Google Loses Epic Games Appeal, Must Open App Store To Rivals (reuters.com) 30
Google lost its appeal Thursday of a judge's order that will force the tech giant to open up its app store to competitors. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling requiring Google Play to allow rival marketplaces and billing systems, ending a legal battle that began when Epic Games sued over anticompetitive practices.
A jury sided with Epic in December 2023, finding Google paid phone makers and app developers to use its store exclusively.
A jury sided with Epic in December 2023, finding Google paid phone makers and app developers to use its store exclusively.
But (Score:1)
Re:But (Score:4)
Separate case I guess. But Apple is a much worst offender. At least on Android you just have to click "allow unknown sources" to install a 3rd party app store. Apple is still blocking that. And no, it's not because of security, it's because of greed.
Re: But (Score:2)
Apple already has this in effect, only in a much worse way, namely because they lied to the court and blatantly ignored injunctions handed down to them. Probably why they got as far as they did to begin with. I still remember Tim Cook downplaying app store revenue, actually testifying in court that he doesn't even know what it is. Smells of total bullshit, but whatever. Ultimately, as the judge stated, every time he made a decision on the injunction, it was always the wrong one, just assuming the court woul
Re:But (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple lost in part, too. That's why they're forced to allow app developers to link to external billing systems now.
I'm not sure why Google is being forced to allow external app stores in their store, but Apple isn't, but there are two obvious differences:
1. Epic didn't ask for their app store to be distributed by Apple in their lawsuit against Apple, but presumably did ask for that in their lawsuit against Google. (I haven't read the latter case, but usually judges don't award a punishment in a civil trial that the plaintiff didn't ask for.)
2. Epic v. Google was a jury trial and Epic v. Apple was a bench trial. Juries tend to be a lot more easily swayed in favor of punishing a big company.
So I suspect it's more about procedural and structural differences between the two cases, rather than any fundamental difference in the situation. But without a judge actually ruling on whether Apple should be required to distribute other app stores, it's anybody's guess.
Re:But (Score:4, Informative)
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One big difference between the two cases was that Google put pressure on OnePlus to kill a deal between them and Epic to include the Epic store out of the box on OnePlus devices, and then offered financial incentives to handset makers to not make similar deals.
It's a difference. Whether it's an important difference is unclear. Google's OS runs on half the market, and so does Apple's. Is having direct control over roughly half the market more or less problematic than exerting influence over half of the market through deal-making? I could see good arguments either way.
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Stop fanboying. They are both bad.
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The question is what precedent is set. Does this case set a precedent that affects Apple? Can a company demand to have their own app store on iDevices and quote this case as precedent? Since it doesn't make sense that Google has to allow them while Apple can refuse to allow them.
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The question is what precedent is set. Does this case set a precedent that affects Apple? Can a company demand to have their own app store on iDevices and quote this case as precedent? Since it doesn't make sense that Google has to allow them while Apple can refuse to allow them.
They can absolutely cite it as a precedent, but whether the judge would agree or not depends on whether the judge considers the circumstances of the case to be similar enough.
That said, I'm pretty sure it's not Apple that Epic is going for. Epic almost certainly wants their store on PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox. Apple and Google are just collateral damage. Those cases will be quite interesting to watch when they happen.
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and only Play Store can do background security updates due to special privileges.
For F-Droid you have to run a Magisk extension on a rooted phone. That's bad for security because most people can't or won't.
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Why not Apple?
WTF are you talking about. Apple lost first. Are you the same idiot who posted this "Why not Google?" in the Apple story a while back?
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the lesser of two evils (Score:3)
Good!
I don't care whether Google's app store is considered a monopoly or not
I don't care whether Epic is doing this for the wrong reasons
the fact is that whenever they lose we (usually) win
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When competition increases, everybody wins. That's worth celebrating.
Re: the lesser of two evils (Score:1)
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Dafuq could be the "wrong reasons" here, pretty please.
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Detractors claim Epic just wanted Google to run the Play Store infrastructure at a loss to increase Epic's profits.
Nobody numerate believes that but they claim Epic did it for that reason which would be shitty except they didn't.
Somebody could probably make a good business out of running a store at 5% markup.
I swear (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know, Epic will be pushing to allow people to bring in outside food on airlines and movie theaters.
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You can already bring outside food on airlines.
airlines don't really stop you from airport food (Score:2)
airlines don't really stop you from airport food
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Or even your own food from home or the grocery store.
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Re:I swear (Score:4, Interesting)
All captive markets should crumble. They do nothing beneficial to the consumer.
In this case I think the Play store's "captiveness" is beneficial to the consumer in one important way: Google does a much better job of policing the Play store for malware than most third party app stores do. The extra hoops that users have to jump through to use third party stores do keep most users "captive", but they also keep them fairly safe. The fact that users can easily turn on the ability to sideload other apps or app stores, though, means that they're not really captive. I think this is the right level of friction, though obviously the courts disagreed.
Unless Play can find a way to effectively police malware on third party app stores (which will be hard) they're now going to be required to distribute through Google Play, I predict that this will be pretty bad for Android users. Play could try to put warnings on third party app stores and leave it up to the user to decide, but the courts may not allow that, and it's not really a good solution anyway because when given a choice between security and something they want right now, nearly all users ignore security. I think there needs to be a little more friction than clicking through a warning.
This court ruling is really good for Android malware authors and somewhat good for Epic, but I think it's a net negative for Android users. I hope I'm wrong!
(Disclosure: I work for Google, on Android Platform Security, but not on the anti-malware team. I do below-the-OS security stuff.)
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Google does a much better job of policing the Play store for malware than most third party app stores do
A logical equivalent to your sentence is that some third party app store do a better job than Google. That alone is an argument to allow the third party stores. People are not obliged to use them, but at least they have a choice to have better than Google.
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Google does a much better job of policing the Play store for malware than most third party app stores do
A logical equivalent to your sentence is that some third party app store do a better job than Google. That alone is an argument to allow the third party stores. People are not obliged to use them, but at least they have a choice to have better than Google.
Very, very unlikely -- the resources required to do good malware detection at any sort of scale are enormous -- but also irrelevant. The issue isn't what the best app store does, it's what the worst does. Users who would choose an app store because it does extremely good vetting are users who would be careful what they install regardless of how careful their store is. It's the users who aren't cautious that will be harmed by Google being required to give them access to many app stores.
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Stop trying to enslave others because you're too scared to make your own decisions. That's literally the most charitable benefit of the doubt I can give you on this one. Anything else less than that is going to be far more sinister on your part. Even more so if your disclosure is real.......
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You can't bring outside food onto airliners where you live?
I usually bring a sandwich or something on long haul flights, instead of the meals that they offer.
Well,what is good for the goose is good for gander (Score:2)