Google “contemplated buying some or all of Epic” to stop “contagion”
rockpapershotgun.com
rockpapershotgun.com
It's always a choice.
I challenge anyone to try and live a normal life completely disconnected from the servers of Amazon, google, Facebook, and Apple. It is impossible.
From [0]:
> Here are the names that are on record publicly as using AWS:
> Aon, Adobe, Airbnb, Alcatel-Lucent, AOL, Acquia, AdRoll, AEG, Alert Logic, Autodesk, Bitdefender, BMW, British Gas, Baidu, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canon, Capital One, Channel 4, Chef, Citrix, Coinbase, Comcast, Coursera, Disney, Docker, Dow Jones, European Space Agency, ESPN, Expedia, Financial Times, FINRA, General Electric, GoSquared, Guardian News & Media, Harvard Medical School, Hearst Corporation, Hitachi, HTC, IMDb, International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, International Civil Aviation Organization, ITV, iZettle, Johnson & Johnson, JustGiving, JWT, Kaplan, Kellogg’s, Lamborghini, Lonely Planet, Lyft, Made.com, McDonalds, NASA, NASDAQ OMX, National Rail Enquiries, National Trust, Netflix, News International, News UK, Nokia, Nordstrom, Novartis, Pfizer, Philips, Pinterest, Quantas, Reddit, Sage, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Scribd, Securitas Direct, Siemens, Slack, Sony, SoundCloud, Spotify, Square Enix, Tata Motors, The Weather Company, Twitch, Turner Broadcasting,Ticketmaster, Time Inc., Trainline, Ubisoft, UCAS, Unilever, US Department of State, USDA Food and Nutrition Service, UK Ministry of Justice, Vodafone Italy, WeTransfer, WIX, Xiaomi, Yelp, Zynga and Zillow.
Just AWS (as of 2020, per the artice). Apple could even be included in that list, according to CNBC. How many more are on Azure or GCP? I would argue you're not completely avoiding their services if you're still a 'customer' of their customer, they're just getting a much smaller cut of your (or the advertiser's) money at the end of the day.
I have a long list of large customers that insist that none of their data is stored in AWS.
(Sidenote, I'm adding Microsoft. I assume your solution isn't "everyone should move to Azure")
I assume that most of us work in tech which, if it doesn't require actually working on software that is hosted by one of those five (or for them directly), requires looking at projects that are controlled by them. Do you use React or Angular? Maybe backend work in Go or C#? Ever use LinkedIn to network (or FB/IG), or use WhatsApp/MSTeams/Skype/GoogleChat to coordinate telework?
And 3/5 of those control all the major consumer OSes. Sure, maybe you run Linux as your primary device, but you probably have to develop stuff compatible with Windows, iOS or Android. So you need those to at least test.
Here's one article, probably not the best, of people trying to blackhole the major cloud providers and how that destroyed the internet experience.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/technology/blocking-the-t...
You being defeated isn’t the same as being unable to live without FAANG.
A friend of mine is paid quite handsomely to work at Google and considers their compliance with company practices bought and paid for.
Interestingly, they're quitting due to the WFH policies.
Everyone loaded up on extra TP, a work stop was all of not opening laptops for 35-40% of the country.
But feudal exploitation by the rich and each other locally is preferred.
Strikes are social events, you don't do it alone. There's usually a minority of agitators/organizers that are respected/trusted among workers and that call the shots/organize the fun. So working from home is very much anti-organization and hinders strikes. It isolates workers.
I seem to recall an invention called “Internet” which allowed for concerts, talk shows, and numerous other social events to occur during covid.
Google wouldn’t notice code not being checked in?
Call centers wouldn’t notice Q’s backing up?
No one would notice if Reddit’s front page was days old?
Commerce now relies on people being at computers daily at scale.
I don’t care whose grandpa did what 80 years ago. I don’t owe deference to a figurative identity they want to carry around if it’s also literally abusive to the species as a whole.
Industrialist power is a privilege, not a right.
Being pedantic, I know. But this distinction does matter a lot in this context.
