Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632818/google-project-hug-game-developers-play-store-millions-epic-lawsuit-complaint

by davweb • 5 years ago

688 466 5 years ago

theverge.com

gbrindisi• 5 years ago

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1428415009860714500.html

beckman466• 5 years ago

Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate."
After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
That is a damning little piece of evidence.

Looks like it’s exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s

draw_down• 5 years ago

And as we all know, everything between Google and Apple has remained exactly as it was in 2010

defaulty• 5 years ago

In business school lingo, this is called 'coopetition' which is just a portmanteau of the two positions: cooperation & competition.

eloff• 5 years ago

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or serious, so I looked it up. It's for real.

travoc• 5 years ago

In the DOJ’s world, it’s called collusion.

agumonkey2• 5 years ago

first time I read this but I'm not even surprised the term exists .. it's probably a natural and very old phenomenon right ?

beambot• 5 years ago

They also cooperated on illegal recruiting practices to stifle tech wages:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

1vuio0pswjnm72• 5 years ago

   Thu Aug 19 17:54:55 +0000 2021
   1428415009860714500

https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371/pho...

https://t.co/gq0m2tIVry

Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug" that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it.

Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491

1vuio0pswjnm72• 5 years ago

Maybe I should have put the line beginning with "Google" in quotes. I did not author that statement, it comes directly from the Twitter page.

HN then changed the thread not to point to Twitter but to the Verge.

spicybright• 5 years ago

tbh, isn't it completely in google's right to do this? It's not a regulated market, it's google's store.

lozenge• 5 years ago

That's what the lawsuit is about. "Epic’s complaint alleges that Google’s payment restrictions on the Play Store constitute a monopoly, and thus a violation of both the Sherman Act and California’s Cartwright Act."

LadyCailin• 5 years ago

Maybe google should move to one year exclusivity on the apps in their App Store?

seniorivn• 5 years ago

Larry Page told Steve Jobs in 2010 that "There will always be places we compete, and places where we cooperate."
After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

if it will be proven in court it's a firm base for anti monopoly/cartel case

samhw• 5 years ago

Honestly, I don't think that's going far enough. That "our vision is that we work as if we are one company" line couldn't be a better basis for an antitrust case if they were literally trying to incriminate themselves.

feanaro• 5 years ago

In addition what everyone else responded, even if it turns out to currently be legal, it doesn't mean it should be legal.

makeitdouble4• 5 years ago

That’s kind of the point of the lawsuit, to get some oversight in a mafia and the mob kind market.

stale20024• 5 years ago

Thats for the courts to decide.

And apparently there are a whole bunch of lawsuits against google, in multiple countries.

My money is on them losing at least one of them, in some way.

All that needs to happen is for them to lose a single lawsuit, somewhere, for the statement of "its in their right to do that" to be wrong.

jakecopp• 5 years ago

After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

...

This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service.

Insane reading.

ctvo• 5 years ago

The new FTC chair, Lina Khan, read this like Birdman, rubbing her hands.

tentacleuno• 5 years ago

Is she more ethical than Ajit Paid?

sam1r• 5 years ago

Shout to bird man!

paganel2• 5 years ago

I don't think she has that much power just yet, my only hope is that the powers that be behind US's industrial military's complex got scared into (re-)action by China's recent moves against the likes of Jack Ma and Tencent, they might just think that the Chinese are right and employing that much human capital into what's essential add- and attention-seeking business is not a good military defence strategy long-term.

With those powers behind her she can do some harm, otherwise I'm afraid she'll be just a sitting duck in front of FANG's lobbyists.

Andrex2• 5 years ago

I can see the justification for this in Android's early life. Every Android phone having its own app store would have been a disaster for everyone: users, developers, Google, and even telcos in the long run.

Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.

mdoms• 5 years ago

Has it become "a disaster" on PCs or Macs?

dalbasal8• 5 years ago

> 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores

Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite. Better to just take your share of monopoly profits than work hard competing, unless you expect to win their place.

This stuff is the norm. Maybe we should switch to being surprised (delighted?) when these guys compete at all.

^https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

edouard-harris• 5 years ago

Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE.

It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1]

Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits.

This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely surprising if it was unprofitable on an operating basis. [2] The reality is that search is so huge that it's worth competing in, even if the incumbent has 30X your market share.

[1] https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321

[2] https://backlinko.com/bing-users

easrng• 5 years ago

My phone has a hidden app store made by the manufacturer that automatically shows and whitelabels itself when it connects to a Brazilian cell network. The app is really just http://help.motorola.com/hc/apps/brapps/redirect.php (Redirects to https://moto.offerwall.com.br/appbox_moto) in a WebView with a carrier-specific header at the top and some way to install APKs which seems to be defunct as the page only links to the Play Store now.

hyperpallium23• 5 years ago

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

wellthisishn• 5 years ago

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

I don't think this analyst is aware that DDG already has a lot of Google influence and isn't for sale right now...

MichaelZuo2• 5 years ago

I think this is huge news if the practice is still en vogue? And also defeats the point of Epic’s separate app store right? The major carriers could simply demand the same cut from Epic if it ever gets any traction.

ocdtrekkie3• 5 years ago

And also defeats the point of Epic’s separate app store right?

This is why Epic is suing them, to have a judge prohibit Google from illegally anticompetitive behavior.

jimbob45• 5 years ago

That’s it, right? That’s the game? There’s no way the DoJ doesn’t have a slam-dunk case with that one quote.

noptd2• 5 years ago

With additional details and evidence, I'd hope so. I'm not sure how this could be seen as anything other than collusion and anti-competitive behavior.

IncRnd10• 5 years ago

Possibly, but when Janet Reno "had the goods" on Microsoft, she suddenly settled. Mind you, that was a lengthy case with the explicit purpose of splitting up Microsoft. Then, when it was all but cinched, she suddenly reversed and settled for just about ... no concessions. All Microsoft had to do was share APIs.

Even the judge in the case said that Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." [1]

This new situation may be a slam-dunk, but no dunking may actually happen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

slownews452• 5 years ago

I thought this was public knowledge - they compete in some areas and cooperate in others?

For a long time Google was the Apple maps provider (exclusive) on Apple - they had near seamless integration there and in a variety of areas (search etc) - very much acting as one company.

They competed in other areas (google photos on iphone has always been very much second class), google music has struggled vs the apple music player etc.

All these monster players - they are so big that if they were fighting each other on every front it would be a huge mess.

Apple both bitterly competes against Samsung (who copies plenty from iphone) while simultaneously working as a big customer to them.

AWS has the same issues in many area - they will do things like cooperate in some areas with enemies (ie, they'll host Microsoft workloads and MS will facilitate) while competing in other areas (AWS vs Azure etc).

oldgradstudent4• 5 years ago

The Obama DOJ had plenty of quotes in the tech wage fixing scandal a few years ago. They didn't bother to enforce it in any meaningful way.

