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Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games
- zemo 6y agowhy aren't they like, suing sony for not letting you sideload games on playstation or nintendo for not letting you sideload games on the switch
- nitrogen 6y agoIt's easier to own multiple consoles than it is to own multiple phones. And hey, maybe that's next.
- the_hoser 6y agoBecause they might actually be able to win this one.
- lvturner 6y agoNot Epic, but this has actually happened. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-29-fi-1120-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-03-29-fi-1120-s...
- nitrogen 6y agoDidn't Tengen actually end up winning in the end?
- revel 6y agoThat's some aggressive rent seeking right there.
- stevespang 6y agoOh my, now Fortnite's lawyers can add conspiracy and racketeering to their lawsuits, how juicy.
- gok 6y ago"Google prohibitions on bloatware hurt bloatware deal, claims bloatware vendor"
- james412 6y agoDo you have any idea how much utter garbage Google forces vendors to ship with a phone simply to have access to a web browser and the Play store? Or perhaps you're one of the lucky few who haven't been woken at 4am to an urgent notification: "YOUR PHONE HAS TOO MANY MEMES. WOULD YOU LIKE TO DELETE MEMES?" Prohibitions on bloatware, my arse!
- viraptor 6y agoWhich apps specifically do you classify as "utter garbage"? Looking at my OnePlus, I can't see anything I'd call that. The most annoying part is that I can't completely uninstall Duo and Chrome, but neither one is on a garbage level, I just prefer alternatives. Otherwise... I think I used pretty much every other default app.
- james412 6y agoI've disabled the vast majority of Google apps that ship with the phone: - Chrome: privacy related, not necessarily garbage, but if the OS were Chinese we'd effortlessly call Chrome's behaviours spyware. I use Firefox - Photos: random single-touch dialogs offering to enable sync. This is upsell and another opt-in data grab. Also the source of the aforementioned ITS 4AM WAKE UP AND HAVE A DELETE MEME PARTY notification. I use f-spot but I'm not a huge fan of it - Messages: can't remember. Probably another notification thrown up without warning. I use Pulse now - Maps: where to even begin? The app has about one UI element left that actually relates to navigation and the rest is some disguised Google Shopping link. I use the paid version of OsmAnd where possible - Gmail/Accounts: phone book data-grab. I use Outlook - Gboard: still using this. Still very aware its forwarding my keystrokes to the mothership for "contextual prediction" or whatever you call it. If Gboard were published by TikTok rather than Google we'd have sent some folk to the electric chair over it already - Play Services: mandatory back channel to the mothership with root access on your phone. Can wake it up, force install something that listens to you, or update itself to force you to click on WHO adverts^W^W^W^W participate in informational and beneficial COVID-19 contact tracing, so much more Probably forgotten quite a bit. Mandatory Games app IIRC? That would have been disabled on the first day
- selectodude 6y agoI know that decimate is a colloquialism nowadays but I feel like a publication should know better. Unless Google asked for ten percent of the proceeds or something, as a headline it makes absolutely no sense.
- hprotagonist 6y ago"to kill, destroy, or remove large parts of" is the modern usage. the usage is hyperbolic; it is not nonsensical.
- selectodude 6y agoI know it's hyperbolic, I just consider it on the same tier as "x person DESTROYS y person".
- ineedasername 6y agoNot quite as bad as "that is LITERALLY the worst thing ever"
- peteretep 6y agoEnglish obscures it a little, but note that verbs in your sentence apply to "large parts of"; differently stated: "to destroy a great number or proportion of". Decimate means quite specifically to remove or destroy a _portion_ of something, rather than simply to destroy something, even in most modern usage.
- ineedasername 6y agoIt would be pretty interesting if all Google had asked was to reduce the apk size by 10%.
- ivalm 6y agoOmg, user story “decimate the binary by next release”
- scarface74 6y agoBut Andy Rubin told us.... the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"
- ineedasername 6y agoHe's been gone from Google for six years, so I don't think we can paint him as a hypocrite or going back on his word over this. EDIT: In fact it was around the time Android was changing a little bit away from its open source roots that Rubin was sidelined out of the Android division and into robotics, shortly after which he quit.
