resisted with Apple (and makes sure Apple gets that 30 cut). Mac already does that btw (you actually cant download an app from an unknown developer by default) unless you choose to in the settings.
This is the current situation on Android. It is similar to macOS or Windows. It comes with a store but users are free to install apps from whatever source they like.
There was already an open, accessible, free app store called - 'Internet Browser' upon which Internet was built. These companies undermined it in collusion with the duopolies to hoard more data from their customers and are now crying wolf.
That's my point here -
>in collusion with the duopolies to hoard more data from their customers
The current leadership has done some fishy marketing tactics for sure. There are swathes of fake news on whatsapp and Facebook which lure unsuspecting citizens into thinking the current leadership is some kind of savior. The local media is mostly silent and doesn't broadcast any news that might affect the savior image of the leadership. These media outlets cognitively manipulate people by pushing uncertain news; eg: "did coward china leave the Ladakh region after Modi's roar?"
Sorry, my English is not very good. But this news is so manipulative when broadcast in the local language.
This combined with aggressive Hindutva identity politics, most naive people of India think Modi is a savior, while they are systematically looting this country. BJP is one of richest parties in the world and no one asked where all the money from de monetization went. Modi has not even called a press meet so far.
It doesn't help that the opposition party is exploited by Nehru family. INC had a great prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, but he was suppressed in the party itself. He is easily the best PM this cursed country has seen after Late Mr. Shastri.
Doesn't help there is a vocal minority of liberal arts graduates which even openly support terrorist forces in an attempt to rail against BJP. They call themselves left or liberals but they are not left. They openly support all kind of dammage from Muslim fundamentalists, and try to defame the long standing tradition of the country. You can see lot of those people on r/india echo chamber. You will be banned for opposing their viewpoints. The effect? You will be called as leftie/liberal/communist/anti-national for just opposing Modi, among your friend circles who are already likely to be manipulated from the fake news based propaganda.
TL; DR This country sucks.
The value for life is non-existent in India, unfortunately.
Considering U.S. - India trade agreement has been elusive for a long time due to differences from fruits to solar cells, India would definitely not add App(Play) store to the list; especially now due to the situation with China.
Although there's nothing stopping anyone from creating 3rd party app store for Android, the lobby wants Govt. to be involved for forcing handset manufacturers to pre-burn this new app store. It's certainly possible, as made in India Samsung M-series phones already has all major Indian apps, they might even provide privilege escalation like Fdroid to make install/update seamless. What they are going to replace Google Play Services with would be interesting to see.
Of course it's not going to happen with Apple unless anti-trust issues in US/EU forces Apple to open its platform for 3rd party app stores.
Coming back to Huawei, Playstore denial didn't have impact on its sales in China as Playstore was never there and China has hundreds of local app stores for android (although silicon denial will have an impact there). Similarly, having local Indian app stores does make strategic sense.
But as a consumer I'm worried about the privacy, security implications of a local app store without common International rules and scrutiny; Especially since I have personally seen what some of these leading apps can do with user privacy and security[1].
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/paytm-says-to-me-that-its-pos-fea...
Oh, I need to use a simple todo app. I guess it needs access to my contacts because there's a legitimate feature for that. It also needs access to my calendar because there's a legitimate feature for that. Of course it needs location for location based todos.
Of course there's a risk of easier distribution of state-sponsored Malware and censorship - somewhat similar to state-level DPI - but there could be an advantage in enforcing local laws.
As it stands, software distribution to european mobile clients seems to be restricted by:
* U.S. laws and regulations
* Policies by Google or Apple
* European laws and regulations
For Free Software Users, https://f-droid.org/en/ is course preferable. Seems to be registered in the UK according to https://f-droid.org/en/about/
> F-Droid is taking a political stance here
I do not want any App Store to be taking political stances.
I don't think there is a clean separation between political and non-political when you're choosing whether to accept or deny apps to an app store.
