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Aptoide wins court battle against Google in landmark case
- dlgeek 8y agoAfter seeing the headline, I really was hoping it was a lawsuit over Maps, just for the pun.
- osrec 8y agoOn account of it being a landmark case?
- wyqydsyq 8y agoIf anyone else thought this article is pretty scant on context, here's the backstory behind the lawsuit, Google was using Play Protect to nag users to uninstall the Aptoide app store: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-07-12-aptoide-says-google-stops-users-installing-a-different-app-store-on-android-devices/ https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/2018-07-12-aptoi...
- qball 8y agoGood. Maybe Microsoft should be taking note since it was doing the same thing earlier: (https://www.howtogeek.com/243581/windows-10-may-delete-your-programs-without-asking/ https://www.howtogeek.com/243581/windows-10-may-delete-your-...)
- joelhaasnoot 8y agoBut what about Apple? iOS is designed such that a third party app store is impossible. Why should Google have to allow a third party app store and Apple be able to "walk free" in their walled garden.
- Fnoord 8y agoAside from the other (excellent) comments already made, Apple neither has the same market share as Android nor does it have a (near) monopoly in search or advertising.
- sysstemlord 8y agoThis excuse is always mentioned whenever such comparison appears. But it doesn't convince me. Having a smaller market share doesn't mean you can get away with breaking the law.
- Fnoord 8y agoIt isn't a get out of jail for free card. Laws still apply for any company however for a (convicted) monopolist different laws apply than for a random (successful) company. Microsoft and Google are convicted monopolists.
- raverbashing 8y agoExcept the law does apply differently if you have the majority of the market share.
- robocat 8y agoThere are countries where Apple has a dominant market share (e.g. Japan). You might argue Google is dominant in advertising worldwide, but Facebook is a contender in many countries (e.g. in the Philippines, Facebook is "the internet" as an approximation). If you want to pick and choose subsectors, I am sure we could pick markets where mobile is one of the words and the second word is also something Apple absolutely dominates. The world is a big place to make sweeping generalisations about. Edit: parent article is about Portugal, not the world. A friend said to me: working in antitrust, on either side, a key is defining the market.
- arendtio 8y agoWell, while the market share is an important side note, the point is that they are a platform provider too. Microsoft had the problem a few years ago with bundling their Internet Explorer on Windows (and making it hard for the competition to have a chance). For Apple, the situation is a bit easier, as they don't allow any third party app stores at all, so any competition would probably encourage their users to break Apples 'Terms of Use', which in turn would make a lawsuit even more difficult. In my opinion, platform providers should be obliged to open their platform for all kinds of third-party services & tools but I am sure, Apple/Google/Microsoft/etc. will find other ways to discriminate others on their platform and push their services.
- codycraven 8y agoI think Microsoft is in a different boat here. The applications seem to be removed when there isn't compatiblity with a new breaking release. Should they provide messaging about what was removed and why? Sure, that'd definitely help with transparency for savvy users (but could be very worrisome for non-technical users). It's an entirely different game to remove a competitor's application that's eating market share from your cash cow—regardless of the possibility of it allowing you to install malware—which under the same criteria Google's Play Store should be removed as well since it isn't immune to distributing malware.
- eiaoa 8y ago> I think Microsoft is in a different boat here. The applications seem to be removed when there isn't compatiblity with a new breaking release. Should they provide messaging about what was removed and why? Sure, that'd definitely help with transparency for savvy users (but could be very worrisome for non-technical users). I think it would be more worrisome to have applications disappear silently because Microsoft decided so. They should definitely provide messaging. Every feature that makes computers less of inscrutable black boxes, the better. If you're making a change that a user can see without getting an explicit command from them, tell them about it and explain it!
- simfoo 8y ago> Aptoide said the Android antivirus program, Google Play Protect, was nudging users through a notification to uninstall the app store from their devices, warning them the program could download harmful apps. For those that choose to keep Aptoide despite the warning, the app store no longer functions and can’t install apps, the company said. I'd be pissed as well
- izacus 8y agoThe part of the context that's missing is the fact that Aptoide is one of the main channels for distribution of cracked and pirated Android apps.
- joelhaasnoot 8y agoAnd with that nobody knows what you're actually getting...
- lagadu 8y agoConsidering how often we see news about malware being distributed on the Playstore, that comment is also true for it.
- bfuller 8y agoI used aptoide to download morpheusTV. I'll gladly share my data for a slick netflix style interface that allows me to pirate any media I want. Trade off works for me.