From Europe, where we have our own issues and politics is not better; just different. But where anti-trust cases against American companies is taken serious, both EU wide and by smaller local governments. And where many of us can vote for a myriad of parties, some with "taking large US monopolies down" as a primary point. (pirateparty, Volt, that I know of). Parties who make real chance of taking the lead or getting people in parliament.
People connected to "HN Bubble" controls hundreds of millions if not a few billions of dollars.
Not every of those dollars are liquid, far from that, but, in addition to the raw monetary value of certain people here HN also commands a lot of attention.
You keep saying this as if it was somehow true or relevant. At this stage, we have no real need for an OS that grandma will want to use. That can come later. She can stay on iOS/Android for the time being.
We need a name for this, the classic "someones parents can't use it and therefore it can't work fallacy".
My parents don't use Mac.
In fact most people don't, including me.
Doesn't prevent Mac from being a huge success and a viable platform for developers.
Same with a good number of applications: A few hundred or thousand hard core users. Bonus if one of them is an oil giant, a defense giant, the armed forces of a wealthy country or something.
OS's success is almost entirely defined by network effects. This is why the UNIX wars ended with everyone using Linux. It was available (for free) and lots of people used it. It wasn't better in any way, that came later. 'Disruptive innovation' in software is a myth.
'Power users' on HN are 95% software developers who have a very good experience with FLOSS because everything from the OS to the apps is written by them for them. This is absolutely not the case for anyone else. The number one reason people don't use FLOSS is because they can't get Adobe and MS Office. Without users FLOSS will never get these. Until FLOSS products are the plurality available on store shelves it will never reach the mass market. No one who isn't a software developer is switching to FLOSS and without a massive restructuring of society that will remain the case. I just wish we could be more realistic and work on finding strategies that would actually move the needle. Chiefly by lobbying governments.
Right, which is more than you can say today about Android given the reality of current mobile hardware lifecycles. Make Linux-for-mobile available today, and people will gladly use it to extend the usability of their otherwise "obsolete" devices. The overall setting is in fact remarkably similar.
Do you expect to be able to press your own semiconductors?
When Google was small it embraced an open OS, the open web, email, RSS, etc. Now it's big enough that it doesn't need (and therefore doesn't want) open technologies.
They don't, that's the whole point. They do the bare minimum of booting up a barely-usable, heavily hacked downstream kernel, and call it a day (or rather, move to the next device release). "Proper" support is left to the community.
Essentially, any phone vendors other than the big names expects to get a fully-working Android image with their chipset to ship with the phone. And Google also punted a bunch of lower-end userspace work off on the chip vendors as well. Chip Vendors don't just ship drivers in that market. Not if they expect to sell any chips.
Source: Worked at a chip vendor.
This makes it more important rather than less to work on an AOSP alternative that's far more in line with existing Linux practices in the mainstream, non-embedded ecosystem. And let's face reality, the chip vendors aren't doing it.
Then someone else will buy them then, given that Google was about to buy Twitch but dropped it due to the same reasons and instead went to Amazon.
Won't be surprised to see them do it again or another >$1TN company do this. Who knows, maybe one will create a bill which prevents >$100BN companies from out right buying out other multi-billion dollar companies. Oh wait. [0]
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/13/hawley-antitrust-bill-trus...
Additionally playing sales commissions is a traditional practice in most markets.
Finally, maybe devs would appreciate to pay the 80 to 90% that used to be common on the Symbian, J2ME, BREW and Blackberry shops from mobile operators, about 15 years ago.
I was there during the Symbian era, the commissions at the time were outrageous, but closer to 40-50% than 80-90%.
I didnt even realize symbian HAD an app store.
Google/Apple having gained the trust of the market and acting as middlemen to sell access simply isn't monopoly activity. In the same way that renting out space in a commercial complex isn't.
There is no question they are running these stores to make an outrageous profit. But the monopoly would be expressed by how the gates are closed to alternate App Stores, or in Google is unfairly pushing competitors to their own Apps off the store to make a profit - which given that they generally provide their Apps for free is a hard argument to make. Nobody seems to be making either of those arguments. Particularly the first one would involve more references to Samsung being made.
The issue is HNer's are still living in the "website era" of the internet -- that's ending. We're now in the app era. And devices are the browsers.
