7 ms·

Beeper Mini removed from Google Play?

69 points by pxeboot 3y ago

dotcoma 3y ago
Or else we’ll choose Bing as the default search engine for iOS.
SargeDebian 3y ago
It's available for me, in the Netherlands.
- SadTrombone 3y ago
  The page loads the Beeper Mini listing for me, but if you try to install it on a device it says it cannot be installed. Are you seeing something different on your end?
  - 1f60c 3y ago
    I just tried to load it and got a 404. Caching is fun!
- fyskij 3y ago
  Not available in Italy.
- reddalo 3y ago
  It says it's available if you're using a Google account that has downloaded the app in the past. If you open it in incognito, it gives 404.
- jerpint 3y ago
  Not available in Canada
- kalium-xyz 3y ago
  Not for me, in the Netherlands.
- judiisis 3y ago
  Not available in India
theferalrobot 3y ago
If this was removed by Google and not the beeper mini team I feel like this move is going to make it so much harder for Apple and Google in any future antitrust legislation. Apple was already getting flak in the media for beeper mini, calling in Google to help makes it seem so much worse (even if it was done without a specific verbalized agreement). The obviousness of this makes me wonder if there is something else going on here (or maybe they really are that blatant now?)
- yftsui 3y ago
  "Apple calling in Google to help" is the image Beeper Mini trying to paint, what if it intentionally did it?
  - theferalrobot 3y ago
    Has the beeper team made statements on this? I was just looking around and couldn’t find anything in my initial search at least
  - mavhc 3y ago
    Then Google would say something
- realusername 3y ago
  That's why I like this Beeper mini saga, it breaks the illusion of competition that really doesn't exist between both companies and highlights the enormous power those two companies have.
  - Grustaf 3y ago
    How exactly?
    - realusername 3y ago
      Thanks to Beeper mini, nobody can say "yeah technically you could implement iMessage if you wanted to, it's just a proprietary protocol" anymore, Apple has actively blocked the messaging platform as much as they could. Nobody can say that the mobile apps are open markets anymore, the app would have been rejected on the appstore from the start and is now removed from the play store. Effectively the distribution of this app on mobile devices is in practice impossible now. It also highlights the similar review process and lack of differentiating competitive factor between those two stores. They aren't interchangeable like supermarkets are. We knew all of that already but I like that Beeper mini made it obvious enough that the PR lies of both companies cannot work here.
camhart 3y ago
It loads for me. In USA.
forgotusername6 3y ago
Tangential, but does anyone else think the world has lost its way in terms of standardisation and regulation of pretty much any communication mechanism after the telephone? I can dial a phone number for anywhere in the world from a phone made by anyone and it just works. I can't do the same for video or messaging or really even email.
- baz00 3y ago
  I don't think this is really a problem. Communications have always been a messy thing over time, from language issues to reliability issues to incompatibilities and costs. Regardless of what stands, it's pretty damn good at the moment. I have a pocket computer that talks to people all over the world. So I have two messaging apps on it? I'm not even bothered. The thing is I don't actually really dial anyone with their phone number any more other than close family. Most of the time I will use whatsapp video calls because said other person is usually somewhere that roaming doesn't work and is tethered on a WiFi hotspot instead. Granted that uses name resolution via phone number but it doesn't need to.
  - hellotheretoday 3y ago
    I disagree. I’ve lost touch with numerous casual acquaintances over the years because they went to one app and I didn’t or vice versa. If there was a better effort at standardization it would have been easier to maintain these connections rather than lose touch because some people went to Facebook messenger while others went to WhatsApp, discord, snap, etc and the fragmentation made it a nightmare to keep up with everyone. SMS is the standby but a surprising amount of people hate using text messages or email despite being completely comfortable with asynchronous text communication on other platforms. It makes no sense to me because it is functionally the exact same and the people I have met who have this concern are definitely not worried about things like message encryption Additionally nowadays it’s becoming more common to be ideologically against usage of platforms and it sucks to be locked out of communication because of that. I don’t use meta products because I think they’re a disgusting company but a lot of my older family members refuse to move from the platform. If there was an open standard that allowed for me to use a platform I was comfortable with that could interoperate with Facebook messenger I could live with that.
londons_explore 3y ago
I assume there will be a blog post from the beeper team explaining what happened any moment now...
lencastre 3y ago
laughs in European... side loading is coming Merry X-mas
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  Cries in family support… malware is coming.
  - op00to 3y ago
    I will MDM lock away anything that looks like side loading on phones I might have any reason to support.
misnome 3y ago
They were originally charging money for a service using third party servers without permission and which was obviously going to stop working (if nothing else, when the spam protection kicks in because they had thousands of people on the same device ID). Removing this sounds like protecting Google's customers.
- ranting-moth 3y ago
  > They were originally But they were no longer doing that.
- basique 3y ago
  Protecting Google's customers from what? iMessage?
bonney_io 3y ago
I still don't understand the pro-Beeper argument here. They have absolutely no right to unauthorized access to Apple's servers or network, this seems fairly cut-and-dry, despite whatever "moral" argument people seem to want to make.
- immanentize 3y ago
  I dont believe Apple has ever authorized anybody to use iMessage. If they even had a way to do it that would be surprising.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Many websites would also like to claim that you're not authorized to access them with an ad-blocker, and spammers would like to claim you're not authorized to use e-mail with spam filtering, and malware authors would like to claim you're not authorized to use antimalware software since all those countermeasures encroach on their respective business models.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    Okay, but the concept of unauthorised access to a computer system isn't a new one, Kevin Mitnick and co were all convicted of it in the 90s. Maybe there was an argument before Apple released a statement, but it's pretty difficult to make one now.
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      A line has to clearly be drawn somewhere, otherwise as per my previous comment you could also consider that ad/malware blocking is unauthorized access to websites/malware developers' servers (since you download the ads/malware but then your security solution blocks them). The typical cases of unauthorized access are quite different in the sense that a private system is being accessed and private data may be exposed. It doesn't really apply to iMessage though - alternative clients don't exceed their authorization (the use the same auth flow as a real device and are granted the exact same privileges) and no private data is being disclosed (just like a real device, the user only has access to their own Apple IDs/phone number's messages). The only argument that could be made is that allowing non-iOS devices access effectively freeloads off Apple's server resources, but Beeper did offer to support payment of a reasonable fee and yet Apple never took them up on this offer nor ever raised this issue, which confirms the (expected) fact that server resource usage (which is minimal btw) is the least of their worries.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
It's over, thought that was what the news was 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722246
niutech 3y ago
This is an argument for alternative app stores or even PWAs. There shouldn't be a single guardian telling me what I can install on my phone.

