Google loses app store antitrust appeal, must make sweeping changes to Play Store
a year ago by LCP to c/technology
But apps outside of their store (such as fdroid) get constantly pinged for malware security scans, and android treats them as second class citizens in a lot of scenarios. It's really frustrating to fight your phone on so many fronts just to use the apps you want.
Apple iOS users outside of the EU are familiar with this too.
For the curious, sideloading apps requires you to run a server on your computer, and refresh the signature on the app at least once a month. Because iOS automatically kills any apps with out-of-date signatures, only automatically refreshes signatures on official App Store apps, and doesn’t allow any signatures longer than 30 days.
I have many, many apps installed through not-Play Store methods. Haven't really run into any issues with them. Yeah, Android gets a bit picky on initial install, but once you've gone through that process once, it becomes a no-brainer.
Haven’t really run into any issues with them
This has been changed if you're lucky enough to have a recent Android version, but not long ago any gallery app sideloaded from external sources couldn't be set as the system gallery, meaning managing pictures was really annoying because any changes required a pop up confirmation.
However, the 2023 trial overseen by US District Judge James Donato revealed a pattern of scheming on Google's part to prevent the distribution of alternative app stores on Android phones. While Android devices do allow sideloading of apps, and the platform is open source, Google's scale and partnerships with OEMs made it a de facto monopoly. This led the court to impose extensive remedies that could remake the mobile app ecosystem.
in the linked article on the 2023 trial:
At the time, Google was quick to point out that the ability to sideload apps on Android meant Epic hadn't been completely barred from distributing Fortnite on the platform (as it had been on iOS). "The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple app stores," Google said in 2020. "While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play."
By April 2020, Epic had returned to the Google Play store, accusing Google of imposing a number of important limits on its sideloaded software. As the company said at the time:
Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third-party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.
the open Android ecosystem
They got some nerve
Guys this is huge
ID/age verification for apps is being built so only google signed and integrity verified apps can run, that would prevent any age verified apps running on non-official android OS like graphene.
This will have to change when apps are coming from any random app store and can no longer use these google attestation services
They don't have to offer backroom incentives to the sort of organizations that want to use attestation. That would be a good future target for antitrust courts, as I'm pretty sure Google's primary motivation to add it was Amazon launching a phone in 2014 without Google services. Amazon didn't need Google's help to fail at that, but perhaps the next company to try was dissuaded.
As Apple recently discovered, willful noncompliance with the antitrust court is a bad plan. Google will probably be wary of backroom deals in the short term.
They're still cool! They have lots of cool things they've released over the past few years! Like... Um...
Uh...
Well shit.
The shit was canceled.
So they didn't pay the bribes?
no doubt china will be making a similar judgement for Tencent etc.
on what? there's a gazillion chinese android app stores already, which makes chinese android phones need a ton more ram to compensate for all the update notification etc. services clogging up the backend
for banned US app stores like Steam and Google Play.
Lol gimps
The case was that Google paid apps to not be on competing stores and only be on the Play store. It’s not a lawsuit around Android sideloading.
Still ironic though that Epic games is the main proponent, but yet they do the exact same thing on their store paying for exclusives.
It’s because greed is a one way street to the greedy.
Still ironic though that Epic games is the main proponent, but yet they do the exact same thing on their store paying for exclusives.
The tactic only becomes illegal when it confers the ability to exclude competitors from the market.
Google has successfully excluded all meaningful competitors from the Android app distribution market. Even big companies like Samsung and Amazon have been unable to operate a profitable app store. Epic is not likely to exclude competitors from the game store market in the near future.
Epic is not likely to exclude competitors from the game store market in the near future.
Give em a minute. They just got their lube jar opened.
The tactic only becomes illegal when it confers the ability to exclude competitors from the market.
You're probably right in a legal sense, but I think that's a bit stupid. It's very difficult to draw a line that delineates between when a company has the ability to exclude competitors or not. It requires a lot of costly legal battles and a length appeal process to prove, and nobody will create that court case without significant financial means to be able to prove all of it. And if the court rules against you, all of that time, money and effort achieved nothing and just leaves you with a heavily damaged reputation.
From a practical perspective, it sounds like a very weak legal framework.
You say Amazon has one for a while... They're deactivating their apk store like this week, I think.
All the apks I got through amazons store gave a shitty check in them that sees if the Amazon apk store is still installed and active. If it isn't, the apk won't work, so I'm in the middle of waiting to see if the ones I still have installed on my phone are going to keep working or not.
*Edit. Just double checked. Amazon apk store shuts down August 20th.
Amazon apk store shuts down August 20th.
Huh... This sounds like a huge pain in my ass. What happens to Kindle fire tablets, that you know heavily rely on that functionality?
I can guess what happens to any of us that use that store on other devices (I think it's safe to say we're fucked).
I basically only ever used it because it gave away free apps, but man, the DRM put into those apps was so aggressive and annoying.
Exactly. All these devices can just be bricked the moment some corporation decides they're not worth supporting anymore. Never buy a device that is so heavily dependent on running on another company's services.
Well I would agree with that except for one thing, the Amazon tablets are still the only product on the market that actually has usable parental controls.
I'm not saying I'll ever trust Amazon, or ever have. But the fact is they had the only usable product on the market, if I had other options I'd use them.
And before anyone says "what happened to just teaching your kids good behavioral expectations?" Let me just say that this isn't always possible. Some kids have developmental challenges or behavioral disorders that make this an impractical expectation. Sometimes you just need parental controls.
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I feel like I would have agreed with Google had they just argued "This is our private store. We did all the work to build it. We control the rules. If you want to make the Epic Store apk, you can. Sideloading is an absolute possibility. No hacking needed."
I would agree with that.
Instead they argued by Epic charging money without giving google a slice, it compromises users safety and the innovation of the platform.
Fuck
Off.
save