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Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly (www.theverge.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Xatolos@reddthat.com to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 44 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Now do Apple.

At least you can have a third party app store on Android. Samsung, Amazon, and Xiaomi have their own app stores on Android devices. And there's F-Droid, too. But that's flat out impossible on iOS still, right?

Apple has a larger share of the US smartphone market (55-some-odd percent vs. Androids's 44) so not only do more people have Apple devices and are thus likely to be impacted by Apple's stranglehold on their platform, but you literally cannot put any app on that platform without Apple's approval and kowtowing to their policies for the same, in addition to them taking a mandatory cut. (Yes, I am aware of jailbroken devices which is a tiny statistically insignificant fractional corner of the iPhone user base). Apple has already provably stifled competition in the iPhone app space by, e.g., prohibiting any web browser that does not internally use the Safari rendering engine and previously banning emulators because they might allow "external code" to run on the device.

This case isn't a "win" for anybody except one megacorporation over another. The crux of the issue originally was that Epic thought both Google and Apple were taking too big of a cut of their revenue, and didn't want either tampering with their in-app microtransactions. Both Google and Apple retaliated by delisting Fortnite for having untaxed microtransactions in it, and then Epic sued both of them.

The decisions in the Epic vs. Google and Epic vs. Apple cases are basically opposites of each other, which makes zero sense when anyone could (and still can) sideload Fortnite onto an Android device if they wanted to and not deal with Google, but this is still not possible on an iPhone.

[–] Username@feddit.org 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Apple already lost in the EU and need to allow other app stores

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Other app stores that are approved by Apple while giving Apple a cut after a million downloads of an app.

You still can't install whatever .ipa file you want on iOS, even in Europe. So if you want something like Revanced (uYou+ on iOS), then you have to go through the whole rigamarole of creating an Apple developer account, resigning the ipa file, and repeating the resigning process every week, optionally using something like AltStore to automate that process, or alternatively, jailbreak, which means that you have to stay on an old, exploitable iOS version and never update.

What really needs to happen is that the consumer needs to own the device they bought. What this means in the smartphone world (also other devices, like video game consoles, car computers, smartwatches, smart TVs, tablets, laptops, etc.) is a few things: root access, an unlockable bootloader, and replacable signing keys for the primary bootloader while providing a firmware package to go back to 100% stock (so no Samsung Knox that irrevocably triggers after unlocking the bootloader or DRM keys that get irrevocably wiped when unlocking the bootloader) (all of these being optional features that the user has to explicitly enable). Anything short of that is not ownership.

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

And also the ability to relock the bootloader.

[–] nooneescapesthelaw@mander.xyz 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Google was giving preferential treatment to certain companies and had a bunch of backroom deals going on and generally very anticompetitive behavior.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Right but is that actually illegal given the fact that you can sideload apps it's not like they're locking people out of their devices.

I don't like it but I'm not sure it necessarily meets the criteria for illegality.

This makes this decision seem stupid. I don't quite understand how US law works but I thought it was precedent based which meant that once one case had been decided that essentially decided all similar cases unless they were demonstrably different. I don't understand why that isn't the case here.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Having a "monopoly" isn't illegal.

Using your "monopoly" position to pick winners and losers is.

[–] mke@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Small addendum, I believe having an unfair monopoly is actually illegal in the US. Google search is currently on the hook for this.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah, it's not just the market position.

It's how you gain the market position and what you do with it.

[–] nooneescapesthelaw@mander.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

Correct, anticompetitive behavior on its own is legal, so is a monopoly, both at the same time are illegal