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Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

688 points by davweb 5y ago

gbrindisi 5y ago
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html
beckman466 5y ago
> Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate." > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." > That is a damning little piece of evidence. Looks like it’s exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s
- draw_down 5y ago
  And as we all know, everything between Google and Apple has remained exactly as it was in 2010
- defaulty 5y ago
  In business school lingo, this is called 'coopetition' which is just a portmanteau of the two positions: cooperation & competition.
  - eloff 5y ago
    I can't tell if this is sarcasm or serious, so I looked it up. It's for real.
    - rainbowzootsuit 5y ago
      I'm not sure that they invented the term but it was, and probably still is, prominent in the F.I.R.S.T. robotics competition. At least in that context, as a mentor, I thought it was a decent message for the students. Work together to get the robots as good as possible so that you had an enjoyable competition. https://www.firstinspires.org/ https://www.firstinspires.org/
  - travoc 5y ago
    In the DOJ’s world, it’s called collusion.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      I think what the government calls it depends greatly on "donations" and promises of do-nothing "consulting" positions with outlandish salaries.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    first time I read this but I'm not even surprised the term exists .. it's probably a natural and very old phenomenon right ?
- beambot 5y ago
  They also cooperated on illegal recruiting practices to stifle tech wages: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
throwaway2048 5y ago
We have here smoking gun evidence that both Google and Apple themselves see themselves as a monopoly, see them commenting about how they "essentially function as one company", yet I absolutely guarantee we will get a torrent of comments denying that in this thread, I am sure with a lot of smug pasting of dictionary entries.
- arkitaip 5y ago
  As always when mega corps are involved we have to at least entertain the idea that their employees and agents come out in full force to defend the actions of the corp. Anything else would be dangerously naive.
  - smabie 5y ago
    Alternatively, maybe some people just disagree?
    - howaboutnope 5y ago
      Downvoting isn't for disagreement, replies are. At any rate, the idea that companies with people who would collude in such a major way don't have any employees willing to manipulating discourse on a site like HN... that doesn't even pass the smell test, there is no way that this is the case. This site should have all votes and flags by all accounts made public. No more guessing, no more squirming.
- VelkaMorava 5y ago
  already happening. It's disgusting.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Thu Aug 19 17:54:55 +0000 2021 1428415009860714500 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/pho... https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug" that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it. Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  Maybe I should have put the line beginning with "Google" in quotes. I did not author that statement, it comes directly from the Twitter page. HN then changed the thread not to point to Twitter but to the Verge.
spicybright 5y ago
tbh, isn't it completely in google's right to do this? It's not a regulated market, it's google's store.
- lozenge 5y ago
  That's what the lawsuit is about. "Epic’s complaint alleges that Google’s payment restrictions on the Play Store constitute a monopoly, and thus a violation of both the Sherman Act and California’s Cartwright Act."
  - LadyCailin 5y ago
    Maybe google should move to one year exclusivity on the apps in their App Store?
    - stale2002 5y ago
      That would be a much better situation than the current status quo. If Google moved to exclusive deals, then that would mean that they would be paying game developers, 10s of millions of dollars, instead of the other way around. The current situation is the reverse. Game devs are paying google 10s of millions of dollars. If the opposite happened, then that would be much better.
- seniorivn 5y ago
  > Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate." > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." if it will be proven in court it's a firm base for anti monopoly/cartel case
  - samhw 5y ago
    Honestly, I don't think that's going far enough. That "our vision is that we work as if we are one company" line couldn't be a better basis for an antitrust case if they were literally trying to incriminate themselves.
jakecopp 5y ago
> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." ... > This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service. Insane reading.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ctvo 5y ago
  The new FTC chair, Lina Khan, read this like Birdman, rubbing her hands.
  - tentacleuno 5y ago
    Is she more ethical than Ajit Paid?
    - nl 5y ago
      Yes
      - chris_wot 5y ago
        That would not be hard.
    - finebalance 5y ago
      Death row inmates are more ethical than that man.
    - shadilay 5y ago
      Did you think that said FCC?
  - sam1r 5y ago
    Shout to bird man!
bronzeage 5y ago
Google and apple shills / workers are working hard on this thread downvoting everything. Literally every comment downvoted. Are Google and apple workers that much common in hacker news? Are they that loyal to their disgusting monopolistic company they feel obliged to defend it with downvotes on some internet forum?
- scrollaway 5y ago
  I'm downvoting your comment because it's irrelevant, probably wrong, and downright boring to complain about downvotes in the first place, even more so about shilling. I am not affiliated with either company.
  - noptd 5y ago
    I don't know, the possibility of companies steering the public discourse for their own gain seems relevant to me.
Santosh83 5y ago
Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that is. True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller, regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one entity. Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well. I have also wondered the same, especially seeing not just the massive spying, but also the shoddy quality and extortionate prices that characterize government software auctions all over the world. Especially as multiple regional and local entities often pay for exactly the same management software. It would seem a no-brainer that a national/regional software institute would produce huge savings, better quality, and strategic advantages if it created a national/regional software stack that could be used everywhere. Alas, I believe that cronyism, market veneration, lack of understanding of software, and the high initial costs are acting to prevent any such effort from even seeming a thinkable idea.
  - pyrale 5y ago
    Every time European countries so much as hint that they may look at US tech corporations the wrong way, the whole US administration threatens a trade war. So yeah, that's the reason.
mard 5y ago
In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system. 20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences. I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  The law sees it as they have been paid and blackmailed to see it. There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school if the state considered any sort of App store laws.
