Dominance of Apple and Google’s app stores impacting competition and consumers (opens in new tab)

I like Apple forcing use of in-app-payments, I like Apple giving me subscription control to make canceling easy. I like Apple blocking app tracking and forcing design constraints.

That said, the 30% weakens their entire argument about this and is a racket. If they want to charge a yearly deployment fee or something fine, but 30% of a company's income via IAP? That's obnoxious and anti-competitive, particularly in cases like Spotify where they directly compete and undercut them in the same market.

Apple is skimming a tax off the top and they're forcing everyone to pay the toll. It weakens their entire argument. I wish they would stop, because I think a world with multiple stores and such would be a huge pain and customers would suffer because of it.

If you think it's a pain to have 15 streaming services or 10 different game distributors all with their own shitty incentives - it'd be that on the phone.

Now, implementing this technically could be somewhat challenging and there is no obvious line to me where the boundary for customisation/freedom should be. But I think a first step is recognising the false choice that you present so that we can move the discussion to the details of where that technical/societal line should be rather than talk in freedom/non-freedom absolutes.

It's not like the App Store even prevents malware anyway. All Apple does during review is run the app and watch network traffic via a proxy and ask "does this look like it's violating our rules?" There's no instrumentation and there's nothing to prevent apps from changing behavior after the review. These aren't loopholes abused just by flashlight apps but even large companies like Facebook routinely abuse them. Don't forget that you can also get code onto people's phones by providing a completely closed and never reviewed dylib to devs and they'll just include it in their apps if it solves a problem for them. This is another extremely common tactic to distribute iOS malware (and another one Facebook likes.) Also lets not forget all of the outright scams on the AppStore and the fact that it more or less prevents the sharing of community maintained software (chat apps in particular) which tend to align more closely with users interests.

There is absolutely no reason not to allow users to be able to enter an alternate App repository and push service in the settings App other than that it protects Apple's monopoly.

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/03/30/trezor-...

Even Amazon (who pushed heavily on their alternative Appstore a few years back) never removed their own apps from Play.

The idea of loving apples walled garden comes from a position of extreme privledge. You have to have lots of money to afford apples ecosystem. The hard reality is just like automobiles an iphone has become a societal requirement to participate in the common market.

You can't install 3rd party apps by default in android, you have to turn it on.

Mobile phones are personal computers, actually of the most successful type. We should have learned some lessons, but no, people come with the same arguments as in the past decades (it's easier, it makes me look cool, I'm lazy). Then, one day, you find that your favourite app has been removed because of God knows what other arbitrary rule has been introduced in the name of the greater good, as undemocratically decided by a private company.

And, please, don't come with the "if you don't like it, choose Android": at 50% market share that's not an argument any longer.

She wouldn't know how to do those things, so this point seems kinda moot.

You liking Apple's ecosystem doesn't mean they aren't anticompetitive.

And really your point is kind of... weird. It's not like you don't have to go out of your way to get third-party apps on your Android phone. And you would lose nothing, if Apple did the same, maybe even more buried in hidden settings and behind disclaimers and warnings. Reads like the typical retrospective justification of any limitation Apple features.

"A single USB-C port? Yeah, I love it! Keeps you focused and mindful about peripheral devices!"

Every god damn time. Beyond bizarre.

It just provides a way to run applications of my choice on my hardware to people who want that.

That was the case when App Store was born, it really did provide the security and curation of Apps. But now that is no longer the case, scam Apps and low quality apps / games are everywhere. They are not as bad as Android but still bad. Not to mention Apple doesn't care about your IP, if someone make an app that is 99% the same with look and graphics. There is no way to challenge that because Apple said they dont take side ( What ? ).

Especially when they hold the majority of market shares. Today, the iPhone has 66% market share in the United States, 75% of U.S. App Store revenues, and over 80% of time spent on the mobile internet. And these numbers are pre iPhone 12, judging from the trend it looks like the current number will only be higher. They cant hide behind privacy and curation forever.

The first option looks far easier.

Feel free to continue using the Apple app store. You can do that, and after these lawsuits other people will have the voluntary choice to choose a different app store as well.

In contrast, Apple retain full control of the phone. You buy it, but you don't control it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19347848

The whole "they only do X for profit" is such a lazy argument, because it can be used to argue any side of the argument if you try hard enough.

I don't really understand the love for Android (and sometimes Google) and hate for Apple. The first versions of Android were a clone of blackberry until Apple unveiled the iPhone.

It is a single setting/message about allowing you to install apps from unknown sources that you can grant for that specific app. You can enable/disable anytime.

> Google regularly monitors apps installed outside of the Play store with their "Play Protect" thing, which is an opt-in virus scanner, except not really. When you install an APK, they ask you for permission to enable Play Protect. If you decline, they'll just keep asking you again and again until you accept either by accident, or do it so they stop annoying you. Through Play Protect, Google is able to arbitrarily block any app they consider to be "potentially harmful". Consider that they regularly ban apps by accident on the Play Store using their broken AI, and that those registered developers struggle to get those erroneous bans reversed. I'd imagine getting a ban from Play Protect reversed is nearly impossible.

