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Really at this point Apple control over app store is anti-competitive (and Google over play store), having to rely on community outrage to get stuff like this t

• g_p 6y ago
  One of the biggest issues with Google play store review is they won't actually tell developers which rule they're breaking, as you point out. This is so incredibly developer-hostile that the fact developers keep using the play store pretty much helps make the case they're acting in an anticompetitive manner. It certainly is interesting to note Google removed the title "Non-competition" from clause 4.5 of their developer agreement some time ago. It's still in the archived version on archive.org though, from back when it was called the Android market... Removing the title but leaving the clause intact doesn't mask the anti-competitive behaviour!
  • jonplackett 6y ago
    This is really shoddy behaviour. Is it just laziness on their part or is there a benefit to them to keep developers guessing?
    • save_ferris 6y ago
      Just a WAG but I think it allows them to maintain total control over the playing field. They get to choose which apps best suit their interests in their market and apply the rules inconsistently to apps that somehow don't align with their interests.
    • dodobirdlord 6y ago
      There are definitely some benefits. If people are trying to sneak stuff past you if benefits you to not explain what you found or how you found it when you reject things. If someone submits an app containing shady things X, Y and Z and you just respond "no dice", now they have to either remove all of the shady things they were doing, or try to guess which one(s) were detected. They can proceed by trail and error, but in the process they will reveal a lot of their secrets because Google can compare the diffs of the submitted apps to learn about other shady things that the developers think might have triggered the rejection.
      • jonplackett 6y ago
        this seems like the non-cynical answer. thanks. don't know why i'm being downvoted for a reasonable question, but there you go.
    • realusername 6y ago
      It helps them to enforce rules arbitrarily depending of their current strategy and how important of a developer you are.
  • ehsankia 6y ago
    I absolutely agree that from a developer point of view, this is awful, but just to play devil's advocate here, the reasoning generally given for these is that bad actors tend to tweak their apps to bypass rules a lot faster and efficiently if you always tell them exactly what to fix to get unbanned. I agree developers shouldn't be treated like this, but it still is true that malicious apps are a real problem and bad actors continually try to break things and minmax ways to get around the rules. As users and developer, that's a side that we don't really get to see, so it's hard to judge how justified these techniques are. What alternative solution do you propose that would help developers without at the same time making bad actors lives easier.
    • throwaway936482 6y ago
      This is basically the "security through obscurity" argument that has been so heavily criticised and largely shown to be false. If they (and apple etc.) Open sourced their approval algorithm and allowed pull requests people with an interest in having a high quality app store could try and poke holes in it and make it more robust. I know there are humans in the mix making judgements, but those judgements are largely of the "does the app meet this tick box criteria" type.
    • m4rtink 6y ago
      So due to few bad actors everyone should suffer ? One would hope collective punishment is a thing of the past...
  • jayd16 6y ago
    Its crappy but I don't see how a crappy review process is anti-competitive or how improving this aspect would make the situation less monopolistic.
    • klez 6y ago
      That's not what they said. They said that the fact people keep using the play store despite all of the shitty practices by Google (e.g. the review process) should be proof enough that Google engaged in anticompetitive behavior, otherwise people would go to a competitor. Which is debatable but not as absurd as you make it out to be.
    • simonh 6y ago
      The argument is that the review process gets away with being crappy due to the monopoly position, not that it is leading to the monopoly. It’s a symptom, not a cause. Also it’s possible that specific clauses in the guidelines are anti-competitive. Fir example a guideline that simply disallows any app that competes with one of Google’s Apps might be seen this way. So those are coherent arguments I think, I just don’t agree with them. The Play Store is a google product, with features developed and maintained by a Google. Other stores exist that compete with it, with features developed by other companies. The reason customers went with Google Play is simply because it had momentum and scale, and customers don’t want multiple stores. They want one store with one set of rules where all the Apps are, that will be on their next phone. Customers benefit from a one stop shop. If someone wanted to develop a better store, with libraries better than ‘play services’, what stops them? If you want to inter operate with and use the services of the Play Store, you need to make a deal with a google, and the terms of that deal are standardised by Google. There’s nothing obviously illegal or a abusive about any of that, as long as the contractual relationships are fairly administered under the law.
