Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
(www.theverge.com)
from RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 2024 20:09
https://sh.itjust.works/post/26302350
from RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 2024 20:09
https://sh.itjust.works/post/26302350
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/26302348
threaded - newest
But third party stores are already allowed and supported on Android?
“Allowed and supported” is something different then “its possible”. The article mentions some points that seemingly haven’t been “supported” in the past:
Thanks Mr. Epic Judge
WTF, they can rule Google can’t offer perks for exclusivity, but epic does that shit with it’s game store.
Because Google holds a monopoly position and Epic doesn’t.
That said, the irony didn’t escape me either.
One offers an exclusivity contract in exchange for guaranteed income, the other offers exclusivity in exchange for having your app on their store.
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So they will have the same judgement for apple right?? And not the same bullshit excuse that since it’s even more locked down it’s okay for them to do it?
Apple got away with it because they were VERY careful to go up to the line without crossing it as well as careful wording of things, unfortunately.
No, because apple’s monopoly doesnt count because they’re upfront about it being a monopoly.
Which is stupid, but that’s how it works apparently
The EU is probably working on that front at the very least. Unfortunately the US side may need regulators to carry it forward
This is all about the Play Store though, it has literally nothing to do with competing stores. I use F-Droid today and there are no restrictions from Google about what apps I can install through that store, whether I can pay for apps through that store (some apps have donation buttons inside), etc. There’s nothing stopping Epic from distributing their own app store like F-Droid does even before this decision.
So I really don’t understand what “cracking open Android” means here. All that seems to be happening is that Google is restricted from certain actions within its own store, which is absolutely fine by me (I don’t use the Play Store), but I don’t see any actual changes to Android or third-party app stores.
The closest is this one:
But Samsung already has its own app store, no? So is there any actual evidence that this was ever a thing?
They should place these restrictions on Apple, not Google, because Apple is the one doing all of this nonsense. Yeah, Google should be reigned in a bit, but they’re really not the problem here.
Doesn’t FDroid still not allow automatic updates due to restrictions in Android?
Meanwhile yes the Samsung galaxy store has extra power over other store alternatives because they are a powerful OEM and can modify Android as they like.
Other OEMs (ones that are often not able to use Play Services) also have their own 1st party app store. Amazon is one, but many others exist in China.
Not sure, but I generally disable them in any store I use anyway, because I like to be in control. So I’m not sure if it’s a technical limitation or a technical choice.
So it’s quite possible Google Play has elevated permissions to apply automatic updates. That said, I use GrapheneOS (on a Google Pixel device), so the Play store doesn’t have those elevated permissions (I only use it for a couple apps on a separate profile), so I think it’s not allowed to do automatic updates on my device as well.
Fdroid has automatic updates since this year.
Yes but only through sideloading, this order requires Google to allow third-party app stores to be distributed from within Play Store, i.e. you can search for “F-Droid” from directly within Play Store and install it.
Which also comes with a bit of a positive reputation to truly allow a competitor to rise. Before, non-technical people (read:the average person) saw sideloading as dangerous because of “viruses”, which led to low uptake of Epics own store (Which they did try to distribute through sideloading)
Now if an average person sees F-Droid or other app store in the play store they’re automatically going to think “It’s in the Play Store and vetted by Google so it MUST be safe to check out”
Honestly, I don’t really agree with that. I don’t think Google should be forced to allow any app onto its store, provided there’s an alternative way users can get that app.
I installed F-Droid from its website and I’ve installed other apps directly from their respective websites, just like I normally would on a PC. I don’t see any reason for Microsoft, for example, to allow competing stores to be distributed in their Windows Store (or whatever they call it now).
The whole concept of “sideloading” is just a marketing gimmick for doing the same thing people normally do on other devices. It’s stupid and unfortunately really effective, so maybe they should get fined for that as well. But I don’t think that means Google should be forced to accept any apps that it doesn’t want to distribute.
@sugar_in_your_tea @cm0002 That's the thing: Microsoft Store allows you to download Epic Games Store, Battle.net and Ubisoft Connect from their store. I don't see anything bad with being able to download F-Droid from Google Play, as long as there's a way to protect it from impersonators or malicious apps.
