5 ms·

Epic vs. Google judge says he'll 'tear the barriers down' on Google's app store

45 points by jnord 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
lolinder 2y ago
There's a tragic irony to the fact that Google lost to Epic while Apple won. I choose Android over iOS precisely because there aren't barriers to installing whatever I want. I give up a lot of creature comforts and integrations that iOS users take for granted in order to be a part of an ecosystem where I can count on always being able to install apps that I write for my own use without getting approval from a gatekeeper. And yet, here we are, with Apple getting a free pass from the US court system because they were completely locked down, while Google's systems get ripped open by a court because they were open enough that they could be anti-competitive. I worry that decisions like this will backfire horribly—that they'll create an environment where something like Android can never happen again, because no company can take the risk of accidentally creating a market that they might be deemed to monopolize later.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  The writing is on the wall for Apple either way
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Which is also a shame, because I believe that consumers should have the right to choose a locked-down ecosystem if that's what they want. It's not perfect, but we've had a pretty good thing going in the mobile phone space from a consumer perspective: There's an option that's extremely intuitive, tightly integrated, and secure, at the necessary expense of being locked down. A walled garden in the best sense—a curated environment that's designed to provide a specific experience and keep out things that aren't welcome. Then there's the option that works okay-but-not-perfectly out of the box but really shines for power users. That system provides all the flexibility you could want (especially when you get into custom ROMs) at the necessary expense of placing a higher maintenance burden on the user. These efforts to dismantle this balance don't seem at all designed to help consumers—they're exclusively focused on the needs of other, typically large companies, and I strongly suspect that the fallout is going to hurt consumers quite a lot.
    - stale2002 2y ago
      > should have the right to choose a locked-down ecosystem if that's what they want You will continue to have that right. Simply don't install other app stores. What you won't be able to do is force other people to do what you want them to do, with their iPhones. It has nothing to do with you choosing what you want to do with your own phone. Instead, you want to force restrictions onto other people's phones. > this balance don't seem at all designed to help consumers It's designed to give those who want it, the ability to control all phones that they own. Few people would have a problem with you being given the option to lock down your phone if that's what you want.
      - arrosenberg 2y ago
        > What you won't be able to do is force other people to do what you want them to do, with their iPhones. A bit of a nit, but what they won't be able to do is use their market power to lock competitors out or extract monopolistic taxes for access to their large segment of the mobile market. It has nothing to do with consumers per se - we could be back here in 3 years because all of the app stores have formed a cartel to decide the vig for apps, same way Amazon and Apple did for e-books.
        halostatue 2y ago
        Amazon and Apple did not decide such a thing. Apple and the publishers had worked out an agreement to raise the price of ebooks to be closer to that of new releases to counter the monopolistic cheap-to-the-point-of-failing-authors approach from Amazon. The US Government got involved in that agreement and declared it illegal because it hurt Amazon's bottom line…and the publishing industry is in a much worse situation with Amazon controlling even more of the income than ever, while now diverting revenue to shitty LLM-publishers and away from humans who try to write things that people want to read. Basically, that decision by the government was wrong, and we’re all suffering for it. Upcoming decisions and the DMA are different, but they are making many of the same mistakes as the US Government did with the publishing agreement, in that these intervention will: - reduce overall security on devices that must be more secure than personal computers because they often act as payment devices, personal IDs, and other matters (this is not guaranteed, but many of the moves being advocated are going to lead to bad actors getting to pretend that they are equivalent to the operating system, or provide access to Secure Enclave data in ways that encourage large criminal and nation state attacks on the ecosystem) - reduce overall payment security and convenience for real people (you think that cancelling a NYT subscription is hard, let Tim Sweeney design a payment flow and it will take a personal visit to Epic to cancel a subscription, and even then it will take more time than it should) Everyone focuses on the 30%. It should be lower; there should be wider access and less gatekeeping‡. But if you want it to be zero, start taking on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch monopolies, too as they charge as much and sometimes more. ‡ I think that Apple (and probably Google) need to get over their American prudishness. This would require having better categorization and parental controls that could be enabled by device owners and even providing applications ways of applying parental controls (let Tumblr bring its adult-oriented content back, but enable the Tumblr app to apply parental controls via an API). There are other changes that I would like to see, but absolutely none of them involve letting Tim Sweeney / Epic get involved in taking payment details, because I trust him far less than I trust Tim Cook / Apple (or even Google).
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Apple's case was decided by a jury, Google's by a judge.
  - EMIRELADERO 2y ago
    The other way around.
    - Workaccount2 2y ago
      Oops, yes, I typed it backwards
- h_tbob 2y ago
  How in the world does an open source platform that can be freely copied get hit so hard!
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
What's the state these days of Apple blocking PWAs? As of January they effectively disabled them; has anything changed or is there no online medium for apps generally available? https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/745414 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/745414 Seems like there's some restrictions especially around storage size (50mb) and push. But it's technically possible again. https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/progressive-web-apps-ios https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/progressive-web-apps-ios
mmmore 2y ago
Forcing Google to stop paying Mozilla to be default search engine would surely be terrible for Mozilla, right? That's the vast majority of their income.
- meiraleal 2y ago
  Yes it will be terrible for Mozilla executives.
- echelon 2y ago
  Maybe Mozilla shouldn't have paid their CEO $6.9M per year. Maybe Mozilla shouldn't have wasted so much money on metaverse, AI, chat, social features, etc. Maybe they could have doubled down on Rust, WASM, the browser, and become a developer tooling vendor that engineers loved. MDN, Mozdev, Servo, Rustls (not Mozilla, but could have been incubated), and so many other awesome things could have had so much potential if simply thought through, cared about, and coordinated. The future of everything is making the web first class on mobile. Regulation was always going to catch up and force Apple and Google's hands. Rust, WASM, and Servo could have been the basis of that.
- edm0nd 2y ago
  Seems great for consumers and bad for Mozilla and Google as companies. Win Win imo.
  - wmf 2y ago
    No, Firefox getting canceled because Mozilla went out of business is not good for consumers.
    - effingwewt 2y ago
      It very much is. They will magically start listening to their users again, or fall by the way-side to be replaced, just like chrome. Business running shit needs to stop.
      - 2y ago
arresin 2y ago
> “We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen,” said Donato. “The world that exists today is the product of monopolistic conduct. That world is changing” Very cool!!
- echelon 2y ago
  Do Apple next! App Store, inability to use runtimes, inability to web distribute, requirements to use Apple Payment rails, Apple user registration rails, Apple UI elements, and jump through arbitrary platform changes is equally draconian. Apple and Google are both monopolies. WASM, OS API sandboxes, and web distribution should be the basis for the entire mobile platform. First party should have no unilateral control over a world built on standards.
  - ASalazarMX 2y ago
    The recent Patreon debate shoul be enough for this judge to expand his crusade to Apple. A 30% cut for providing nothing in exchange is scandalous.
- boringg 2y ago
  Weird that a judge would make that kind of statement. It seems very much unjudgely.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    There are many colorful figures in the district and circuit courts, of all political stripes.
  - EMIRELADERO 2y ago
    That's how judges usually talk on the bench. Actual written opinions are much more formal.
  - wmf 2y ago
    I've discovered that judges tend to speak pretty formally in TV and movies while in reality they often use plain english. As a layman I also find many legal decisions more readable than I expected.
horns4lyfe 2y ago
Now do Apple
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41259003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41259003
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
iJohnDoe 2y ago
It’s so ridiculous with Google App Store. It’s full of malware and always has been. There is no value with Google’s app store. Also, I thought Android was about being able to install whatever you want instead of Apple’s walled garden?

