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Comment by cat_plus_plus | Hacker News Reader

You know that Android is open source and you can just sideload apps, install a 3rd party app store or replace entire OS with your own ROM right? What, your app/game is not valuable enough to the user to bother with unless it's a single click install without having to enter credit card? Well...

Basically - Situation is not at all the same as with iOS - There is too much emphasis on friction-less low value installs and less on highly valuable things that users are willing to invest time and money on. Those apps would not survive without vendor-included single click app stores anyway.

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Those apps would not survive without vendor-included single click app stores anyway.

I find this a little amusing because it's the exact reason why Microsoft lost their IE anti-trust case. Users were given IE by default, and because using something else required effort IE took a huge chunk of the market remarkably quickly. That was deemed to be violating their effective monopoly position on OSs to influence their position in a different market (browsers). Microsoft were made to add a screen in the Windows on-boarding process that gave users options about which browser they wanted.

Sometimes using user 'laziness' to maintain or gain market share doesn't work out so well for you.

I strongly believe that if the Microsoft anti-trust case happened today, Microsoft would easily win. The tech monopolies that we have today have a much bigger impact on society.

Absolutely! First time I loaded Google Search and saw ad under search box, where nobody else can advertise, no matter how much they offer to pay, saying “not using Chrome? Click to install now”, I thought to myself “damn they gonna get huge ant-minopoly lawsuit that will cost then billions”. And what happened?? Nothing! Other than Chrome is number one browser now for decades to come.

Microsoft's mere inclusion of a web browser (which is now a basic OS tool that is reasonably expected to come out of the box, but then was new) wasn't why they lost their case. They lost their case because they were demanding OEMs refuse to include any alternative browsers on pain of revoking their pricing agreements.

What was really the outcome of Microsoft losing the anti-trust case? Windows still comes with a preinstalled browser and I don't remember ever seeing a version of Windows without one.

They've reached a settlement equal to a slap on the wrist. They've agreed to share their API with third parties and a couple of people to verify that for a couple of years (it expired in 2007).

So basically nothing.

In legal terms they got off easy, but it did change Microsoft and computing forever. Microsoft became terrified of been seen as monopolistic and that lead to them effectively saving Apple, not buying Google or Yahoo, embracing Linux and so on. It was very much worth it.

"So basically nothing"

Umm..no.

IE could now be un-installed on Windows.

After various settlement fines in the US with several parties, the EU took it further and also leveraged its largest anti-trust penalty of that era. (~1 billion)

Microsoft were forced to share ALL their earlier private computing API's as open specs. MS word, excel formats, SMB, etc. This was amazing and resulting in several OSS libraries.

>>IE could now be un-installed on Windows.

Why is this important?

And I was never able to make it actually work. Like the whole system became much more unstable if you did uninstall IE.

That being said, I didn't know much about computers back then, so I probably messed up somewhere.

Avoiding security vulnerabilities.

Look at how Apple, and to a degree Google, are controlling/constraining mobile apps today and imagine that Microsoft had done that (x10... they were much worse in their time) 20 years earlier on the desktop. They were pretty successful in choking off the growth of Netscape (the browser) and Java pre-DOJ action and would have likely used similar strategies against web companies (which were completely dependent on and at the mercy of the desktop OS back then) before they became large enough to be a competitive threat.

Google exists, for one. Microsoft decided against early attempts to acquire Google or block their toolbar in IE because of the fear of further antitrust legislation.

You think Google would sell to Microsoft? Larry and Sergey are one the smartest founders ever. They had clear vision and mission for Google.

Microsoft was in a position to put Google entirely out of business at the time, and buy it for pennies on the dollar. Internet Explorer was THE dominant browser at the time with over 90 percent market share, and Microsoft was considering blocking the install of Google Toolbar (the vaguely malware-esque add-on Google paid Adobe to inject into Flash Player and Reader installers) and preventing Google from modifying the default search.

Google would not still exist without the antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft that scared them into playing it safe.

Also, Larry and Sergey's vision was an academic search engine that wasn't tainted by the mixed motivations of advertising[1]. Since they built the world's largest ad company, it's fair to say they sold out their vision and mission and the first opportunity for a lot of money.

[1] http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html appendix A

Well, they had a clear vision about "organizing the world's information", but ads did not enter the picture until year 2000.

In 1998 they were decidedly anti-ad, but after failing to monetize differently, I guess they caved in.

However, that anti-ad approach and an attempt to avoid the results being gamed with PageRank made hordes of "us" (geeks who were being called in to help others with their "computer problems") to get everybody to switch to Google Search.

But I doubt they planned all of that, especially not to turn their company into an advertising company.

For a while copies of Windows sold in Europe let the user choose which browser would be installed by default during the setup process.

Microsoft's obligation to do this ended in 2014 and now we're back to them begging everyone to use Edge.

Microsoft didn't lose the anti-trust case.

Go check Wikipedia.

They did loose, then they appealed and settled.

