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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 ar
by 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 agoThey'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 agoI 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 agoAn 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.