Can confirm, I just pulled up Epic Games Store from within the MS Store lol
And on top of that, this isn’t some startup who has to depend on every dollar, even if you’re right @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works this is fucking Google with a 2 TRILLION DOLLAR market cap they can lose some revenue to make room for some competition even if it’s a tad unfair.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a9f81fce-d7da-45d0-bf2c-8963cad79ec0.png">
I’m not shedding any tears for Google, but we shouldn’t be doing things just because we don’t like the person or group being impacted.
I absolutely hate Google and have spent a lot of time de-Googling my life. But when it comes to legal precedent, I think we should be very careful.
True, but legal precedents can be nuanced
For example, that whole litmus test with the three questions to determine if something is art or pornographic or obscene was borne out of a legal precedent.
So something similar could come out of this, where it’s only applicable if the company in question is X market cap and controlling Y percentage of the market segment or whatever. It doesn’t have to nor should be an all or nothing kinda thing
I suppose that’s fair, I’m just concerned that smaller orgs will be caught in the crosshairs, while larger, better funded orgs find the loopholes. In general, my opinion is that the simpler the rules are, the less likely for your average small org to get screwed, because they’re playing by the same, simple rules as the larger orgs.
In this case, if I create an Android competitor and my income stream depends on revenue from my app store, would I be expected to support the Play Store if it can run it? I think Google would have a valid argument here if they’re forced to support my store on their platform. Or maybe I can start w/o it, but if I get past a certain amount of sales, I would have to, which could mean that I still get screwed once I hit that threshold.
So I’m skeptical and would need to see the law first. I just think, in general, we shouldn’t be making policy as a knee-jerk reaction to orgs we don’t like. For example, I think the TikTok ban is dangerous precedent, despite loathing TikTok.
I don’t see a problem with F-Droid being available on Google Play, I just don’t think it should be a requirement to allow competitors’ app stores in their app store.
That said, it’s interesting that Microsoft Store allows alternative stores. I’ve avoided the Microsoft Store like the plague, so that’s cool. Maybe that’s a good argument for Google being required to follow suit. Idk, I just don’t like the idea of an app store being forced to support direct competitors, that seems like a conflict of interest and I honestly wouldn’t trust that store to be consistently up-to-date.
Maybe yeah, it’s so so fast to search “F-Droid” & hit download. Even prompts (at least on some Android versions) to allow installation and takes you right to settings.
Legislating incentives & payments is interesting, but not sure it’s a huge deal to do the very fastest search with the included web browser and then be able to install just about anything afterwards.
Don’t like all the bloatware that some manufacturers stealthily install and the nag notifications that can’t be disabled but those are separate issues.
Exactly. We should make rules about scary prompts and whatnot, I’m just hesitant about requiring an app store to distribute apps it doesn’t want to for whatever reason, whether that’s an ideological, technical, or competitive reason.
How can Google vet an app store without vetting everything it could serve?
That’s just the perception with the average person, not that they would actually do it
Where does it say in the ruling that the play store has to host and distribute other stores in the ruling? I didn’t notice anything in there about that.
It’s…in the first paragraph
Wow. That’s brutal.
The difference here from my understanding of what I read was that you could now open the Google Play Store and type “fdroid” and the fdroid app could be installed with the single install button.
Yea that’s exactly it, no more side loading needed.
I guess my only question is what then happens when you want to disable the Google Play Store and Google Play Services. Mind you, anybody who uses custom ROMs and such likely does not sign into the Google accounts anyway, so would not be able to download a third-party app store from the Google Play Store because they refuse to sign in. And Google Play requires sign in.
Nothing different. You download the F-Droid APK and install it just like you do today.
It’ll be “allowed and supported” when e.g. you can download F-Droid from the Play Store instead of having to side-load it.
But doesn’t that tie third party stores to the play store more?
What jurisdiction in this?
that is an epic judge right there
He rules
Tldr for those who are confused, since Android already does support side loading and even seamless updates for third-party app stores (like Droid-ify, etc), these are mostly legal changes.
