Last week wasn’t the first time Google was declared a monopoly – eight months ago, in the Epic vs. Google case, Google’s control over the Play Store was also declared monopolistic. The judge, Google, and Epic have been arguing ever since over possible remedies, and in two weeks’ time, we’ll know what the judge is going to demand of Google.
Eight months after a federal jury unanimously decided that Google’s Android app store is an illegal monopoly in Epic v. Google, Donato held his final hearing on remedies today. While we don’t yet know what will happen, he repeatedly shut down any suggestion that Google shouldn’t have to open up its store to rival stores, that it’d be too much work or cost too much, or that the proposed remedies go too far.
“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.” Donato will issue his final ruling in a little over two weeks.
↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge
I was a bit confused by what “opening up” the Play Store really meant, since Android is already quite friendly to installing whatever other applications and application stores you want, but what they’re talking about here is allowing rival application stores inside the Play Store. This way, instead of downloading, say, the F-Droid APK from the web and installing it, you could just install the F-Droid application store straight from within the Play Store.
Epic wants the judge to take it a step further and force Google to also give rival application stores access to every Play Store application, allowing them to take ownership of said applications, I guess? I’m not entirely sure how that would work, considering I doubt there’d be much overlap between the offerings of the various stores. The prospect of micromanaging where every application gets its updates from seems like a lot of busywork, but at the same time, it’s the kind of fine-grained control power users would really enjoy. A point of contention is whether or not Google would have to perform human review on every application store and their applications inside the Play Store, and even if Google should have any form of control at all.
What’s interesting about all these court cases in the United States is how closely the arguments and proposed remedies align with the European Digital Markets Act. Where the EU made a set of pretty clear and straightforward rules for megacorporations to follow, thereby creating a level playing field for all of them, the US seems to want to endlessly take each offending company to court, which feels quite messy, time-consuming, and arbitrary, especially when medieval nonsense like jury trials are involved. This is probably a result of the US using common law, whereas the EU uses civil (Napoleonic) law, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
IMHO this legislation should come in package and be applicable for both Google and Apple. But i guess one at a time works too. Can’t really see on how on the long run Apple could avoid the same laws.
>result of the US using civil law, whereas the EU uses civil (Napoleonic) law, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
You mean “common law” for the US
Fixing the duopoly is tough, not merely because the companies are so powerful, but also because the duopoly has shaped market practices and consumer behaviors. Those behaviors are very hard to change.
Obviously we need to start by addressing the practice of banning owners from going elsewhere. Owner bans need to stop. Google have been less guilty of this than apple, although chromebooks could improve:
https://www.howtogeek.com/752759/how-to-sideload-apks-on-a-chromebook-without-developer-mode/
Other issues are more complex because google isn’t the one directly forcing us into google’s app store. It tends to be the bank, employers, library, ridesharing, governments, etc who force us to go to apple & google for the apps needed to use mobile services. If I want to use their services on my phone, I have no choice in the mater since they don’t provide the software elsewhere. I can try to sideload their apps from elsewhere but the experience is frustrating beyond the point that normal users would tolerate.
This clearly harms competition, but as a legal matter how do you fix it when the software involved belongs to 3rd parties and those 3rd parties link to apple & google exclusively to download their software? As a lineageos user, I regularly face face this problem. Fdroid works great, but I’ve been forced to get a second phone with google services just to log in to work. Consumers are so helplessly dependent on the duopoly that even assuming a court wants to fix it, it’s just hard to find a path that frees us from the duopoly.
Google like Apple takes a chunk of money for those apps in the store ? If so, this would be a way to create other stores, which take a smaller share.
Lennie,
They could go all out inception with app stores. Everyone up the chain gets a cut. There won’t be much left for app developers, but who cares since they’re just a means to an end anyway.
(I joke, but
Oops. I was going to say this is the way some businesses actually work. It’s like layers of an onion. You buy on amazon from some brand. But the brand only exists on paper with no inventory or logistics. That needs to go to a brick and mortar company that owns a warehouse to ship products that came from somewhere else. If you follow far enough most of it leads back to china, haha.
Really, it would be good if they just operated things like Linux repos. Call it the Marketplace, have the grab-bag of stores, register a url handle other stores can use to be added, and everybody is happy. Maybe a euro-style first-boot question of who you might prefer as the default store provider.
Extra points for the ability to remove unwanted providers, and force manufactures to make bundled providers removable. Moonshot: all apps must go through a store, all apps must be removable. Design this thing right, out-of-the-gate.
The problem with that is that if I (as a user) select amazon’s store, it doesn’t have my banks app. Nor does it have the services includes for my games (ie I’d lose my scores and so on) so it’s not an choice of equal function like in the browser market.
People are now used to pay for apps. The free lunch of linux is no more on mobile. Let them have it and laugh as their world burns. 99cents apps that once was the dream of developers are gone.
> messy, time-consuming, and arbitrary, especially when medieval
> nonsense like jury trials are involved. This is probably a result of
> the US using common law, whereas the EU uses civil
> (Napoleonic) law, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Common law is guarantees a legal process that is eternally messy, time consuming and arbitrary. It also guarantees the law is an eternal bulwark against a future oppressive state (there is always one sooner or later), rather than a tool of it, to a degree that most Napoleonic Code countries can only dream of. This isn’t speculation; its a matter of historic record. I’d rather have something messy and inoculated against autocracy because it involves the common man and woman than something streamlined because the dumb proles are kept at bay.
But each to their own.
In any case that’s off topic because in this case I do agree it is unnecessarily messy, time consuming and arbitrary. Do they use juries in corporate trials in the USA? That does seem weird. How can Google be judged by a “jury of its peers”?
Monopoly law really ought to be relying almost exclusively on clear-cut statute. Its no good pretending normal due process applies here: this is a political decision about an organisation larger than some countries. Limited liability companies, unlike people, exist at the pleasure of the legislature, after all.
Yes I have heard about American companies being found to have the same right to free speech as citizens, but the fact is that a person doesn’t need a certificate from the State to pop into existence.
As such it would make more sense, frankly, for companies on the scale of Google/Apple to be broken up by specific laws passed by Congress, rather than left to judges, by-passing the courts entirely.
The East India Company wasn’t shuttered because a provincial judge said so, it was broken up by an Act of Parliament.
This news is kind of off topic, but I wanted to bring it up to make a point about how having so many companies under the same corporate umbrella can be bad for us.
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/14/nx-s1-5074830/disney-wrongful-death-lawsuit-disney
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/column-disneys-bid-arbitrate-husbands-wrongful-death-suit-has-chance-2024-08-16/
Broad arbitration clauses could be applied to all large conglomerates. Say you became injured in a case involving a waymo vehicle, which is owned by google (technically “alphabet”, but I still call them google). They could demand your court case go to arbitration instead on account of an arbitration clause related to your android phone or youtube.