Their app stores are monopolies on their devices; in that the person who controls the road is a monopolist, despite the existence of air travel.
That android devices compete with ios devices is irrelevant, in as much as comcast/et al. can say, "go to a different state". The app store is an iOS monopoly -- the hardware apple provides is a road/telephone/browser device for access apps -- the new predominant mode of social/economic communication & infrastructure.
It isn't though. That is my point, monopoly doesn't just mean big market share + you don't like it. Half the web would go dark to Chrome and everyone would dump the browser in a couple of months if they pulled a stunt like that. Because they don't have monopoly. They only have a very high market share because Chrome is the best browser.
If the best-browser part stops being true there is not reason for the highest market share part to stay true.
Ie., a monopoly is whatever situation gives rise to a situation where a company can set prices without regards to legitimate competitive market processes. Where 'legitimate' is effectively a concequentialist constraint concerning aggregate consumer benefit.
There are many theories of /when/ a company is a monopoly; including very narrow case law definitions around pricing.
The pretheoretical use of the term however is taken to permit a broader scope.
And lets be clear: a 30pc surcharge on all our economic activity (whether that be a mastercard or an apple) given no market justification has no justification.
Let there be many app stores on the iphone-- and we shall see what the market price on an app store. If it ends up being 30% then theres no objection.
This is very much a matter of opinion, not something you can reasonably state with a straight face. A large part of Chrome's large market share is the fact that it comes installed as a default on more than half the world's phones and that it's heavily marketed by the world's largest search engine and video hosting website (owned by the same entity!).
It also good enough, for now.
It has nothing to do with it being the best, though.
Not when there are other roads to be taken, regardless of how many pot holes they have on them.
So buy another device, a feature phone, give money to Jolla, FairPhone, whatever.
You are peddling a fantasy - my bank has mobile only access, and the app wont work on any alternative you lifted. The UK goverment app to apply for riggt to resde for European immigrants won't work either.
What the fuck am i meant to do with those phones?
I only use banks that provide access via ATM and Web, in addition to apps.
I still carry my Windows Phone around.
That being said, if Google started charging monthly for play store, you can easily change. The same is not true for Apple
https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-...
Google holds many monopolies. Is the play store not a monopoly?
It's not so relevant whether the stores are a monopoly or not. They're doing anticompetitive behaviour and misuse of market power, that's illegal regardless.
Such a convenient worldview, conpwtition doesn't exist, banks did nothing wrong prior to 2008, etc.
In an iterative prisoner's dilemma, the optimal solution is most often tit-for-tat or some variation of it. It's logical for one firm to do the same as another until it can obtain a strong hold on a profit-making activity that gives it more degrees of freedom with regards to its strategies. At that point a firm can move from merely surviving to experimentation or it can continue to milk the opportunity for all its worth.
Your cartel argument requires more than sameness of strategy. It requires motive and direct action towards achieving a forced equilibrium (e.g. willfully punishing other market players in concert to dissuade the use of alternative profit-making strategies).
I never brought up banks. What do they and the 2008 recession have to do with online stores and 30% cuts in 2021?
Do you expect the head of Apple and Google to sign a public document "hereby we form an illegal cartel"?
At a minimum the competition and market authority should take an interest as to why there is no competition. If they botheresld to investigate, maybe we would actually find out if there is any wrongdoing.
As far as I know this has not been agreed up on by a court so far. Or has it?
Nothing about this so called duopoly prevents you from spending money on a gaming device if you like games.
If a court does find that, did they not have the monopoly before the court made their ruling?
The way I see it, Apple and Google made the platforms worth something, made the stores, made the development tools, run the stores (which can't be cheap).
They could charge you a flat fee of several thousand dollars per app, but that would stifle competition too much. Instead they charge a percentage of what the app developer makes and ensures that as a user I can always trust the payment option to be save and, if I buy a subscription, to be easy to cancel.
They could allow you to pick your own payment provider, but then companies would still have to pay the 30% tax to Apple/Google, so what would be the point?
What seems perverse to me is they don't tax you on your profits, I am sure Google and Apple won't like the governments do the same to them.