[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
1) The issue is that Google is attacking competitors using the App Store as a weapon
Google Pay is one of the biggest payment apps in India
It attacked PayTm, another very big payment app, by making its app disappear
2) So lots of Indian companies are using it as an opportunity to do BOTH
A) Point out Google attacking competitors
B) Google taking 30% cut is unsustainable
*
Now, in INdia Android has 95% market share
So Apple gets a free pass by virtue of being so tiny in India
They have fantasy cricket now which is definitely gambling and my dad is getting spammed with messages that look exactly like scams. I am glad they removed it even if just for a few hours. They didn't comply after being requested to multiple times.
Justifying it as cashback can be used for almost anything in the way they have done.
Many publicly traded corporations are not that much different. I am confident that an app-store is not that hard of a task relative to the revenue Google et al are extracting from mit.
If the govt can run a postal service competitively, then I don't see why what is basically a glorified file hosting service + reviews would be impossible.
If anything, I think we need more of these "public options" to compete with walled-garden "platform"/market-making tech companies like Google's play store, Venmo, Uber, etc.
Can it be just because of the difference in disposable income in the countries? I don't know any reliable metric for income but the GDP per capita of PRC is five times that of India. The quench for luxurious goods comes with rising income.
> India has different politics
What do you mean? It's more inequitable than China and has more political capture by private actors, but I don't see why the same couldn't occur in India.
Maybe not every country will have as many app stores as China, but still that's gonna be a nightmare for developers (especially small developers) to manage.
Push notification might be another nightmare to watch out for consumers. When China bans Google service, app developers have freedom to implement push themselves or via a 3rd party vendor. And I guess if forced to open, Apple won't support non AppStore push either, hence consumers may end up with Facebook/Google/Epic/Tencent/YouNameWho have their push services running and connected on their phones with a burning battery.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1058612/china-android-ap...
This doesn't sound like a good idea to give the control of an app store to the government. Government will for sure try to track and spy on users and remove any app it doesn't like and quality will be a joke.
[1]: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/right-to-privacy-not-...
They will strictly block everything they don’t like. I have a bad feeling about it
an app store would allow them to inject RAT into every app thus giving them the ability to spy on every indian device
If the idea was to help citizens, laws or regulations to stop said practices would be better, not that I agree with it.
But thats not the idea, they see Google's power and they want in.
Can you imagine thinking a government having all your data is better than a corporation?
People have forgotten the governments were the perpetrators of the worst thing in human history.
No corporation has rounded up people to be shot like governments did.
Governments have been killing people since their beginning and probably as we speak.
As have corporations.
governments do that and much worse.
Right now there are people in concentration camps.
I get that corporations can be bad, but they don’t have the monopoly on violence.
To conflate corporation’s violence with governments is a stretch.
It’s funny that people point at corporations being bad, while at the same time defending the worse offender.
I think people can be bad, and having a power form corporations make it worse, but the power government gives to terrible people is much worse.
* edited would with wouldn’t
However, it is entirely like that the Modi govt is probably trying to find a way to backdoor all phones in India through this. So thats bad.
"Narendra Modi ‘wants state apps installed’ on new phones"
Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/narendra-modi-wants-state...
> India is said to be considering a plan to make it mandatory for almost all new mobile phones to have government software pre-installed, raising the prospect of the state being able to closely monitor citizens.
But I definitely agree on the point about Google Play Services. For a platform that is often touted as being open, Android isn't quite Android without Play Services, and that wouldn't be the case if Google wasn't systematically ensuring that specific outcome.
It's mentioned in the article that apps won't be charged for gatekeeping.
Third part app stores should be allowed, and in the end, hopefully, the best one will come out as a winner.
While I don't like censorship of any form, if that violates Play Store or AppStore's TOS, the violating app would get removed.
https://daliaresearch.com/blog/democracy-perception-index-20...