They even had quotes that showed intent and understanding of the illegality:

"Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared 'verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?'", the Reuters news agency quoted the court filing as saying.

https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-google-settlement-idIN...

heavyset_go3• 5 years ago

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

They're literally a cartel.

echelon4• 5 years ago

It's time to split the Famgopolies. Apple and Google shouldn't be in so many different businesses, killing everything in their wake.

Why the hell does Apple have a film studio? Why does Google have a game studio and cloud? If they keep going, they'll be the MGM and Whole Foods too. (Oh, wait!)

Famgopolies also shouldn't be allowed to dictate their payments stacks, software distribution systems, app approval processes, browsers, or monitoring. Especially not if they're going after every single possible market, snuffing out all of the oxygen in the ecosystem.

If a famgopoly does over 100 things, it shouldn't be allowed to keep growing like the blob.

I really don't want my startup to be a gazelle at the savannah, waiting for the lions to bite at the jugular because they like my idea and market. If I put so much on the line to innovate, only to have these titans duplicate and crush me, what's the point?

I never thought I'd ever cheer for patent suits given all of the trolls, but I was genuinely happy that Sonos won over Google recently. We need more of that.

Edit: incoming famgopoly downvote brigade.

oblio2• 5 years ago

Do you remember the no poaching agreement started personally by Steve Jobs? They have been a cartel for decades. They share board members, they compete only as much as not to threaten the status quo.

jollybean• 5 years ago

So if they actually said this, it's definitely anti-competitive collusion.

If someone can trace that directly to pricing ... well price collusion is definitely illegal.

f6v4• 5 years ago

And people on the internet will can you names for using an opposing mobile OS. Ironic.

oldgradstudent4• 5 years ago

Enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

A few years in federal prison for the CEOs of Apple and Google might change the situation.

elliekelly3• 5 years ago

Has anyone ever actually gone to prison under the Sherman Act?

silexia• 5 years ago

As a CEO, I would love to see the enforcement of these laws. Increasing competition will greatly help our free market. People have lost faith in capitalism because of crony capitalism.

127• 5 years ago

What's going on in America and why is there no actual antitrust enforcement action?

wilde• 5 years ago

The Consumer Welfare Standard. You have to show that the cartel actually caused an increase in prices for end consumers. This is hard.

Here’s an FTC commissioner explaining the history of it and why we should probably change it. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...

Santosh83• 5 years ago

Cartelization is nothing unexpected. Just like governments cut all sorts of deals to form geopolitical blocks, so do leading companies in any industry. It's win-win for them. As for "regulators", they tend to drag their feet for a long time, take even longer to build a case, and after all that time, their action tends to be more show than substance. I wonder why that is.

True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller, regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one entity.

Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.

tsimionescu4• 5 years ago

Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.

I have also wondered the same, especially seeing not just the massive spying, but also the shoddy quality and extortionate prices that characterize government software auctions all over the world. Especially as multiple regional and local entities often pay for exactly the same management software. It would seem a no-brainer that a national/regional software institute would produce huge savings, better quality, and strategic advantages if it created a national/regional software stack that could be used everywhere.

Alas, I believe that cronyism, market veneration, lack of understanding of software, and the high initial costs are acting to prevent any such effort from even seeming a thinkable idea.

pyrale4• 5 years ago

Every time European countries so much as hint that they may look at US tech corporations the wrong way, the whole US administration threatens a trade war.

So yeah, that's the reason.

elric• 5 years ago

Back when I was a young software engineer, I worked for a large consulting company which frequently outsourced people to my country's government(s). As a consequence, I gained some insights into government software projects. And it's as bad as you'd expect it to be, or worse.

$gov pays 600eur/day for software developers (which they could hire for less than a third of the price). The pimps renting out these developers have zero incentive to ensure quality in any way. The longer a project takes, the bigger their cut. The developers don't care, they're being grossly underpaid by their pimps, so they ride it out until something better comes along. $gov has zero IT competence, and doesn't realize (or doesn't care) it's being ripped off. Government IT project failures are commonplace, with hundreds of thousands wasted per project, sometimes even millions. $gov can't hire software engineers directly, because governments have ridiculous rules about employment and wages and degree requirements. They can't pay developers as much as they could make elsewhere.

I think it would be a great idea for any government (local, regional, national) to start insourcing their own software developers. Starting small. There would be great value to having a few dedicated teams, in the true sense of the word, instead of a ragtag bunch of consultants. This will require changes to government employment laws. But in my book, it would be worth it.

Long story short: governments can't even get their own software in order. I don't see them promoting "home grown" software any time soon.

MrBuddyCasino• 5 years ago

As Thomas Sowell has put it:

„Why anyone would expect better decisions to be made by third parties who pay no price for being wrong is one of the mysteries of our time.“

h2odragon• 5 years ago

Aint it interesting, how often governments are crippled by inability to hire talent because that talent is improperly credentialed / whatever; but those problems never prevent the mayor's cousin Cletus from being hired to run the Highway Dept.

phatfish• 5 years ago

Governments currently have a critical lack of ambition, they have been captured by global corporations and made to believe only privately owned entities can solve complex problems. This is why software engineering looks like an impossibly hard problem.

It doesn't help that the way to win elections now is to start a culture war, not to make the country they govern a better place (see the UK).

mard2• 5 years ago

In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system.

20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences.

I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

agloeregrets• 5 years ago

The law sees it as they have been paid and blackmailed to see it.

There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school if the state considered any sort of App store laws.

mercora• 5 years ago

do you have a source available?

Dracophoenix• 5 years ago

Wouldn't that be Apple's prerogative? There's no reason to do business in a state that's hostile to your interests or pursuits. That's not blackmail anymore than the attempted Hollywood boycott over Georgia's abortion laws a few years ago. There are plenty of well-documented violations of integrity to accuse Apple of, but using its philanthropic investments as a leverage isn't one of them.

ekianjo• 5 years ago

I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

Regulatory capture.

alex_young• 5 years ago

Not only does Apple include its own browser, it forces other browsers to use Safari under the hood on iOS.

JCWasmx86• 5 years ago

Ironically this is the only thing preventing a chromium monopoly with probably >90% of marketshare (Although this restriction is still not that great for the user)

tpush• 5 years ago

The tying claim eventually got dropped from the case, though, since the govt couldn't prove that the harm to competition outweighed the benefits of having a browser built in to the OS.

darkwater• 5 years ago

Not in Europe though. We had a WinXP version without IE and a prompt at first install to choose the desired browser

intricatedetail• 5 years ago

You can only explain this by corruption. I think three letter agencies slept on that one...

Edit: Not sure why accusation of corruption is downvoted? It's a very difficult crime to prove and requires resources to pursue, so there is no appetite to prosecute. Big companies and civil service know that. If these companies pay off developers, they would have no reason to pay anyone else in their way and that would unlikely result in any consequences.

woofie114• 5 years ago

Marketshare. The law sees marketshare.

* Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly.

* Microsoft had no effective competitors.

You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.

throwaway20482• 5 years ago

In this very document you have Google and Apple claiming that they effectively do not compete in terms of app store pricing policies.

zarzavat• 5 years ago

What is Apple's market share for tablets in the US?

realusername2• 5 years ago

* Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly.