  - mercora 5y ago
    do you have a source available?
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      https://www.imore.com/apple-used-intimidation-and-lot-money-kill-georgia-app-store-bill-says-sponsor https://www.imore.com/apple-used-intimidation-and-lot-money-...
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Wouldn't that be Apple's prerogative? There's no reason to do business in a state that's hostile to your interests or pursuits. That's not blackmail anymore than the attempted Hollywood boycott over Georgia's abortion laws a few years ago. There are plenty of well-documented violations of integrity to accuse Apple of, but using its philanthropic investments as a leverage isn't one of them.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      "Leverage" doesn't go along with "philantropic".
- 5y ago
ThePhysicist 5y ago
I've grown pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the Internet as a motor for entrepreneurship. Today it is theoretically still "free" but wherever you go you'll find gatekeepers like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft that keep a tight grip on who is visible on the net and who can offer a service or software product on a given platform. In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you make. This really needs to stop.
- zpeti 5y ago
  I think this is just the natural evolution of any market. Unfortunately it leads to this. There's not much competition in the railroad market, or the telco market anymore, which used to be massive spaces for innovation. There are two options: - We have to wait for the next technological revolution. - It is simply just more costly to be an entrepreneur. It's not about throwing together a website or app, it's much more costly to break through the existing monopolies. While you can still make a website or app yourself, I think you do need more and more capital to market it.
  - ant6n 5y ago
    There's competition in the railroad market in the EU,because they want there to be a market. In particular they mandate separation of infrastructure and operation, and force rail infrastructure owners to give open access to all (for a toll, which has to be the same for all operators). Once you can't use infrastructure as a moat, competition is much more possible. The US which only regulates rail safety but not the market, has a bunch of local monopolies and calls that a market, being in total denial that markets need to be regulated to actually allow competition.
    - the-dude 5y ago
      Are there any indications that a market for rail is actually more efficient?
kook_throwaway 5y ago
Who redacted this in the first place, and how would it have been sealed? Much of it is clearly redacted for PR reasons, and I don't really understand how there could be any excuse for keeping it hidden.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  I think the lawyers from Google got to redact what parts of the filing should be available to the public. And yeah, there's no trade secrets here, just clear evidence of horrible abuses. Glad the judge ordered it unredacted. It's not just about the public knowing: Legislators and regulators aren't privy to non-public judicial information, and this is key evidence that Congress needs to pass strong laws that break the backs of Apple and Google.
lucasverra 5y ago
That is why we need trustless / censorship resistant platforms like “regular” web or the yet to be proven web 3 (led by ethereum)
- grishka 5y ago
  No. We just need two things: - it should be illegal to lock down a device against its end user - governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    > governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability Do you realize that given our current laws in the US, that this is pretty much impossible?
    - grishka 5y ago
      As a person from a country that's not US... Everything being centralized around the US and other countries basically having no sovereignty is also a huge problem. When two companies collude, it's illegal. When countries do the same, it's perfectly legal and is called a "trade agreement" because it's them who write laws.
moondistance 5y ago
Large companies have massive governance issues. When you get that large, you end up with an endless stream of people nattering on to compromise values for profits. Eventually, leadership gets sick of fighting or misses the impact of a big change. It's all downwards from there (the next piece of garbage in the room appears more quickly). I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments - is to build AGIs and put them in charge. I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting closer and closer. If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere). My two cents.
Sabinus 5y ago
This is clear anti-competitive behavior. Unregulated capitalism is dangerous capitalism.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I wish we did a better job facing this fact as adults. This is the Achilles heel of Capitalism and ignoring it or making excuses only hurts us all. I love Apple hardware, I love Android, but I also love Capitalism and having choice. Living under this economic system requires responsibility to regulate these things.
scotty79 5y ago
90% of things mentioned here should be super illegal and the punishment should be 150% estimated income they achieved through such deals.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  100 years in the electric chair! This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. It's an industrial structure. The competition is competition for monopoly, a superior & highly profitable market position of some sort. Those are what make Google, FB & so profitable. Google competed with Yahoo & Microsoft for years in search marketing. I don't believe either ever made significant profits. Their "market share" in terms of users may have been 10%-20%. But, their share of market revenues was a fraction of that. Their share of profits was negative. OTOH Google pays (for example) Apple $7bn per year to make Google Search default. That's better than best case scenario profits MSFT or Yahoo could have hoped to make, unless they managed to replace Google in the no. 1 position. Competing is just a lot less profitable than cooperating in a lot of cases. What is Apple supposed to do, say "keep it, we're good?"
  - noptd 5y ago
    >This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. I disagree - governments legislate their markets so it is absolutely punishable if defined as such.
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
      I think parent’s point is that a one time slap (as big as it might be) as we do with other crimes wouldn’t solve the issue. The punishment has to be more structural, legislating for instance as you suggest, or dramatically changing the entity’s structure as we did with past monopolies.
      - catmanjan 5y ago
        Depends on what you think the goal of the free market/society is, e.g. is this even in our interest to solve - better to redistribute these ill gotten gains to the benefit of society and let the free market solve its own problem - if they do it again, another fine. just like parking /speeding tickets arent considered structural problems
gorwell 5y ago
Don't Be Evil. Project Hug. Your antennae should go up whenever you hear phrasing like this.
erhk 5y ago
Can't read on mobile without a Twitter account
