Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

Android@lemmy.world – 341 points – 11 months ago

Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

Google will appeal the decision: https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/11/23996902/google-will-appeal-the-epic-v-google-verdict

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On Android you can install unapproved apps and even entire app stores. The barrier to having people install your app is a couple of taps (approximately as difficult as it'd be on Windows when you've got to approve UAC a time or two).

So, it is kind of ridiculous in comparison that they lost but Apple with an entire walled of ecosystem that you can't bypass without finding a zero day exploit won their case.

With that said, I know a lot of people who only buy Apple BECAUSE of that walled off ecosystem and conversely I know people that primarily buy Android for their relatively open system, so I'm in the minority where I think neither Google nor Apple should have to change in this particular regard. Both companies suck, but charging the same price they always have for their app store isn't the issue I'd fight them over.

The barrier to having people install your app is a couple of taps

Not entirely true. Google has a history of making it as difficult as possible for other app stores to run without outright locking them out as possible.

Citation needed. I just tried installing the Epic store on my Samsung and it was literally a couple of taps, not even an actual warning - just a friendly dialog box asking me to allow my browser to install apps and that's it.

Used to be much, much worse. They used to force you to go find a setting called something like 'allow apps from outside the Play Store' and tick it, show you warning screens, then when you tried to install an app from it, it would take you out of the store to say 'do you want to install this from an untrusted location?'

Edit: and that's before we get onto the subject of Play Protect, which is used to wipe applications from phones that are contrary to Google's interests but not actual malware.