[source needed]. The only tariff change Apple ever made was ... due to a real threat of an anti-trust lawsuit. And Google followed straight away.

I can't recall any competition between both companies, they just have their own distinct market.

smokeymorning• 5 years ago

Marketshare. The law sees marketshare.

As I understand it, the law sees detrimental effects on consumers.

ren_engineer2• 5 years ago

Google and Apple have been caught colluding before on trying to keep software engineer salaries low.

They also conveniently had the exact same app store fee for years. Doesn't make much sense if they were actually competing with each other

White_Wolf• 5 years ago

They do indeed compete but doesn't Apple have a monopoly on IOS with it's app store and Google on Android with PlayStore?

At least on Android you can install you own market if you're so inclined. I have yet to find an alternative app store for ios though(might be just me not knowing where to look though).

Edit: Forgot to add that when you're talking about Apple vs G I don't see it as 1 big "smartphone" market. It's 2 different ones. Apple hardware running iOS vs generic hardware running Android.

mmcconnell1618• 5 years ago

The law is interpreted according to different standards over time. NPR has a really interesting 3 part podcast series that explains how antitrust laws have been applied over time. Marketshare was the significant metric at one time but more recent judges have used impact/harm to consumers based on price. Under recent case law, if the consumer is still able to get the good cheaply, you can basically own the entire market.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/anti...

gunapologist99• 5 years ago

Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly.

They effectively have a monopoly over their customers from other customers and can leverage that monopoly to control their vendors.

And Google and Apple secretly working together as "one company" literally defines trust behavior:

'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."'

IncRnd10• 5 years ago

You should read the actual page before you comment!

From the article: After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

dalbasal8• 5 years ago

"The Law" is pretty patchy, inconsistent and self contradictory. A lot of them are old. A lot of definitions are sketchy. There aren't many precedents, and the normative precedent of what doesn't get prosecuted is vast and confusing.

> You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.

The realities of being a primary OS, App Store, or browser vendor today are both more significant, and more well known than in the 90s. They have financial consequences many times greater.

I don't see how you can come to an intelligible concept of monopoly, market power and such with a general, legal-friendly theory of monopoly. The logic needs to be reversed.

NEW UNDERPANTS PLAN:

0. Forget about proving a monopoly exists to strengthen your case that X is acting as a trust.

1. Use evidence that X is acting as a trust, as to make the case that monopoly exists instead.

2. ???

3. Profit.

The problem is that we don't have a step 2. What happens when markets mature into an monopoly dynamic? We need an answer, because some have.

TeeMassive2• 5 years ago

I've once worked for a large corporation that got hit hard by antitrust. Think a few tens of billions of dollars. Why? A seller was caught giving freebies if they bought their products. That's it. That's all it took.

I know because due to that incident we had to follow online formation every god damn month about antitrust. You don't have to have a "monopoly" to trigger antitrust legislation. The mere mention of "deals" or "cooperation" or "understanding" in the same conversation that involves competitor can be enough evidence to cause huge trouble.

Revenant-15• 5 years ago

What? Antitrust isn't solely about marketshare and having a monopoly. You can behave in anticompetitive ways that break antitrust laws without having a monopoly.

jasode• 5 years ago

In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system.

That reductive summary is repeated but isn't accurate.

Microsoft didn't get in trouble for adding its own IE web browser to Windows. (Software companies always add new features and enhancements.)

The key nuance that triggered the government lawsuit was anti-competitive actions such as using obscure/undocumented Windows API functions to cripple Netscape and forcing computer manufacturers to avoid other software when licensing DOS/Windows. All of that is in the long document: https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

NorwegianDude• 5 years ago

His point still stands, especially on iOS where other browsers isn't even allowed and every browser has to be basically a reskin of safari. That way others can't add features or stability, forcing developers to use the app store and give Apple a large cut.

This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.

Xelbair3• 5 years ago

which is basically nothing compared to google/apple of today.They are basically forcing you to use them as a middle-man for any app you want. While getting a cut from all transactions.

Non-google app stores cannot automatically update aps, side-loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.

IOS forcing you to use safari no matter what, and there is no way to side-load apps, nor any non-apple app stores.

chrome de facto sets web standards, giving them slight edge over other browsers - and they do use chrome specific APIs to cripple other browsers - like YouTube working worse on Firefox due that reason.

And that's even without taking into the consideration all the tracking in form of telemetry on the devices, coupled with their own ads markets.

gentleman11• 5 years ago

What about alerting users that Firefox is potentially malware and that edge is safer? That seems extremely anti competitive to me

mhh__• 5 years ago

Apple have undocumented instructions now let alone APIs

hliyan• 5 years ago

On a perhaps related note, I have noticed that a Google Meet that consumes just over 1Mbps on Google Chrome consistently consumes close to 4Mbps on Firefox. Same settings, same window size, same participants. I cannot help but wonder whether Chrome has implemented some standard browser feature more efficiently, or whether it has special native features just for Meets.

jokethrowaway• 5 years ago

I hope Apple treatment of low performance iOS webviews will be treated similarly

passivate• 5 years ago

I don't know every detail of the case, but I used Netscape in the 90's, it worked just fine. I don't think it was crippled by any means.

wslh• 5 years ago

I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

In these cases, generally, the law acts when other parties push it. Mainly big actors. The app stores are generally build by those major actors. May be regulations will happen in several years.

dekhn• 5 years ago

you're mixing up the details of the MSFT lawsuit.

Also, there's nothing antitrust about bundling web DLLs in an OS, or using the web shell for applications. That's what a Chromebook did.

What MSFT did was abuse its monopoly position to take advantage of other companies and customers.

mard2• 5 years ago

Fair enough. Merely bundling some software was not a violation by itself, but that bundling was also additionally reinforced with "concerted series of actions designed to protect the applications barrier to entry", which caused "consumer harm by distorting competition" [1].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

dalbasal8• 5 years ago

>I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.

Let's make a point of starting here. There's room for the legalistic standpoint, especially if we're trying to understand legal processes... but this isn't a law forum. It's near impossible to discuss antitrust usefully from a mostly-legalistic perspective. The laws, precedents, legal doctrines and economic doctrines they relate to are extremely patchy, flimsy and often barely exist.

I think a core part of the problem is a weak, badly grounded antitrust framework in the first place. Key definitions like "monopoly" use contradictory conceptual frameworks, from different eras. Generalizing from one instance to another is difficult. A lot of key concepts don't have definitions at all, or really wishy washy ones.

I think the nature of monopolies has a lot to do with this. One possible definition of monopoly is an singular market entity... IE not generalizable, by definition. Are courts supposed to be punishing violations, or structuring markets and doing industrial policy? Are they supposed to be regulating monopolies, preventing them, or declaring their existence so that a different set of regulations kick in? Is monopoly a normal occurrence in market maturity, or market failure?

At some point, Peter Thiel gave away the game when he said that "monopoly is the goal." If you read microeconomics basics, but conceptualize it as software companies instead of a auto manufacturing... you tend to think of monopoly, rather than commoditization as the equilibrium point that's never quite reached. Successful tech companies don't try to make money by competing in a level field with lots of competitors. That's for appstore app developers, salesforce plugin consultants, spotify artists and such.