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Twitter changed something recently where they no longer let you view most tweets without an account.
  - dan-robertson 5y ago
    I think you just need to tap the tweet again to see the thread. But you could also use nitter.
jayd16 5y ago
Does any of this surprise anyone? I thought the custom deals with large companies was common knowledge. So were the pack in deals with Gapps and Play store. What is the new info here?
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  We shifted from “common knowledge” to “on the record evidence”, which is a pretty big step in my opinion. The new info is that it is now available for legal action. The optimistic view would be that Epic is enough into it to bring more changes than Microsoft’s default browser ballot.
jonplackett 5y ago
> "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." Case closed, no?
dang 5y ago
There's also https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371. (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798, which we've merged hither)
hamburgerwah 5y ago
Not that there was any question about whether these companies are monopolies but will this finally be the evidence that causes regulatory action? Haha, of course not.
henearkr 5y ago
What monopoly? I use FDroid without any problems thank you very much. Now if Google has a program to make happy its customers so that they don't leave... I wish all companies strategies were like that!
- anaganisk 5y ago
  Great, but let me know when you can install thousands of other everyday apps, like slack? Can update apps seamlessly. And Fdroid is actually used by masses. Last I checked (week ago) unless you root, you have to go and click on every app to update it. Too bad if you had 25 apps. Infact Fdroid community itself complains, its limited in its functionality because there is no store API, inbuilt into android.
101_101 5y ago
Google is another shitty company that employees shitty people. they waited till the payout day to suspend ad-sense accounts so they can keep the advertisers money. also, one of their employees who is very popular here is a creeper.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
So what? It's not surprising, bad, or newsworthy that Google would bribe developers to try to keep them in the fold
- anaganisk 5y ago
  Yeah sure, let two mega corps which control mobile OSs, to become as powerful as they can. While their app store reject apps with AI and no recourse. Force devs to use their payment APIs. What could go wrong, its not like they’re American telecom companies, only they can be evil and lobby. Devs are saints, am I right?
babesh 5y ago
This is a near industry wide abusive practice. Facebook started forcing companies to use Facebook Credits and then forced a 30% cut. Zynga balked. Zynga and Facebook came to secret arrangement. If you were smaller, you were SOL. EDIT: https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/ https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/ Netflix didn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut. Apple tried to keep Netflix. Eventually, Netflix got rid of new app store subscriptions. EDIT: Apple offered Netflix concessions. https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase... Look at Amazon's bookstore which forces sellers to not offer their books at a lower price elsewhere. EDIT: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-class-action-against-amazon-and-publishers-for-fixing-wholesale-print-book-prices/ https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-cl...
phendrenad2 5y ago
How is this different from giving developers a larger cut of profits? It's a pretty common sales trick to do "cash back" instead of reducing price. If this is what Epic is going with, they're grasping at straws more than I had imagined.
- ehsankia 5y ago
  It isn't. Epic literally decided to not use AppStore/PlayStore because they weren't happy with how much money they'd make, so Google decided to improve the money game devs make... They just complain because Google didn't sign a secret extra juicy deal with them only.
RGamma 5y ago
Interesting, considering that last time I checked, the Play Store was full of predatory shovelware. This is like another layer on the stack of dysfunction in the contemporary (mobile) gaming market.
anaganisk 5y ago
The silence of googlers when articles like this come up is funny. They jump in like a rabbit, about every google post. Showing off all their google stuff. When things like this come up they pretend they’re busy coding (something something api to help their ad company). We as devs made them mega corps, seriously. Even the worst privacy nightmare inducing API, was coded by someone. Money sure drives everything, people say decentralisation will take care of everything. But Web is decentralised. But somehow we as devs helped few companies to make it almost centralised. The next big tech which tries hard(web3, ipfs) will eventually become centralised again. Companies pretending to be humble, will come in to increase ease of use pull the blanket and repeat. Edit: I understand during the legal case, employees can have life changing implications for commenting on it. Well the cases can end up dragging for years. So for all those years, are we just going to keep silent? I mean if our moral compass is controlled by how corporate thinks of it, I guess we are not free after all. The next big decentralised thing is a compromised dream already. Also if you want to really make an opinion, for those who feel like voicing but cant, make an alt account. Every voice matters.
- tssva 5y ago
  I'm not a Googler and I fail to see the issue here. I personally find no issue with this.
  - anaganisk 5y ago
    When you look it narrow, you will mot see it. But as you start to see the big picture, you start to see the similarities with our past mistakes. Companies that are so afraid of loosing their power over their consumers, will do anything and everything to keep it. If android and apple had an Open Store API, and their respective stores had the power, no problem. But closing their store apis for themself, payments to themself is bad. Do you think we would’ve had chrome and firefox, if IE used obscure APIs? Imagine Internet standards as controlled by Microsoft. They reject legit apps on daily basis without recourse. To keep it more simple, think of how US let its telecom companies have so much power over its communication needs. How it’s affecting people.
adam_arthur 5y ago
Though it's been much lambasted by investors, I think it's inevitable that the US will begin down the same path China has recently with their tech companies. It's pretty easy to see that FAANG-esque companies are totally dominant at this point, and have many pseudo-monopolistic elements about them. Beyond specific names, there is a vast difference in both the scale, and the "ecosystem" or "platform" nature in modern software that effectively invalidates the applicability of anti-trust law as it is written. Going even further, many laws protecting private companies likely will change in the coming years to account for different paradigm that software brings. Sometimes difference in scale is also difference in nature. If you look into the aims of a lot of China's recent regulations, they are actually setup to create a competitive market, rather than have a few tech companies become dominant. Competition is ultimately good for the public, as it leads to lower costs to the consumer, and more incentive to innovate (once entrenched). I don't suggest we go to the same extremes, but it's inevitable we'll start heading down that path, whether it be the next few years, or decades.
