Alphabet Inc.’s Google was sued by three dozen states alleging that the company illegally abused its power over the sale and distribution of apps through the Google Play store on mobile devices.
State attorneys general said in a complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco that Google used anticompetitive tactics to thwart competition and ensure that developers have no choice but to go through the Google Play store to reach users. It then collects an “extravagant” commission of up to 30% on app purchases, the states said.
These lawsuits will keep on coming, and eventually one will be won – and it’s going to send shockwaves across the industry.
I can’t wait.
“Google was accused of paying Samsung Electronics Co., the largest Android manufacturer, to ensure that the Korean company didn’t develop its own competing app store. Additionally, after Fortnite maker Epic Games Inc. began distributing its app outside of Google’s store, Google “bought off” developers to dissuade them from doing the same, according to the complaint. Details of those payouts were blacked out in the complaint.”
Uhm, Samsung does have a competing app store… so are they accusing Google of not paying Samsung enough? 😛
leech Samsung was required by Korean government to have their own app store. So when you have your countries government give you a legal requirement to have you own app store a party like Google cannot pay enough to stop it.
This is long overdue. Personally I feel security and software installation are a function of the OS and these fucntions should be designed in a none discriminatory way so that any distributor or user can install what they like from wherever they like as long as a standard is maintained. For completeness I mention Risc-V simply to include the hardware element.
In the past when designing my own install and update mechanism this is the kind of philosophy I embedded. It is heavily influenced by the OpenGL ARB and self-hosted multiplayer game servers and player to player mods which used to be popular at the time. I never released anything with this model but the idea of a game engine and ecosystem being an independent standard with developer and user representation, a “shared source” open sourcing of “reference code” while protecting propriatory closed extensions, and open architecture for distribution has stuck with me.
It is not beyond the wit of Google et al to understand the regulatory environment. Indeed, Google has been accused of “hacking” regulatory law with aggressive legal action and Microsoft has only just increased its budget for lawyers handling regulation issues by 20%. Apple we know is not shy of lawyers either or sending in their own private police force which is a quirk of the US legal system. There are no innocent parties here. They have the organisation bulk, talent and skill, knowledge, and financial resources at hand to build things differently but they chose not to for monopolistic reasons. They know what they are doing. It is not an accident.
With regard to my high level design it is not beyond the wit of an update and distribution mechanism to provide a searchable store front at relatively modest cost while the hard work of hosting the item is carried by the developer via other means. In the case of a niche product this may be in the order of 10,000 units over the effective sales lifetime. The cost may be trivial or in some cases effectively free.
High street retail margins of 30% or even 60% are not unheard of but then shops provide added value you cannot get via a catalogue. I can and have bought jewellery direct from the supplier via Ebay and even with Ebay’s margin and shipping it came out at least half the price of the high street. When buying makeup I almost always visit the shop. This is partly for the experience and partly for the exercise. Shops also tend to have their supply chain more secured. With online you never know if you are buying counterfeit. Duo lash glue is horrendous for Ebay fakes. What I buy in the shop whether in-person or via their web site is very definately not what is sold on Ebay. Now you could argue that buying and installing an application outside of Google’s online store is more risky. In practice it’s not a noticable problem. In reality the bigger risk comes from warez and keygens and cracks. Most “scene” groups release clean product but unscrupulous uploaders can repackage them with a nasty surprise hence quality control existing even with popular outlets of this kind of material.
For more premium retail products buyers will often visit the supplier or work with the supplier on quality issues. How is this different from Google providing a back end verification service and providing a secure hash to gaurantee the quality of the download if obtained via a third party or developer hosted servers?
In Google defense regarding third party stores and application installation. I extensively use F-Droid App Repository and that works just fine. Where on for example Apple mobile devices that doesn’t exist. On this front i feel that Apple should get sued first. As for Google Play practices i agree that as an average app developer you don’t have a choice but to be present on Google Play. Hence the terms of doing that must be fair and acceptable by all parties involved.
Geck,
+1
I agree with both of your points. There’s no denying that apple’s restrictions are objectively worse than google’s. Still, they’re both using their dominant positions in the hardware market to create dominant app stores. App store competition has suffered as a result.
Despite all of this though, there’s no guaranty that any of these lawsuits will prevail or be more than an inconsiquencial slap in the wrist.
I don’t mind at all if the result will be more competition in the App Store markets for Android. I do feel that it must affect Apple too. It must be possible to sideload apps on Apple mobile devices. Just as one can on Android based ones.
Geck have you not notice that F-Droid need to be sideloaded these days. F-Droid use to be able to be in the google play store until google changed their terms.
The reality here is google has made it harder for any app store that will not toe the google party line to get to consumers. Yes third party app stores left in google play are really not independent is more fakes so google appears to have competition they can point to.
–As for Google Play practices i agree that as an average app developer you don’t have a choice but to be present on Google Play. Hence the terms of doing that must be fair and acceptable by all parties involved.–
The terms of google play are quite restrictive and getting more restrictive..
Apple makes their own devices this does make it harder to argue the abuse because a person bought product from apple directly with a particular limitation. Google Android most of the time you are not getting that directly. Yes you take on Apple for their restrictive App store and apple will point to google plays terms that third party app stores are not allowed and say why do we have to allow third party app stores particularly when our customers who bought the device agreed to limited app stores for their own protection. Reality here going after google play first is required before you could go after Apple.
I agree that it should be possible to install F-Droid from Google Play and in addition App Store in the future. Hopefully such lawsuits will result in that. I don’t agree that Apple has the right to dictate otherwise.
I too hope that sideloading and alternative app stores are legislated as mandatory. We used to have this freedom since the days of Windows 95, there is no threat to the industry whatsoever.
I would even go as far as a “ballot screen” similar to the browser ballot screen since Apple (and Google to a large extent) have formed a monopoly all these years.
PS: And of course, it would be funny hearing all those people who now say “of course it’s Apple’s right to disallow sideloading and alternative app stores” change course if this happens.
kurkosdr,
I am in agreement, however I think we need to distinguish between “legislated” and sued over antitrust violations.
Ideally we would get fair legislation across the board so that our rights are established and we don’t have to revisit this every time a corporation tries it. But IMHO there’s virtually no chance congress is going to pass any legislation allowing owners to use alternatives. Congress represents our most powerful US corporations first and foremost, And the DOJ, FTC, etc have towed that line as well. Sympathy for consumers is not in our political DNA.
So this leaves suing the companies over antitrust violations, which doesn’t have the greatest track record here in the US. When these cases go to trial the parties involved may settle on mitigations that address the plaintiff’s needs in a carved out way, but still falls short of fully addressing public interests.
Ultimately, I hope for the best, but I want to see results before rejoicing.