The whole premise of the tech miracle is that monopolies are the bull case. How else to expect/justify/realize tech company valuations.

Imagine pitching an investor like Thiel on your idea to spend a billion dollars making youtube content for ad revenue? That's all wrong. Your bull case is that you'll temporarily profitable, if successful. Even if you're very profitable, its temporary. There are zillions of youtubers and squillions who could be. They'll copy you, or maybe your content will just get stale over time. A youtube policy change could wipe you out. In the turbulence of youtube's free market for online videos, profits don't last at scale. To get Thiel's attention, you need to go for your own monopoly.

"Commoditize your compliments" has long been a tech motto. Well... what's the corrolorary? Monopolize your market segment.

Commoditize PCs. Monopolize the OS.

Commoditize smartphones. Monopolize the OS.

Monopolize consoles, Commoditize games. Platform/Content. Market/Vending. Users/Advertising. Data/Advertising.

adam_arthur3• 5 years ago

Yes, exactly. The law needs to be updated to account for this new world of "platforms".

By platform, I mean an ecosystem a private entity creates which they monetize through content created/uploaded/deployed by external parties.

AWS and others fall under this definition too. The truth is, cloud computing should be a low margin industry in the long run. Yes, software has close to 0 marginal cost of production, but the same is true of your competitors. Basic economic principle implies that in a competitive market, the price to customers should be close to the cost of production.

In the old days, the economy was largely physical goods based, so it was very easy to simply buy a competing product if you don't like the one you have now. That by and large didn't entail becoming entrenched in a whole ecosystem.

Laws need to be updated to tackle the inherent monopolistic elements of platforms, social and so on. China is taking this path, so it will be interesting to see how that develops.

It's important to recognize too, that leveraging a monopolistic position to produce excess profit is effectively a direct transfer of wealth from the littler guys to the bigger guys.

e.g. Apple taking a 30% cut on the app store directly takes from app creators, who may raise prices 30%, which ultimately hits customers.

Andrex2• 5 years ago

The MS decision got gutted on appeal, which merely emboldened the monopolistic practices which developed since the dot-com boom.

crazygringo• 5 years ago

The different is crystal clear. Microsoft was considered a monopoly. You really had no good choice but Windows.

Apple and Google aren't. You have a choice between iOS and Android, both vibrant and thriving.

It really is that simple. And it's not just the legal but common sense definition of monopoly too -- do you control the market or not?

Now you might have other criticisms of app stores, but basing them on the Microsoft-monopoly-argument isn't going to be helpful or useful. You're going to need a different legal foundation for that.

bobmaxup• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duopoly

titzer• 5 years ago

The monopoly criterion is so outmoded. Anti-trust laws were enacted to counter organizations that cornered basic things like steel, railroads, power, communications, etc. 100 years ago, almost everything they could imagine was a commodity that was easily replaceable.

But app platforms are not commodities. There is considerable vendor lock-in, by design. It's not like one just takes an iOS app and instantly ports it over to Android when Apple's terms no longer suit; there is considerable sunk cost. Platforms cleave the market into captive audiences that can and are abused.

And what to do if you are little guy who invested everything in one of those two platforms and didn't have the foresight to write your app in a way that it was easily ported? Well, screw you.

So these platforms actually compete with each other to offer "value adds" which are really just like traps for vendor lock-in.

Anti-trust laws are full of flawed and antiquated reasoning that is unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century marketplace. And there is precious little understanding of these technological issues in courts and legislatures.

paganel2• 5 years ago

An oligopoly (i.e. a business cartel) it's just as bad as a monopoly. Even worse, I would say, because on the outside it gives you the illusion of business competition, while with a monopoly you kind of know loud and clear what you're dealing with.

newacct583• 5 years ago

In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system.

Microsoft got out of that, though. They barely paid a fine. I don't disagree that there are antitrust concerns with all sorts of big company behavior. But this is the world we live in. If you want the government to regulate this stuff for you you need to elect a government willing to do that (or rather, willing to appoint judges willing to do that).

Jasper_• 5 years ago

In 2001, Microsoft "constituted unlawful monopolization" under Antitrust Act for bundling a web browser with their operating system.

You're forgetting how that ended. Remember, the DOJ threw the book at Microsoft. It was an intensely publicized trial, with pretty much all the country hating Microsoft and Bill Gates. Waffling over the word "ask", the infamous "knife the baby" email, the Halloween documents and Embrace-Extend-Extinguish. That all came out as part of the DOJ antitrust suit. It's hard to remember how visceral the hate for this was. During the height of that, The Simpsons decided to portray Bill Gates on the show, not positively [0]. A game developer released a title called "Microshaft Winblows 98" to positive reviews and very good sales [1].

The judge makes their final verdict. Microsoft clearly stepped over the line, there were no easy answers. They were too big a company, the only possible remedy is to break them up. Into at least two companies, but probably more; at the very least, the apps and OS needed to be split up into the "Baby Bills", they were going to be called.

Then George W. Bush comes in, guts the DOJ to a fifth of their size, and basically all but tells them "never do that again, please". The case quickly and silently went to appeal, where it was reduced from "Microsoft needs to be broken up" into a small fine [2]. And after other tragedies in the early 2000s, the nation quickly forgot.

So, no, despite the fanfare, despite the judgement and ruling, the DOJ antitrust case had very limited effect on reality. And the message from above seems to be "try that again, and get your budget demolished even more". That's, uh, why antitrust isn't a thing anymore.

Except, well, it did have one effect. In the midst of everything, Bill Gates was basically forced to resign and go into philanthropy to clear their image, resulting in Ballmer taking over. Some believe that was the true punishment for Microsoft.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_SZRhWr1s [2] https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/bush-administration-a...

macintux• 5 years ago

People both inside and outside the company have also asserted that Microsoft was quite gunshy, both during and after the trial. It seems to have had a pretty dramatic impact on their behavior.

GeekyBear• 5 years ago

This kind of glosses over the fact that they were found guilty of anticompetitive behavior in the EU.

They got a massive fine and were and forced to do things like open up the client server protocol used between Windows Domain Controllers and Windows Clients.

They came pretty close to being forced to open up the Office document formats, but the EU backed down from that one.

rce• 5 years ago

I cannot find any references online to the DOJ budget being slashed by George W. Bush let alone by 80%. That sounds quite outlandish to me. Do you have any more information on what you're referring to?

giantrobot• 5 years ago

A sibling comment pointed out that you're wrong about the Microsoft case. You're also seemingly under informed about monopolies. One of the core issues in the Microsoft case was that they're a horizontal monopoly. Microsoft's monopoly affects all players in the market because a majority of the players use Microsoft's OS. They used that leverage against Netscape and many other companies.

Apple on the other hand has a vertical monopoly, they control the whole stack from hardware to software. While their influence on iPhones is absolute, they don't have outsize influence on other phone vendors. Also while popular iPhones don't have a majority of really any phone market.