Btw I understand it is super hard to implement a tax on profits only so it would make more sense IMo to give the developers a choice, pay on what you use (pay for bandwidth, for reviews, for dev tools licenses, for advertising) OR pay the tax. The small devs could chose the tax , the big developers would chose the first one , Apple will have less money from this giant devs but they could keep their high walls for a few more years(I prefer if Apple and Epic don't get a secret deal and this fight continues so judges and us uncover more data about this topic)
Together, GA has a duopoly on app stores and they have set their fees to be the same. That one of them would consider buying the trouble maker on the other platform is just ... telling.
- bandwidth is not that expensive , so only if the giants would screw you over with inflated prices. You could force the giants to reveal how much it actually costs(though I seen that even in the face of a judge the bastards pretend they are clueless and avoid answering questions)
- app reviews, You pay per review or per hour, maybe you submit a game to Sony or MS and they want a review dude to play it all to ensure is not broken.
-ads , only if you want, this should be an auction system
- dev tools, you should only have to pay for Apple signing your stuff, compilers, SDKs, IDEs should be always an opion for the dev to chose.
Btw, I am including all stores in my critique (including Steam,Sony's Play Station, and Microsoft)
In a non-monopolistic market you can take your business elsewhere. If you don't like apple and Google's cut, you have no options.
I have written a long-ish post but deleted it. I just wanna say this new left-capitalist doctrine really scares me. Communism all over again except instead of woke comrades at the Central committee censoring things we got young programmer thought police at trillion dollar companies cancelling you over usage of "blacklist", "master" or not respecting preferred pronouns in a git repo or email.
Don't worry, I'll check my privileges to become sufficiently woke and be a plus plus good warrior for justice.
From what I can tell, Gab is the same cesspool that it always was. I assume the same about Parler but I don't know, since I don't have an account. Both still seem popular with Trumpists, QAnon and the alt-right, so I don't know what Xerox-like "former glory" you believe these platforms have lost, but Xerox is still a billion dollar corporation so...
And if having to abide by the terms of service of app stores, social media platforms, ISPs and the actual laws of the land are too "Communist", there's an entire dark web out there that will let anyone do or say just about anything.
I asked some other dude on this website - do you really want a country with one party in the control of everything (Congress, presidency, governors...)?
I am not from the US, but this is so bizzare to watch. Half of your country voted for Trump, and you just hand-wave them away as "Trumpists" as if they were nutjobs who should be censored. That's half the country which opinions you have just dismissed.
> And if having to abide by the terms of service of app stores, social media platforms, ISPs and the actual laws of the land are too "Communist", there's an entire dark web out there that will let anyone do or say just about anything.
Funny how no one mentions this in posts about China, North Korea, Iran, Syria or Daesh. They have just set their own rules, why should they be labeled as tyranical or authoritatian countries?
No, but if I have to choose one, I'm not choosing the one that believes in Satanic pedophile cults and Jewish space lasers, and that gathers neo-nazis like flies, so simple math says I have to choose the other one until my country gives me a viable option besides "lesser of two evils."
>Half of your country voted for Trump,
A popular bit of propaganda, but no, Trump never carried the mandate of half the country. In 2016, only about 56% of the voting-eligible population - already a subset of the entire population - voted. Between them, Trump and Clinton each got about 27% of the possible vote, and while Trump won the Electoral College, he lost the popular vote.
In 2020, 66.7% of eligible voters turned out to vote. Biden won with 51.8% of votes cast, against Trump's 46.8%.
>and you just hand-wave them away as "Trumpists" as if they were nutjobs who should be censored
It's common to refer to followers of a particular social, religious or political movement - particularly those associated with a cult of personality - by the name of their leader. I refer to the unique blend of populism, neo-reactionism, persecution complex and conspiracy theory that makes up Trump's politics, and that of his followers, as "Trumpism" and them as "Trumpists" in order to draw a distinction between them and the Republican and Conservative ideals they supplanted.
>Funny how no one mentions this in posts about China, North Korea, Iran, Syria or Daesh. They have just set their own rules, why should they be labeled as tyranical or authoritatian countries?