Aunche 5y ago
I don't understand Epic's complaint here. Google doesn't want want to lose business to Samsung, so they offer incentives to maintain a competitive advantage.
- timmg 5y ago
  Doesn't Epic pay money to game makers to keep them (if temporarily) off Steam? Is that materially different than this case? (Is it that Google already has a strong market position and Epic is an upstart?)
richardfey 5y ago
Gotta love this. Marketing newspeak at its finest: "always had programs in place that support best-in-class developers with enhanced resources and investments to help them reach more customers".
summerlight 5y ago
Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thanks to its iron grip on the market until Epic have revealed its arsenal. This is why we need to bring more competitions in the app store market; Even if it doesn't bring any real alternatives, this tiny possibility of competition will force Google and Apple to yield more and more to developers. The first step should be breaking the Duopoly cartel. It's only possible because Apple has no competitions and Google simply enjoys its follower-ship, enabled by their non-aggression pact. Force Apple to allow third party store and payment solutions to dismantle its unfair advantages against competitor apps thanks to 30% fee. This will force Apple to develop Web and Android version of its services which will effectively nullify the non-aggression pact.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Microsoft tried and failed to make a third alternative and force competition, spending billions to make it happen. As they found out, app makers don’t want to build for yet another platform. It doesn’t matter whether you make an awesome mobile OS, you’ll never get the app makers to support you enough to convince the users, and without the users you cannot convince the app makers. Meanwhile, in desktop land, there are real alternatives because almost everything you’d want to do runs in the browser well enough (for regular home users at least). But on mobile the browsers are locked down, so the web is not a credible mobile app strategy. Linkedin and facebook oroginally tried a mobile web strategy and discovered that mobile browsers aren’t good enough. The lack of real competition, especially on iOS keeps mobile browsers underpowered for apps and maintains the strong gatekeeping function of mobile app stores. For me a possible solution is to force platform owners to allow real browser competition on their platforms (again: especially iOS) and hope that is enough to kickstart a browser arms race like we enjoyed on the desktop a decade ago, with the end result being that mobile web apps become a real alternative and we weed out much of the bad behavior by apple and google because they have a genuine competition for the native platform.
- 5y ago
avipars 5y ago
Yet gaming on android sucks
sidcool 5y ago
I don't blame Google for doing it, but I do blame anti-trust agencies for turning a blind eye on this. Google is a business and by the very rules of capitalism, it does as much as possible to maintain their lead, sometimes skirting with the law. It's the onus of the FTC to ensure they are monitored and penalized in case of transgression.
Popegaf 5y ago
I'm reading the comments here and it seems like quite a few people are disgusted but not surprised by this behavior. My question to them: has it changed / will it change your behavior and what you buy? It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?
MrDresden 5y ago
As much as I am for healthy competition, and would love for the revenue cut to be smaller (even smaller than the current 15%), my main concern as a mobile application developr who has focused predominantly on the Android ecosystem is further fragmentation. If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when. If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer. There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)
- josefx 5y ago
  > If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when. If only Google had acted as a good faith steward of Android instead of pushing vendor lock in and closed source APIs in ways that make Bill Gates green with envy. Who am I kidding, their hilariously named "Open" Handset alliance even has a kill switch in the licensing agreements for anyone even thinking about competing with its services.
lots2learn 5y ago
Can someone help me underatand: how is Google/Apple's app store fee different than when a game console company charges game developers a licensing fee to put their game on their console?
- Jensson 5y ago
  Why do people bring that up? Phone market is orders of magnitude bigger, bigger more important markets face more scrutiny.
  - lots2learn 5y ago
    Ok so no difference yeah?
    - Siira 5y ago
      I personally don't find the rent seeking in consoles acceptable either, but there are some important differences; Consoles are essentially subsidized PCs nowadays, so the seller is giving away the hardware and benefitting from long-term sale commissions. PCs are essentially open consoles, and most games are available on PCs as well. Just releasing a game for PCs is also a big enough market that companies can turn a profit without ever paying rent to the console platforms. Consoles also don't shamelessly spy on their owners, which is a most critical difference.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
karaterobot 5y ago
Let's say the allegations are true, and that they violate either Sherman, Cartwright, or the California unfair competition laws. Do the developers who accepted money from Google suffer any consequences?
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
This kind of collusion is shown to occur regularly in every industry eventually, every single time. History repeats itself over and over again. Yet tons of people continue to believe in and join the chorus about the wonders of capitalism, the free market and competition whenever any sort of government antitrust intervention or regulations are proposed. Its easy to defend capitalism in black and white terms as opposed to communism/socialism while completely ignoring the vast middle ground between 0 government oversight and total control. I hope these stupid tactics are one day broadly recognized by voters..
sirjaz 5y ago
Now this maybe why windows phone failed. It was gaining market share in other countries outside the US.
specialist 5y ago
In broadcasting, the publishers bought off the distributors at the expense of creators, aka payola. Which was eventually prohibited, but continued nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola I'm struggling to articulate a payola analog for internet. I'll revisit Stratechery's Aggregation Theory, see how closely it fits. https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/ Meanwhile, if the tech titans want to claim the protections for platforms afforded by Section 230, they should probably stop acting like publishers. (aka having your cake and eating it too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
belter 5y ago
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21046008-epic-v-google-unredacted-complaint#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21046008-epic-v-goog...
fomine3 5y ago
Meanwhile Apple don't need to do things like that because they ban alternative stores from a day 1. I wonder is both evil.

