'Fortnite' developer Epic has pushed back on Google’s control of the Android app store. The courtroom showdown could force the search giant to offer users more apps, at more affordable prices.
Epic and Apple have already had this battle two years ago. Epic lost. They’ve filed an appeal already. They served Apple and Google at the same time. Google removed Fortnite within hours of Apple doing so. Epic will battle Google, and if they lose here, they will likely appeal this too.
This is correct, but misses some semantics. Apple won because they argued that they controlled everything on the iPhone to give it a coherent design. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to allow 3rd parties to swap out the profitable component from underneath them.
Google on the other hand has always allowed 3rd party versions of things on Android- so Google can’t make the same argument.
(I’m not defending anything here, only summarizing the cases)
That’s fair. I didn’t want to go into too much detail, and there is some information on this in the posts linked article. I still think Google will win this though. While both companies have revenue in the billions, Google has revenue nearly a hundred times epic. That seems to usually factor in to who wins these things.
I’m just baffled by how many people are saying “Google?! Let’s put Apple on trial instead!” Apple has already gone through this and will likely again. This information is spelled out pretty clearly in the linked article. In my opinion, they should all be on trial. As much as I love steam, valve should be on trial too. 30% cut for the platforms the majority of people use (effectively locking devs into using those platforms) is an insult, and it’s untenable for a lot of smaller devs.
These predatory pricing practices are equivalent to highway robbery to me. If we keep saying, oh Apple should be on trial not Google! then these companies win. They want us to be in conflict with each other so we don’t notice the other hand moving.
Epic and Apple have already had this battle two years ago. Epic lost. They’ve filed an appeal already. They served Apple and Google at the same time. Google removed Fortnite within hours of Apple doing so. Epic will battle Google, and if they lose here, they will likely appeal this too.
This is correct, but misses some semantics. Apple won because they argued that they controlled everything on the iPhone to give it a coherent design. Therefore it doesn’t make sense to allow 3rd parties to swap out the profitable component from underneath them.
Google on the other hand has always allowed 3rd party versions of things on Android- so Google can’t make the same argument.
(I’m not defending anything here, only summarizing the cases)
That’s fair. I didn’t want to go into too much detail, and there is some information on this in the posts linked article. I still think Google will win this though. While both companies have revenue in the billions, Google has revenue nearly a hundred times epic. That seems to usually factor in to who wins these things.
I’m just baffled by how many people are saying “Google?! Let’s put Apple on trial instead!” Apple has already gone through this and will likely again. This information is spelled out pretty clearly in the linked article. In my opinion, they should all be on trial. As much as I love steam, valve should be on trial too. 30% cut for the platforms the majority of people use (effectively locking devs into using those platforms) is an insult, and it’s untenable for a lot of smaller devs.
These predatory pricing practices are equivalent to highway robbery to me. If we keep saying, oh Apple should be on trial not Google! then these companies win. They want us to be in conflict with each other so we don’t notice the other hand moving.