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Google Says Opening Up Its App Store Is Expensive And Too Much Work, Gets Told By Judge, 'We're Going To Tear The Barriers Down' (www.benzinga.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Judge James Donato intends to dismantle Google’s Android app store monopoly, following an earlier ruling declaring it illegal.
Google argued that opening its store to competitors would be too costly and complex, but the judge dismissed this claim, emphasizing that barriers will be removed.
Proposed remedies include banning discriminatory practices against rival app stores and setting up a committee to monitor compliance and report regularly.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Can you explain in technical detail why? Because I don't see this really being much of an issue.

Alternative stores in the App stores would still need to go trough Google's process of being accepted. Notices can be added to their download pages and these stores can even be forced to undergo a stricter process to make sure they are legit.
Downloading using a different front end changes absolutely nothing in terms of malware and junk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Google can vet the app store but they are not going to be able to vet every app that's inside that app store.

I'm not completely clear on whether Google will just be forced to allow alternate app stores into Google Play or allow more apps into Google Play. Either way I'm not sure I see the point of an app store inside an app store. We can already install whatever app stores we want.

There's also the existing problem of app stores like the Samsung app store updating apps that weren't downloaded from their store, which seems to me would open things to security vulnerabilities if one of the front ends gets hacked and then starts updating apps that you didn't even download from that app store.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

App Stores are responsible for their content. If google simply vets the app store developers and their team and their product, they should have some kind of trust that whatever that app store supplies will be up to standards. But on the other hand, it's actually none of their business to hold my hand for me when I want to do stuff with my device.

It's more about getting the less tech-savy people away from the Play Store. It creates a road that app makers can take to remove the need of Google Services, eventually making gapps fully optional for all.

The last problem you raise seems more like a symptom of a problem than an actual problem. This kind of weird behavior is only possible because Google simply does not care about others. A simple "this app is managed by x" configuration setting would be easy enough to implement in Android.