Well, for one thing, you're confusing the laws of those countries and extremist groups with the terms of service of social media platforms. Twitter isn't beheading anyone, and Facebook isn't sending anyone to concentration camps, so attempts to draw some kind of equivalence between them and totalitarian regimes don't really work.
Good luck waiting for a viable option. Edit: just realized, not sure if by the satanic pedophile cults you meant the Clintons. You know, the war hawk lady who laughs at videos of beheading while parodying Gaius Julius, one of the biggest mass murderers in history. And the current president, who sniffs children and incestously kisses their grandchildren.
As an outsider, politics in the US is complete shit, maybe instead of participating in tribalism of one side vs another you should seek out ways to hard-reset the system and introduce more political parties, as is common in Europe.
> Well, for one thing, you're confusing the laws of those countries and extremist groups with the terms of service of social media platforms. Twitter isn't beheading anyone, and Facebook isn't sending anyone to concentration camps, so attempts to draw some kind of equivalence between them and totalitarian regimes don't really work.
The end result for me as a user is the same. What's the difference between Facebook and Twitter voluntarily censoring any mention of Tommy Robinson and China censoring anything mentioning Tommy Robinson? In one case its authoritation government doing it, in the other it's some sleazy multinational corp with way too much power doing it. "gO StArT YoUr OwN pLaTfOrM"...
Now tell me, I saw you in a few threads already, usually arguing leftist talking points. Are you an astroturfer? The reason I am here wasting my time writing something that will go completely over you just to get back a response that dismantles my post pedantically point by point is that unfortunately USA exports a lot of stuff. We started getting the BLM/MeToo stuff in Europe too and it's completely absurd.
A) Legislators haven't caught up with how the (digital) world works, so they don't even understand what is happening
B) These "stores" are run by two of the biggest companies on the planet (Apple and Google), so big that they can afford to spend countless amount of money to lobby and influence the legislators so the discussions never even hit the table
C) Both of the above
> Isn't this classic misuse of a monopoly?
Not really. While the App Store has monopoly on distributing apps on iOS, Apple and iPhone are far off from being a monopoly as more people have Android phones. Android phones allow side-loading so can't really claim Android has any misuse of a (potential) monopoly.
This might be a monopoly. Or at least, I think the current scrutiny from legislators is fully warranted and we should not jump to conclusions because AFAIK the jury will be out for a while.
I don't know the details, but I imagine this is pre-emptive move from Google to avoid monopoly judgements.
Stripe Chargeback Protection: https://stripe.com/radar/chargeback-protection
PayPal Chargeback Protection: https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/what-is-chargeba...
This is either ignorance or delusion. Brick and mortar stores take a lot more of a cut than that, and it isn't like Google's distribution infrastructure is free or something. It's a bit like saying developers demanding 6-figure salaries is extortion.
How the hell did we get to this point? Where ostensibly reasonable people feel entitled to shove their crapware on any storefront they want without paying for it?
> but even worse, and further proving the point, is that they prohibit taking payments through any other channel.
How so? Unlike with Apple, You can deploy Android applications without the store, or distribute on a different storefront for Android.
> How is it not illegal for the platform to force the use of their own payment service?
Companies choose what methods of payment they'll accept all the time. I can't buy a pizza with XBox Bux[0] or whatever the fuck either.
> Isn't this classic misuse of a monopoly?
No. For one, Android and the Google Play Store are not a monopoly. Android doesn't even have a majority market share in the US.
I generally agree that giant corporate conglomerates like Google are a bad thing for basically everyone, but I don't think that diluting the meaning of "monopoly" helps anyone, and neither do silly entitled arguments against paying a commission for distribution.
[0] As an aside, it is especially silly to me that people claim Google Play Store and Apple Store are bad but seem completely fine with the exact same practices on their game consoles.
I do think there is a big difference between Apple and Google.
I also think there is a difference between consoles and general purpose devices that have not being properly explored by anyone and at some point should be identified by the law.
That being said, digital rights are a disaster right now, it will take ages before it's fixed.
Consoles might need to be fixed too: for some reason, digital items cost the same or more than the physical counterpart, but provide you with less (can't re-sell, can't lend). And this doesn't take into account yet the fact that digital libraries will disappear when people die (can't leave to family your account, in theory). So consoles are not a good example, they are the most abusive ones.