Basically Google can’t force Google IAP as the only method of payment in apps anymore, can’t block companies from advertising how to find them on non-Play Store android app stores. So good changes overall.
Also when you download third party apks, on Android, while it’s still relatively easy to do, it does give bit of a scary warning saying security issues are on the user for doing so. This creates the assumption that Play Store is the only secure way to get apps on Android, and the OS gives all sorts of special security exceptions to the Play Store for that. Obviously other secure app stores can exist, so this can be seen as an anti-competitive method since Google is exempt from their own scary apk install message.
This is a wild downplay of this.
The judge is forcing Google to let third party app stores sell and distribute all the apps in the Google Play Store. That s massive.
You have it backwards. They’re putting third party stores on the Play store.
It’s both, and honestly a pretty genius move on the judge’s part. “Oh you keep finding ways of leveraging this gate to uncompetitively make money, well how about I just mandate that you give access to both sides of the gate to everyone else.”
That’s pretty bullshit, honestly. Being forced to provide the bandwidth to hurt its own business. All while Apple gets to keep screwing people.
Mostly fair, but I’ll push back on the security issue.
Side loading an apk is extremely dangerous, and an easy attack vector.
While there are plenty of malicious apps that make it on the Google store, they do attempt to do some automated and even manual curation. This is fact.
I think it’s wholly appropriate to warn the user that they’re bypassing that standard, if imperfect, Google security coverage. And granting extensive app permissions is done at your own risk.
3rd party app stores may do their own security curation as well, and it’s up to them to communicate that and educate their users on why they still get the Google warning.
If malicious apps can make it way to Play Store, this means it is not 100% safe and make it subject to the same security warnings is reasonable, and not give it exceptions and makes it like the only safe option.
You could make exactly the same argument for installing software onto your computer, it is an attack vector and going through microsoft’s store or your distro’s repos gives a level of curation. So should desktop users be prevented/scared off from installing what software they want because it’s a security issue?
You mean that warning that they all give when you’re installing a 3rd party app? And the warning is more aggressive when it’s an unregistered (licensed?) App.
They all do it. Windows, MacOS for sure. I don’t remember seeing it on Linux, but I’m usually not installing sketchy binaries on Linux.
COOL, cool…. Hay why was the exact opposite ruled for apple?
Would like to know the answer, but feel like I already know.
Does that answer have anything to do with the great vehicular hobo massacre of 1988?
No?
You’d be surprised how often it’s relevant, but kept virtually a secret.
Apple produces hardware for their walled garden, whereas Google imposes their terms on third parties. I can’t speak to how this works legally, but thats the main difference as far as I understand.
It’s no longer an excuse for Apple. Since the EU’s ruling they now have to allow third party stores there: support.apple.com/en-us/118110 and of course they’ll fight tooth and nail against it here, the infrastructure exists so many of their previous arguments around not doing it are moot
Cool, that’s great news for Apple users
The biggest reason is most likely that the cases had different judges.
How the judges see it:
Google forces conditions onto other OEMs. They have to include a bunch of Google stuff on their phones if they want the play store and play services, which they realistically need, that’s just a market reality. They have no real choice but to do whatever Google says. Google is abusing their market dominance to push their ecosystem, and the OEMs have no real choice but to play ball.
Apple doesn’t force anybody else to use their products. They make their own ecosystem for their own phone. If iOS was available on non-Apple devices, and Apple was forcing stuff onto those OEMs knowing they have little other choice, Apple would be getting the same treatment.
Cool. Do apple next!
Especially because they already have the infrastructure to do so with the EU’s ruling, so they can’t make any claims about it not being secure or that it’s not possible
I’ll always read this as the article praising the judge by calling them epic.
If that makes it even easier to get F-Droid installed for the masses, I’m all for it.
I installed it, it would kick off updates for hours every day for 3 days straight, and I uninstalled it. What is so good about it for you? I get not getting the apps through advertised crap, but I really dont think this will effect most users at all.
Never had your issue. F-droid let’s you have apks brother google doesn’t like and won’t allow on their own apk store.