688 points by davweb 5y ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html

> Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate." > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." > That is a damning little piece of evidence. Looks like it’s exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s

draw_down 5y ago
And as we all know, everything between Google and Apple has remained exactly as it was in 2010
defaulty 5y ago
In business school lingo, this is called 'coopetition' which is just a portmanteau of the two positions: cooperation & competition.
- eloff 5y ago
  I can't tell if this is sarcasm or serious, so I looked it up. It's for real.
  - rainbowzootsuit 5y ago
    I'm not sure that they invented the term but it was, and probably still is, prominent in the F.I.R.S.T. robotics competition. At least in that context, as a mentor, I thought it was a decent message for the students. Work together to get the robots as good as possible so that you had an enjoyable competition. https://www.firstinspires.org/ https://www.firstinspires.org/
- travoc 5y ago
  In the DOJ’s world, it’s called collusion.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    I think what the government calls it depends greatly on "donations" and promises of do-nothing "consulting" positions with outlandish salaries.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  first time I read this but I'm not even surprised the term exists .. it's probably a natural and very old phenomenon right ?
beambot 5y ago
They also cooperated on illegal recruiting practices to stifle tech wages: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

throwaway2048 5y ago

We have here smoking gun evidence that both Google and Apple themselves see themselves as a monopoly, see them commenting about how they "essentially function as one company", yet I absolutely guarantee we will get a torrent of comments denying that in this thread, I am sure with a lot of smug pasting of dictionary entries.

arkitaip 5y ago
As always when mega corps are involved we have to at least entertain the idea that their employees and agents come out in full force to defend the actions of the corp. Anything else would be dangerously naive.
- smabie 5y ago
  Alternatively, maybe some people just disagree?
  - howaboutnope 5y ago
    Downvoting isn't for disagreement, replies are. At any rate, the idea that companies with people who would collude in such a major way don't have any employees willing to manipulating discourse on a site like HN... that doesn't even pass the smell test, there is no way that this is the case. This site should have all votes and flags by all accounts made public. No more guessing, no more squirming.
VelkaMorava 5y ago
already happening. It's disgusting.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Thu Aug 19 17:54:55 +0000 2021 1428415009860714500 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/photo/1 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/pho... https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug" that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it. Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Maybe I should have put the line beginning with "Google" in quotes. I did not author that statement, it comes directly from the Twitter page. HN then changed the thread not to point to Twitter but to the Verge.

spicybright 5y ago

tbh, isn't it completely in google's right to do this? It's not a regulated market, it's google's store.

lozenge 5y ago
That's what the lawsuit is about. "Epic’s complaint alleges that Google’s payment restrictions on the Play Store constitute a monopoly, and thus a violation of both the Sherman Act and California’s Cartwright Act."
- LadyCailin 5y ago
  Maybe google should move to one year exclusivity on the apps in their App Store?
  - stale2002 5y ago
    That would be a much better situation than the current status quo. If Google moved to exclusive deals, then that would mean that they would be paying game developers, 10s of millions of dollars, instead of the other way around. The current situation is the reverse. Game devs are paying google 10s of millions of dollars. If the opposite happened, then that would be much better.
seniorivn 5y ago
> Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate." > After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." if it will be proven in court it's a firm base for anti monopoly/cartel case
- samhw 5y ago
  Honestly, I don't think that's going far enough. That "our vision is that we work as if we are one company" line couldn't be a better basis for an antitrust case if they were literally trying to incriminate themselves.

jakecopp 5y ago

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." ... > This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service. Insane reading.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ctvo 5y ago
The new FTC chair, Lina Khan, read this like Birdman, rubbing her hands.
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  Is she more ethical than Ajit Paid?
  - nl 5y ago
    Yes
    - chris_wot 5y ago
      That would not be hard.
  - finebalance 5y ago
    Death row inmates are more ethical than that man.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    Did you think that said FCC?
- sam1r 5y ago
  Shout to bird man!

bronzeage 5y ago

Google and apple shills / workers are working hard on this thread downvoting everything. Literally every comment downvoted. Are Google and apple workers that much common in hacker news? Are they that loyal to their disgusting monopolistic company they feel obliged to defend it with downvotes on some internet forum?

scrollaway 5y ago
I'm downvoting your comment because it's irrelevant, probably wrong, and downright boring to complain about downvotes in the first place, even more so about shilling. I am not affiliated with either company.
- noptd 5y ago
  I don't know, the possibility of companies steering the public discourse for their own gain seems relevant to me.

Santosh83 5y ago

Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that is. True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller, regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one entity. Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tsimionescu 5y ago
> Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well. I have also wondered the same, especially seeing not just the massive spying, but also the shoddy quality and extortionate prices that characterize government software auctions all over the world. Especially as multiple regional and local entities often pay for exactly the same management software. It would seem a no-brainer that a national/regional software institute would produce huge savings, better quality, and strategic advantages if it created a national/regional software stack that could be used everywhere. Alas, I believe that cronyism, market veneration, lack of understanding of software, and the high initial costs are acting to prevent any such effort from even seeming a thinkable idea.
- pyrale 5y ago
  Every time European countries so much as hint that they may look at US tech corporations the wrong way, the whole US administration threatens a trade war. So yeah, that's the reason.