69 points by pxeboot 3y ago

dotcoma 3y ago

Or else we’ll choose Bing as the default search engine for iOS.

SargeDebian 3y ago

It's available for me, in the Netherlands.

SadTrombone 3y ago
The page loads the Beeper Mini listing for me, but if you try to install it on a device it says it cannot be installed. Are you seeing something different on your end?
- 1f60c 3y ago
  I just tried to load it and got a 404. Caching is fun!
fyskij 3y ago
Not available in Italy.
reddalo 3y ago
It says it's available if you're using a Google account that has downloaded the app in the past. If you open it in incognito, it gives 404.
jerpint 3y ago
Not available in Canada
kalium-xyz 3y ago
Not for me, in the Netherlands.
judiisis 3y ago
Not available in India

theferalrobot 3y ago

If this was removed by Google and not the beeper mini team I feel like this move is going to make it so much harder for Apple and Google in any future antitrust legislation. Apple was already getting flak in the media for beeper mini, calling in Google to help makes it seem so much worse (even if it was done without a specific verbalized agreement). The obviousness of this makes me wonder if there is something else going on here (or maybe they really are that blatant now?)

yftsui 3y ago
"Apple calling in Google to help" is the image Beeper Mini trying to paint, what if it intentionally did it?
- theferalrobot 3y ago
  Has the beeper team made statements on this? I was just looking around and couldn’t find anything in my initial search at least
- mavhc 3y ago
  Then Google would say something
realusername 3y ago
That's why I like this Beeper mini saga, it breaks the illusion of competition that really doesn't exist between both companies and highlights the enormous power those two companies have.
- Grustaf 3y ago
  How exactly?
  - realusername 3y ago
    Thanks to Beeper mini, nobody can say "yeah technically you could implement iMessage if you wanted to, it's just a proprietary protocol" anymore, Apple has actively blocked the messaging platform as much as they could. Nobody can say that the mobile apps are open markets anymore, the app would have been rejected on the appstore from the start and is now removed from the play store. Effectively the distribution of this app on mobile devices is in practice impossible now. It also highlights the similar review process and lack of differentiating competitive factor between those two stores. They aren't interchangeable like supermarkets are. We knew all of that already but I like that Beeper mini made it obvious enough that the PR lies of both companies cannot work here.