Yeah, people should start treating, morally, settling just as losing a case. This doesn't apply for individuals, but companies settling for millions and millions are morally admitting defeat. Corporations can afford the drawn out court battles, so if they're not continuing them, it means that they're admitting they lost.

no, people should consider settlements on a case-by-case basis depending on the actual terms. entities settle totally unfounded suits all the time just because it's cheaper than taking them to court. just because a giant corporation could afford to doesn't mean settling isn't a rational choice.

Settlements are a win because they don't set precedent, and are often much cheaper than going to trial, and much, much cheaper than losing. There are plenty of companies that skirt the law or civil agreements hoping that, in the worst case, they can just settle if they're brought to court.

I think European court system is not based on precedents, so while someone can point at any particular ruling in another case, it shouldn't affect ruling in their own case.

IANAL though :)

Applies in the UK, though, we got our case law system from them.

> You know that Android is open source...

Technically Android is OpenSource.

De-facto - its not.

For many many years now Google is adding all non-os functionality into "support" libraries, "Google Services" - the name changes periodically - but the essence is the same: Making sure that any Android that is not "Google certified" won't be able to run Android apps - which all use these libraries - and won't have apps such as YouTube, Gmail, Photos come pre-installed..

But there is an opensource implementation of those support services (microg) which work for most apps.

Except the drivers are always closed, so you cannot run any OS that you like or have long-term support.

oh, nice.

I didn't know about it.

It is a huge undertaking, google has services from "simple" things like location, to complex things like face recognition.

I believe many of the microg services are mocked out in a way that makes apps 'work', but complex things like step counting in Google fit or face recognition will always return some bogus results.

Still, it makes 99% of apps work.

A third party app store can not automaticly apply updates to apps. The user has to explictly approve every update. This puts the play store in a privileged position of lower ongoing friction.

There was a recent Android blog post that said "we will be making changes in Android 12 (next year's Android release) to make it even easier for people to use other app stores on their devices". https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/09/listening-...

I bet they only announced that because Epic sued them on these grounds soon before that.

"Android has always allowed people to get apps from multiple app stores. In fact, most Android devices ship with at least two app stores preinstalled, and consumers are able to install additional app stores. "

What is the most common preinstalled app store besides Google play?

I'm going to guess the Samsung one.

90% of future Android 12 users will only get it when their phone dies and they buy a new one.

It's actually getting better. New versions of Android are getting adopted faster: https://www.gsmarena.com/report_android_11_has_the_fastest_a...

It's not yet at iOS levels, but Google is actually getting there, I'm impressed. It's much easier to pull this off when you're a huge company making the hardware and the software and you can just boss OEMs and telecom companies around, it's much harder when you have a Microsoft Windows-like arrangement.

They're still at least 5 years from getting near iOS, but still... progress! :-)

IF one happens to own a flagship Android device from top brands, nothing changed for the devices that most people actually buy in large quantities for their pre-paid cards.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/4/20847758/google-android-up...

Google's own security reports marketing usually only focus on the devices where they can sell a nice Treble picture.

It will trickle down. Even for those top brands it was a struggle.

Nokia will gladly sell me a new device for Android 11, even though other devices from them of similar age as 7+ already got it, and they are one of the best update stories currently.

Meanwhile most shopping malls in Germany still sell pre-paid phones with Android 7 and above.

It will be ages before Android 12 is on a plurality of devices, not even a majority.

That's assuming the feature even materializes. I don't it's cynical to assume that Google might shelve a "feature" that undermines their own business at the first opportunity.

I bet they invest billions of resources to this feature.

A lot of apps can do substantial changes to functionality with just serverside changes. App developers are already used to a good chunk of users having updates disabled. Those users update every 1 or 2 years whenever they get a new phone and reinstall your app.

this opensource thing is not so straight as you have explained.

In Android these days I find lot of finance app using some proprietarytechnology like google safety net. And most app are using google play services which again is closed source.

Android is not true opensource software ...

Snaps in Ubuntu also has proprietary components.

Yes, the store. And advanced functionality is only available to paying users.

"Advanced functionality" such as the ability to take full control of when apps get updated.

And many on HN have reservations against snap for that and more.

Many, _many_ Android phones cannot work with any known custom ROM.

Where's a custom rom for my Blackberry Priv, for instance?

It is worthwhile to read the google anti-trust complaint:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1328941/downl...

It's clearly written, a short read and gets interesting each subsequent page.

The android stuff begins on page 19.

> You know that Android is open source and you can just sideload apps, install a 3rd party app store or replace entire OS with your own ROM right?

User installable 3rd party app stores are cannot compete with the Play Store on feature parity because 3rd party app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.

Manufacturers fight against users' abilities to root or replace their OS on the phones they sell. There are thousands of models of phones that will only ever run their OEM installed ROMs, and there are millions, if not billions, of Android devices that cannot be rooted or won't run custom ROMs, and more are produced every year.

> or replace entire OS with your own ROM right

For over 90% (rough guess) of devices this isn't true.

ARM isn't an open platform like Intel/PC.

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