mard 5y ago

In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system. 20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences. I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

agloeregrets 5y ago
The law sees it as they have been paid and blackmailed to see it. There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school if the state considered any sort of App store laws.
- mercora 5y ago
  do you have a source available?
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    https://www.imore.com/apple-used-intimidation-and-lot-money-kill-georgia-app-store-bill-says-sponsor https://www.imore.com/apple-used-intimidation-and-lot-money-...
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Wouldn't that be Apple's prerogative? There's no reason to do business in a state that's hostile to your interests or pursuits. That's not blackmail anymore than the attempted Hollywood boycott over Georgia's abortion laws a few years ago. There are plenty of well-documented violations of integrity to accuse Apple of, but using its philanthropic investments as a leverage isn't one of them.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    "Leverage" doesn't go along with "philantropic".
5y ago

ThePhysicist 5y ago

I've grown pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the Internet as a motor for entrepreneurship. Today it is theoretically still "free" but wherever you go you'll find gatekeepers like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft that keep a tight grip on who is visible on the net and who can offer a service or software product on a given platform. In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you make. This really needs to stop.

zpeti 5y ago
I think this is just the natural evolution of any market. Unfortunately it leads to this. There's not much competition in the railroad market, or the telco market anymore, which used to be massive spaces for innovation. There are two options: - We have to wait for the next technological revolution. - It is simply just more costly to be an entrepreneur. It's not about throwing together a website or app, it's much more costly to break through the existing monopolies. While you can still make a website or app yourself, I think you do need more and more capital to market it.
- ant6n 5y ago
  There's competition in the railroad market in the EU,because they want there to be a market. In particular they mandate separation of infrastructure and operation, and force rail infrastructure owners to give open access to all (for a toll, which has to be the same for all operators). Once you can't use infrastructure as a moat, competition is much more possible. The US which only regulates rail safety but not the market, has a bunch of local monopolies and calls that a market, being in total denial that markets need to be regulated to actually allow competition.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    Are there any indications that a market for rail is actually more efficient?

kook_throwaway 5y ago

Who redacted this in the first place, and how would it have been sealed? Much of it is clearly redacted for PR reasons, and I don't really understand how there could be any excuse for keeping it hidden.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
I think the lawyers from Google got to redact what parts of the filing should be available to the public. And yeah, there's no trade secrets here, just clear evidence of horrible abuses. Glad the judge ordered it unredacted. It's not just about the public knowing: Legislators and regulators aren't privy to non-public judicial information, and this is key evidence that Congress needs to pass strong laws that break the backs of Apple and Google.

lucasverra 5y ago

That is why we need trustless / censorship resistant platforms like “regular” web or the yet to be proven web 3 (led by ethereum)

grishka 5y ago
No. We just need two things: - it should be illegal to lock down a device against its end user - governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  > governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability Do you realize that given our current laws in the US, that this is pretty much impossible?
  - grishka 5y ago
    As a person from a country that's not US... Everything being centralized around the US and other countries basically having no sovereignty is also a huge problem. When two companies collude, it's illegal. When countries do the same, it's perfectly legal and is called a "trade agreement" because it's them who write laws.

moondistance 5y ago

Large companies have massive governance issues. When you get that large, you end up with an endless stream of people nattering on to compromise values for profits. Eventually, leadership gets sick of fighting or misses the impact of a big change. It's all downwards from there (the next piece of garbage in the room appears more quickly). I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments - is to build AGIs and put them in charge. I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting closer and closer. If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere). My two cents.

Sabinus 5y ago

This is clear anti-competitive behavior. Unregulated capitalism is dangerous capitalism.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I wish we did a better job facing this fact as adults. This is the Achilles heel of Capitalism and ignoring it or making excuses only hurts us all. I love Apple hardware, I love Android, but I also love Capitalism and having choice. Living under this economic system requires responsibility to regulate these things.

scotty79 5y ago

90% of things mentioned here should be super illegal and the punishment should be 150% estimated income they achieved through such deals.

dalbasal 5y ago
100 years in the electric chair! This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. It's an industrial structure. The competition is competition for monopoly, a superior & highly profitable market position of some sort. Those are what make Google, FB & so profitable. Google competed with Yahoo & Microsoft for years in search marketing. I don't believe either ever made significant profits. Their "market share" in terms of users may have been 10%-20%. But, their share of market revenues was a fraction of that. Their share of profits was negative. OTOH Google pays (for example) Apple $7bn per year to make Google Search default. That's better than best case scenario profits MSFT or Yahoo could have hoped to make, unless they managed to replace Google in the no. 1 position. Competing is just a lot less profitable than cooperating in a lot of cases. What is Apple supposed to do, say "keep it, we're good?"
- noptd 5y ago
  >This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. I disagree - governments legislate their markets so it is absolutely punishable if defined as such.
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    I think parent’s point is that a one time slap (as big as it might be) as we do with other crimes wouldn’t solve the issue. The punishment has to be more structural, legislating for instance as you suggest, or dramatically changing the entity’s structure as we did with past monopolies.
    - catmanjan 5y ago
      Depends on what you think the goal of the free market/society is, e.g. is this even in our interest to solve - better to redistribute these ill gotten gains to the benefit of society and let the free market solve its own problem - if they do it again, another fine. just like parking /speeding tickets arent considered structural problems

gorwell 5y ago

Don't Be Evil. Project Hug. Your antennae should go up whenever you hear phrasing like this.

erhk 5y ago

Can't read on mobile without a Twitter account

encryptluks2 5y ago
Twitter changed something recently where they no longer let you view most tweets without an account.
- dan-robertson 5y ago
  I think you just need to tap the tweet again to see the thread. But you could also use nitter.

jayd16 5y ago

Does any of this surprise anyone? I thought the custom deals with large companies was common knowledge. So were the pack in deals with Gapps and Play store. What is the new info here?

