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It's more nuanced than that. Apple successfully argued that the combination hardware+software experience of iOS and its app store is "the product", since people
by judge2020 3y ago
It's more nuanced than that. Apple successfully argued that the combination hardware+software experience of iOS and its app store is "the product", since people don't buy iOS for e.g. what bootloader it uses, but rather the wide ranging ecosystem experience and the apps that Apple certifies and verifies through a "feature" of "the product". Without such tight integration of the hardware and software, the product loses immense value to both consumers and developers.
Android being open actually made its own point of being "an OS with other products [app stores] running on top of it".
- behnamoh 3y agoSo the walled garden model won against the (almost) open backyard model?
- 8note 3y agoThe open model has won more openness, which is good for open models
- Jensson 3y agoBut bad for incremental opening of things. It isn't like Apple will see this and think "oh, I want to to happen to me as well!".
- jwells89 3y agoThe way I’m reading it is that your platform needs to be totally open, desktop-OS-style, or manufactured as a single piece iOS/console style. Anything between those two is where the trouble comes in.
- stephenr 3y agoIsn't this just as simple as: if you claim to be open/allow something (alternative stores) you can't then do back room deals to prevent competition with them. As someone else said: Google wants to make big loud claims about android being "open" but also wants to prevent anyone from competing with them.
- Dylan16807 3y agoBut most people don't care much about those claims. If the end result is "Google stops claiming to be open", that's a terrible outcome.
- stephenr 3y agoWell I guess in a scenario where Google decides to stop working with other hardware vendors and just makes their own phones running their own software, their existing hardware partners will have three options: exit the phone business; continue using something forked/continued from the android core as it is "now"; or move their phones to a separate platform (ie webos, or... Samsung had one too, tizen?) Unless every single existing android vendor stops making phones, the result is more actual competition.
- Dylan16807 3y agoThey don't have to stop working with other vendors to stop being open.
- stephenr 3y agoThat depends entirely on how you define "being open". To me what is open about the android platform is that it's used (and even customised) by multiple vendors.
- Dylan16807 3y agoThe openness that the lawsuit was about, in particular. Primarily the ability to add other stores. If they stop promising to allow anything beyond the Play store, you can't sue them for breaking the promise.
- stephenr 3y agoBut that's the point: Google don't have complete control the "Android" that ends up on other vendor's devices. So Even if Google says "we won't allow other stores on <Google brand> phones", that doesn't prevent Samsung/etc from enabling it in their own customised builds.