      • tpxl 6y ago
        >The reason customers went with Google Play is simply because it had momentum and scale, and customers don’t want multiple stores. The reason customers went with the default is mostly because it's the default. Given the choice, we'd see a lot more competition. >If someone wanted to develop a better store, with libraries better than ‘play services’, what stops them? The anti-competitive google behavior where they forbid you to sell any android phone with Google Play if you sell any android phone without it? IIRC there was a lawsuit/fine in EU a few years back regarding this.
• devit 6y ago
  Also if the app store is the only way to sell or distribute apps to customers using a specific device for which it's customary to only own one device in that category (such as a mobile phone), or it's otherwise impossible for others to create a fully equivalent app store (e.g. because the OS doesn't expose APIs to install apps), then the fee must not exceed the money required to do payment processing, and all apps must be accepted.
• travisjungroth 6y ago
  Im not really into congress defining how apps get reviewed. I’d rather see it just get broken up in some way. Either you can’t have a phone and an app store (like the studio/movie model) or they at least have to support other app stores. Side note: my iPhone autocorrected app store to App Store, which I think is another example of overreach.
  • FriendlyNormie 6y ago
    Shut up faggot. Apple making money off of their own shit is totally normal. Not everything is grounds for a revolution you mentally ill fucking idiot.
  • scarface74 6y ago
    The studio/movie regulation was overturned....
    • mijoharas 6y ago
      What was this regulation? I'm unaware of it
      • vidarh 6y ago
        Primarily the Paramount case[1] and agreements entered into by the studios as a consequence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
        • mijoharas 6y ago
          Thanks! Seems to be quite a landmark case I wasn't aware of. Interesting, but possibly not surprising that it's now been overturned.
    • microtherion 6y ago
      … and this actually happened about two weeks ago: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.527174/gov.uscourts.nysd.527174.52.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.527174... I wonder how familiar the people espousing an expansive view of antitrust law here on HN are with the actual administrative and judicial state of antitrust enforcement.
• ilaksh 6y ago
  The answer is not laws but public distributed systems. Things like IPFS and Ethereum for example.
  • madeofpalk 6y ago
    what?
• madeofpalk 6y ago
  > They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking I agree that the situation is really bad, but I do not trust that governments would be able to set laws and regulations to control such specifics of app stores.
• dylan604 6y ago
  The problem I have is that you make it sound like you have a right to release software for their platform. They opened their platform for devs to make apps. You accepted that offer, read their terms, agreed to those terms, and are now complaining about those terms? I get it that you want to make 100% of the price made from each sell, but that's not realistic. If you sell your product at a brick&mortar store, you don't get full amount of the sell. They buy it at wholesale. Rarely is that wholesale price only %30 of the retail price. Nothing about the App Store seems pretty reasonable.
  • dlubarov 6y ago
    But in the brick & mortar scenario, the negotiation happens on more of a level playing field. Both parties have a reasonable alternative if an agreement isn't reached -- the manufacturer can find another retailer, and the retailer can find another supplier. In this case there's no such competitive market. Granted, 30% would be low for retail, but surely digital marketplaces would charge less if competition was allowed. To get a sense of what pricing would look like in a competitive market, we can look at Steam, Epic, etc. for app distribution, or Stripe, Braintree, etc. for in-app purchases.
    • dylan604 6y ago
      Ever tried to negotiate to get your product sold on a shelf? It is very much not a level playing field. WalMart is infamous for beating sellers down to such a low per unit price with the promise of making it up on quantity. Target, BestBuy, and any other big box retailer only follow WalMart's lead. Then there's the fact that if your product doesn't sell well according to their metrics, you are forced to buy it back from them. Now you're hoping Ross will buy it from you! There are costs of doing business. They can all be negotiated or at least attempted, but at the end of they day you want your product where the consumers are, so you have to ultimately play within their terms. You can make 70% or make 0%.
