SummerBreeze

Huge win for Epic Games in their court case against Google. The court decided that Google’s Play app store operated as an illegal monopoly and the case also challenged the transaction fees of up to 30% that Google imposes on Android app developers.

Fast Key Highlights:

1. It’s still unclear what the penalty will be, court won’t rule on this till January
2. There’s speculation in the media that this could lead to forcing Google to offer alternative app stores
3. Google ironically used privacy measures (self-deleting messages) to hide the anti-competative behavior internally. (see below)
4. Epic filed a similar antitrust case against Apple in 2020, but a US judge ruled in favor of Apple in 2021

Very Brief Background: The court case originally began when Epic Games began collecting payments from users directly, bypassing Apple and Google’s steep fees. As backlash, the two companies banned Epic’s apps from their respective app stores. So Epic took it to court. First the Apple ruling went against them, but now the Google one is in their favor.

Why Google but Not Apple? The big difference between the Google case and the Apple one was revenue sharing deals between Google and various other gaming industry participants such as the game developers and even the smartphone makers themselves. Epic’s lawyers were able to clearly demonstrate that “Project Hug”, which involved both direct investment in games and promotional benefits, was designed to shut out competition. This was the key evidence and arguments missing from the Apple case.

Ultimately, the full effects of this ruling are still unclear and most of the internet talk is now just speculation.

Kicker: The judge in the California court case scolded Google during the trial for deleting many internal chats that would have incriminated the company. The ultimate ironic move for a company whose past CEO Eric Schmidt claimed “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Source: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/epicgoogle/

SimpleX is a private encrypted messenger that creates new identities for each conversation. However, when you first install the app, it’s all the developer’s own servers. This has metadata and centralization risks. This can help...

SimplifiedPrivacy is completely different than SimpleX (although sharing the same start). They just released a tutorial video with a self-host script for any Debian/Ubuntu VPS that you can use to easily self-host a SimpleX server: https://video.simplifiedprivacy.com/simplex/

Here is the script on their self-hosted gitlab: https://git.simplifiedprivacy.is/publicgroup/simplex-self-host/

If you do not wish to self-host, you can add their SimpleX servers to your app for free:

smp://BgQRXMpC_pOpm2eAWvwFAvz6o1pJMu8y6_LaxZYxAFg=@smp.simplifiedprivacy.com

xftp://YLfpIjjRjJdOHKSPHCxhHMUmB_auPkxSIkfo76cH7F8=@xftp.simplifiedprivacy.com:5443

Also consider joining their SimpleX chat room where people talk about Linux and privacy in general:

https://simplex.chat/contact#/?v=1-4&smp=smp%3A%2F%2Fhpq7_4gGJiilmz5Rf-CswuU5kZGkm_zOIooSw6yALRg%3D%40smp5.simplex.im%2FXVf2UZLG2NxirJJlkO-yjU3BjbnK-QBo%23%2F%3Fv%3D1-2%26dh%3DMCowBQYDK2VuAyEAy8t1QqQ_sOovdEAfXlWvWKH9dw-7kwl5menGf4JI8hU%253D%26srv%3Djjbyvoemxysm7qxap7m5d5m35jzv5qq6gnlv7s4rsn7tdwwmuqciwpid.onion&data=%7B%22type%22%3A%22group%22%2C%22groupLinkId%22%3A%225tJ0uL-PgZB4UjSIsbnyJQ%3D%3D%22%7D

I sincerely hope the moderator will not suppress this knowledge, as some may wish to learn. I am excited about sharing technology independence.

Google has abandoned the “Web Environment Integrity” API that was supposed to allow websites to only allow approved and verified browser environments. The plan would allow websites to reject browser or even OS modifications that were “unattested” for the purpose of supposedly stopping bots, piracy, ad-blocking, and other activity Google deemed to be malicious. However, critics of the plan called it corrupt tyranny in which Google flexes it’s muscles to control the entire internet.

The plan was rejected from Firefox and Brave browsers, and could potentially shut Linux users out of many websites as there would be no telemetry company to “verify” the operating system was not modified. Further, some said it was an outright attempt by Google to force people to submit to the API even if they didn’t want to use Chrome browser.

Now this horrible tyrannical plan from Google was abandoned after severe “community backlash”, however it could see a limited version for Android Chrome only when embedded into apps themselves. Some privacy advocates criticize this move as merely a trial testing ground, where they can prove to websites and services that the concept works and then try to push it to a larger audience. These critics call for a boycott of the apps that use this functionality.

We can only hope these rotten Google executives can abandon their plans for world domination and the submission of all knowledge to pass through their ad tracking software.

https://simplifiedprivacy.com/google-abandons-web-environment-integrity/