I’m sure this will be done with consumers in mind and won’t contribute to enshittification of the phone ecosystem, like launching a game on steam launching a whole new launcher. Nah, companies want what’s best for us
Why is the Google play store a monopoly if you can sideload apps, but the Apple store isn’t one although you can’t sideload apps? I’m not pro-Google, I’m just trying to understand.
Ok, I’m going to preface this by saying I don’t agree with the ethics of this, because I’ve been shot for just being the messenger in the past when I’ve spoken about this. That somehow by explaining the situation it means I’m siding with Google or Apple. I am not.
But it’s because the case and the judge aren’t ruling on it from a Google > smartphone user POV (where Apple’s store is objectively even more of a monopoly than the Play Store, in that you literally have to use it).
They’re looking at it from a Google > phone OEM POV. Google effectively forces companies to use the play store, otherwise they can’t access Android functionality that has been shifted to play services, they don’t get to upstream patches to AOSP, they can’t access Google Apps (which are effectively required if you want to have people buy your device), they don’t even have access to Android’s notification system API. Google enforces that OEMs don’t have alternative app stores set as the default. Etc.
Apple has no such equivalent. They aren’t forcing anything on OEMs, because they themselves are the OEM. If the only phones with a Play Store were Google’s own Pixel phones, the ruling would’ve went like Apple’s.
The case is about Google abusing their market position to push OEMs into using the Play Store. Not end users.
Everybody who talks about this case on Reddit/Lemmy seems to miss what it’s actually about. It’s (unfortunately) not about protecting end users directly.
Just to add, there are multiple app stores available for Android devices. I hate Google, but this seems like an odd attack at first glance
Because they make deals with manufacturers to ensure only google play is loaded on, and that the bootloader is locked so custom ROMs can’t be easily installed. If they decline, they lose the right to ship w/ google play, and therefore piss of the average user.
Not just a coincidence that the only flagship devices on the market with an unlockable bootloader are made by Google. If you want to use android without them in a secure manner, you’re going to have to pay them for it.
This makes a lot more sense, and was the information I was missing. Thank you. As others have pointed out though, last I knew Samsung shipped with their own store
But that doesn’t speak towards the Apple side, which locks their app store and hardware as well.
Can’t answer your question as I’m also trying to understand but recently Graphene OS has been in the news.
Basically there are apps that won’t work if they have not been authenticated by one of Google’s APIs. Which means there are apps that won’t work if it did not come from the play store.
Yeah, It’s a bit more complicated than that though. The service your referring to is called Google App Service (sometimes just called App Services) and is required for certain functions. Mostly to do with API calls to Google servers, so it makes sense that they would need to be verified. It ain’t as anti-competitive as it first sounds, it’s actually very reasonable.
There are also some apps that have versions that don’t need Google App Services in order to run, they use alternate open source solutions. The version designed to run on Google’s app store requires Google App Services, the other versions don’t. The problem comes if people try and sideload the wrong version.
If the app does not require App Services then it doesn’t matter what platform it’s installed from.
I’m going one step further, it’s not just Google app services that is the problem. What they’re catching fire for currently is the Google Integrity api, as Google is refusing to whitelist third-party ROMs onto the API which means that secure apps such as banking apps will use that API are not able to be run on third party custom roms. Their argument is since they can’t validate the security of the ROMs they refuse to integrate them, however there are a few projects including graphene OS that has done everything that they can to keep it a secure minimalistic environment but because it’s not Google they won’t whitelist it. It’s definitly anti-competitive.
Oh, I thought it was an epic judge saying that, but it’s just Epic’s judge.
How about the Google Play as system app? I would like to see that gone too. Just make every app stores normal apps. No special privileges.
The problem is that there are very good reasons to have specific authoritative app stores/package repositories. and it is a lot harder to have privileged and unprivileged accounts on a phone versus a computer.
But yeah. Something has to be done about that since it is the fundamental issue with mobile devices.
I mean as someone running Graphene OS it hasnt been that difficult having the playstore being a sandboxed non system app
The issue is less the app store itself and more the applications in it. Because while I agree that basically everything should run sandboxed unless specifically given permission, the problem is more about sourcing the apps themselves.
Google and Apple are far from perfect but they do a good job of protecting big companies. So if you download “Chase bank app” with 12 million stars from “Chase bank company” (like, their actual account and not just me half assing it) then you can pretty much trust that is legit. Whereas downloading that on a random app store you bought so you can play pubg mobile locally or whatever nonsense people were doing? You can pretty much trust that it is not legit but most people won’t understand that.
In a perfect world? I would love it if people got into a habit of checking hashes (which, is an inherently flawed approach but “works pretty well” if you aren’t already compromised) and so forth. As it stands? There are very good reasons to just tell grandpa to not install random APKs he found on the internet.
Exactly. I don’t even use the Play store on GrapheneOS, I use Aurora to get apps from Google Play, and F-Droid for everything else. I don’t even have Google Play services running at all on my main profile, it only runs on my “work” profile because I need an app that needs it.
Is it though? I have three profiles on my phone:
- main - all my normal apps; no Google Play whatsoever
- work - work apps; Google Play services running
- google - Google stuff (like Google Maps and whatnot); Google Play services running
This is on GrapheneOS, and they basically just ship AOSP with some patches on top.
Congrats. You just volunteered to teach all the boomers (and the zoomers who can’t do anything that isn’t google docs) how to set all that up and maintain it
May Erastil have mercy on your soul
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.
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.
Google was giving preferential treatment to certain companies and had a bunch of backroom deals going on and generally very anticompetitive behavior.
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.
Having a “monopoly” isn’t illegal.
Using your “monopoly” position to pick winners and losers is.