I disagree and would say that today the difference between these devices is arbitrary. Game console manufacturers don't allow Outlook or Google Docs or whatever on their stores, but there's no reason they couldn't be there. Their absolute control over their platform is no different than Apple's except that Apple is less restrictive.
> Consoles might need to be fixed too: for some reason, digital items cost the same or more than the physical counterpart, but provide you with less (can't re-sell, can't lend). And this doesn't take into account yet the fact that digital libraries will disappear when people die (can't leave to family your account, in theory). So consoles are not a good example, they are the most abusive ones.
I am by no means defending this practice in consoles. I'm objecting to carving out an exception for them. If you believe that phones should be more open as platforms then you should also believe that the consoles should be too.
I vote with my wallet and avoid buying consoles (but I can't stop my wife from owning one), but there isn't much more you can do about it, sadly.
Politicians tend to be controlled by the money, everyone turns a blind eye to the idea of real digital rights.
To make money on reselling games from Blizzard, EA and others you have to be an insanely talented buyer and have very little overhead.
For reference: https://www.gamesradar.com/ps5-is-being-sold-at-a-loss-but-h...
For both game consoles and phones (mostly on the iOS side) the post-sale revenue is part of the overall profit scheme - PS5 hardware is sold very near-cost but all the money Sony makes off PSN and their cut of game sales becomes profit. Apple makes up-front margin from the hardware but also expects profit from in app purchases - if that wasn’t guaranteed, they might raise prices to make up the difference. Is it anti-consumer? Probably, for both the game console side and the phone side since the consumer ends up indirectly paying more after purchase.
But they do not prohibit the producer from selling their goods elsewhere, and they are not a monopoly intermediary, unlike google.
Also, Google has intentionally crippled Android and background app running, so you have to depend on FCM to deliver notifications, and you can't deliver FCM notifications uf app is installed via apk or fdroid or other third-party appstore.
FCM could indeed offer support for non-play-store apps, but weren’t background apps on Android leashed in because abuse of the capability was rampant and was torpedoing users’ battery life? I remember this being a pretty big Android issue for less technical users and an annoyance to more technical users.
Yes, you can still run in the background but you need to show a persistent notification to that effect. The user can then choose whether to hide it.
Also, notification area becomes unusable if there are too many persistent notifications. Syncthing, VPN, xmpp client, and you almost have no space for regular notifications, they become stacked.
That seems quite incorrect to me. Source?
This should have been addressed by giving the user a capability to determine power usage by each app and either allow it if he needs the app, or restrict background running.
The way it was done is far from adequate. Also, many manufacturers (samsung, xiaomi, huawei) cripple android even further. See https://dontkillmyapp.com
Apple and Google have a duopoly with their respective app stores, they hold the keys to the majority of the customers since the customers only buy through their platforms. So it's different in at least that way. It's not as if I couldn't host my own downloads, take my own payments and give my own authentication, but no one could install my app without a long-winded process they are very unlikely to go through.
It's not like they don't provide services for their cut, I get it, they host the infrastructure, maintain the platform and so on, but I only have to use their services because otherwise I'm selling to a void, a void that they created. This would not be the case had they not captured the entire consumer market with their app stores, and had all their default OS settings on their market leading phones default to only accept their app stores.
If there was a vibrant ecosystem of third-party installer capabilities, say the ability to install something from a website easily with all my own infrastructure like in the wild west days, it wouldn't be an issue (customer easy, not tech wiz easy).
But they lock it all up and funnel everyone through their stores, and so as a seller you're coerced into their ecosystem and they get to take whatever cut they want. We have no negotiating power, we are locked out of customers if we don't participate, and we are regularly screened and bullied by the app approval processes, so the comparison to extortion isn't as far-fetched as you're making it out to be.
Here's a thought experiment, whenever someone complains about the app store banning their app and them losing all their income, tonnes of people reply with "You shouldn't have put all your eggs in one basket!" so okay, where are the other baskets? Where else can I sell an app? And be reasonable, be sensible, it's nowhere. There are no other options for a real business operating in a commercial reality. You can technically sell elsewhere, but I can technically sell chocolate bars in the desert, that doesn't make it a reasonable option.