makeitdouble 5y ago
We shifted from “common knowledge” to “on the record evidence”, which is a pretty big step in my opinion. The new info is that it is now available for legal action. The optimistic view would be that Epic is enough into it to bring more changes than Microsoft’s default browser ballot.

jonplackett 5y ago

> "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." Case closed, no?

dang 5y ago

There's also https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371. (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798, which we've merged hither)

hamburgerwah 5y ago

Not that there was any question about whether these companies are monopolies but will this finally be the evidence that causes regulatory action? Haha, of course not.

henearkr 5y ago

What monopoly? I use FDroid without any problems thank you very much. Now if Google has a program to make happy its customers so that they don't leave... I wish all companies strategies were like that!

anaganisk 5y ago
Great, but let me know when you can install thousands of other everyday apps, like slack? Can update apps seamlessly. And Fdroid is actually used by masses. Last I checked (week ago) unless you root, you have to go and click on every app to update it. Too bad if you had 25 apps. Infact Fdroid community itself complains, its limited in its functionality because there is no store API, inbuilt into android.

101_101 5y ago

Google is another shitty company that employees shitty people. they waited till the payout day to suspend ad-sense accounts so they can keep the advertisers money. also, one of their employees who is very popular here is a creeper.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

So what? It's not surprising, bad, or newsworthy that Google would bribe developers to try to keep them in the fold

anaganisk 5y ago
Yeah sure, let two mega corps which control mobile OSs, to become as powerful as they can. While their app store reject apps with AI and no recourse. Force devs to use their payment APIs. What could go wrong, its not like they’re American telecom companies, only they can be evil and lobby. Devs are saints, am I right?

babesh 5y ago

This is a near industry wide abusive practice. Facebook started forcing companies to use Facebook Credits and then forced a 30% cut. Zynga balked. Zynga and Facebook came to secret arrangement. If you were smaller, you were SOL. EDIT: https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/ https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/ Netflix didn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut. Apple tried to keep Netflix. Eventually, Netflix got rid of new app store subscriptions. EDIT: Apple offered Netflix concessions. https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase... Look at Amazon's bookstore which forces sellers to not offer their books at a lower price elsewhere. EDIT: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-class-action-against-amazon-and-publishers-for-fixing-wholesale-print-book-prices/ https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-cl...

phendrenad2 5y ago

How is this different from giving developers a larger cut of profits? It's a pretty common sales trick to do "cash back" instead of reducing price. If this is what Epic is going with, they're grasping at straws more than I had imagined.

ehsankia 5y ago
It isn't. Epic literally decided to not use AppStore/PlayStore because they weren't happy with how much money they'd make, so Google decided to improve the money game devs make... They just complain because Google didn't sign a secret extra juicy deal with them only.

RGamma 5y ago

Interesting, considering that last time I checked, the Play Store was full of predatory shovelware. This is like another layer on the stack of dysfunction in the contemporary (mobile) gaming market.

anaganisk 5y ago

The silence of googlers when articles like this come up is funny. They jump in like a rabbit, about every google post. Showing off all their google stuff. When things like this come up they pretend they’re busy coding (something something api to help their ad company). We as devs made them mega corps, seriously. Even the worst privacy nightmare inducing API, was coded by someone. Money sure drives everything, people say decentralisation will take care of everything. But Web is decentralised. But somehow we as devs helped few companies to make it almost centralised. The next big tech which tries hard(web3, ipfs) will eventually become centralised again. Companies pretending to be humble, will come in to increase ease of use pull the blanket and repeat. Edit: I understand during the legal case, employees can have life changing implications for commenting on it. Well the cases can end up dragging for years. So for all those years, are we just going to keep silent? I mean if our moral compass is controlled by how corporate thinks of it, I guess we are not free after all. The next big decentralised thing is a compromised dream already. Also if you want to really make an opinion, for those who feel like voicing but cant, make an alt account. Every voice matters.

tssva 5y ago
I'm not a Googler and I fail to see the issue here. I personally find no issue with this.
- anaganisk 5y ago
  When you look it narrow, you will mot see it. But as you start to see the big picture, you start to see the similarities with our past mistakes. Companies that are so afraid of loosing their power over their consumers, will do anything and everything to keep it. If android and apple had an Open Store API, and their respective stores had the power, no problem. But closing their store apis for themself, payments to themself is bad. Do you think we would’ve had chrome and firefox, if IE used obscure APIs? Imagine Internet standards as controlled by Microsoft. They reject legit apps on daily basis without recourse. To keep it more simple, think of how US let its telecom companies have so much power over its communication needs. How it’s affecting people.

adam_arthur 5y ago

Though it's been much lambasted by investors, I think it's inevitable that the US will begin down the same path China has recently with their tech companies. It's pretty easy to see that FAANG-esque companies are totally dominant at this point, and have many pseudo-monopolistic elements about them. Beyond specific names, there is a vast difference in both the scale, and the "ecosystem" or "platform" nature in modern software that effectively invalidates the applicability of anti-trust law as it is written. Going even further, many laws protecting private companies likely will change in the coming years to account for different paradigm that software brings. Sometimes difference in scale is also difference in nature. If you look into the aims of a lot of China's recent regulations, they are actually setup to create a competitive market, rather than have a few tech companies become dominant. Competition is ultimately good for the public, as it leads to lower costs to the consumer, and more incentive to innovate (once entrenched). I don't suggest we go to the same extremes, but it's inevitable we'll start heading down that path, whether it be the next few years, or decades.