Antitrust considerations are different for different monopoly types. Unless a company with a vertical monopoly also had a market monopoly position and used that position to actively influence/harm other companies it's really hard to legally pursue them. You can't fault a company for building their own products and trying to make money from selling them. If a Samsung washing machine has some cool feature when paired with a Samsung dryer, just because Samsung has a monopoly on Samsung appliances doesn't mean they're violating some antitrust laws.

If anything Google is in bigger danger of antitrust suits since they have a more horizontal position in the phone market. While they have token entries in the hardware market they're an OS and service provider. Which is likely why they're supportive is sideloading and alternate app stores, if they behaved like Apple but with a horizontal monopoly the DoJ would be all over them.

Dylan168072• 5 years ago

Apple and Google control almost everything. Horizontally.

radley• 5 years ago

While their influence on iPhones is absolute, they don't have outsize influence on other phone vendors

Apple isn't exclusively a hardware/OS company. They compete horizontally with digital media services like Amazon (books), Spotify (music), Netflix (video), etc. They use their OS and APIs to squeeze out weak competitors and suck up to stronger competitors. They make more money from apps than hardware.

Keep in mind, it's not just current competitors. It's also the potential competitors that don't even bother to start due to Apple's predatory practices.

Mikeb85• 5 years ago

You can definitely replace Google's app store, see Chinese phone providers, Samsung App store, sideloading, etc... You can also make any browser the default.

Apple I agree with.

AlexCoventry2• 5 years ago

Maybe intent matters. Until now, maybe, there's been nothing demonstrating intent like the "cut off Netscape's air supply" quote the DOJ used in the Microsoft antitrust case.

ApolloFortyNine• 5 years ago

Look I'm fine punishing Google too, but it has to happen either after Apple or at the same time.

Apple literally has banned competitors. Google at least allows them, even if they make every effort to keep them out, it's still possible to install them without hacking your phone (which hasn't really been possible on iPhone for years).

I just hate that they're grouped together as if it's equivalent.

agumonkey2• 5 years ago

It's a lot more damning than the MS case because internet impact and integration in ones life was minimal. Today society is hybrid and appstore/googleplay are the digital interface to a boatload of public and private services.

ThePhysicist2• 5 years ago

I've grown pretty pessimistic about the prospects of the Internet as a motor for entrepreneurship. Today it is theoretically still "free" but wherever you go you'll find gatekeepers like Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft that keep a tight grip on who is visible on the net and who can offer a service or software product on a given platform.

In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you make. This really needs to stop.

zpeti• 5 years ago

I think this is just the natural evolution of any market. Unfortunately it leads to this. There's not much competition in the railroad market, or the telco market anymore, which used to be massive spaces for innovation.

There are two options:

- We have to wait for the next technological revolution.

- It is simply just more costly to be an entrepreneur. It's not about throwing together a website or app, it's much more costly to break through the existing monopolies. While you can still make a website or app yourself, I think you do need more and more capital to market it.

ant6n2• 5 years ago

There's competition in the railroad market in the EU,because they want there to be a market. In particular they mandate separation of infrastructure and operation, and force rail infrastructure owners to give open access to all (for a toll, which has to be the same for all operators). Once you can't use infrastructure as a moat, competition is much more possible.

The US which only regulates rail safety but not the market, has a bunch of local monopolies and calls that a market, being in total denial that markets need to be regulated to actually allow competition.

tomComb• 5 years ago

That's why the web is so important. When the proprietary platforms get the upper hand you get eg. Apple taking a 50% cut off revenue in their news app.

adventured2• 5 years ago

It's simultaneously true that big tech is too big (and set to get far bigger yet) and there is no scenario where you can escape being under the influence/impact of platform owners.

Want to advertise? You had to go through radio stations with license monopolies. Or maybe you had to go through a newspaper, historically there were usually one or two that thrived per city, and usually one dominant super paper in a given city (2-3 times larger than its smaller competitor). Or maybe you had to go through one of the few big broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox). Just a few behemoths dominanted television.

Want to transport goods? Say hello to the railroad oligopoly, going back more than a century now.

Maybe you needed a lot of vehicles for your business, circa the 1950-1970s. Say hello to the GM and Ford oligopoly, your dependency.

Maybe you wanted to buy airplanes, it's 1971 and you're starting a version of Fedex. How many choices do you have? How many suppliers are there in terms of dependency?

You want to get something on a store shelf across the country? Let me introduce you to Sears, Pennys, Kmart, Woolworth, WT Grant, Genesco, Allied, McCrory's, May. That's 50 years ago, they owned retail.

The new boss, same as the old boss (today some of them are even bigger, that much is true). You can't escape it. Unless you own all the platforms, you will always have to go through other platforms, other gate keepers. The best you can hope for is to intelligently diversify your risk exposure, so it takes more than one of them to cripple you.

cblconfederate2• 5 years ago

maybe you had to go through a newspaper, historically there were usually one or two that thrived per city, and usually one dominant super paper

what you 're describing is NOT a monopoly, because the winners were local, physical separation prevented monopolization, and crucially there was more than one dominant player. There is a whole new world on the internet where for every verb there is one, single monopoly for the entire world. In the end , one can look at the money flow: How many people were employed in newspapers vs how many people are in googleplex

amadeuspagel• 5 years ago

Want to transport goods? Say hello to the railroad oligopoly, going back more than a century now.

And regulated as a common carrier[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

cblconfederate2• 5 years ago

The endgame of entrepreneurship is monopoly, if possible. The (western) internet has no physical barriers so is infinitely scalable so it got monopolized very very quickly. Whether those monopolies are forming a cartel to prevent new entrants is another matter; it might well be the case that it is now closed for new entrants. There is some innovation in things like decentralized finance which are inherently orthogonal to the current state. There is also the old internet which could never be centralized, it's still out there but it's unmonetizeable now.

If there is going to be competition for the big players, it will come when closed markets like Russia or China develop enough to threaten them. It is possible that Europe at some point will also follow their example.

Sargos4• 5 years ago

Thankfully I think Web3 (dapps made from composable protocols collaboratively developed by everyone) will form strong competition and maybe even replace Google in the next 5-10 years. Services like social media, finance, gaming, productivity, etc will all be interoperable by default providing a seamless user experience and be built by millions of developers around the world. Each company coding only what they specialize in and being built on top of existing protocols leads to massive efficiency and what looks like exponential growth.

Tech monopolies will likely fade away over time like the early industrial revolution monopolies did just at an accelerated pace due to things working at internet speed. Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network.

ozten• 5 years ago

What are the more successful DAO or dapps we can study, to evaluate this model?

ThePhysicist2• 5 years ago

I'm pretty pessimistic about decentralized (blockchain-based) apps as well, almost all projects have been overtaken by speculators and fraud seems to be rampant, so I would not go near any of those. There really is no need to use blockchain technology to build decentralized infrastructure, most Internet 1.0 protocols are decentralized & federated and none of them relies on cryptocurrencies or a blockchain to function. So, sorry, but for me this whole movement is BS and seems more like a pyramid scheme than a real effort to build something useful.