And feudal lords used to take even more. Apple is neither the former nor the latter. They dont maintain a physical supplt chain, or need to raise a fyrd
Developers don't typically make that much in any country except the US, and that seems mostly attributable to protectionist immigration laws. So I would agree with your analogy in that Google and US software developers are both in an unfairly advantageous bargaining position that one might call "extortionary" with some degree of hyperbole.
This is a completely false equivalence, for two reasons.
A) stores have very limited shelf space they need to allocate. They also carry the cost of logistics, keeping inventory and the risk of bad sales. The cost to app stores for reviews and distribution in comparison is tiny per unit and easily scalable. The only context where this could apply is highlighting of apps, but that is handled via separate advertisement.
B) The high fees do not apply only to app sales but also to in-app transactions. This is where the cost is truly ridiculous and can be called extortion.
Credit card companies, for comparison, charge a few percent. The EU has even limited the maximum interbank exchange fees to 0.2% in 2014. Visa and Mastercard seem to be doing just fine with that cut... (there are additional fees, but it still only a mounts to a few percent)
The equivalence would be Walmart getting 30% for every in-game transaction for games that were bought at Walmart.
On Android you can at least use other payment providers, but on Apple you have to use Apple Pay.
> No. For one, Android and the Google Play Store are not a monopoly. Android doesn't even have a majority market share in the US.
They are a duopoly. Many concerns that are relevant for monopolies apply to duo or oligopolies as well. The companies split up the market and arrive at a comfortable equilibrium where they can milk the customers. They might squabble for market share, but they also coordinate (directly or indirectly) to not hurt each other too much. This can be seen in the matching of the cut they take.
The only reason the stores get away with their pricing is because there is no practical alternative for the average consumer for Android, and no alternative at all for iOS. The Google/Apple situation is indeed a classic economy textbook duopoly.
Calling something "ignorance or delusion" is quite a strong statement with such shallow insight.
There are fees other than those to processes a credit card payment.
Each card brand has its own assorted assessment fees. Some are percentage based and some are pre transaction. Your payment processor also has fees, typically per transaction.
For small transaction, such as a $1 app or song purchase, those fixed fees bring the processing cost to a lot more than 0.2%.
This is crucial: any efficient market would have them compete on price. Google lowers the fee to 25%, developers move over to Google, so Apple has to follow and lower the fee to 20%. untill we reach the price-point that just about matches the costs made.
Unless you can argue that this 30% is exactly that lowest price-point: just about covering the hosting, staff and some risk, there is the proof that a monopoly is distorting this efficient market.
Proving that the current price is exactly that price-point is probably impossible; we might feel it is far from the actual costs, but we cannot prove it, which is probably one of the reasons this cannot be given as hard proof for a duo/monopoly.
Google and Apple very much represent a duopoly, that's just calling a spade a spade.
Nor did I see anybody here argue they should just distribute other people's apps for free.
The issue is over the size of the fee they demand and how they also demand to exclusively use their payment services, so they can extort their 30% fee on every single transaction even past the original distribution.
To apply that example to a brick and mortar store would be the equivalent of the store getting a cut off attachments/replacements the customer directly orders from the manufacturer because the customer bought the original device in the brick and mortar store.
I know plenty of apps where one can buy the subscription at a significant discount directly on the service's website instead of through the stores and it works perfectly fine.
I think the restriction is on obviously advertising that fact in your app. So I'd recommend checking if the subscription you're about to buy through the app can be bought on the website instead.
I really hope to see them broken down, as I am pretty sure that we’ll all regret it if we let those giants left untouched.
If you accept, they'll never ask you again. You're only option to reject is "not now".
Another problem is a missing alternative to Google Mobile Services (GMS), which are installed on virtually all android devices. For example, if you need push notifications or in-app purchases you are dependent on them as well.
IMO, it is the widespread distribution of GMS (and a lack of alternatives thereof) that make google a quasi monopoly.
Don't Amazon, Samsung and Huawei have their Android app stores, for any app?
This means, that everyone will still use Google Play for in-app purchases out of convenience.