45 points by jnord 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

lolinder 2y ago

There's a tragic irony to the fact that Google lost to Epic while Apple won. I choose Android over iOS precisely because there aren't barriers to installing whatever I want. I give up a lot of creature comforts and integrations that iOS users take for granted in order to be a part of an ecosystem where I can count on always being able to install apps that I write for my own use without getting approval from a gatekeeper. And yet, here we are, with Apple getting a free pass from the US court system because they were completely locked down, while Google's systems get ripped open by a court because they were open enough that they could be anti-competitive. I worry that decisions like this will backfire horribly—that they'll create an environment where something like Android can never happen again, because no company can take the risk of accidentally creating a market that they might be deemed to monopolize later.

jncfhnb 2y ago
The writing is on the wall for Apple either way
- lolinder 2y ago
  Which is also a shame, because I believe that consumers should have the right to choose a locked-down ecosystem if that's what they want. It's not perfect, but we've had a pretty good thing going in the mobile phone space from a consumer perspective: There's an option that's extremely intuitive, tightly integrated, and secure, at the necessary expense of being locked down. A walled garden in the best sense—a curated environment that's designed to provide a specific experience and keep out things that aren't welcome. Then there's the option that works okay-but-not-perfectly out of the box but really shines for power users. That system provides all the flexibility you could want (especially when you get into custom ROMs) at the necessary expense of placing a higher maintenance burden on the user. These efforts to dismantle this balance don't seem at all designed to help consumers—they're exclusively focused on the needs of other, typically large companies, and I strongly suspect that the fallout is going to hurt consumers quite a lot.
  - stale2002 2y ago
    > should have the right to choose a locked-down ecosystem if that's what they want You will continue to have that right. Simply don't install other app stores. What you won't be able to do is force other people to do what you want them to do, with their iPhones. It has nothing to do with you choosing what you want to do with your own phone. Instead, you want to force restrictions onto other people's phones. > this balance don't seem at all designed to help consumers It's designed to give those who want it, the ability to control all phones that they own. Few people would have a problem with you being given the option to lock down your phone if that's what you want.
    - arrosenberg 2y ago
      > What you won't be able to do is force other people to do what you want them to do, with their iPhones. A bit of a nit, but what they won't be able to do is use their market power to lock competitors out or extract monopolistic taxes for access to their large segment of the mobile market. It has nothing to do with consumers per se - we could be back here in 3 years because all of the app stores have formed a cartel to decide the vig for apps, same way Amazon and Apple did for e-books.
      - halostatue 2y ago
        Amazon and Apple did not decide such a thing. Apple and the publishers had worked out an agreement to raise the price of ebooks to be closer to that of new releases to counter the monopolistic cheap-to-the-point-of-failing-authors approach from Amazon. The US Government got involved in that agreement and declared it illegal because it hurt Amazon's bottom line…and the publishing industry is in a much worse situation with Amazon controlling even more of the income than ever, while now diverting revenue to shitty LLM-publishers and away from humans who try to write things that people want to read. Basically, that decision by the government was wrong, and we’re all suffering for it. Upcoming decisions and the DMA are different, but they are making many of the same mistakes as the US Government did with the publishing agreement, in that these intervention will: - reduce overall security on devices that must be more secure than personal computers because they often act as payment devices, personal IDs, and other matters (this is not guaranteed, but many of the moves being advocated are going to lead to bad actors getting to pretend that they are equivalent to the operating system, or provide access to Secure Enclave data in ways that encourage large criminal and nation state attacks on the ecosystem) - reduce overall payment security and convenience for real people (you think that cancelling a NYT subscription is hard, let Tim Sweeney design a payment flow and it will take a personal visit to Epic to cancel a subscription, and even then it will take more time than it