- Sir_Substance 8y agoIt's also the primary source of common free apps that only publish on the app store for people that run android phones without google accounts. It still boggles my mind that organizations like keybase and protonmail refuse to shove an APK on an S3 bucket somewhere, it makes me feel like they don't really understand their audiences that well... Anyway, for closed source free apps, aptoide has my back.
- dcalixto1 8y agogreat victory!
- _dmurph 8y agoWhat's the deal here? Aptoide was malware? Or was it serving malware-infected apps? Or none of the above?
- londons_explore 8y agoIt was a super easy place to get pirated apps that had usually been ripped from the play store and modified to open up all in-app purchases for free.
- sleepychu 8y ago+??? Who knows what other modifications were made.
- qwertay 8y agoWho knows what the original play store apps did to begin with. Most of the top apps are basically malware. Maybe someone added a bitcoin miner to the existing spyware that came from the original app but it just comes back to the same thing that you can't trust proprietary software to be safe.
- Goronmon 8y agoBut at least if the original play store apps have spyware issues, you can generally find a developer/company behind them to blame. If Google updates the Gmail app to include a bitcoin miner, people are going to find out and be pissed at Google. If someone takes the Gmail app, injects a bitcoin miner and uploads it to a third-party store, who gets the blame?
- qwertay 8y agoGoogle puts a personal data miner in gmail and no one gives a shit.
- elejo 8y agoThat's the user's responsibility, not Aptoide's.
- mikejb 8y agoIf I read the article & comments correctly, the problem is that Aptoide is/was sometimes/often used to distribute cracked apps from Google's AppStore and/or removing in-app purchase requirements for additional features. I can understand Google/App-developers not liking that, but why would they use this approach? Is there no way to stop/challenge this though the court system?
- creato 8y agoIf it was sometimes/often used to distribute cracked apps, then it was also almost certainly used to distribute apps with other added "features" (malware), in which case, the connection with play protect isn't that crazy.
- mikejb 8y agoI agree, and I think that's a good reason to deploy a warning about this app(store) and educating the user about the risks. But blocking the installs entirely is a bit much, IMO.
- vatueil 8y agoGoogle's antivirus is optional, so if a user was cognizant of the dangers of using Aptoide but still wanted to risk it couldn't they turn Play Protect off? Google and Microsoft are often criticized for malware that targets Android and Windows, respectively, but restrictions such as this render Play Protect and Windows Defender increasingly toothless in the battle against malware vectors.
- boomboomsubban 8y agoA browser serves the same purpose, distributing links isn't that difficult.
- subroutine 8y agoIt's much easier and cheaper to state that Aptoide is in violation of their ToS, and simply remove the app. As you can see here, the courts don't always rule favorably.
- Jyaif 8y agoMy paid app has gotten between 5k-25k downloads on their store, obviously without me getting a cent. What are my options to hurt them as much as possible?
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y agoThey've been to court, which presumably means they're publicly accountable, as opposed to pirates who tend to operate anonymously. I suppose you could send them an Electronic Commerce Directive take-down notice. Probably doesn't hurt them as such, but should get your app removed. EDIT: The store seems to be somewhat decentralized, with stores being similar to APT repositories. So it may be difficult to target Aptoide directly unless there's a centralized list of stores, in which case I imagine you can get the user's store struck from it. Otherwise you may need to contact the store's hosting provider - which indeed could be a bit of a cat and mouse game.
- ce4 8y agoAnd now where is exactly the difference to F-Droid? The FOSS store f-droid also allows to add custom apt-like repositories, which for example CopperheadOS used to add a non-sanctioned patched version of the "signal" app. Moxie doesnt want forks of signal that are also using signal's servers. CopperheadOS did it anyway because signal is not compatible without Google Apps installed (removing google cloud messaging because CopperHeadOS doesnt include Google play services).
- wedlled 8y agoAs per their 'About page' no difference: "The original F-Droid client app was based on the Aptoide app developed by Roberto Jacinto." F-Droid is a fork of the original Aptoide project, it seems.
- ptx 8y agoIt was forked in 2010, so the the differences after 8 years of separate development are probably quite significant. (But both clients let you add third-party repositories, so in that regard there is no difference.)
- kmlx 8y agothe virus creator sues the antivirus company and wins.
- bertolo1988 8y agoExactly this.
- ruicardoso 8y agoDo you have any source on this? I've worked in Aptoide, they aren't a virus company. They even spent a lot of resources fighting virus but that's always a cat and mouse game and given the amount of resources they have vs amount of users that can publish an apk (everyone) it gets hard. If you think they are manipulating the published apps, you are free to fork the Aptoide client on github.com/Aptoide and create your own version.
