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Comment by cubefox | Hacker News Reader

> Epic may have lost its antitrust battle against Apple in the U.S., but it won its lawsuit against Google, which was found to have built an illegal monopoly in the Android market.

Amazing. You can install third-party app stores on Android, just not via Google's own Play Store. Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.

The iOS case is far more egregious. It seems the US courts are heavily biased in favor of Apple.

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The craziest part of this is:

Apple wasn't a monopoly because they didn't share their platform with anyone

The judge in the Google case said that Android couldn't be compared to iOS because iOS is only available to Apple products.

So while I can kind of squint and see this, the obvious signal the court is sending is

"If you don't want to be monopolistic, don't open your platform to anyone".

Do remember, however, that the judge is viewing this purely through a legal lens. That interpretation is probably quite an easy one to get to where if you have built a product and never allowed a competitors product in, and nor have you taken over someone else's by using unfair business practices then you're not a monopoly given the legal definition, not the dictionary definition.

From the point of defence of the dictionary definition, Android is huge in Australia, and outside the US generally.

Sure. If you claim something is open source and then make it impractical to use without closed source components you should get in trouble for that.

Huh, third party developers are what made iOS big ...

Hardware platform.

Which is even stranger because Samsung, by far the largest Android phone distributor, ships their phones with the galaxy app store on them.

From what I recall reading, it was a matter of market definition. They defined the Android app market to be all devices that run Android, and then said Google monopolized it; whereas the iOS market is just devices made by Apple.

I don't agree with the outcome, but that's the twist of logic that allows the more open ecosystem to be the one being attacked as a monopoly.

People complain about it here often, but the EU setting clear rules in the DMA is probably a significantly better way to ensure a level playing field instead of relying on judges and agencies to figure it out. Apple winning the case while Google lost theirs seems increasingly arbitrary.

Walled gardens are not illegal under existing law. You have to change the law before walled gardens become illegal, as the EU did with the DSA.

Nintendo's various platforms, Microsoft's XBox, and Sony's PlayStation have been perfectly legal walled gardens for decades.

However, claiming to introduce an open platform and then using anticompetitive means to retain control of that "open" platform is plainly illegal under existing law, as Google found with Android and Microsoft found with Windows.

First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim". Moreover, what you are suggesting is that it is okay to do something bad if you say it's bad, but not to do something slightly bad if you say it's good. That's absurd. What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".

> First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim".

They explicitly made the claim that Android was open on many occasions.

Remember when a major Android selling point was that Android was "open source" before they started moving all the updated versions of the developer APIs into the Play Store?

https://medium.com/@coopossum/how-open-source-is-android-8d1...

> What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".

It’s objectively not despite what you claim.

Apple never promised you an alternative, you got exactly what you paid for. Google promised you an alternative and while you weren’t looking tried to strangle it in its crib.

You need to look past your fan bias.

Google didn't "promise" anything.

> You need to look past your fan bias.

That's funny, considering that you are arguing that Android is worse than iOS, despite iOS being far more anti-competitive.

Google didn't just claim that Android was open, they claimed that it was open source.

Then they used anticompetitive tactics against companies attempting to take advantage of that supposed openness to retain tight control.

They have been found guilty of doing this many times in many jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's XBox walled garden ecosystem remains perfectly legal.

This is because walled gardens are not illegal. Anticompetitive conduct in open markets is.

If you want walled gardens to be illegal, you have to do what the EU did and change the law.

Do you have reading issues? Because that’s not what I argued at all. I argued you can’t say one thing and then do another and it seems the courts agree.

Do you have reading issues? Because I said Google didn't "promise" anything.

You could have just said “yes, yes I do.”

You like Google, we get it.

US courts haven't really begun dismantling this status quo, but there's quite a few things going on that challenge it:

- DOJ antitrust case going to trial soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2024)

- 2021 Epic injunction that Apple defied followed by 2025 Epic injunction that recently forced Apple to allow links to competing payment options: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/apple_epic_lies_possi...

- Open Markets Act from 2020 has some new life: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/25/bipartisan-open-a...