Amazon Device Messaging: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html
Huawei Mobile Services: https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/hms
A service like GMS would be important for Samsung, too, as there are quite some Samsung devices out there. However, with GMS pre-installed on all Samsung devices, the Samsung Galaxy Store is completely useless as everybody and his brother will use Google Play for app and in-app purchases.
- Google Play
- Huawei AppGallery
- Samsung Galaxy Store
- Amazon AppStore
But Google Mobile Services (GMS) are so widely spread and often pre-installed on the devices that there is no real competition for Google.
Currently, the most promising alternatives for GMS are:
- Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) [1]: more widely used now because GMS was banned from Huawei devices since US-China trade wars
- Amazon + Microsoft [2, 3, 4]: Microsoft is planning to serve android apps in Windows Store with Windows 11 in cooperation with Amazon
[1] Huawei Mobile Services: https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/hms
[2] Amazon in-app purchases: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/in-app-purchasing/iap-over...
[3] Amazon push notifications: https://developer.amazon.com/docs/adm/overview.html
[4] Windows 11 and android support: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548428/microsoft-window...
Google is a for profit company don't expect them to act like an non profit organization
One missing bit that still hasn't happened - but one day will - is the subscription required to use your device. For now it's optional (called iCloud storage etc.) - you are nagged and so on but are able to refuse, but one day it will become obligatory. It could be 10 years from on or 20, but for sure they're thinking how to do it.
If a company violates this a progressive and percentage based fine should be imposed for every day of non-compliance. Something like .01% of the company's net worth per day, increasing to 2% over the course of 30 days, half of which goes to federal enforcement and half to the user. Something painful and crippling, with teeth, and enough to incentivize people to watch out for themselves and to force companies to behave well.
Data beaches should be lethal if data was leaked that wasn't obtained with consent.
Faang is not entitled to surveil the lives of everyone in the world by dint of people merely visiting websites.
Participation in a relationship with a person or business or community should be consensual.
That, or stupid. And I don't think a stupid company would get to where Google is today.
It would take a company filled with perfect people to avoid having anyone even think about doing the wrong thing. Part of being human is considering the wrong thing and then doing the right thing. (Or not, sometimes.)
I can and I will.
The only remedy prescribed by capitalism to evil companies is that consumers hold them to the consumers ideals of how ethical a company must act.
This can NEVER happen, if every time this comes up, somebody is making excuses for them.
"Google is a for profit company of course they are gonna try to make money"
Irrelevant. Stop making excuses.
One would have expected a big company like Google not to take illegal choices into consideration, no matter its profit-related motives.
But how monumentally dumb/ arrogant do you to be to not realize these emails and docs would show up in discovery?
News flash: yes, in internal meetings, people suggest all sorts of options. It's called brainstorming. And then they're looked into in varying levels of detail to investigate pros/cons. Research isn't action.
Also, most people in meetings aren't lawyers, so they come up with options before running it by legal. It's not always clear what is or isn't illegal -- lawyers even disagree with each other.
At the end of the day, what matters is what Google does. It you're going to criticize, criticize actual actions, not what was "contemplated".
Criticizing a company for "contemplating" something is as bad as criticizing someone for having a thought. Any responsible company should be contemplating a wide variety of options... and then rejecting the ones that are no good.
Not to mention no internal and communications are cited in the article.
Netflix and Office 365 you buy a subscription and then you simply use the app on a multitude of devices.
As an aside - does anyone know if it's explicitly banned to buy "coins" somewhere else - and then use those coins to buy things in the app? This is actually how Epic games works.
Fortnite appears to offer a subscription. What would've stopped them from doing that when the game was still available on the app stores?
Everything is essentially a trust nowadays.
Though I guess Apple could make the same case against Google too.
Google is to still have infrastructure and people working on putting code/binaries on phones but not be compensated for it? Or is it to get Google completely out of it and let the phone provider do it? Or just willy nilly and you are on your own? Or finally will other stores popup instead of Google?
I think if I was Google I would want some percentage of the end revenue or a flat fee every time you push new code out. Maybe force them to lower their fee.
I dislike the idea of there being no store. End users will be tricked into installing god knows what...