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Comment by renegat0x0 | Hacker News Reader

It really surprises me that it takes so long. This has been a talking point at least since 2018 [1]. 5 years and nothing has changed.

How is that possible, and acceptable?

Secondly, why is it so difficult to use other App stores for mobile? why section 4.5 of [2] exist at all?

As a user I really really would like to be able to install any app store I like. I do not like that Google play stored is installed by default, while there are so many hurdles to install f-droid.

It all looks like monopolistic actions that are against the law. I feel that we are repeating history. Microsoft has already gone through processes with bundling up of Internet Explorer.

Links

[1] https://www.axios.com/2018/11/19/tim-cook-interview-apple-go...

[2] https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-agreeme...

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> It really surprises me that it takes so long. This has been a talking point at least since 2018 [1]. 5 years and nothing has changed.

> How is that possible, and acceptable?

That's because the FTC came under new leadership in 2021, and the previous leadership were incompetent/lazy/possibly-corrupt morons.

Hanlon's revisited:

Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by corruption.

That dovetails nicely with: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

Sadly things take so long because democratic rule of law law "has to" work slowly (you would not want "innocent" businesses closed overnight or citizens arrested because of allegations). It's not great, obviously, and both false positives and negatives happen.

The issue is that people and companies exploit it, "better ask for forgiveness than permission", and after years they clean up evidence, their CEOs say they "don't remember", and even if they get fined - it's too late and will not save destroyed, monopolized market. All those gig economy "disruptors" are the worst, but probably all the biggest companies do this.

I wish that there could be a possibility of a retribution payment - a monopolistic payment destroyed an $xyz bln competitor? They need to pay this amount of money, maybe to some publicly owned alternative/open source competition if it's too late.

Small companies can move fast and change direction.

Medium companies can move at a moderate pace and can change their direction with minimal delay.

Large companies move slowly and change directions slowly.

A whole countries governing apparatuses....

The bigger something is the longer it generally takes to move but because of that it also has more inertia once it does start moving and is harder to stop.

So you better make sure the moves you're making our a good one when you're big.

fdroid is only a couple clicks away but it should be installed by default

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