should) Everyone focuses on the 30%. It should be lower; there should be wider access and less gatekeeping‡. But if you want it to be zero, start taking on the PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch monopolies, too as they charge as much and sometimes more. ‡ I think that Apple (and probably Google) need to get over their American prudishness. This would require having better categorization and parental controls that could be enabled by device owners and even providing applications ways of applying parental controls (let Tumblr bring its adult-oriented content back, but enable the Tumblr app to apply parental controls via an API). There are other changes that I would like to see, but absolutely none of them involve letting Tim Sweeney / Epic get involved in taking payment details, because I trust him far less than I trust Tim Cook / Apple (or even Google).
Workaccount2 2y ago
Apple's case was decided by a jury, Google's by a judge.
- EMIRELADERO 2y ago
  The other way around.
  - Workaccount2 2y ago
    Oops, yes, I typed it backwards
h_tbob 2y ago
How in the world does an open source platform that can be freely copied get hit so hard!

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

What's the state these days of Apple blocking PWAs? As of January they effectively disabled them; has anything changed or is there no online medium for apps generally available? https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/745414 https://forums.developer.apple.com/forums/thread/745414 Seems like there's some restrictions especially around storage size (50mb) and push. But it's technically possible again. https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/progressive-web-apps-ios https://www.mobiloud.com/blog/progressive-web-apps-ios

mmmore 2y ago

Forcing Google to stop paying Mozilla to be default search engine would surely be terrible for Mozilla, right? That's the vast majority of their income.

meiraleal 2y ago
Yes it will be terrible for Mozilla executives.
echelon 2y ago
Maybe Mozilla shouldn't have paid their CEO $6.9M per year. Maybe Mozilla shouldn't have wasted so much money on metaverse, AI, chat, social features, etc. Maybe they could have doubled down on Rust, WASM, the browser, and become a developer tooling vendor that engineers loved. MDN, Mozdev, Servo, Rustls (not Mozilla, but could have been incubated), and so many other awesome things could have had so much potential if simply thought through, cared about, and coordinated. The future of everything is making the web first class on mobile. Regulation was always going to catch up and force Apple and Google's hands. Rust, WASM, and Servo could have been the basis of that.
edm0nd 2y ago
Seems great for consumers and bad for Mozilla and Google as companies. Win Win imo.
- wmf 2y ago
  No, Firefox getting canceled because Mozilla went out of business is not good for consumers.
  - effingwewt 2y ago
    It very much is. They will magically start listening to their users again, or fall by the way-side to be replaced, just like chrome. Business running shit needs to stop.
    - 2y ago

arresin 2y ago

> “We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen,” said Donato. “The world that exists today is the product of monopolistic conduct. That world is changing” Very cool!!

echelon 2y ago
Do Apple next! App Store, inability to use runtimes, inability to web distribute, requirements to use Apple Payment rails, Apple user registration rails, Apple UI elements, and jump through arbitrary platform changes is equally draconian. Apple and Google are both monopolies. WASM, OS API sandboxes, and web distribution should be the basis for the entire mobile platform. First party should have no unilateral control over a world built on standards.
- ASalazarMX 2y ago
  The recent Patreon debate shoul be enough for this judge to expand his crusade to Apple. A 30% cut for providing nothing in exchange is scandalous.
boringg 2y ago
Weird that a judge would make that kind of statement. It seems very much unjudgely.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  There are many colorful figures in the district and circuit courts, of all political stripes.
- EMIRELADERO 2y ago
  That's how judges usually talk on the bench. Actual written opinions are much more formal.
- wmf 2y ago
  I've discovered that judges tend to speak pretty formally in TV and movies while in reality they often use plain english. As a layman I also find many legal decisions more readable than I expected.

horns4lyfe 2y ago

Now do Apple

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41259003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41259003

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

iJohnDoe 2y ago

It’s so ridiculous with Google App Store. It’s full of malware and always has been. There is no value with Google’s app store. Also, I thought Android was about being able to install whatever you want instead of Apple’s walled garden?