CharlesW• 5 years ago

Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network.

Google literally built their business on a decentralized worldwide developer network.

arcturus172• 5 years ago

Why would my mother or yours, as internet users, care about anything that you just said, in a way that justifies a prediction that Google, Facebook or others will lose their monopolies in 5-10 years?

kook_throwaway• 5 years ago

Who redacted this in the first place, and how would it have been sealed? Much of it is clearly redacted for PR reasons, and I don't really understand how there could be any excuse for keeping it hidden.

ocdtrekkie3• 5 years ago

I think the lawyers from Google got to redact what parts of the filing should be available to the public. And yeah, there's no trade secrets here, just clear evidence of horrible abuses. Glad the judge ordered it unredacted.

It's not just about the public knowing: Legislators and regulators aren't privy to non-public judicial information, and this is key evidence that Congress needs to pass strong laws that break the backs of Apple and Google.

lucasverra• 5 years ago

That is why we need trustless / censorship resistant platforms like “regular” web or the yet to be proven web 3 (led by ethereum)

grishka4• 5 years ago

No. We just need two things:

- it should be illegal to lock down a device against its end user

- governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability

encryptluks23• 5 years ago

governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability

Do you realize that given our current laws in the US, that this is pretty much impossible?

moondistance• 5 years ago

Large companies have massive governance issues. When you get that large, you end up with an endless stream of people nattering on to compromise values for profits. Eventually, leadership gets sick of fighting or misses the impact of a big change. It's all downwards from there (the next piece of garbage in the room appears more quickly).

I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments - is to build AGIs and put them in charge.

I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting closer and closer.

If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere).

My two cents.

Sabinus• 5 years ago

This is clear anti-competitive behavior. Unregulated capitalism is dangerous capitalism.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

I wish we did a better job facing this fact as adults. This is the Achilles heel of Capitalism and ignoring it or making excuses only hurts us all. I love Apple hardware, I love Android, but I also love Capitalism and having choice. Living under this economic system requires responsibility to regulate these things.

scotty79• 5 years ago

90% of things mentioned here should be super illegal and the punishment should be 150% estimated income they achieved through such deals.

dalbasal8• 5 years ago

100 years in the electric chair!

This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. It's an industrial structure. The competition is competition for monopoly, a superior & highly profitable market position of some sort. Those are what make Google, FB & so profitable.

Google competed with Yahoo & Microsoft for years in search marketing. I don't believe either ever made significant profits. Their "market share" in terms of users may have been 10%-20%. But, their share of market revenues was a fraction of that. Their share of profits was negative.

OTOH Google pays (for example) Apple $7bn per year to make Google Search default. That's better than best case scenario profits MSFT or Yahoo could have hoped to make, unless they managed to replace Google in the no. 1 position.

Competing is just a lot less profitable than cooperating in a lot of cases. What is Apple supposed to do, say "keep it, we're good?"

noptd2• 5 years ago

This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc.

I disagree - governments legislate their markets so it is absolutely punishable if defined as such.

gorwell• 5 years ago

Don't Be Evil.

Project Hug.

Your antennae should go up whenever you hear phrasing like this.

erhk2• 5 years ago

Can't read on mobile without a Twitter account

encryptluks23• 5 years ago

Twitter changed something recently where they no longer let you view most tweets without an account.

dan-robertson• 5 years ago

I think you just need to tap the tweet again to see the thread. But you could also use nitter.

jayd16• 5 years ago

Does any of this surprise anyone? I thought the custom deals with large companies was common knowledge. So were the pack in deals with Gapps and Play store. What is the new info here?

makeitdouble4• 5 years ago

We shifted from “common knowledge” to “on the record evidence”, which is a pretty big step in my opinion.

The new info is that it is now available for legal action. The optimistic view would be that Epic is enough into it to bring more changes than Microsoft’s default browser ballot.

jonplackett• 5 years ago

"Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

Case closed, no?

dang• 5 years ago

There's also https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428415192480698371.

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798, which we've merged hither)

hamburgerwah• 5 years ago

Not that there was any question about whether these companies are monopolies but will this finally be the evidence that causes regulatory action? Haha, of course not.

henearkr• 5 years ago

What monopoly? I use FDroid without any problems thank you very much.

Now if Google has a program to make happy its customers so that they don't leave... I wish all companies strategies were like that!

anaganisk9• 5 years ago

Great, but let me know when you can install thousands of other everyday apps, like slack? Can update apps seamlessly. And Fdroid is actually used by masses. Last I checked (week ago) unless you root, you have to go and click on every app to update it. Too bad if you had 25 apps. Infact Fdroid community itself complains, its limited in its functionality because there is no store API, inbuilt into android.

wly_cdgr• 5 years ago

So what? It's not surprising, bad, or newsworthy that Google would bribe developers to try to keep them in the fold

anaganisk9• 5 years ago

Yeah sure, let two mega corps which control mobile OSs, to become as powerful as they can. While their app store reject apps with AI and no recourse. Force devs to use their payment APIs. What could go wrong, its not like they’re American telecom companies, only they can be evil and lobby. Devs are saints, am I right?

babesh• 5 years ago

This is a near industry wide abusive practice.

Facebook started forcing companies to use Facebook Credits and then forced a 30% cut. Zynga balked. Zynga and Facebook came to secret arrangement. If you were smaller, you were SOL.

EDIT: https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/

Netflix didn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut. Apple tried to keep Netflix. Eventually, Netflix got rid of new app store subscriptions.

EDIT: Apple offered Netflix concessions. https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase...

Look at Amazon's bookstore which forces sellers to not offer their books at a lower price elsewhere.

EDIT: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-cl...

phendrenad2• 5 years ago

How is this different from giving developers a larger cut of profits? It's a pretty common sales trick to do "cash back" instead of reducing price. If this is what Epic is going with, they're grasping at straws more than I had imagined.

ehsankia• 5 years ago

It isn't. Epic literally decided to not use AppStore/PlayStore because they weren't happy with how much money they'd make, so Google decided to improve the money game devs make... They just complain because Google didn't sign a secret extra juicy deal with them only.

RGamma• 5 years ago

Interesting, considering that last time I checked, the Play Store was full of predatory shovelware.

This is like another layer on the stack of dysfunction in the contemporary (mobile) gaming market.

anaganisk9• 5 years ago

The silence of googlers when articles like this come up is funny. They jump in like a rabbit, about every google post. Showing off all their google stuff. When things like this come up they pretend they’re busy coding (something something api to help their ad company). We as devs made them mega corps, seriously. Even the worst privacy nightmare inducing API, was coded by someone. Money sure drives everything, people say decentralisation will take care of everything. But Web is decentralised. But somehow we as devs helped few companies to make it almost centralised. The next big tech which tries hard(web3, ipfs) will eventually become centralised again. Companies pretending to be humble, will come in to increase ease of use pull the blanket and repeat.

Edit: I understand during the legal case, employees can have life changing implications for commenting on it. Well the cases can end up dragging for years. So for all those years, are we just going to keep silent? I mean if our moral compass is controlled by how corporate thinks of it, I guess we are not free after all. The next big decentralised thing is a compromised dream already.

