> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."<p>...<p>> This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service.<p>Insane reading.
Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games.<p>The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thanks to its iron grip on the market until Epic have revealed its arsenal. This is why we need to bring more competitions in the app store market; Even if it doesn't bring any real alternatives, this tiny possibility of competition will force Google and Apple to yield more and more to developers.<p>The first step should be breaking the Duopoly cartel. It's only possible because Apple has no competitions and Google simply enjoys its follower-ship, enabled by their non-aggression pact. Force Apple to allow third party store and payment solutions to dismantle its unfair advantages against competitor apps thanks to 30% fee. This will force Apple to develop Web and Android version of its services which will effectively nullify the non-aggression pact.
Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that is.<p>True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller, regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one entity.<p>Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.
In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system.<p>20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences.<p>I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.
Though it's been much lambasted by investors, I think it's inevitable that the US will begin down the same path China has recently with their tech companies.<p>It's pretty easy to see that FAANG-esque companies are totally dominant at this point, and have many pseudo-monopolistic elements about them.<p>Beyond specific names, there is a vast difference in both the scale, and the "ecosystem" or "platform" nature in modern software that effectively invalidates the applicability of anti-trust law as it is written.<p>Going even further, many laws protecting private companies likely will change in the coming years to account for different paradigm that software brings. Sometimes difference in scale is also difference in nature.<p>If you look into the aims of a lot of China's recent regulations, they are actually setup to create a competitive market, rather than have a few tech companies become dominant. Competition is ultimately good for the public, as it leads to lower costs to the consumer, and more incentive to innovate (once entrenched).<p>I don't suggest we go to the
same extremes, but it's inevitable we'll start heading down that path, whether it be the next few years, or decades.
I've grown pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the Internet as a motor for entrepreneurship. Today it is theoretically still "free" but wherever you go you'll find gatekeepers like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft that keep a tight grip on who is visible on the net and who can offer a service or software product on a given platform.<p>In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you make. This really needs to stop.
> Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate."<p>> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."<p>> That is a damning little piece of evidence.<p>Looks like it’s exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s
Large companies have massive governance issues. When you get that large, you end up with an endless stream of people nattering on to compromise values for profits. Eventually, leadership gets sick of fighting or misses the impact of a big change. It's all downwards from there (the next piece of garbage in the room appears more quickly).<p>I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments - is to build AGIs and put them in charge.<p>I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting closer and closer.<p>If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere).<p>My two cents.
Interesting, considering that last time I checked, the Play Store was full of predatory shovelware.<p>This is like another layer on the stack of dysfunction in the contemporary (mobile) gaming market.
How is this different from giving developers a larger cut of profits? It's a pretty common sales trick to do "cash back" instead of reducing price. If this is what Epic is going with, they're grasping at straws more than I had imagined.
As much as I am for healthy competition, and would love for the revenue cut to be smaller (even smaller than the current 15%), my main concern as a mobile application developr who has focused predominantly on the Android ecosystem is further fragmentation.<p>If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when.<p>If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer.<p>There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)
Who redacted this in the first place, and how would it have been sealed? Much of it is clearly redacted for PR reasons, and I don't really understand how there could be any excuse for keeping it hidden.
Can someone help me underatand: how is Google/Apple's app store fee different than when a game console company charges game developers a licensing fee to put their game on their console?
The silence of googlers when articles like this come up is funny. They jump in like a rabbit, about every google post.
Showing off all their google stuff.
When things like this come up they pretend they’re busy coding (something something api to help their ad company).
We as devs made them mega corps, seriously.
Even the worst privacy nightmare inducing API, was coded by someone.
Money sure drives everything, people say decentralisation will take care of everything. But Web is decentralised. But somehow we as devs helped few companies to make it almost centralised. The next big tech which tries hard(web3, ipfs) will eventually become centralised again. Companies pretending to be humble, will come in to increase ease of use pull the blanket and repeat.<p>Edit: I understand during the legal case, employees can have life changing implications for commenting on it.
Well the cases can end up dragging for years.
So for all those years, are we just going to keep silent?
I mean if our moral compass is controlled by how corporate thinks of it, I guess we are not free after all.
The next big decentralised thing is a compromised dream already.<p>Also if you want to really make an opinion, for those who feel like voicing but cant, make an alt account. Every voice matters.
This is a near industry wide abusive practice.<p>Facebook started forcing companies to use Facebook Credits and then forced a 30% cut. Zynga balked. Zynga and Facebook came to secret arrangement. If you were smaller, you were SOL.<p>EDIT: <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/" rel="nofollow">https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/</a><p>Netflix didn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut. Apple tried to keep Netflix. Eventually, Netflix got rid of new app store subscriptions.<p>EDIT: Apple offered Netflix concessions. <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase/" rel="nofollow">https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase...</a><p>Look at Amazon's bookstore which forces sellers to not offer their books at a lower price elsewhere.<p>EDIT: <a href="https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-class-action-against-amazon-and-publishers-for-fixing-wholesale-print-book-prices/" rel="nofollow">https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-cl...</a>
In broadcasting, the publishers bought off the distributors at the expense of creators, aka payola. Which was eventually prohibited, but continued nonetheless. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola</a><p>I'm struggling to articulate a payola analog for internet. I'll revisit Stratechery's Aggregation Theory, see how closely it fits. <a href="https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/" rel="nofollow">https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/</a><p>Meanwhile, if the tech titans want to claim the protections for platforms afforded by Section 230, they should probably stop acting like publishers. (aka having your cake and eating it too.) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230</a>
Does any of this surprise anyone? I thought the custom deals with large companies was common knowledge. So were the pack in deals with Gapps and Play store. What is the new info here?
I don't understand Epic's complaint here. Google doesn't want want to lose business to Samsung, so they offer incentives to maintain a competitive advantage.
I'm reading the comments here and it seems like quite a few people are disgusted but not surprised by this behavior. My question to them: has it changed / will it change your behavior and what you buy?<p>It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?
Let's say the allegations are true, and that they violate either Sherman, Cartwright, or the California unfair competition laws. Do the developers who accepted money from Google suffer any consequences?
Gotta love this. Marketing newspeak at its finest: "always had programs in place that support best-in-class developers with enhanced resources and investments to help them reach more customers".
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<a href="https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/photo/1" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/pho...</a><p><a href="https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry" rel="nofollow">https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry</a><p>Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug" that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it.<p>Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491</a>
This kind of collusion is shown to occur regularly in every industry eventually, every single time. History repeats itself over and over again.<p>Yet tons of people continue to believe in and join the chorus about the wonders of capitalism, the free market and competition whenever any sort of government antitrust intervention or regulations are proposed. Its easy to defend capitalism in black and white terms as opposed to communism/socialism while completely ignoring the vast middle ground between 0 government oversight and total control. I hope these stupid tactics are one day broadly recognized by voters..
Not that there was any question about whether these companies are monopolies but will this finally be the evidence that causes regulatory action? Haha, of course not.
I don't blame Google for doing it, but I do blame anti-trust agencies for turning a blind eye on this.
Google is a business and by the very rules of capitalism, it does as much as possible to maintain their lead, sometimes skirting with the law. It's the onus of the FTC to ensure they are monitored and penalized in case of transgression.
What monopoly? I use FDroid without any problems thank you very much.<p>Now if Google has a program to make happy its customers so that they don't leave... I wish all companies strategies were like that!