      • dlubarov 6y ago
        No one said retail was easy! Thin margins are just the natural result of competition. Retailers have thin margins too. Walmart's net profit margin was 4.7% in Q2, and that was a major outlier. The playing field might not be completely level, but at least competition exists on both sides.
• bloblaw 6y ago
  > They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking You have a lot of faith in 60+ year old (mostly tech-illiterate men) to fix technology they don't understand. Government isn't the solution to this problem. Developers leaving the app store is probably only what will get Apple to change.
  • scarface74 6y ago
    Sure they understand. Did you hear all of the insightful questions that the representatives asked Zuckerberg? Especially when they asked Zuckerburg about Twitter’s policies.
  • tspiteri 6y ago
    They can legislate for example against app store exclusivity instead of legislating technical app store rules.
  • rubber_duck 6y ago
    They did a decent job with credit cards eventually. Developers leaving won't happen, Apple and Google will cut a deal with big guys (Netflix, Amazon) and ignore smaller players (even Epic in this case)
  • ponker 6y ago
    Compared to the entire set of countries, the US government is extraordinarily high-functioning, and this was all created by mostly 60+ tech-illiterate men.
  • belorn 6y ago
    You have users who has iphones, and those users want you to develop an app. They can't switch phones. Buying a new phone is expensive. They use apps that only currently exist in iphone. There is sunk costs. Their social circle require them to use iphone. The phone was provided by the job and they can't use something else. Should the developer spit in the face of those users and refuse to develop the app? No. They might not like apple. Might not support what apple is doing. The app might be horrible crippled and overpriced. Sadly the choice will still likely be to develop an app for the iphone because the small signal it would send to apple is microscopic compared to the major harm to your users. Linus tech tips had a nice discussion around.
• scarface74 6y ago
  No business treats all users equally. Businesses make deals with other businesses all the time. Look up “no duty to deal”.
  • 7tsfmCAusrQ 6y ago
    The difference is, they don't then lie to the public and to Congress about it, as Apple and Tim Cook have now done.
    • scarface74 6y ago
      So now you expect Congress to force Apple to sell you an iPad at the same price it sells to a corporation that buys 1000s? Of course Apple is going to make a deal with Amazon when Amazon can offer it another sales channel.
      • romanoderoma 6y ago
        > So now you expect Congress to force Apple to sell you an iPad at the same price it sells to a corporation that buys 1000s? I honestly expect the congress to remove Apple powers as gatekeeper If the Apple Store is the only store for iOS devices, they have to allow any app in and let the authorities handle misbehaviour Apple is not a National State, so it shouldn't act as the ruler and dictator of the State. I expect congress to force Apple to remove control over what's inside the box. If I buy a product on Amazon when I open the box I can find a lot of promotional material put there by the manufacturer and sometimes even discount codes for affiliated businesses or coupons for other online stores, Amazon can't tell them to remove it or go elsewhere Apple should allow promoting the product inside the apps as well That's what I expect from the country that sell itself as the land of the free (and champion of free market)
        • scarface74 6y ago
          I honestly expect the congress to remove Apple powers as gatekeeper So you expect the same government that passed DMCA, COPPA, that is trying to get rid of end to end encryption, did the things that came out via Snowden, warranties wiretaps, buying location data from carriers, dismantled net neutrality, etc. to actually not do something malicious with more power and control? If the Apple Store is the only store for iOS devices, they have to allow any app in and let the authorities handle misbehaviour So Apple should have allowed the Facebook VPN so that spied on users? You really want the government controlling which apps can go on your phone? Have you been paying attention to the government over the past two decades? You really want to give it more power? That's what I expect from the country that sell itself as the land of the free (and champion of free market) So more government control is your definition of a free market?
