this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight (www.theverge.com)
submitted 11 months ago by flop_leash_973 to c/technology
258 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Well, I’ll be damned. They finally won one it sounds like.

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[–] takeda 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No, then you won't even be able to use in-app purchases.

Android supposedly has an option to side load, and even install another store, but in order to do it, you get through a series of warnings, and such stores can't even be on the play store. So for an ordinary user you feel like you are hacking the phone. So naturally there aren't many alternatives. The only one that lasted is F-Droid, but it seems to be only used by advanced users who want to run open source software.

So simply, theoretically they should be able to do whatever they want practically everyone has to stick to play store.

Play store has a rule, that additional charges need to go through them (and they of course charge 30%). This probably would still be ok, but then certain vendors don't need to follow the same rules.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

No, then you won’t even be able to use in-app purchases.

That's not true - they wouldn't be able to use the Google Play APIs for payments of course, but if the app is sideloaded they can definitely use any payment processor / method. If the app isn't on the Play Store then Google has no say over it.

Android supposedly has an option to side load, and even install another store, but in order to do it, you get through a series of warnings

It's really not as difficult as you make it seem.

  1. Send a link to the user somehow (SMS, email etc); or user goes to the website
  2. Click on the Download button
  3. Open the APK
  4. In the dialog box that pops up, click on the Settings button > then allow Samsung Internet
  5. Click on the Install button

That's it. There were no "series of warnings" to go thru, no need to flip between multiple screens or anything. I literally just went thru this process to install the Epic store my Galaxy Fold 4 - which took only a few seconds in total - and it was in no way complicated or "scary" at all. And bear in mind that the audience in this case are gamers - people who are already familiar with the concept of downloading and installing programs on a PC, so it's not like you're targeting some tech-illiterate people here.

The only one that lasted is F-Droid

Not true again. Aurora Droid and Droid-ify are both reasonably popular, at least in the OSS/enthusiast communities. Yes they use the F-Droid repos but they also subscribe to other repos (Guardian Project, Izzy etc), so you're getting your apps from multiple sources.

There are also proprietary stores such as Aptoide which are quite popular in the Asian markets. Finally, you're completely ignoring other stores which are bundled out-of-the-box on many non-Google phones such as the Galaxy Store on Samsungs, Mi Store on Xiaomis, AppGallery on Huawei etc. Of course, in the western market the Play Store is the most dominant, but the Samsung store is reasonably popular among Samsung users (as they have regular deals on games and various other apps + some exclusives like Good Lock and other Samsung-specific apps), and of course, the OEM stores are also quite popular in Asian markets.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Not OP, and, correct me if I'm misremembering, but you did actually used to have to enable developer options to be able to sideload at all, and Android doesn't tell you how to do that.

[–] yamanii 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You seem too certain that it's still simple, but everytime I'm installing a new APK my Xiaomi makes me wait 10 seconds and puts a big, red, scary sign saying how dangerous it is to side load, then finally the ok buttons unlocks and I install my app.