To Modi bhakts it's a democracy because they are in power.
To regular people, it's very clear it's a democracy like Russia is a democracy. The govt pays large amounts of people to misinform the populace online. The government uses martial law to impose Internet lockdown for over a year on any citizens who resist govt's crimes against them. There's no free press (check press freedom indices), without which democracy is in name only.
> The govt pays large amounts of people to misinform the populace online.
Are they using state apparatus to do that? Isn't this true in most parts of world now. The whole Brexit campaign was fueled by misinformation.
> There's no free press (check press freedom indices), without which democracy is in name only.
I have read a lot of outlets from India which are anti establishment. Though I definitely think the press freedoms are nowhere at the level of some countries.
> The government uses martial law to impose Internet lockdown for over a year on any citizens who resist govt's crimes against them.
I think this refers to Kashmir. While I don't support the restriction and definitely heavy handed and it wouldn't have been possible in say a country like US now. I think you are triviliazing the situation when you think all the "resistance" is against government crimes.
Sigh!
When OEMs install Google service and other apps required to install Play store, they need a license from Google.
Look at custom ROMs not bundling Gapps (Google apps) because they do not have the license from Google to pre-install and ask you to install from open gapps.
Honestly, what alternative exists? Corporations won't be OK with publishing on F-Droid, but is there some kind of opensource store that can be used for commercial apps? If some people put their heads together, maybe they could come up with something opensource that respects privacy, is secure and allows closed-source stuff to be published.
iOS on the other hand is slightly difficult to sideload apps compared to Android. Not too optimistic about an alternative App Store on iOS.
From the perspective of the Indian government that is exactly what is wrong with Getjar.
Also recently Google banned few Indian apps. The way I see it, Indian govt wants to make sure, essential apps are in their control, not in private companies'.
Suppose Epic wins its case against Apple and judges force alternative app stores, I wonder if that would mean tmobile, at&t, et al. would all then be allowed to install their app store with adware into iPhones...
Reliance will become like one of those chaebol companies in Korea, pervasive in every Indian’s life with little to no other options.
Why does it have to be a government app store?
I'd rather not even have any state app instead.
This seems to be a good opportunity for cryptocurrency and something like a distributed database or content-oriented networking with indexing. Such as for example Ether and OrbitDB.
if they force Apple to pre-install appstore on phones? say bye-bye to $10 B manufacturing dream.
Having local controls and slightly stricter rules is good! But these chinese-commie style is bad!
Unless they mean force sellers to change defaults and dump on f-droid or something it's embarrassing they think they can.
Now maybe the EU should get their act together? The EU was able to create airbus to compete with boeing, why can't they do the same for their own version of microsoft, google, apple, facebook, etc? They are certainly wealthy enough and given their large population, they certainly could produce the talent to drive such an initiative.
If the EU thinks their private sector is going to compete against state-backed corporations like google, facebook, microsoft, apple, intel, etc, then they really have drunk the kool-aid. The EU's private sector can no more create a competitor to these tech giants as it could have created an aerospace company to compete with boeing. These companies are fundamentally "private" state companies.
If india, EU, etc succeed, then perhaps ASEAN, Africa, etc will follow their examples and create their tech ecosystem within their economic bloc.
THIS is the only time, I am more inclined to side with Chinese style of control. Sovereign nation out to decide what is good for their people. India is a chaotic democracy, but a function one. I will rather support my government's way of ensuring "Privacy and Security" than Apple's. We do have equally capable people over here. Slowly but surely, things move in positive direction. No need of dictation by any foreign multi-national.
The way Google banned PayTM for few hours, until they removed some of the features from the App, come-on, Indian Laws are good enough to decide what is legal / correct / etc. etc. This was a very visible case of an American company imposing "Their Policy" on things which only court / government should get to decide.
I am mostly IN with this proposal.
EDIT: I guess I used harsh words, but something definitely needs to be done with the current duopoly.