I have multiple apps installed from F-Droid and I have never got a single message from Play Protect warning me of anything.

> Google has a full time hit squad of penetration testers called "Project Zero" which goes around checking competitors for vulnerabilities so they can make big scary press releases about how unsafe the competition is (even though Google Play itself is riddled with malware).

I've never seen Project Zero act unethical or unprofessional to gain a market advantage.

> Yes, Android is open source. The operating system on your Android phone is not open source.

Depending on the phone you get. Many people specifically pick manufacturers that are more friendly to open source.

What you’re refering to as Android, is in fact, Google Play Services/Android, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, Google Play Services plus Android. Android is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning Google Play Services system.

Many mobile users run a modified version of the Google Play Services system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of Google Play Services which is widely used today is often called Android, and many of its users are not aware.

There really is a Android, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Google Play Services is the core: the program in the system that is required for full functionality of a mobile device. The core is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Android is normally used in combination with Google Play Services: the whole system is basically Google Play Services with Android added, or Google Play Services/Android. All the so-called Android ROMs are really distributions of Google Play Services/Android!

Wow. That is incredibly uncharitable, bordering on slander.

Thanks think if users had to enable “unsafe” apps on the App Store than that would be fair. The whole “Benefit” from these walled gardens was that they would have some validation.

In reality their walls are revenue funnels.

Google is an ad company, and a hardware/smartphone company, and an enterprise collaboration company, and a cloud hosting company, and lots more.

Similarly Apple is a hardware company which is getting more and more of its revenue from digital sales, subscriptions and even advertising every year. They can and do track their users exactly like Google.

It is naive to think that any company at that scale has your best interests at heart. They will do whatever it takes to make more money, period.

It's possible to run open source android phones (including without google play services) which protect your privacy pretty well. As part of android allowing more consumer control, there's a larger culture of open source apps, so you can get further with fdroid. Open source apps are usually pretty unlikely to compromise your privacy and harvest data.

On iPhones, it's true that the phone itself doesn't track you as much, but there's other downsides. You're unable to use firefox+ublock origin, so far more websites on iPhone will track you. There are fewer open source apps, so it's quite plausible you get tracked by more apps individually. There's no ability to uninstall default services whatsoever, again unlike android.

I think for the default user who doesn't make an effort to search out privacy-preserving software, an iPhone will probably harvest less data.

However, for someone who knows how to run LineageOS, install ublock on firefox, and install apps from fdroid, I think you can get a phone that harvests less of your data with android.

I also think that there are enough distinct data-points on each side of this argument that it's difficult to claim either is better with certainty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distrib...

Last, Google allows you to disable their activity history and other options that may be concerning from your Google Account. Apple has very few options to limit your amount of data sharing.

LOL. Instead of bowing down to one master, you chose to bow down to the other?

And I'm baffled why they're baffled. Is the koolaid that strong and that permanent there?

Until such a beast is released, I'll stick with my (admittedly) crappy and de-googlified Android phone; I simply can't afford to buy a new iPhone 3-4 times a year because they keep breaking.

The other 90% use Androids. They could use "second-hand" iPhones - but those don't work quite as well and stay compatible with the latest apps whereas the latest cheap Androids do.

They sell plenty of things, including these apps

Apple has just as much reason to harvest your personal information and track you in their App Store as anyone else.

> if they bowed to pressure so people can execute whatever software on my device

Who is proposing that? Nobody.

When I'm buying a general purpose computing device (which is what smartphones have become), I expect a significant degree of flexibility in how I can use it, and don't need the vendor to arbitrarily start placing limits on that flexibility to "protect" me. Especially when those limits happen to coincide with the financial goals of the vendor.

Still doesn't excuse being iOS-only, though.

The fact that its now further embedded in an app. owned by international conglomerates is hardly suprising. They're slowly losing what control they had.

Governments are incapable of doing sensible things involving ever changing technology. There are too many things understood by too few people for sensible decisions to be made, let alone worrying about do these things age well and just add to the behemoth of red tape^H^H^H^H digital bureaucratic cloud storage.

Paper systems didn't have these problems (although they certainly had some disadvantages).

The ACCC is one of Australia's few good independent bodies, but pretty much all of the others have had their funding greatly reduced over time. Whatever good ideas they come up with just get ignored a lot of the time, because corruption pays and ineptitude is normalised. The financial watchdog is basically toothless at this point.

The Robodebt scheme [1] is just one of their recent screwups. Interestingly, there's now something similar that's come to light regarding Post Office budgets in the UK from a few decades ago.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robodebt_scheme

You are forgetting the number of democratic countries which forced their COVID app from Appstore/Playstore on their citizens. They came short of calling it mandatory download but mandated the app as entry pass for several services.