- scarface74 6y agoOctober 2013... “Google's iron grip on Android: controlling open source by any means necessary” https://www.wired.co.uk/article/googles-iron-grip-on-android https://www.wired.co.uk/article/googles-iron-grip-on-android
- ineedasername 6y agoThat really doesn't go against what I said: At that time anyone could still fork Android, and if they wanted the open source versions of apps replaced by closed source ones they could use the source code for those old apps were perfectly serviceable alternatives to the closed-source ones Google replaced them with. In fact the article mentions two very prominent examples of successful break-aways of Android from Google: Amazon's devices and some made for the Chinese market. So my point stands: As of Andy Rubin's departure, Android was very much an open OS.
- scarface74 6y agoSo if you wanted to sell a phone in China, where you couldn’t use Google Play Services anyway, or you were one of the world’s most valuable companies who could afford to rewrite all of Google Play dependencies, you were set? Are you also as lenient about iOS? Since the core of it is open source? WebKit? The EU doesn’t agree with you. They ruled against Google for its practices. Google wouldn’t let a manufacturer both sell a phone using an Android fork that didn’t used Google Play Services and sell a phone that did.
- heavyset_go 6y agoReminds me of how Microsoft would make deals with OEMs to only sell PCs with Windows on them, and how that, among other things, was used against them in their antitrust suit 20 years ago.
- scarface74 6y agoAnd because of the great effectiveness of the American government, MS lost their dominance in the PC operating system market and rank nowhere near the top five most valuable companies in the US like they did 20 years ago.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoYou say it like it’s a bad thing. Perhaps if MS had remained so all-powerful, we would not have seen the rise of other US companies, including Google. If Google lost its monopoly stranglehold on Search and mobile, what interesting and useful innovation might emerge?
- scarface74 6y agoSo an anti trust schedule that ended in 2001 stopped Google’s emergence during the same time period when they had to convince people to come to their website using IE? You could say the same for FB, Amazon and Apple’s resurgence. None of them were helped by the government’s actions.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoHow do you know? Had MS remained all-powerful, perhaps those entities may not have emerged. That’s the justification for anti-trust legislation. But if you like your markets saturated with monopolies, you’re in luck. The world is full of them and under the current administration anyway, they aren’t going anywhere.
- scarface74 6y ago
- jojobas 6y agoHardware/OS vendors should not be allowed to include app stores out of the box, much less prevent sideloading. We'd be nowhere near where we are today if PCs couldn't run Linux, and earlier PCs couldn't run whatever you wanted from a floppy. The fact that consumers are lazy and stores are easy shouldn't prevent decisions beneficial to everyone.
- ineedasername 6y agoI like the idea, but then you have specific-purpose hardware like game consoles, although they're becoming more general purpose devices so I see them less and less as an exception. But there's still other devices like Fitbits that I'm not so sure about.
- m4rtink 6y agoMost of these devices could run general purpose siftware just fine if it were not for artificial roadblocks added by the manufacturer.
- jojobas 6y agoIt's just the same with consoles, the manufacturers sell them at a loss knowing they'll recover from game tax. Which is why PC games outnumber console games by a huge factor. Walled gardens are everyone's liability.
- Const-me 6y agoI have no idea who’s less wrong, Google or Epic, but I’m not sure I like your idea. Smartphones and PDAs existed for couple decades now, I’ve got a first PDA in 2000 or so. For many years before iPhone they were very niche products I’m not sure we had the explosion in popularity (followed by technical improvements of both hardware and software) had it not be the financial incentive from paid content, initially music, apps followed a year later. Hardware design, software development, and marketing are all very expensive, someone had to pay for them or the smartphones would stay being niche products for geeks and corporations. If what you wrote in the comment would become a law, this would remove motivation to do investments like that. Would be especially bad for game consoles. The hardware is often sold below the costs in the start of each lifecycle, then technical progress catches up bringing costs down, and vendors are getting their profits. Stores help as well. The strategy ain’t gonna work if the app.store is not linked to the hardware, as soon as the HW costs are down other people would offer compatible hardware for less money. Hardware compatibility within generation is another hard problem to solve. About Linux, when Torvalds made it, PCs were expensive tools for business and engineers. If you’re a businessperson or engineer, you have access to comparable tools with smartphone hardware. Search the web for “qualcomm snapdragon single board computer” and you’ll find many. There’re even affordable options now, I have 2 single-board computers on my desk next to a bunch of other hardware, both were under $100.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI think in the last thread a bunch of people were adamant Google wasn't a monopolist because plenty of phones shipped with app stores outside of Play. Seems like Google picks and chooses which of those are okay. It's time to stop lying: Google will absolutely abandon every single rule in the book to ensure they get 30% of Fortnite purchases. It's too lucrative, and Google is too greedy. This has nothing to do with safety or security. It has nothing to do with playing fair and following their terms. It's about the money.