• Jaxkr 6y ago
  Let’s hope Epic beats Apple+Google to allow easier third-party stores.
• amelius 6y ago
  > They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking The same could be said by taxi drivers about Uber. It's the exploitation of the platform-economy that is the problem, really. An extra problem is that this platform-economy is a pretty new concept. I don't even know if economists have good models for it. From this, it's no wonder that governments are lagging far behind, and we shouldn't expect much change in the near future.
  • rubber_duck 6y ago
    Uber is a different story, competition is a lot easier and it already exists all over the place (Uber isn't even that profitable which proves this, meanwhile app store is printing cash)
• donmcronald 6y ago
  > any submissions have to be reviewed in a reasonable amount of time and if declined must receive specific violations of the guidelines on which the denial is based Competing app stores solves this 100% because there would definitely be a market for a developer friendly app store.
  • cvs268 6y ago
    Competing app stores would raise another problem though. One that occurred with certifying agencies in the financial crisis of 2008. In a world with competing app-stores, if a store does its scrutiny properly, and is seen as too strict, then the apps will flock to get listed in other less-strict app-stores. Thus all stores are incentivised to relax the scrutiny to retain apps for their own survival. Sometimes to the point of simply rubber-stamping their approvals on crappy stuff. Thus the end-users lose the benefits of proper curation.
    • Larrikin 6y ago
      Users won't use the store known to be full of viruses
      • eanzenberg 6y ago
        Right because users don’t goto sketchy sites or click on wierdo popups and get virus’s to this day.
    • rvense 6y ago
      > Thus the end-users lose the benefits of proper curation. But Apple are obviously not doing proper curation. They might be good at keeping viruses out, but what they have done to Wordpress and HEY was not proper in the least.
    • marcosdumay 6y ago
      If app availability is the only dimension users care about, then sure, there will be a race into malware infested low quality stores. And what's the problem? It's the best for everybody here. But your comment really points out that not everybody wants that. So your scenario won't happen on practice.
• valuearb 6y ago
  Apple is pretty good at listening to developers and overturning their mistakes. This is an example. To have a good App Review system, there are going to be mistakes made. Having actual people there the developers can appeal and talk to is critical.
• antihero 6y ago
  It's almost as if allowing unaccountable private enterprise which act purely on self interest to have this much power is NOT a great idea...
• dwaite 6y ago
  > They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking I assume by "they" you mean "each of the 175+ countries that the app stores operate in, most with slightly different rules that a software developer would need to understand?"
  • roblabla 6y ago
    A software dev won't need to understand it. Apple's and Google's legal team would. Your average software dev doesn't run an app store
  • diffeomorphism 6y ago
    You mean they have to obey the laws of the countries they are selling things in? How is that in any way unreasonable?
• ponker 6y ago
  If "No outside payment inside of apps" is illegal is it legal for Apple to heavily promote those apps that do pay in-app?
• jabirali 6y ago
  > They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking Thinking a bit wider, the same legislation should affect e.g. how Amazon can treat people who sell on their platform. They are all monopsonies: “In economics, a monopsony is a market structure in which a single buyer substantially controls the market as the major purchaser of goods and services offered by many would-be sellers.”
• marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I think it's interesting that this story hit the front page at the same time as the one about Facebook's fact-checking shenanigans, which concluded that leaving this in the hands of a private company wasn't working. Are FAANG (well possibly not 'N') about to face nationalisation? Or United-Nationalisation given that they're all global organisations and having them run by the completely dysfunctional US government isn't a result anyone wants? Can government really step in to control the workings of the Apple Store and change the rules without drastically effecting Apple's business? If so, what responsibility does government have if that drastic effect stops the business from being profitable? Can government enforce fact-checking on Facebook (or Google) without affecting its advertising business? Again, if so, what responsibility does it bear if that business collapses? Can government ignore it and allow the tech giants to continue uncontrolled? That doesn't seem to be working either.
