Google Gave Phone Makers Extra Money To Ditch Third-Party App Stores (theverge.com) 18
A newly unredacted sections of Epic's antitrust complaint against Google reveal new details on the lengths to which Google went to undermine third-party app stores on the Android platform. From a report: According to the new text, starting in 2019, Google ran a "Premier Device Program" that gave Android phone makers a greater share of search revenue than they would normally receive. In exchange, the OEMs agreed to ship their devices without any third-party app stores preinstalled. Specifically, they followed a rule that prohibited "apps with APK install privileges" without Google's approval, leaving the Play Store as the only built-in digital marketplace for software.
As noted by Leah Nylen, products that qualified as a Premier Device would receive a 12 percent share of Google search revenue compared to the 8 percent they'd normally earn. Google sweetened the deal further for companies like LG and Motorola, offering them between 3 and 6 percent of what customers spent in the Google Play Store on their devices. "Google's Premier Device Program was not publicly known, and was not known to Epic, before Google recently began producing relevant documents in this litigation," Epic's lawyers wrote in the complaint. "Google has sought to conceal its most restrictive anticompetitive conduct by, among other things, including in the agreements themselves a provision restricting signatories from making 'any public statement regarding [the] Agreement without the other party's prior written approval.'"
As noted by Leah Nylen, products that qualified as a Premier Device would receive a 12 percent share of Google search revenue compared to the 8 percent they'd normally earn. Google sweetened the deal further for companies like LG and Motorola, offering them between 3 and 6 percent of what customers spent in the Google Play Store on their devices. "Google's Premier Device Program was not publicly known, and was not known to Epic, before Google recently began producing relevant documents in this litigation," Epic's lawyers wrote in the complaint. "Google has sought to conceal its most restrictive anticompetitive conduct by, among other things, including in the agreements themselves a provision restricting signatories from making 'any public statement regarding [the] Agreement without the other party's prior written approval.'"
Don't be evil (Score:3)
Just another indication that "don't be evil" was kicked to the curb years ago and is choking on Google corp's dust.
These kinds of secrecy clauses should be banned.
Re: (Score:3)
On the face of it "promote our app store and we will give you more money" doesn't seem quite so bad, at least in comparison to companies that insist you only promote their products or don't allow you to install alternative app stores at all.
In fact it probably helped some consumers because companies took the extra revenue instead of installing crapware to try to make it up.
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Money wars. (Score:2)
Shades of the battle between Intel and AMD. [nytimes.com]
Mixed feelings on this (Score:3)
I have mixed feelings on this.
I do not necessarily trust the phone hardware manufacturers to commit the resources needed to try to keep their third-party application repositories clean and the apps above-board.
I do not trust that these hardware manufacturers will use their own repositories fairly, in that they might attempt to force collisions between versions if they want something that is to the exclusion of the default one.
On the other hand Google hasn't exactly made their own application repository altruistic, and they have not always caught malignant software deployed through it either.
I'm still trying to figure out what happened. Android essentially is a Linux distro or a fork. How come we don't have lots and lots of open-source software available for it?
If there are repositories for truly open source programs, would someone please provide a link?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If there are repositories for truly open source programs, would someone please provide a link?
Look into Aptoide [wikipedia.org] and F-Droid [wikipedia.org]. Also, "List of free and open-source Android applications [wikipedia.org]".
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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Looking over various anti-trust laws, I do not see a single time when 'as far as toukale is concerned' is mentioned. I do, however, see things where a company in a dominant position making deals to shut out competitors is illegal.
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There are open source apps available in the Play Store. There are also open source apps you can download the code for, compile yourself, and install the APK directly either through adb or copying to the device and opening.
Nothing in the workings of the Play Store prevents open source apps from being created/available. There are even open source Android builds available for many phones. The options exist for those that look.
Re: Third-party wet markets? (Score:2)
I agree with your sentiment.
However, offering Search Revenue (essentially a monopoly for Google) to gain advantages in the smartphone software market was obviously anti-competitive. Google should have just offered direct money to keep it more ethical.
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We can't escape the fact that one app store controlled by the mobile OS creator and therefore monitored by them is the best way to filter out nefarious apps.
Uhh...yes we can.
Mobile app stores need to be curated, and are prone to malware and false advertising and other things that are not in the interest of the general public. We can agree there.
controlled by the mobile OS creator
That right there is the disconnect. Has the Amazon App Store been overflowing with malware? I'm sure something has gotten through somewhere, but Amazon isn't a mobile OS creator, and yet they managed to keep their repos clean. F-Droid has also managed to keep their repository pretty clean of malware.
So, being as there ar
up-and-up (Score:2)
Definitely not an abuse of market power and not a trust combination with phone makers to exclude competition.
Seems like (Score:3)
All the middle management types who were responsible for the anti-competitive behavior at Microsoft in the 90s just migrated south from Redmond to Mountain View... probably as part of their migration path to either Arizona or Florida.
Anti Competitive Behaviour (Score:3)
I use F-Droid (Score:2)