- neil_s 8y agoThat's precisely why Google wants the average Android user with uncertain tech knowledge to use the app store. It uses Google's immense machine learning and ops resources to fight malware and malicious apps.
- dzdt 8y agoIt would be more like if Pirate Bay sued an ISP for blocking end users from accessing their site. Aptoide makes it easy to find and install the apps; it doesn't create or modify them.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoIs there any evidence of TPB actually doing this? Because they absolutely should.
- gammateam 8y ago> “If you have reason on your side don’t fear to challenge Google.” I like this. People forget that just because you agreed to a contract, it doesn't mean you have to put up with everything in it as a court might disagree with the facts and circumstances.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoHaving reason on your side has not been an historically reliable way to win legal battles.
- gammateam 8y agoGetting the court venue, judge, and that jurisdiction's political process favorable is an art too.
- 1nverseMtx 8y agoThis is the top download list for last week: https://en.aptoide.com/apps/local/more?period=7d https://en.aptoide.com/apps/local/more?period=7d Note all the high profile apps like Google Photos, Nest, WhatsApp, Instagram? None of these have been uploaded by Google, FB, etc. These could easily have been modified to include additional malicious code to steal your personal data. None of this is mentioned of course in the press. But it seems like this company mainly survives on copyright infringement and serving malicious apps.
- stonewhite 8y agoLooks definitely very shifty, almost feels like seeing used needles in a public toilet.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoBear in mind https://www.apkmirror.com/ https://www.apkmirror.com/ is a totally legit site run by Android Police, which also gives you all the APKs you need to sideload official apps from Google, Facebook, etc. See https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/ https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/ to get an idea how much they have and how convenient it is. Most people accept that "free" apps should be able to be installed any way that people like. The difference is that Google doesn't consider their apps to be "free", they're a licensed component of Google Apps, which manufacturers license for their phones.
- 1nverseMtx 8y ago> Most people accept that "free" apps should be able to be installed any way that people like. That doesn't make it legal or safe. Re-distributing copyrighted material is questionable even in Portugal. But more importantly there's no guarantee the app binary was not modified and repackaged to include malicious code.
- opencl 8y agoIt is very easy to verify these apps have not been modified if you also have access to a known good copy of the same app. Install known good copy -> install suspect APK as upgrade -> signature check performed on upgrade verifies that it was signed with the same key as the old version, so if the upgrade succeeds there has been no modification.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoProbably the most interesting thing here is that after Google has just reworked it's licensing to suggest Google Apps are "worth something" as opposed to just being "free", now Google is prohibited from banning a top method of sideloading them. The emperor has been revealed to be wearing no clothes. I wonder if Google will now start implementing DRM into Google Apps to prevent them from running on unlicensed phones. The other place this gets interesting is that most Google Apps are just clients for online Google services, services offered free, which have (truly) free apps on iOS that aren't tied to a license fee. How long will Google be able to extract license money from Google Apps from Android manufacturers that Apple gets for free? How long will users tolerate being told this is licensed software that is just the best way to access gmail.com or youtube.com on their phones?
- neil_s 8y agoWut? They only started charging EU manufacturers for the apps because the EU courts required them to. They want as many phones as possible using the apps if they can, to get more users into the online services.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoEU courts didn't require them to start charging manufacturers. Google chose to start charging for them, since they were upset the EU told them they could no longer make access to them conditional upon preloading Google Search and Google Chrome, which are where Google makes all it's money on ad revenue. Google could absolutely allow users to install the YouTube app or the Gmail app with no strings attached, but they don't want to do that. They want them tied to Google Search/Chrome, like in the rest of the world, or for a fee, like in the EU.
- samfisher83 8y agoHow is apple able to not getting any EU slack for allowing little to no competition on their devices. I know their market share is a little less, but it is still pretty big in Europe.
- bobcostas55 8y agoAndroid has something like 85% market share in Europe, it's not even remotely close.
- samfisher83 8y ago15% is still a large market share.
- writepub 8y agoIf only the courts showed half as much willingness to regulate Apple as Google. Remember when steam was banned from Apple's app store, and Apple retroactively modified it's ToS to justify the ban?
- lgleason 8y agoWhile Aptoide is probably not the ultimate answer, Google does not have a leg to stand on here given the amount of censorship they have been practicing on the app store by banning apps such as Gab.ai. Irregardless of whether you agree with the content on Gab, they are not perpetuating viruses, harming the system etc.. The fact that Google can majorly affect your business by denying you access to the app store is a real problem. Apple is guilty of this too and these are problems with the entire mobile space.
- ucaetano 8y agoIs there any source for this that doesn't rely on a Aptoide press release? Every other source seems to go back to this Reuters article and the Aptoide PR.