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It's not the first time Google has been paradoxically punished for being more open than Apple. When you have partners and competitors then there are a lot of pe

It's not the first time Google has been paradoxically punished for being more open than Apple. When you have partners and competitors then there are a lot of people to argue against you in court. When you forbid competition and partner with nobody then the people harmed are the theoretical partners and competitors you would have had, but theoretical people don't show up in court.

MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
Exactly. Epic actually created a third party store on Android, and then Google abused their monopoly position and colluded with phone manufacturers to hurt Epic's store. Apple just didn't allow them to create a store at all.
stephenr 3y ago
Your last sentence almost gets the point: Apple never claimed iOS is an open platform open, nor made it available to other hardware vendors to use as they wish. This isn't Google being "punished for being more open" it's punishing them for claiming to be open and then doing a heap of hidden deals to prevent competition.
- modeless 3y ago
  The point is that what Apple did is as bad or worse from the perspective of promoting competition in healthy markets, but it's more difficult to prove and quantify the harm, so it doesn't get punished.
  - ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
    On one of the platforms it was possible for epic to make a third party app store, and on another it wasn't. That alone should tell any sane person which platform was 'worse'. It's absolutely wild and a failing of our legal system somewhere that the company with the worst effect actually won their own case.
    - stephenr 3y ago
      One company was honest about what their platform allows and disallows. You might not like how they choose to run it, but they did what they said. Another company made claims about their platform (both to end users and to business partners) being "open" and then acted directly counter to those claims, in efforts to prevent competition.

MatthiasPortzel 3y ago

Exactly. Epic actually created a third party store on Android, and then Google abused their monopoly position and colluded with phone manufacturers to hurt Epic's store. Apple just didn't allow them to create a store at all.

stephenr 3y ago

Your last sentence almost gets the point: Apple never claimed iOS is an open platform open, nor made it available to other hardware vendors to use as they wish. This isn't Google being "punished for being more open" it's punishing them for claiming to be open and then doing a heap of hidden deals to prevent competition.

modeless 3y ago
The point is that what Apple did is as bad or worse from the perspective of promoting competition in healthy markets, but it's more difficult to prove and quantify the harm, so it doesn't get punished.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
  On one of the platforms it was possible for epic to make a third party app store, and on another it wasn't. That alone should tell any sane person which platform was 'worse'. It's absolutely wild and a failing of our legal system somewhere that the company with the worst effect actually won their own case.
  - stephenr 3y ago
    One company was honest about what their platform allows and disallows. You might not like how they choose to run it, but they did what they said. Another company made claims about their platform (both to end users and to business partners) being "open" and then acted directly counter to those claims, in efforts to prevent competition.