Also if you want to really make an opinion, for those who feel like voicing but cant, make an alt account. Every voice matters.

tssva2• 5 years ago

I'm not a Googler and I fail to see the issue here. I personally find no issue with this.

anaganisk9• 5 years ago

When you look it narrow, you will mot see it. But as you start to see the big picture, you start to see the similarities with our past mistakes. Companies that are so afraid of loosing their power over their consumers, will do anything and everything to keep it. If android and apple had an Open Store API, and their respective stores had the power, no problem. But closing their store apis for themself, payments to themself is bad. Do you think we would’ve had chrome and firefox, if IE used obscure APIs? Imagine Internet standards as controlled by Microsoft. They reject legit apps on daily basis without recourse.

To keep it more simple, think of how US let its telecom companies have so much power over its communication needs. How it’s affecting people.

Shubham28• 5 years ago

Googlers can't reply to posts like this, irrespective of where they stand on the issue, because this is an ongoing legal matter.

Disclaimer - I am a Googler.

P.S. Rather than passing snark comments about what others do, maybe try talking to any of them. Any employee of a significantly sized company could have guessed that.

anaganisk9• 5 years ago

so you as humans are controlled from voicing your opinion by your corporate? So your moral compass depends on your employer?

Edit: I did not mean to dictate what anyone must do, but as a person you are entitled to have an opinion, to stand up. If you are going to base your moral compass based on what others decide. May be one day, you wont even bother having it. Im not hatching a big conspiracy here, but we must always keep some actions in mind irrespective of what courts decide. Courts are run by humans too, and humans make mistakes.

kyrra• 5 years ago

Googler, opinions are my own.

100% this. Even if we come here and express our opinions, or even express them internally on discussion forums and email, or chat, any of those communications are open to discovery by the plaintiff. If the plaintiff sees any value to anything an employee of the defendant company says, said employee could then be pulled into the lawsuit, be deposed, and many other non-fun things.

Well I'm sure there are many googlers out there that would love to comment on this, for our own sanity, we likely wouldn't.

peterkelly• 5 years ago

You could just use a throwaway account.

sombremesa• 5 years ago

Googlers can't reply to posts like this, irrespective of where they stand on the issue, because this is an ongoing legal matter.

Is this true? I know this to be true for actual parties involved, and I'm sure you can't speak on behalf of Google, but I'm not aware of any law or even company policy where private citizens are barred from voicing their own opinions, without divulging non-public information, in a legal matter where they aren't a party (though their employer may be).

As for "fear of retaliation" from your employer, that applies regardless of whether this is an ongoing legal matter or not.

squarefoot• 5 years ago

I'm neither a Googler and definitely not a Google fan, but it seems pretty normal to me. At every company I worked for (nothing even close to a fraction of Google) the contract I had to sign contained clauses that would give them enough rope and bullets to hang and shoot me if I did anything that could harm the company in any way, including comments, and there were no social media back then. Googlers might be forced to stay silent, possibly also barred from participating in discussions to defend the employer, which in case of a lawsuit could make sense since what they say or write could be used against the employer.

anaganisk9• 5 years ago

If voicing our opinion is controlled by the corporate. Im not sure how free we are. Yes I understand the life changing implications of this. But, we every step taken back, is a mistake we might regret.

adam_arthur3• 5 years ago

Though it's been much lambasted by investors, I think it's inevitable that the US will begin down the same path China has recently with their tech companies.

It's pretty easy to see that FAANG-esque companies are totally dominant at this point, and have many pseudo-monopolistic elements about them.

Beyond specific names, there is a vast difference in both the scale, and the "ecosystem" or "platform" nature in modern software that effectively invalidates the applicability of anti-trust law as it is written.

Going even further, many laws protecting private companies likely will change in the coming years to account for different paradigm that software brings. Sometimes difference in scale is also difference in nature.

If you look into the aims of a lot of China's recent regulations, they are actually setup to create a competitive market, rather than have a few tech companies become dominant. Competition is ultimately good for the public, as it leads to lower costs to the consumer, and more incentive to innovate (once entrenched).

I don't suggest we go to the same extremes, but it's inevitable we'll start heading down that path, whether it be the next few years, or decades.

Aunche• 5 years ago

I don't understand Epic's complaint here. Google doesn't want want to lose business to Samsung, so they offer incentives to maintain a competitive advantage.

timmg• 5 years ago

Doesn't Epic pay money to game makers to keep them (if temporarily) off Steam?

Is that materially different than this case? (Is it that Google already has a strong market position and Epic is an upstart?)

richardfey• 5 years ago

Gotta love this. Marketing newspeak at its finest: "always had programs in place that support best-in-class developers with enhanced resources and investments to help them reach more customers".

avipars• 5 years ago

Yet gaming on android sucks

sidcool• 5 years ago

I don't blame Google for doing it, but I do blame anti-trust agencies for turning a blind eye on this. Google is a business and by the very rules of capitalism, it does as much as possible to maintain their lead, sometimes skirting with the law. It's the onus of the FTC to ensure they are monitored and penalized in case of transgression.

summerlight• 5 years ago

Interestingly, this is exactly what's happening in the console gaming market today; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios as well as various preferential treatments on advertising, publishing and marketing of their games.

The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thanks to its iron grip on the market until Epic have revealed its arsenal. This is why we need to bring more competitions in the app store market; Even if it doesn't bring any real alternatives, this tiny possibility of competition will force Google and Apple to yield more and more to developers.

The first step should be breaking the Duopoly cartel. It's only possible because Apple has no competitions and Google simply enjoys its follower-ship, enabled by their non-aggression pact. Force Apple to allow third party store and payment solutions to dismantle its unfair advantages against competitor apps thanks to 30% fee. This will force Apple to develop Web and Android version of its services which will effectively nullify the non-aggression pact.

Hokusai• 5 years ago

Google and similar get 30% of all sales. Many companies will lose money in games and apps published in the store meanwhile Google profits. It seems an unsustainable model.

sunshinerag• 5 years ago

Force?

swiftcoder2• 5 years ago

Force is the correct term for a government mandating a solution. Whether by introducing new anti-monopoly regulations, or even just enforcement of existing anti-monopoly regulations.

rewq43212• 5 years ago

The evidence of collusion between Apple and Google coming out of the Epic case is amazing to me. I'd always thought it was a sort of unspoken "game theoretic" type of collusion (which I'm sure it is in part), but it looks like they've had very explicit communication about it:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428417681351348...

After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

Just incredible.

Gibbon1• 5 years ago

"Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

Personal feeling after the whole salary fixing case and now this, Google should be forced to move it's head quarters and it's top management to some place like Waco Texas.

oldgradstudent4• 5 years ago

I'd always thought it was a sort of unspoken "game theoretic" type of collusion (which I'm sure it is in part), but it looks like they've had very explicit communication about it:

Why would you even think that after the whole salary fixing scandal? There's no enforcement of antitrust law and no incentive not to collude freely and egregiously.

