this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
1571 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
57432 readers
3911 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So odd that the open source platform that allows sideloading and doesn't even come with an app store by default is the one that is a monopoly but the locked down one with total control over your device is not.
Some Android flavors even come with other app stores. Samsung phones have their own Samsung app store that even includes Fortnite.
problem here was that Google was doing deals to undermine those things
Apple has no such “deals” because apple owns the entire stack.
Welcome to law, Apple is less monopolistic than Google legally simply because Apple built a better monopoly, by denying competition in the first place.
Wtf is this? You do not need google sign in for running a smart phone. Hell, one of the features of stock AOSP Android is being in no way tied to Google.
Not just the degoogled open source Android disros either. Amazon has a commercial fork of Android with its own app store. There was Oppo's AOSP derived ColorOS which was not based on Google's stock Android. I don't think Google should control the core apps as tightly as they do on stock Android but on the other hand those apps sort of define stock android and the default user experience in the marketplace. Epic could roll their own fork if they wanted and substitute apps.
On the subject of Oppo, I think Tencent went after them and other Chinese manufacturers as well to get into their platforms. Tencent are the guys who push their own app store and one app to rule them that Musk has wet dreams about. I sometimes wonder if they are using Epic to wedge open US based app stores for a future WeChat/MyApp like approach. Not that the US government would allow that.
Valve created their own console and helped fund Wine development, presumably as a strategic move to counter Microsoft's platform control. I might be missing something but I don't see similar effort or innovation from Epic.
I believe Microsoft and Nvidia did deals with hardware manufacturers for years that helped exclude competition and those sorts of deals probably pose more difficulty in court. Google might have fallen into a trap and done something similar. Being vertically integrated Apple doesn't have to do deals with other manufacturers but presumably they have some deals with developers. Obviously Sony, Nintendo have exclusives, agreements with developers and tight control of their platforms as well that go far beyond anything I can see with Google so I do find it a bit confusing.