- App Store Freedom Act from 2025: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3209...

- 2011 class action on excessive fees going to trial next year: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4178894/in-re-apple-iph...

- 2025 class action on excessive fees: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70356851/korean-publish...

- 2025 class action for monopolizing app distribution: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gkvlagedmpb/...

- 2025 class action for doing a shit job of monopolizing app distribution: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70526762/shin-v-apple-i...

Is any of these realistically expected to result in the possibility of installing third-party apps and app stores, similar to Android?

All of them challenge Apple having exclusive app distribution, except the Epic injunction and the class action accusing Apple of doing a shit job.

Apple is what, less than 20% of phone sales? So it's hard to see how that constitutes a monopoly. And if banning 3rd party apps is enough for a lawsuit, then why doesn't that apply to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for their game consoles? Why doesn't it apply to Amazon's Fire tablets, or Kindles, or Huawei phones, or Oculus headsets? All of those devices have similar restrictions.

Unless customers are coerced or misled, or returns/refunds are difficult, I don't see the need for government intervention. Apple's software restrictions hurt the iPhone's market share. The same goes for charging high fees for app purchases. Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them. If an informed adult chooses a locked down platform because they prioritize other features, why should the government stop them?

I can see an argument for requiring labeling (similar to warnings on cigarettes), but a total ban seems like overreach.

I did some... Googling.... Anyway, it seems many sites estimate iOS as about 57% of the US market, not 20%.

Example: https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics

Since the article is about an Australian court case and comments discussed the US & EU, I was using figures for the whole world, which seems to be 16-18% depending on the source.[1][2] Even if we restrict numbers to the US, 57% is rarely considered monopoly. You'd need significant barriers to entry, and the smartphone market has enough manufacturers that it would be hard to argue that such a barrier exists.

1. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insight/post-insight-re...

2. https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/

> Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them

Well no, there's only two operating system with very similar policies and pricing. If there's any competition there, it's not obvious where.

The only pricing change ever made was made as a reaction of an antitrust lawsuit... Just that fact alone should be enough to raise some eyebrows.

Similar policies and pricing? You can get Android phones for much cheaper than iPhones. And many smartphone manufacturers let you run whatever you want on their devices. The largest smartphone manufacturer in the world (Samsung) ships most of their phones with two app stores, and lets customers enable side loading with a few taps.

If you're talking about policies and pricing for developers, then why not apply that argument to app stores owned by Sony, Microsoft, & Nintendo? Those are much more restrictive than anything in the smartphone world. Heck, even Steam takes a 30% cut.

I'm talking from the point of view of app developers.

Sure I'm open to the idea that there's fierce competition on the hardware, on the software though, there's absolutely zero signs of it.

> then why not apply that argument to app stores owned by Sony, Microsoft, & Nintendo?

We do have signs that there's competition in the console world, if you want to make that parallel, when was the last time Google or Apple paid for an app exclusive similarly to game exclusives?

Apple and Google make apps exclusive all the time. They just do it by acquiring the company that developed the app, then integrating the app's functionality into their OS. Examples for iOS include Siri, Dark Sky, Shazam, and Workflow. Google did it with Waze, and failed with Sparrow, Quickoffice, and a bunch of others. Samsung did it with LoopPay (which became Samsung Pay) and Viv (from the developers of Siri), which they turned into Bixby.

I wouldn't consider most of those exclusives but company titles. They also exist on the console world but are a different concept (like Halo for example)

I'm unaware of a single contract where Google or Apple paid some money to a company to keep the exclusivity like what happens on console.

AFAIK it was on the basis that Google pretends to be an open ecosystem, while Apple is pretty upfront about the fact they control everything you do with your device.

> Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.

Apple did malicious compliance and only technically complied with the requirements in a specifically geo-restricted area (the EU) without allowing anyone else to benefit. (Although I think it was later ruled that they didn't actually manage to comply thanks to all the malice.)

Wasn’t the legal difference that Apple never said you could whereas Google did then added roadblocks?

Why would the courts be biased in favor of one multi trillion dollar firm vs some other multi trillion dollar firm?

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