  • lioeters 6y ago
    > what responsibility does government have if that drastic effect stops the business from being profitable? If the business relies on anti-competitive behavior to stay profitable, then any regulation that improves the situation will necessarily affect that business' bottom line. I wouldn't be surprised if FAANG and their dominant positions in the market are considered important to "national security", in an economic sense of the term. (And perhaps from surveillance/intelligence perspective, and control of information access.) In that case, it would be in the national interest to support - or at least let continue without disruption by pesky regulations - their anti-competitive behavior that ensures that dominant global position.
• LoSboccacc 6y ago
  > They should create legislation to control access to all app stores to prevent this rent seeking as long as there are alternatives, it's the user choice to get into the walled ecosystem. people enjoy the ease of mind of it, and while I'm not among them, I can say I find the play store and the 'apk downloaded from somewhere' experiences both grating compared to the apple store. a curated store has it's appeal, and it's value. is it 30%? that is for the customer to decide, not the legislator.
  • ShroudedNight 6y ago
    > as long as there are alternatives, it's the user choice to get into the walled ecosystem. Coercive bundling should warrant anti-trust scrutiny, whenever it occurs. It may only seldomly warrant action, but the very ability to coerce counter-parties appears to be a strong indicator that the traded good is not inherently fungible with another offering. > that is for the customer to decide, not the legislator. It's not clear to me what basis this claims factual authority beyond your personal understanding of the world. Alternatively, and equally glib, That is for society to decide, not the individual.
    • LoSboccacc 6y ago
      > It's not clear to me what basis this claims factual authority beyond your personal understanding of the world. likewise. that why you argue the argument, not the authority behind for a healthy discussion on anonymous forums. > and equally glib except I provided an argument for the benefit to the individual, while the whole of your post hinges on appeal to (un)authority another case in point: all the pc stores exclusives. imagine having to have to install 5 different stores for accessing this or that publisher games on a phone. how can you argue that is pro-customer? we already know that it is what is going to happen, because it has already happened. and it was not for the better; there was no reduction of prices (if anything, aaa went from 49$ to 69$) and a constant fight for user attention by undercutting each other stores with exclusives. so the price cut reduction did not materialize, and we have to fight against a tide of software spying each other on top of it. > Coercive bundling should warrant anti-trust scrutiny fair enough, but it still doesn't mean it has to be incorporated in law, where it gonna stay for a long time and likely used as hammer in all kind of unexpected ways. > the traded good is not inherently fungible with another offering or the consumers are happy with the locked platform. those who aren't, after all, can already sideload to their android. this seems more of a case of a minority wanting a cake and eat it too, not a real issue with predatory behavior.
• parasubvert 6y ago
  I am amazed at the default reach to legislative solutions as if this has been consistently successful in the past. At one point not too long ago, Microsoft controlled everything. They didn’t control retailers, but they would put ISVs out of business regularly. You could charge what you wanted, but were always at the risk of a “predatory pricing” attack when Microsoft would clone your feature for free in the latest version of their products. There was a consent decree formed about product tie-ins to stymie this activity circa 1994. Then the Web Browser came along and threatened Microsoft’s regime. We had a way to run software anywhere without Microsoft’s involvement! And of course they tried to tie their own Browser into Windows, because that’s how they competed in the past. They were found guilty of violating it with in their 1998 trial, forming a new consent decree with penalties in 2001. Did this actually matter when mobile took over in 2007? Google Chrome also now has vast majority browser share. Did this help there too? What Apple and Google are doing is nowhere close to this in terms anti-competitive behaviour, it’s not even in the same league. You throw terms around like “rent seeking” without understanding what that means. Rent seeking is about expanding one’s share of wealth without also broadening the base of wealth. A retail cut is ... not that. But even more so... why are people so devoid of knowledge of tech history or imagination that we must reach for legislation rather than building a better mousetrap? This isn’t about consumers, it’s about ISVs wanting higher margins without putting any of the work in. It’s not likely going to be successful.