US judge orders Google to open app store to competitors - eviltoast
    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      That’s incorrect. There are multiple requirements, both hardware and software, to be able to ship with the play store. That’s the monopoly they’re abusing, and that’s what Epic is suing for.

        • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          One example (of many) where their requirements have directly impacted the growth of a market is refresh rate. Android ereaders are excellent devices, but because of Google’s arbitrary limitations, devices until recently (when the technology they impeded with their monopoly developed far enough to meet that restriction) were forced to require users to jump through multiple extremely convoluted hoops to enable the play store.

          This made them almost entirely inaccessible to normal end users and almost certainly played a huge role in the availability of options. That’s textbook anticompetitive.

          It’s not the only restriction, just the first to come to mind.

            • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              The play store is their monopoly that they abuse. There’s a refresh rate requirement to distribute your device with the play store.

              Otherwise, the user has to go to a Google website page from the device, sign into a Google account, and copy paste serial information of the device in order to be allowed to install the store. That’s not something normal customers can do, and it massively impeded the growth of the Android reader space.

                • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 month ago

                  You have to manually enable the play store on all of those devices. It’s why they’re so niche and only made by Chinese companies.

                  It’s not in any way a limitation of the OS. It’s a business decision that is using their market position as the only source of most Android apps in order to control what manufacturers are able to make and sell.

                  And again, your core concept isn’t just flawed. It completely lacks understanding of what antitrust is. You can make decisions that only affect your own hardware. You cannot claim to be open and use that “openness” to make yourself the standard, then use that market position to pick winners and losers between your “partners” using that product, especially when you’re also one of them. That’s anticompetitive. Google wants all the benefits of being “open” while completely dictating the entire market.