Google originally did not want to make any money from Android's app store (www.androidauthority.com)
from throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 14:20
https://lemmy.nz/post/3396020

#technology

threaded - newest

JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz on 15 Nov 2023 14:24 next collapse

I mean they make money syphoning personal data, they could have left everything free I guess

themurphy@lemmy.world on 16 Nov 2023 08:04 collapse

That’s the thing with big mega corps. They could lower prices, make some products free, give more to app makers in this case - and it won’t hurt a single person in their firm.

But they won’t. They just want a higher green number, that’s so high it’s not possible to spend in a lifetime.

And you get nothing, because they won’t even pay their taxes.

wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 14:30 next collapse

And shareholders were originally happy with their profits

avidamoeba@lemmy.ca on 15 Nov 2023 15:20 collapse

Narrator: They never were.

logicbomb@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 14:54 next collapse

Of course they make bank on their app store. It’s a monopoly.

TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 16:05 collapse

It is not a monopoly. They have Apple as a major competitor and Google allows sideloading within their own ecosystem.

Apple is the one where a monopoly is starting to become a concern, especially as their app ecosystem is completely locked down.

logicbomb@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 16:23 next collapse

This is from wikipedia: “In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with a decrease in social surplus.” As a side note, I find it really distasteful when people say, “It is not a monopoly,” because it adds nothing to the conversation, and is almost always wrong.

TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 16:53 collapse

And tossing a Wikipedia quote at me doesn’t make what I said incorrect, either. Google allows (and has) numerous third-party app stores on their devices, some of which are completely free. The app store that Google themselves operate also has lower fees and looser restrictions than Apple’s own store. Android is also an open-source platform that allows sideloading of thirdparty applications. Most device manufacturers heavily modify it to suit their needs.

Anecdotally: I have used Android phones for most of my smartphone-owning life and have recently been using iPhones for the past few years. Apple’s app situation is an absolute joke. It is so incredibly expensive and locked down that the app store is almost completely useless unless you are ok with paying monthly sub fees for even the most basic of apps. Apple is literally fighting a court battle with the EU right now over their app store in which the court branded it as a monopolized service.

logicbomb@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 17:00 next collapse

Google allows (and has) numerous third-party app stores on their devices, some of which are completely free. The app store that Google themselves operate also has lower fees and looser restrictions than Apple’s own store. Android is also an open-source platform that allows sideloading of thirdparty applications. Most device manufacturers heavily modify it to suit their needs.

There is nothing about any of that which has anything to do with whether Google is using their market power to unilaterally charge more than they would in a fair market.

bort@feddit.de on 15 Nov 2023 20:39 collapse

Google allows (and has) numerous third-party app stores on their devices,

to be clear: you don’t think, that google has a monopoly on android apps?

[deleted] on 15 Nov 2023 17:07 next collapse

.

AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 17:07 next collapse

Apple isn’t really a major competitor when android has 80% of the market.

ABCDE@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 17:25 next collapse

It has most of the paying customers/revenue though.

AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 17:27 collapse

I don’t know what the numbers are in that regard but that’s quite possible.

[deleted] on 15 Nov 2023 17:50 collapse

.

Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 17:11 next collapse

Real talk: sideloading is allowed on android in the most maliciously compliant way possible.

Google restricts what other app stores can be included with devices that ship with play services

User-sideloaded app stores can’t auto-update apps

Play protect will flag any app that the play store has hashes of, but was installed by another app store. (Developers cannot, for example, upload a list of valid hashes for their apps to Google to prevent false positives here, effectively making other install routes appear as malware if they’re different.)

n2burns@lemmy.ca on 15 Nov 2023 17:58 next collapse

User-sideloaded app stores can’t auto-update apps

I think they’ve changed this in recent versions. While I disable auto-update everywhere, Neo Store (my f-droid app) has a setting for auto-update.

iopq@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 21:51 collapse

My phone didn’t come with Google play services, I installed them myself

n2burns@lemmy.ca on 15 Nov 2023 17:41 collapse

It is not a monopoly. They have Apple as a major competitor

Thank god! Where can I download the Apple App store on to my Android phone? I can’t? Then it’s irrelevant to this conversation around Google’s monopoly on Android.

Google allows sideloading within their own ecosystem.

As @logicbomb points out, just because a ecosystem is open, doesn’t mean a monopoly doesn’t exist. All the other stores are pretty niche and Google controls 90%+ of the market, so by definition it is a monopoly. A monopoly on it’s own isn’t illegal or even bad, and we have to dig in further to determine that. As you pointed out, it’s pretty clear-cut that Apple has a forced monopoly where users have to actively work against the system to load apps outside of Apple’s ecosystem. While Google’s case isn’t as clear many have argued that Google’s Android has kneecapped alternative stores like Amazon’s, possibly in anti-competitive ways.

