• huginn@feddit.it
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      1 year ago

      They lost against Apple and you can’t even install another store on iOS

      Ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell against Google.

      • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’re thinking about it from an end user perspective, not from a legal perspective. The court doesn’t care about which platform gives more user choice.

        Yes, Apple’s system is objectively more locked down and dictatorial, but Epic lost because Apple effectively said “so what? These are our devices, ergo our rules. You can’t have access to them without our say so.” The courts agreed - Epic can’t compel Apple to allow sideloading on iOS devices, nor free transactions through the app store, in a very similar way to how they obviously can’t compel console makers to have third party game stores or microtransaction systems.

        Google is a bit more complicated. Google purports Android to be open (which compared to iOS, it obviously is, but the courts don’t care about that), yet there are restrictions imposed on the OEMs. In effect, Google arguably strongarms OEMs that are reliant on them, which can be argued to be abuse of their market position.

        If it turns out that Google blocks, say, Samsung or OnePlus from preinstalling Epic/other app stores, the courts may not like that and may say that Google is abusing the power that they have over these other OEMs (Google telling Android OEMs what they can and can’t do with their own products).

        Apple doesn’t have that legal thorn in their side, because they don’t impose rules on other phone makers - their decisions are imposed only on their own devices, and they can do whatever they want with those, as they are their devices.

        I’m actually more inclined to believe Epic would win the Google case than the Apple case - courts are always more serious to matters of contracts between companies than they are to what companies are doing on their own devices.

        That said, I think Epic will still lose this one too. I just see a lot of people saying they have less chance here than with Apple, and I actually think the opposite.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    The future of Google’s app store is at stake in a lawsuit by Fortnite publisher Epic Games.

    Epic sued Google in 2020 after a fight over in-app purchase fees, claiming the Android operating system’s Google Play store constituted an unlawful monopoly.

    It wants Google to make using third-party app stores, sideloaded apps, and non-Google payment processors easier — while Google says its demands would damage Android’s ability to offer a secure user experience and compete with Apple’s iOS.

    That’s what Google attorney Glenn Pomerantz suggested in Fortnite court this morning.

    Pomerantz argued that the court should seal portions of an upcoming exhibit revealing Google’s User Choice Billing agreement with Spotify — which lets Spotify use its own payment system for subscriptions while still giving Google a cut.

    “Disclosure of the Spotify deal would be very, very detrimental for the negotiation we’d be having with those other parties,” Pomerantz told Judge James Donato, who is overseeing the Epic v. Google antitrust case.


    The original article contains 233 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 31%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!