- pixl97 6y agoApple and Google chiming together: "we're not a monopoly, we're a duopoly and that's perfectly legal"
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoEpic did their homework on the lawsuit, they make it very clear that Apple and Google are each separate monopolies. Because they have exclusive monopolies over app stores on devices that a large portion of people have. But the Play Store and App Store are not competitors: They control different markets. Furthermore, Epic helped highlight a very important point about Android and iOS: They're not actually competitors. For an OEM building a phone, Android is the only option, it has a complete monopoly on mobile OSes with respect to the market of OEMs who might choose it.
- pjmlp 6y agoThe supermarket on the corner also has a monopoly on what gets on their shelves, and which persons are allowed to get in to buy their stuff.
- playeren 6y agoI don't think your analogy is making any strong points, because there aren't just two supermarkets in the whole world. I can choose from 4 different supermarkets within walking distance, and an additional 3 if you count online supermarkets that deliver to my area. That is not the case when it comes to choosing a mobile OS/app store.
- dafty4 6y agoInteresting that AT&T and Samsung can collude to pre-install AT&T and Samsung bloat on my Galaxy S7 Edge Android device, but Fortnite couldn't collude with OnePlus to pre-install bloat? (Yes, I see that the carrier and the #1 Android phone seller are involved in one case and not the other, so the Samsung bloat is the more interesting case. If OnePlus were to write its own bloat-ware or acquire/merge-with Epic, would they be allowed to pre-install?)
- copp 6y agoAFAIK they can pre-install Fortnite. Not, EPIC app store, which was what the deal seemed to be about.
- RonanTheGrey 6y agoI don't find it particularly interesting to argue over whether Google and/or Apple or Goople are monopolies/duopolies. I think however it is obvious that something has seriously pathologically gone wrong in the mobile software market and these two companies are behind it. I also don't think that appeals to "is that legal" are all that satisfying -- (Apple's free speech lets them silence whoever they wish, of course) -- but does that seem right to you? For problems like these I tend to start at the end and work backwards. What would we want an ideal ecosystem to look like? And working backwards, what policies, laws, and cultural rules were made in order to get there? What products were built, and/or sold, in order to build that outcome? Then we do those things. I watch these conversations again and again devolve into whether these companies are monopolies, but I think that discussion is beside the point. Is it right?. Why do I only have 2 choices? Why do I get to choose only between Global Hoover or Comical Evil? And why if I choose one of them, do I give up all choices that follow? Solving problems like these relies on establishing a common ground about what we want to see, and agreeing that what we see isn't that. So -- what do we see wrong now, and what would we fix?
- lotsofpulp 6y ago> Why do I only have 2 choices? There’s an extremely high barrier to entry and people don’t have time to learn different operating systems.
- joemazerino 6y agoWhy hasn't a business approached F-Droid or other App stores to bridge a gap between Play and Android?
- izacus 6y agoMany OEMs ship their own stores (Samsung, Huawei, etc.) which gives them a piece of the pie. Is that what you mean by business? Approaching F-Droid probably isn't very desirable when the point of the store is to not profit from software.
- partingshots 6y agoIt’s kind of funny how negative/angry people are in the comments section right now, when the similarly ongoing discussion currently happening with Apple[0] has such a large set of apologists and adamant defenders. Cognitive dissonance much? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24146987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24146987
- jessaustin 6y agoDo you imagine that a significant percentage of HN people support the position of exactly one of {Apple, Google}? Give us some credit, please.
- neil_s 6y agoThis headline seems sensationalist to me. Google simply enforced its Android/Play Store Terms of Service, which have restrictions on apps being able to sideload other apps on devices that also have the Play Store. This is because if one of those other apps is infected, users don't know whether it came through the sideloaded apps or Play Store (which is supposed to virus scan all apps). You can argue all day about whether Google should be allowed to charge 30% of revenue for providing the value of the Play Store and Android, but seems pretty straightforward that if you sign the ToS, then sign a conflicting deal with an OEM, Google saying that that won't work is not exactly "forc[ing]...to decimate a deal".