Aunche 5y ago

I don't understand Epic's complaint here. Google doesn't want want to lose business to Samsung, so they offer incentives to maintain a competitive advantage.

timmg 5y ago
Doesn't Epic pay money to game makers to keep them (if temporarily) off Steam? Is that materially different than this case? (Is it that Google already has a strong market position and Epic is an upstart?)

richardfey 5y ago

Gotta love this. Marketing newspeak at its finest: "always had programs in place that support best-in-class developers with enhanced resources and investments to help them reach more customers".

summerlight 5y ago

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games. The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thanks to its iron grip on the market until Epic have revealed its arsenal. This is why we need to bring more competitions in the app store market; Even if it doesn't bring any real alternatives, this tiny possibility of competition will force Google and Apple to yield more and more to developers. The first step should be breaking the Duopoly cartel. It's only possible because Apple has no competitions and Google simply enjoys its follower-ship, enabled by their non-aggression pact. Force Apple to allow third party store and payment solutions to dismantle its unfair advantages against competitor apps thanks to 30% fee. This will force Apple to develop Web and Android version of its services which will effectively nullify the non-aggression pact.

Joeri 5y ago
Microsoft tried and failed to make a third alternative and force competition, spending billions to make it happen. As they found out, app makers don’t want to build for yet another platform. It doesn’t matter whether you make an awesome mobile OS, you’ll never get the app makers to support you enough to convince the users, and without the users you cannot convince the app makers. Meanwhile, in desktop land, there are real alternatives because almost everything you’d want to do runs in the browser well enough (for regular home users at least). But on mobile the browsers are locked down, so the web is not a credible mobile app strategy. Linkedin and facebook oroginally tried a mobile web strategy and discovered that mobile browsers aren’t good enough. The lack of real competition, especially on iOS keeps mobile browsers underpowered for apps and maintains the strong gatekeeping function of mobile app stores. For me a possible solution is to force platform owners to allow real browser competition on their platforms (again: especially iOS) and hope that is enough to kickstart a browser arms race like we enjoyed on the desktop a decade ago, with the end result being that mobile web apps become a real alternative and we weed out much of the bad behavior by apple and google because they have a genuine competition for the native platform.
5y ago

avipars 5y ago

Yet gaming on android sucks

sidcool 5y ago

I don't blame Google for doing it, but I do blame anti-trust agencies for turning a blind eye on this. Google is a business and by the very rules of capitalism, it does as much as possible to maintain their lead, sometimes skirting with the law. It's the onus of the FTC to ensure they are monitored and penalized in case of transgression.

Popegaf 5y ago

I'm reading the comments here and it seems like quite a few people are disgusted but not surprised by this behavior. My question to them: has it changed / will it change your behavior and what you buy? It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?

MrDresden 5y ago

As much as I am for healthy competition, and would love for the revenue cut to be smaller (even smaller than the current 15%), my main concern as a mobile application developr who has focused predominantly on the Android ecosystem is further fragmentation. If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when. If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer. There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)

josefx 5y ago
> If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when. If only Google had acted as a good faith steward of Android instead of pushing vendor lock in and closed source APIs in ways that make Bill Gates green with envy. Who am I kidding, their hilariously named "Open" Handset alliance even has a kill switch in the licensing agreements for anyone even thinking about competing with its services.

lots2learn 5y ago

Can someone help me underatand: how is Google/Apple's app store fee different than when a game console company charges game developers a licensing fee to put their game on their console?

Jensson 5y ago
Why do people bring that up? Phone market is orders of magnitude bigger, bigger more important markets face more scrutiny.
- lots2learn 5y ago
  Ok so no difference yeah?
  - Siira 5y ago
    I personally don't find the rent seeking in consoles acceptable either, but there are some important differences; Consoles are essentially subsidized PCs nowadays, so the seller is giving away the hardware and benefitting from long-term sale commissions. PCs are essentially open consoles, and most games are available on PCs as well. Just releasing a game for PCs is also a big enough market that companies can turn a profit without ever paying rent to the console platforms. Consoles also don't shamelessly spy on their owners, which is a most critical difference.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

karaterobot 5y ago

Let's say the allegations are true, and that they violate either Sherman, Cartwright, or the California unfair competition laws. Do the developers who accepted money from Google suffer any consequences?

zaptheimpaler 5y ago

This kind of collusion is shown to occur regularly in every industry eventually, every single time. History repeats itself over and over again. Yet tons of people continue to believe in and join the chorus about the wonders of capitalism, the free market and competition whenever any sort of government antitrust intervention or regulations are proposed. Its easy to defend capitalism in black and white terms as opposed to communism/socialism while completely ignoring the vast middle ground between 0 government oversight and total control. I hope these stupid tactics are one day broadly recognized by voters..

sirjaz 5y ago

Now this maybe why windows phone failed. It was gaining market share in other countries outside the US.

specialist 5y ago

In broadcasting, the publishers bought off the distributors at the expense of creators, aka payola. Which was eventually prohibited, but continued nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola I'm struggling to articulate a payola analog for internet. I'll revisit Stratechery's Aggregation Theory, see how closely it fits. https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/ https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/ Meanwhile, if the tech titans want to claim the protections for platforms afforded by Section 230, they should probably stop acting like publishers. (aka having your cake and eating it too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

belter 5y ago

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21046008-epic-v-google-unredacted-complaint#document/p37 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21046008-epic-v-goog...

fomine3 5y ago

Meanwhile Apple don't need to do things like that because they ban alternative stores from a day 1. I wonder is both evil.