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Google Pays $700 Million to Settle Play Store Antitrust Lawsuit
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No it’s really not. Google licenses its OS to other manufacturers. Apple does not. That alone is a significant difference. There are others.
You're looking at this all wrong. Let's say Apple decides to kick Uber off of the app store. If you have an iPhone odds are you're not going to go out and buy an Android phone simply to use Uber. Uber would have no other way to get their app to iPhone users and would simply loose that part of their business. That puts Apple in a very monopolistic position and gives them power they simply shouldn't have. I'm surprised you lumped Harmony Tizen in as neither is a competitor to the dominant two. Especially not Tizen. Samsung doesn't even use Tizen in it's own smart watches anymore.
These closed app stores are the exact reason a new third competitor will never happen. The Microsoft Windows Phone was by all accounts an amazing operating system that was ahead of its time in so many ways. The problem is that they couldn't get enough apps on their store fast enough and that killed the platform. If a third party cross platform app store popped up it could take it's time to grow. Once there were enough apps this would finally enable the possibility of a viable third (or 4th or 5th) phone platform. Competition is a good thing.
The only aspect Google got wrong here is they opted for a jury instead of a judge like Apple.
Regardless, this fine is just pocket change to Google. They would have this much money lodged between the sofas at their headquarters.
This will be appealed and overturned.
In light of what Google was found to be up to, I am not sure it would have made any difference in the end. If anything, I suspect they went with a jury precisely because they knew they had done something wrong and that a judge would definitely find them guilty.
Going with a jury was a stupid decision because of herd mentality. It's possible some members of the jury had a contrarian view but went with the judgement of the majority because their views didn't matter anyway.
Opting for a judge means there is no pressure.
This will be appealed and overturned.
If Uber abides by Apples App Store rules then it won’t get kicked off the App Store. Play by the rules and everyone is happy.
I think another reason why a third platform may never occur is because developers simply don't want to support multiple platforms. A company like Facebook would have enough resources, but a single dev or a small team?
There's also the question of whether Google will even bother supporting the new platform with their apps. That was what killed the windows phone, them not having access to apps like gmail and YouTube. It's not about app stores being open or closed. A new platform without even the basic apps is dead in the water.
There's also the question of what a new platform could offer to users. Apple has its ecosystem, Android hits all price points, what's a new competitor to do to stand out?
To be fair, taxi drivers having to pay 30% to Apple is nuts and Uber should be excluded. The service that taxi drivers provide happens outside iOS.
Epic wants to open up their own Game Store on iOS which is simply not cool, so it is a different thing.
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I know, but I'm just saying how wrong it would be if they had to pay 30%. Makes no sense at all.
Right but I’m not sure how this relates to Uber obeying Apple’s App Store rules.
You can simply talk some sense into Apple. Apple themselves agreed that it was pretty stupid charging taxi drivers 30%.
There is always an exception to the rule.
As long as Uber abides by the App Store rules then they won’t get kicked off the App Store.
There are rules, but the rules don't apply to everybody. Starbucks also doesn't have to pay the Apple Tax.
Surely Starbucks doesn’t have to pay any commission because their app meets one of the rules that says they don’t?
It's an exception. The rule is you got to pay except for ....
This conversation seems to be going around in rings. Apple draws a pretty clear line between services that are consumed on your device (and therefore subject to 30% cut) vs those that involve physical goods in the real world. We can debate over whether this is reasonable, but I agree with @mrochester that it was never in doubt that companies like Uber and Starbucks would never be subject to the App Store tax.
I’ve just looked around at a few other fast food apps and none of them offer IAP so none of them will pay Apple a commission. I presume this is because you are buying a physical good or service as opposed to something digital, so it looks like the same rules are applying to Starbucks as they are to Greggs and Papa Johns.
Yes, you are completely correct. I mean there's Samsung etc stores as well, but I don't know anyone that has ever used those. Everybody gets their apps from Google Play. Most users don't even know what side loading is and sometimes I work at service desk and most people, even when they were born in 2004 don't really know what phone they're using.
Once I asked one lady if they're using Android or iOS and she was like: "I don''t know. Wait, let me go and ask from my coworker". She didn't even know if it's an iPhone or not.
All of this action against Google and Apple is primarily to benefit developers, not consumers. The consumer experience is likely to get slightly worse as conditions for developers get better, but that’s because developers and consumers are on opposite sides of the market. At the minute, consumers get a better experience because we have huge companies on our side to keep developers in check. If we remove those protections, there’s a good chance things will get worse/more predatory for us consumers.
Well, skipping over the unstated fact of why you don’t want to use the App Store or TestFlight as your distribution system, there is...
Alternatively, you can consider switching (development of at least some apps) to the Web. That’s a choice with a lot of extra commitment but an option for (mostly) easy and simple access by the masses nonetheless.
EDIT: Corrected a link.