Yeah I’m sure it was a bug, but it stands to reason if someone doesn’t have the time to fudge around with getting the F-Droid app to work on their device, they would just download the APK for the app they actually want installed that they are going through F-Droid to download I would think. Which would install the same way that F-Droid does now.
My guess is the best argument would come from the profit returns for a developer are higher as they don’t have to pay a percentage to the Play store. That said, unless the app has massive adaption, costs would be low to host the download of the APK from their website.
I guess we will see in 5 years if there is enough apps that will choose to move to another app store to make users even figure out it matters. With many users right now they exist on environments that attach to their Gmail addresses that track which apps were on previous devices and install which apps they had on their new device in an easy manner. I myself have moved away from using my Gmail accounts and tried to slowly exit that sphere of influence some, but the mass public doesn’t have motivations to do so. Over 50% of the public agrees Musk is not a good person, yet we watch people post shit on Twitter daily, change doesn’t come easy.
That sounds like some bug that should not occur and would of course be painfully annoying. The main advantage of it are the apps it provides, though. Some of them are not available in the play store (like NewPipe, a very good YouTube app without adverts, if that is still around). It is also a good place to start if you are looking for some new app for a specific feature, mainly because it consists of free, open source apps and you don’t have to sift through loads of low quality software that is riddled with ads, collects as much data as possible, or requires some obscene subscription fee, if all you wanted was a flashlight or whatever.
Yeah it was annoying, NewPipe I actually have installed, I just did it from the APK from GitHub I assume.
Making F-Droid an app in the Play Store would just open it to the same environment eventually though wouldn’t it? Pressures to have ads to make money by sponsoring apps that have those things we don’t like, which ultimately drive us back to installing via APK. It is a win for freedom of choice, that’s true… But in the end I wonder if people would actually move from their currently working platforms. I could see the Play store just scalping apps they downloaded most often and adding them and taking a hit on their portion of profit on those apps to ensure the 99% of Android users still stay on their platform.
I mentioned something like this elsewhere, the Democrat president will make announcements to the people over the next 48 hours regarding their health and safety using a platform he knows the majority of his voters do not support the owner of. Not because the platform is better than others, but because it will reach a larger user base.
I don’t think so, F-Droid should not be viewed as a play store replacement for the masses. I would instead consider it an opinionated store / repository for apps that have to fulfil some pretty strict criteria. This makes it a great resource, and a good complementary resource, because that allows them to be picky and stick to their values. And it enables people that don’t mind the trade-offs to restrict themselves to F-Droid without having to research every app themselves, if they want to.
Most general users would hate the idea of dealing with multiple app stores, but I think some fragmentation like this would have some benefits as well. Note, for example, that F-Droid does not focus on quality of apps: There are lots of little projects that maybe don’t look super polished or are in early development, etc., and that is great. But there could just as well be another App Store focusing exclusively on high quality, feature-rich apps, while taking a more lenient stance on open source code and it being free. Or whatever kind of focus you want to place.
Then again, this could be achieved with a good search function and filters as well. In the end, what F-Droid offers is more choice a better place for apps that Google decided to ban from their play store for strategic reasons.
There are many things I like about F-Droid, but its UI is awful for a lay person
droid-ify :)
They got the wrong phone OS…
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At least they have precident now.
It mentions decoupling the payment system from the store.
Is this really a good thing? It’ll lead to Google relying even more on ad revenue.
if Google wants paid, they can make a compelling and competitive product
What OS do you use? I haven’t run anything different in a long while. The OS on my Galaxy S4 I think was my last OS I replaced
That means get rid of that fucking anti-sidoading shit they’re flirting with.
My initial reading of the reporting on this ruling suggests it won’t do that. App developers can opt out of most of the provisions, but Google may not pressure them to do so.
Finally.
Could be good
wording “crack open” doesn’t seems appropriate
next you’re going to tell me ‘side loading’ and ‘backdoor access’ sound naughty
“If I have to crack open your nuts, I will!”
Maybe it was phrased like that for this very reason.
🥳🎉
XDA-CHADS, TODAY WE WILL REMIND THEM.
About fucking time
They need to do this on iOS Fr Fr