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I'm not GP, but that's a really good point and one to keep in mind. I suppose the question is, did the farmers market threaten all the other land owners if the

I'm not GP, but that's a really good point and one to keep in mind. I suppose the question is, did the farmers market threaten all the other land owners if they allowed a competing farmers market to open up? Or throw metaphorical wrenches in the way to a competitor? Google's exclusivity agreement makes it much harder for alternatives to emerge. Even with this though, I get that they are funding open source development and need to protect it somehow lest it be stolen (cough by Amazon cough) and made a competing platform. I'm quite unsure where the balance should be.

vkou 3y ago
Your analogy is poor. App store monopolies aren't built on threats. A mall giving an anchor retailer a sweetheart deal isn't threatening nearby malls. They are, however, built on economies of scale.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  They're built on excluding competition. App stores, like payment processors, have economies of scale in the sense that you need a critical mass of users to sign up for them and trust them with their payment info, so you're not going to have a thousand of them, but you could certainly have a dozen. At which point they would have to compete on things like fees and keep each other in check. But not if each platform has only a single dominant payment processor.
- freedomben 3y ago
  I don't agree the analogy is poor. Unless I'm mistaken, Google has made threats, such as "if you include a competing app store, then you don't get any of the google apps, google play services, etc, and you can't use the Android trademark. We saw in the early 00s a proliferation of "Android" devices that didn't have the Play store, and they were mostly DOA
  - vkou 3y ago
    An unwillingness to co-operate is not generally considered a threat. > and they were mostly DOA Maybe those stores should have invested a few dozen billion dollars in building up a comprehensive first-party app ecosystem that made them attractive to users. Economies of scale, and all. Nobody's going to your farmer's market, because everyone's going to the mall that has a Walmart.

vkou 3y ago

Your analogy is poor. App store monopolies aren't built on threats. A mall giving an anchor retailer a sweetheart deal isn't threatening nearby malls. They are, however, built on economies of scale.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
They're built on excluding competition. App stores, like payment processors, have economies of scale in the sense that you need a critical mass of users to sign up for them and trust them with their payment info, so you're not going to have a thousand of them, but you could certainly have a dozen. At which point they would have to compete on things like fees and keep each other in check. But not if each platform has only a single dominant payment processor.
freedomben 3y ago
I don't agree the analogy is poor. Unless I'm mistaken, Google has made threats, such as "if you include a competing app store, then you don't get any of the google apps, google play services, etc, and you can't use the Android trademark. We saw in the early 00s a proliferation of "Android" devices that didn't have the Play store, and they were mostly DOA
- vkou 3y ago
  An unwillingness to co-operate is not generally considered a threat. > and they were mostly DOA Maybe those stores should have invested a few dozen billion dollars in building up a comprehensive first-party app ecosystem that made them attractive to users. Economies of scale, and all. Nobody's going to your farmer's market, because everyone's going to the mall that has a Walmart.