Epic Games' Sweeney Takes Aim at Android's 'Fake Open Platform' (bloomberg.com) 28
Epic Games Chief Executive Officer Tim Sweeney testified that Google's Android operating system is a "fake open platform" in a high-stakes antitrust lawsuit over claims that the technology giant thwarts app market competition. From a report: Sweeney, who founded the company that makes the blockbuster Fortnite, took the witness stand Monday in San Francisco federal court to reinforce his claims that Google Play policies are unlawful and allow Alphabet to maintain a monopoly in the Android mobile-app distribution market. The court fight started in 2020 when Epic marketed Fortnite on Android and sidestepped the Google Play billing system and the 30% revenue cut it was taking from app developers.
"We very much wanted to avoid that and do business directly with our customers," Sweeney told jurors. Google denies abusing its market power. The jury trial started two weeks ago and is expected to wrap up in early December. If Epic prevails, Google could be forced to allow competing app marketplaces and payment methods on its app store, threatening billions of dollars in revenue generated by Google Play. Sweeney previously testified in a 2021 trial in a similar antitrust suit targeting Apple's App Store policies as unfair and self-serving. Epic mostly lost that fight, which was decided by a federal judge in Oakland, California, after a trial. An appeals court upheld the judge's ruling and Epic is now asking the US Supreme Court to review it.
"We very much wanted to avoid that and do business directly with our customers," Sweeney told jurors. Google denies abusing its market power. The jury trial started two weeks ago and is expected to wrap up in early December. If Epic prevails, Google could be forced to allow competing app marketplaces and payment methods on its app store, threatening billions of dollars in revenue generated by Google Play. Sweeney previously testified in a 2021 trial in a similar antitrust suit targeting Apple's App Store policies as unfair and self-serving. Epic mostly lost that fight, which was decided by a federal judge in Oakland, California, after a trial. An appeals court upheld the judge's ruling and Epic is now asking the US Supreme Court to review it.
If anyone could, Epic would be the one (Score:4, Insightful)
If there was a company or entity altogether that actually could sidestep Google store's monopoly, it's something as big as Fortnite. I mean, consider: Fortnite. Hell, I don't give half a fuck about that kind of games and even I know what it is. If there has ever been an app where people would jump through insane hoops just to play it even though it tries to avoid Google's store, no matter how inconvenient Google may make it, this would be it. This would be the app that people would do ANYTHING, including climbing over their grandma's corpse and sacrifice their firstborn, just to play it.
That this has a problem with the hurdles Google puts between you and playing your games on your android phone without Google getting a cut speaks volumes.
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If there was a company or entity altogether that actually could sidestep Google store's monopoly, it's something as big as Fortnite.
No the company you're looking for is called Spotify.
no matter how inconvenient Google may make it
There's nothing inconvenient about a single popup asking you if you wish to install something. It is literally less convenient to install *anything* on a PC.
what's F-droid if not an alternate app store? (Score:3)
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95% trash
You underestimate. It is like 99.9999999999% trash.
Re: what's F-droid if not an alternate app store? (Score:2)
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Even the app for my new Bose earbuds ($200+) works extremely slowly when it works at all.
The obvious question is why earbuds require an app. At most, I could maybe see some sort of audio controls plug-in that lets you switch modes or something, but nothing as big as an app, but really, there should be standards for types of controls and how to pass names of options from the device into the UI so that you don't need to install software for it at all.
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Horseshit that there wasn't a PC app to do the same, or that the app had ads plastered in it.
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Most of them have been created for older Android versions and abandoned since then.
Re: what's F-droid if not an alternate app store? (Score:2)
I use Droidify for my FOSS apps (I adore the SimpleMobileTools suite, nextcloud, syncthing, kdeconnect, OsmAnd,...), Aurora Store as admittedly a proxy for Play Store.
If only developers released more of their apps outside of Play Store.. For example, they could set up their own repositories à la Debian or Ubuntu' PPA's.
Because [b]it's by releasing apps only in Play Store that all this power is given to Google. Just set up your own repo's already, even if your app is corporate or closed source[/b]. ktx.
Sweeney is a leech (Score:3, Insightful)
Sweeney should be grateful to pay the 30% commission to the companies that let him found his company and make his billions.
If he wants to sell his software and pay no commission to the system makers on the sales, he should make his own gaming system and let other game makers use it for free.
Alternative app stores a solution perhaps? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are quite a few alternatives [wikipedia.org] to the play store. Epic apparently thinks the play store is a monopoly, but clearly there are alternatives which function just as well.
On top of that, side loading is also a thing on Android.
All they need to do is to provide instructions on their website and they're all set.
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Just because I can sideload the EXACT same garbage on my phone, doesn't mean it is the better option.
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You'd think it would be even more obvious by now that this isn't what Epic wants.
What Epic wants is for Google to do the work but for Google to foot their bill.
Epics smear campaign was less obvious when directed at Apple, since apple really does force you into one option for both distribution and payment.
But it was still pretty clear.
Epic found out right quick that most people do not agree with them that paying for app hosting/distribution at their scale was unfair or unreasonable.
That's why they changed th
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On top of that, side loading is also a thing on Android.
All they need to do is to provide instructions on their website and they're all set.
Epic has their own store for Android and provides instructions for it.
See: https://www.fortnite.com/mobil... [fortnite.com]
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Epic apparently thinks the play store is a monopoly, but clearly there are alternatives which function just as well.
The law doesn't consider the complete lack of alternatives when definition whether something is an abuse of market power. Note that I didn't say the word monopoly, the law doesn't use that word either. Just because alternatives exist doesn't mean the Play Store doesn't fall afoul of antitrust laws.
This has been tested in court several times and the practices around the Play Store have been found to be an abuse of market power.
That said Fortnite can go fuck off. Entitled Sweeny is just upset that other peopl
wat (Score:3)
If Epic prevails, Google could be forced to allow competing app marketplaces and payment methods on its app store, threatening billions of dollars in revenue generated by Google Play.
This summary is trash (as usual) because you can already do these things. In fact in Android 12 third party app stores can do everything Google Play store can do, including unattended updates. There is absolutely nothing preventing Epic from selling their software to people through another mechanism other than Google Play. NOTHING AT ALL.
Consequently either the complaint must have other critical details, or this is just total bullshit. But you can't tell from the summary, and I can't tell from the story either because it's Bloomberg bullshit.
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Re: wat (Score:2)
Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the summary. That sounds obviously anticompetitive if true.
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Yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the summary. That sounds obviously anticompetitive if true.
Google has already been found guilty and fined for similar practices in the EU vs Google case involving Samsung and the Bing search engine. For this point and this point alone Epic gets the benefit of doubt from me as it would be on brand for what Google has done in the past.
That said I hope Epic fails on all other claims. They shouldn't magically get access to someone else's service for free.
Who cares (Score:2)
Samsung? (Score:2)
I've only owned two Samsung devices but they both came with the Galaxy Store installed along with the Play Store. Is this a Samsung special deal?
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On Windows no one complains about the Microsoft Store policies because they're used to snagging installation files from a webpage.
I do, because that is becoming a harder thing to find. Okular is already like that. I don't see it being much longer that VS Code will go that route on Windows.
TIL (Score:2)
Today I learned that Android is an open platform. Is it even advertised as such, do the users care? I though OEMs picked up Android because it is very easy to hook up to Google's infrastructure and the assumption is that is exactly what customers buying a cheap ass phone want. I know I wouldn't buy a phone that only connected to Rando QQ Sussy Play App Play Store World Xtreme.
If the lost against Apple.... (Score:2)