I personally love f-droid, but Google does not make it an easy process to sideload!

synae@lemmy.sdf.org on 15 Nov 2023 21:37 next collapse

The fact that it is called sideloading implies the monopoly. It’d just be “installing” otherwise

iopq@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 21:50 collapse

Your device can’t run the iPhone apps, and the Apple app store is an iPhone app

I downloaded this Lemmy client from an alternative store called IzzyOnDroid and I’m using it to type from my Android phone

n2burns@lemmy.ca on 15 Nov 2023 23:15 collapse

Your device can’t run the iPhone apps, and the Apple app store is an iPhone app

I think you missed the sarcasm in my comment.

I downloaded this Lemmy client from an alternative store called IzzyOnDroid and I’m using it to type from my Android phone

Technically IzzyOnDroid is an f-droid repository, not the store itself.

iopq@lemmy.world on 16 Nov 2023 00:21 collapse

I’m using the izzyondroid app, not the f-droid app because it’s janky

n2burns@lemmy.ca on 16 Nov 2023 00:54 collapse

The IzzyOnDroid App is an f-droid client…

Fades@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 16:02 next collapse

Hahahahaha

Xartle@lemmy.ml on 15 Nov 2023 16:04 next collapse

I miss 2008 Google

rob299@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 16:48 next collapse

Just because competitors do exist, doesn’t mean much. example: There are competitors to Youtube, yet they raise Youtube premium prices and go after ad blockers and get away with it. I assume it’s ultamately to make money back from Youtube tv price hiles from disney content such as nfl. I do hope it’s not just to rack in more cash just because they can, but that’s another possibility too.

If Rumble raised their prices, they would go out of business, while Youtube would not be as heavily impacted. If it’s determined in court to not be a monopoly, there’s some kind of illegal behavior going on pottentially and that’s what they are trying to figure out in court.

Why don’t people make more commercial products too compete. No one seems to do that anymore. to be clear i’m talking make their own commercial operating system, their own PC, and smartphone lineup.

Come on Duckduckgo there’s your chance to shine if you’re really not just secretly a part of Microsoft in disguise.

HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club on 15 Nov 2023 17:35 collapse

Because it is incredibly expensive and risky to compete in the service market.

Software has been giving way to service revenue for awhile. Both Android and SteamOS are based on Linux, and Android without Googlr has been used to create phones.

Hardware has notoriously thin margins, with non-flagship equipment being really cheap. Hardware margins are so thin that a lot of hardware manufacturers now rely on service providers to subsidize their work.

rob299@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 18:12 collapse

If you just simply make an operating system, that alone would increase competition. The thing is, people don’t go to Linux when they do think of alternatives they go to mac, you need more commercial oses, that’s why apple is number two on most used operating systems on PC.

HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club on 15 Nov 2023 18:21 collapse

If you just simply make an operating system, that alone would increase competition.

Would it? An OS by itself that doesn’t have anything to run has little value. The whole reason Microsoft got its monopoly was because it became the standard for most desktop software.

rob299@lemmy.world on 15 Nov 2023 18:27 collapse

I think so, the reason why Linux isn’t as successful even though it’s free is because it is complex. With Windows, you just buy a windows. WIth apple you just buy a Mac. with Nintendo, you just buy a Nintendo. With Linux, you gotta know how to hack your computer and you got to pick a distro. (i’m exaggerating a little on the hacking part, but that’s how people see it.)

Or maybe we could get a centralised open sourced os that does not have anything to do with Linux, since that’s being took over by Microsoft and other investors in the Linux foundation anyways that have been known to use Macs themselves. Just for the sake of simplicity and competition that actual works for people.

smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de on 15 Nov 2023 17:51 next collapse

Remember Open Handset Alliance (www.openhandsetalliance.com)?

Or when it was actually possible to make an app for Android using open source tools?

Zak@lemmy.world on 16 Nov 2023 13:02 collapse

Or when it was actually possible to make an app for Android using open source tools?

Is it not now? There are lots of actively-maintained apps in F-Droid, and as I understand it anything in F-Droid must at least be buildable with open source tools.

smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de on 16 Nov 2023 15:24 collapse

Android SDK source code is available, in theory and in theory you can build yourself. In practice binaries provided by Google come with restricting licence how you can use them while source is so scattered around weird control systems that noone knows if it’s actually complete source and possible to use.

There was a project to provide FOSS builds of the SDK, but is unmaintained. gitlab.com/android-rebuilds/auto Debian also has android-sdk in it’s repos, but 23 is the max API level now.

I don’t know how F-Droid build apps today, it seems like a big problem.

Zak@lemmy.world on 16 Nov 2023 17:06 collapse

I’m not sure, but F-Droid does state:

We cannot build apps requiring Non-Free build tools, including Oracle’s JDK or some pre-release toolchains.

They’ve been pretty consistent about their requirement that everything be open source.

tsonfeir@lemm.ee on 15 Nov 2023 18:24 next collapse

Said no Google exec ever.

satans_crackpipe@lemmy.world on 16 Nov 2023 13:24 collapse

I heard Google was a non-profit and they care about us very much.

Zak@lemmy.world on 16 Nov 2023 13:04 collapse

25% went to carriers

2008 was different. It’s amazing how much power carriers had at the time.