You don't use a monopoly powered smartphone? You cannot afford a phone at all? Tough luck buddy(/s).

Only reason these COVID pass apps didn't stick around in the democratic countries is because the apps didn't do what's it's supposed to do; Ironically because the app couldn't be made mandatory download thereby not achieving the critical mass.

I think an incompetent gov is a much more realistic hypothesis.

You're in this thread and you can't find anyone who cares about locking in a duopoly?

However I am still worried that governments basically make us choose between 1/ buying in into this duopoly, or 2/ using slower, decade-old processes. It feels like if you want to stay up to date with society, you actually have no real choice.

I mean, those apps could certainly be open-source and distributed through F-Droid as well. In Republic, these are "public things" after all.

It's one of the few closed source apps I have on my phone and forces me to install a workaround like yalp in order to get it. (playstore requires a google login to use)

I think it is uncommon for Australia to move first, but we do move first sometimes. I thought the recent news revenue-sharing laws[0] are an example of that.

> They want EU or US to make a move first to see what works

It's always nice to know how a policy will work beforehand, but I don't think it's remarkable how rarely Australia moves first. Putting aside cultural differences, we're a medium power in a world with many medium powers, even in the West, why would we expect to be first, ahead of European countries, or North American ones, or developed nations in Asia?

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/australias-ne...

NZ/UK have copied this model and the EU is following mid this year.

The scheme has a special definition for marketplaces so that they can rope in eBay and Amazon to collect for them rather than having to go after every little Chinese eBay seller.

I'm sorry, but it does. Just because they chose not to phrase it exactly as I did doesn't mean they didn't invoke these logical conflicts. But please, there's no need to take my word for it—I invite anyone to read the press release and form their own conclusion.

> it is wrong to equate the existence of controls with the abuse of market power.

I agree that it's "wrong" to equate them, but equating them is a common theme among complaints about Google and Apple's dominance of their platforms' app ecosystems.

You make it sound like the ACCC is inherently on the consumer's side in any matter. One look at the borderline-corrupt Media Bargaining Code would quickly disabuse any objective observer of that notion. It could be argued that the ACCC was somehow incapable of comprehending what an internet link is or how news article snippets come to appear on Google and Facebook. That's certainly a more charitable hypothesis than the ACCC being corrupt unduly influenced by the political interests of the current elected Government. Whether it's incompetence or malice (see Hanlon's razor) it doesn't look good for them.

It feels like the ACCC is telling Google and Apple "lower false positives and also lower false negatives".

They do have actionable proposals, eg "coordinated app ‘sweeps’ by consumer protection authorities", and establishing and independent app moderation authority, but overall the message kind of boils down to "do better simultaneously on every single front, even when they contradict each other".

But in a world that was taking consumer choice seriously would be primarily a job for law enforcement. We don't delegate traffic enforcement to the people who build and maintain roads.

The ACCC are calling on Google and Apple to clamp down harder on what developers can get away with inside their walled gardens. If Apple and Google comply, this clamping down will be seen as anti-competitive in other contexts and used as evidence against them in other venues.

False negatives trade off against false positives.

[1] Calling on Google and Apple to further clamp down on subscription traps and scams;

[2] Calling on Google and Apple to give up control over the mechanisms which have allowed them to clamp down on malicious financial activity including some (but not all) subscription traps and scams.

I'd can see myself using other stores on iOS depending on the store. If Steam existed on iOS I'd certainly consider it, especially if buying a game that ran across platforms included the iOS version.

This is not unreasonable. Apps like netfix and spotify can not possibly pay the Apple cut and stay competitive with apples own services which pay nothing.

Not a single user is going to pay 30% extra to listen to the same music.

I should be able to install free apps on my device without giving up my name, address, email, phone number, and device serial number. Apple's App Store requires all of these.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=bd2b38f1-9b66...

What's required, and lacking, is the political will to prosecute.

If I live in a country with only one phone provider, is that a monopoly? To someone living in that country, yes.

But, I could live in another country, and use another phone provider. See, I have choice, therefore it's not a monopoly, right?

If you buy an Apple device, your only choice for where to get apps from is from Apple's store.

Within that market, they are a monopoly. They control what stores run on that platform, and they choose not to permit competition.

What rationale they use for not permitting alternative stores, what terms they set for apps to be on their platform, those are all different issues.

I can choose not to use Apple's devices, sure, but that doesn't alter that Apple is a monopoly on their own platform.

>Google's app store dominance is not constrained by Apple's App Store, which is only available on iOS devices.

Now on the app store, absolutely everything is crammed with adverts, tracking IAPs, and subscriptions. I can't just install an app and expect it to work because there is always some catch that ruins it.

While really good for security and debugging I can imagine it can be complicated to suport for many less experienced developers used to cooling stuff together in an Android IDE where a binary APK falls out at the end that they then upload to the store.

Mobile web tech could support the overwhelming majority of use cases without jank with a few key, non-impossible improvements. And they would if there were any incentive for platform owners to do so.