Had Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Paul Otellini, and everyone else directly involved in the wage fixing scandal, spent a year in federal prison per violation, the situation might have been different.

kzrdude• 5 years ago

Incredible that they would allow something like that to be recorded in writing! Apparently they are not even afraid of antitrust laws, judging by that.

_cs2017_2• 5 years ago

While it makes an awesome headline for a tabloid or HackerNews, it's not necessarily imporant. See comments on Reddit that provide some thoughts on that:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...

Obviously, I don't claim these two comments are correct. I do claim, however, that people are better served by not quoting random statements from a lawsuit without understanding either the context or the applicable law. Especially when only one side in the lawsuit is quoted from.

f6v4• 5 years ago

The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers.

I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

rjzzleep• 5 years ago

Don't Ubisoft and Epic have their own game stores inside of the playstation store?

And given how hard Sony and Microsoft compete to pursuade games to be released exclusively on either platform isn't it a bit of different dynamic?

helloiloveyou23• 5 years ago

I don't think that is correct unless you have a very narrow "market" in mind. Both Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and PC vendors sell gaming hardware. And both Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Steam own stores that sell video games. Sure, Nintendo's hardware and software has some distinguishing features. But, they still all compete for gamers attention and money.

As a case in point, it's clear that Nintendo themselves think they are competing with Microsoft, Sony, and the PC space. They pay tons of money to game developers in order for their games to not show up on Xbox, PS, and PC. That would make no sense unless there was some actual competition. I could mention Hades and Monter Hunter Rise as two recent examples where Nintendo paid money to devs in exchange for exclusivity.

hnlmorg6• 5 years ago

I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.

Nintendo might be a running joke amongst hardcore gamers but ironically they're the most successful console manufacturer out there.

The Switch is going from strength to strength and I'd estimate it will outsell the Playstation 4 before Nintendo retire it (it's been outselling the PS4 since 2019 already but that's to be expected given the expectation of the PS5). And from the same trial that bought us this submission we've seen Microsoft admit that they've never made a profit on the Xbox. Let's also not forget that games on the Switch are typically more expensive than the same game on other platforms. And that's without even touching the topic of Nintendo's 1st party games -- they make an absolute killing on their IP. Animal Crossing, for example, was seen by many as the unofficial game of the 2020 lockdown.

I predict Nintendo's market position will only get stronger too. With many Xbox fans giving up on buying new consoles because they're basically just PCs at this point. So switching to PCs that can be upgraded over time and still have access to Xbox content. Plus the struggles Sony have had just shipping their latest consoles and many gamers there saying they might just stick with the PS4. Yet Nintendo have calved out their own corner of the market that sits between the ultra competitive hardcore market and casual gamers who want more than crappy mobile apps. And it's a segment that's increasing in size too.

It'll be interesting to see how Valves offering does. I can't see it competing with the Switch directly but it might take more market share away from Sony and Microsoft given Valves new portable offers the capability of desktop gaming on the move.

So anyway, back to your point. You might scoff but actually Nintendo are in a far more stable and successful position than Sony and Microsoft (with regards to consoles).

Joeri• 5 years ago

Microsoft tried and failed to make a third alternative and force competition, spending billions to make it happen. As they found out, app makers don’t want to build for yet another platform. It doesn’t matter whether you make an awesome mobile OS, you’ll never get the app makers to support you enough to convince the users, and without the users you cannot convince the app makers.

Meanwhile, in desktop land, there are real alternatives because almost everything you’d want to do runs in the browser well enough (for regular home users at least). But on mobile the browsers are locked down, so the web is not a credible mobile app strategy. Linkedin and facebook oroginally tried a mobile web strategy and discovered that mobile browsers aren’t good enough. The lack of real competition, especially on iOS keeps mobile browsers underpowered for apps and maintains the strong gatekeeping function of mobile app stores.

For me a possible solution is to force platform owners to allow real browser competition on their platforms (again: especially iOS) and hope that is enough to kickstart a browser arms race like we enjoyed on the desktop a decade ago, with the end result being that mobile web apps become a real alternative and we weed out much of the bad behavior by apple and google because they have a genuine competition for the native platform.

ZoomerCretin5• 5 years ago

Why are you comparing consoles to phone app stores when the more clear comparison is console app stores to phone app stores? As far as I know, every console manufacturer monopolizes all sales to their platform, which is no different than Apple or Google’s app stores.

atatatat• 5 years ago

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have been paying subsidies of millions dollar to renowned studios

That's old news =] — now they just purchase all of the studios and "let them do their thing". Probably for significantly less % at the dev end, but, I digress.

Popegaf• 5 years ago

I'm reading the comments here and it seems like quite a few people are disgusted but not surprised by this behavior. My question to them: has it changed / will it change your behavior and what you buy?

It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?

MrDresden• 5 years ago

As much as I am for healthy competition, and would love for the revenue cut to be smaller (even smaller than the current 15%), my main concern as a mobile application developr who has focused predominantly on the Android ecosystem is further fragmentation.

If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when.

If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer.

There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)

josefx• 5 years ago

If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when.

If only Google had acted as a good faith steward of Android instead of pushing vendor lock in and closed source APIs in ways that make Bill Gates green with envy. Who am I kidding, their hilariously named "Open" Handset alliance even has a kill switch in the licensing agreements for anyone even thinking about competing with its services.

lots2learn2• 5 years ago

Can someone help me underatand: how is Google/Apple's app store fee different than when a game console company charges game developers a licensing fee to put their game on their console?

Jensson• 5 years ago

Why do people bring that up? Phone market is orders of magnitude bigger, bigger more important markets face more scrutiny.

lots2learn2• 5 years ago

Ok so no difference yeah?

karaterobot• 5 years ago

Let's say the allegations are true, and that they violate either Sherman, Cartwright, or the California unfair competition laws. Do the developers who accepted money from Google suffer any consequences?

zaptheimpaler• 5 years ago

This kind of collusion is shown to occur regularly in every industry eventually, every single time. History repeats itself over and over again.

Yet tons of people continue to believe in and join the chorus about the wonders of capitalism, the free market and competition whenever any sort of government antitrust intervention or regulations are proposed. Its easy to defend capitalism in black and white terms as opposed to communism/socialism while completely ignoring the vast middle ground between 0 government oversight and total control. I hope these stupid tactics are one day broadly recognized by voters..

sirjaz• 5 years ago

Now this maybe why windows phone failed. It was gaining market share in other countries outside the US.

specialist• 5 years ago

In broadcasting, the publishers bought off the distributors at the expense of creators, aka payola. Which was eventually prohibited, but continued nonetheless. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

I'm struggling to articulate a payola analog for internet. I'll revisit Stratechery's Aggregation Theory, see how closely it fits. https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/

Meanwhile, if the tech titans want to claim the protections for platforms afforded by Section 230, they should probably stop acting like publishers. (aka having your cake and eating it too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230

belter• 5 years ago

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21046008-epic-v-goog...

fomine32• 5 years ago

Meanwhile Apple don't need to do things like that because they ban alternative stores from a day 1. I wonder is both evil.

Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store

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