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Comment by romanows | Hacker News Reader

I don't like having to make all play store apps available to all third-party app stores. I would want control of that were I an app developer.

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Would it even be legally possible for Google to do this? The Google Play Developer Distribution Agreement [1] doesn't appear to extend to sublicensing -- Google can't designate third-party app stores as having permission to distribute developers' apps.

[1]: https://play.google/developer-distribution-agreement.html

Epic wants Google to distribute those apps even when installed through Epic's storefront. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40450522

My interpretation is that the idea is that third-party app stores could, for example, support updating an app installed by another app store.

Or they could modify your app without your knowledge or consent before someone downloads it, while claiming to be the stock configuration. Pre populating app stores sounds great for Epic, but there’s a lot of issues.

Instead I would rather let 3rd parties provide different UI for Google’s App Store backend for a small cut of any transaction. Minor improvements like being able to permanently block any idle games, IAP, advertisements, etc would go a long way. But frankly Epic doesn’t give a shit about users here.

Apps are signed.

Epic is trying to make it trivial to set up an App Store by pre populating apps which changes the incentives around burning one’s reputation. So sure looking at signatures is useful for someone who pays attention, not so much in the general case.

Or perhaps they do hand out your app at a discount, and then never pay you. Or, do several things all at the same time.

> looking at signatures

"Looking"? AFAIK one can't update an app that had already been installed with a different signature. Correct me if I'm wrong and that's not the current behavior on Android.

That's part of it. The proposal is for everything on Google Play to be available on Epic's store but payments/downloads/updates still managed by Google. Then if an app becomes available via Epic they can "take over".

If you mean that

>Google to allow third-party app stores access to Google Play’s catalog of apps for six years and let users make those third-party app stores perform their app updates

That doesn't mean the developers are forced to because the app store still needs the developers license to publish it.

Epic proposes to get around this by acting as a front-end to Google's catalog but not actually distributing the apps themselves.

> [...] Google shall allow Third-Party App Stores to access the Google Play Store’s catalog of apps not then available on those Third-Party App Stores. If a Third-Party App Store’s User wishes to download and install an app not then available on that Third-Party App Store, Google shall have the Google Play Store download and install that app on the Third-Party App Store User’s device through a background process [...] Such apps installed by the Google Play Store shall be governed by the Google Play Store’s distribution agreements with Developers [...]

I mean, technically 3rd parties can already scrap packages from Google and repost them through various channels.

But yea, I find this point to be weirdest from all the ones that epic proposed.

It's weird, but I get where it's coming from at least. You have a "smart" device, they don't have a public api (because), they have an app, but using the app requires google play services.

It's not a choice between "google app store" and "3rd party app store", it's a choice between "have a phone that can access my devices, my bank, my credit card, etc" and "have a phone that can do nothing except browse the internet and make calls".

I think it's because Epic doesn't want to be a "second" app store. They want users to be able to completely throw away the Play store, use the Epic store and still get every app that has one of those "Get it on Google Play" badges which to users just means "works on Android."

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