camhart 3y ago

It loads for me. In USA.

forgotusername6 3y ago

Tangential, but does anyone else think the world has lost its way in terms of standardisation and regulation of pretty much any communication mechanism after the telephone? I can dial a phone number for anywhere in the world from a phone made by anyone and it just works. I can't do the same for video or messaging or really even email.

baz00 3y ago
I don't think this is really a problem. Communications have always been a messy thing over time, from language issues to reliability issues to incompatibilities and costs. Regardless of what stands, it's pretty damn good at the moment. I have a pocket computer that talks to people all over the world. So I have two messaging apps on it? I'm not even bothered. The thing is I don't actually really dial anyone with their phone number any more other than close family. Most of the time I will use whatsapp video calls because said other person is usually somewhere that roaming doesn't work and is tethered on a WiFi hotspot instead. Granted that uses name resolution via phone number but it doesn't need to.
- hellotheretoday 3y ago
  I disagree. I’ve lost touch with numerous casual acquaintances over the years because they went to one app and I didn’t or vice versa. If there was a better effort at standardization it would have been easier to maintain these connections rather than lose touch because some people went to Facebook messenger while others went to WhatsApp, discord, snap, etc and the fragmentation made it a nightmare to keep up with everyone. SMS is the standby but a surprising amount of people hate using text messages or email despite being completely comfortable with asynchronous text communication on other platforms. It makes no sense to me because it is functionally the exact same and the people I have met who have this concern are definitely not worried about things like message encryption Additionally nowadays it’s becoming more common to be ideologically against usage of platforms and it sucks to be locked out of communication because of that. I don’t use meta products because I think they’re a disgusting company but a lot of my older family members refuse to move from the platform. If there was an open standard that allowed for me to use a platform I was comfortable with that could interoperate with Facebook messenger I could live with that.

londons_explore 3y ago

I assume there will be a blog post from the beeper team explaining what happened any moment now...

lencastre 3y ago

laughs in European... side loading is coming Merry X-mas

thebruce87m 3y ago
Cries in family support… malware is coming.
- op00to 3y ago
  I will MDM lock away anything that looks like side loading on phones I might have any reason to support.

misnome 3y ago

They were originally charging money for a service using third party servers without permission and which was obviously going to stop working (if nothing else, when the spam protection kicks in because they had thousands of people on the same device ID). Removing this sounds like protecting Google's customers.

ranting-moth 3y ago
> They were originally But they were no longer doing that.
basique 3y ago
Protecting Google's customers from what? iMessage?

bonney_io 3y ago

I still don't understand the pro-Beeper argument here. They have absolutely no right to unauthorized access to Apple's servers or network, this seems fairly cut-and-dry, despite whatever "moral" argument people seem to want to make.

immanentize 3y ago
I dont believe Apple has ever authorized anybody to use iMessage. If they even had a way to do it that would be surprising.
Nextgrid 3y ago
Many websites would also like to claim that you're not authorized to access them with an ad-blocker, and spammers would like to claim you're not authorized to use e-mail with spam filtering, and malware authors would like to claim you're not authorized to use antimalware software since all those countermeasures encroach on their respective business models.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  Okay, but the concept of unauthorised access to a computer system isn't a new one, Kevin Mitnick and co were all convicted of it in the 90s. Maybe there was an argument before Apple released a statement, but it's pretty difficult to make one now.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    A line has to clearly be drawn somewhere, otherwise as per my previous comment you could also consider that ad/malware blocking is unauthorized access to websites/malware developers' servers (since you download the ads/malware but then your security solution blocks them). The typical cases of unauthorized access are quite different in the sense that a private system is being accessed and private data may be exposed. It doesn't really apply to iMessage though - alternative clients don't exceed their authorization (the use the same auth flow as a real device and are granted the exact same privileges) and no private data is being disclosed (just like a real device, the user only has access to their own Apple IDs/phone number's messages). The only argument that could be made is that allowing non-iOS devices access effectively freeloads off Apple's server resources, but Beeper did offer to support payment of a reasonable fee and yet Apple never took them up on this offer nor ever raised this issue, which confirms the (expected) fact that server resource usage (which is minimal btw) is the least of their worries.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

It's over, thought that was what the news was 3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38722246

niutech 3y ago

This is an argument for alternative app stores or even PWAs. There shouldn't be a single guardian telling me what I can install on my phone.