A great example of two polar opposite worlds:
- Bandcamp: lets artists set their prices, lets consumers purchase lossless DRM-free files. Mobile site works fine without Google. No uninvited algorithmic feeds ruining your personally curated collection.
- Google: entire business relies on the open web, yet the mobile platform follows a sharecropping model from the 1800s, the video platform pays creators fractions of a penny per view, and everything is nailed down with DRM.
Unlike on iOS, there's nothing on Android stopping Bandcamp from releasing a standalone sideloadable app with any payment system they desire.
Antitrust rules apply to monopolies, and Google has no where near monopoly over app stores or phones, the relevant systems here.
You’re conflating some ideas here. A marketplace owner always has “dominant market power” over the market they own. That’s the nature of marketplace, the owner gets to set certain rules like the types of payments accepted at the marketplace, because that is literally the job of a marketplace.
Google also has dominant market share, since their App Store is the best for android, but that’s legal (keep in mind Amazon, another $1tn company actively competes in this space) - the government does not want to force consumers to use worse app stores. Competition for the sake of competition is not pro consumer.
What Google probably isn’t doing (and what is illegal) is using its OS market power to crowd out other app marketplaces. As mentioned above Amazon meaningfully competes in this space. The closes you could get there is Google doesn’t publish its own apps to other app marketplaces, but that’s likely not across the bar of anti-competition.
Google could've made it possible but did not, that's monopoly.
https://www.xda-developers.com/android-12-alternative-app-st...
On iOS, just as on Android, there is nothing stopping you from handling purchases and payments through your own website and having your app only handle content consumption as companies like Netflix and Spotify have done on iOS for years.
I don't think users really even care.
'Download Here' and it's good to go.
I don't think people think that much about 'viruses' in their mobile.
Some do of course.
Maybe Google should put the playstore behind a developer option flag in the menu with a warning that it's unsafe and see themselves if it'll work.
Some (niche reddit subs) think Musk bought out Twitter just to shit on the short sellers of TWTR that overlap with targeting Tesla, and "just because he could".
Apple/Google/Anyone else trying to limit general purpose computing on mobile/PC platforms is a terrible thing for computing, but thats just my view. The ideal situation is we have a default app store - where the system integrator enforces all their policies, but then a user can voluntarily choose to download a separate app store where that store is run by different less exploitative policies. To make it easy for users, you can have an central store-front which then re-directs users to the different store pages. No different than a "Nike store" on Amazon.
Tim Sweeney is buying creator marketplaces. The Github in each market: 3D (sketchup/artstation), 2D (artstation), music (bandcamp), etc. It's the Microsoft play, but for creatives.
He's trying to leapfrog the gaming industry and build a content creation engine that encompasses Hollywood, marketing, architecture, automotive, you name it. He's actively cultivating skilled creator mindshare and winning.
He's also trying to set legal precedent that siloed distribution marketplaces can't charge an arm and a leg and enforce draconian rules, because his play is a two sided multi-channel marketplace where he wins regardless of where you buy or sell.
The endgame for Tim is huge if it works.
Apple on the other hand has a war against "evil" sideloading. :P
Relatively rich/privileged software developers making their problem (App Stores wanting a 30% cut) the musicians' problem isn't noble, it's evil.
Edit: The way I see it, Tim Sweeney/EPIC is responsible for breaking the status quo that allowed bandcamp’s niche to operate the way they did, which seems a reasonable assumption. That acquisition turned the userbase into a pawn in the App store battle.
Yes, if epic controlled 1 of only two serious video games in the entire world, then yes anti trust law should apply to them.
But that is clearly not the case, whereas Google and Apple clearly are much closer to being anti-competitive.
Pull the app and pull a Fortnite at this point and make people sideload it. I'm too tired of watching this fight over and over again, especially now that they're in the position of actually having a special deal that was given to them (even if it was pre-Epic).
Hoping nothing bad happens to it as it’s one of my favourite places on the Web.
I have of course no idea how Amazon does their deals (just anyone outside Amazon I guess).
I agreed with epic when they made this argument with Apple but that's because the App Store was the only way around.
Epic could just distribute an APK they build themselves. They just can't use the play store. Simple link on a website. Or the app. Doesn't the desktop launcher auto update?
Android is a lot more open so it's just weird to cry foul here but I also understand it does have an effect on their visibility.