Imagine how untenable Apple's position would be if the Play Store is proven to be a monopoly.
avidamoeba
joined 1 year ago
I just came to note that seeing Mastodon inserts instead of Twitter in an Ars article makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
🤯 Thank you for your service.
Or your own proprietary implementation if you're making an Android device yourself and you were lazy.
I member!
Damn, he's got the receipts!
And they're completely replaceable as there are clean interfaces between the closed source components and the open source base.
Yes. LineageOS and GrapheneOS among other forks are some obvious counterexamples to the narrative that Android isn't open source. Then there are the countless vendors that use it in China without Google software. I know it's cool to hate on Google and I do partake but that's simply a fact.
As opposed to Apple where advertising is a growing revenue stream that they're definitely not gonna maximize because they have other revenue streams.
Agree on the hardware point. That said you can buy a Fairphone or a Pixel today and install usable Google-free software on it, today.
Pot, meet kettle.
To add to this, at least Android being open source allows for alternative versions that can be used on some hardware that truly don't track and can be consistently supported long term. With Apple's devices, that's not a practical option.
Edit:
From the news today:
Google’s relationship with Apple is particularly significant given its unilateral access to iPhone customers. Internal Google notes of a meeting between Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook released Monday by the DOJ give an interesting insight into that relationship. The meeting, which began as a discussion of the regulatory environment in D.C. eventually turned toward the question of Google’s place as the default search engine on Apple products.
Cook, according to the notes, told Pichai he believes the two companies were “deep partners; deeply connected where our services end and yours begin.” In another note from the meeting, Pichai reportedly said, “Our vision is that we work as if we are one company.” Pichai tried to distance himself from that line during this testimony on Monday.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!
Always is. Competition isn't profitable.
For everyone in the back of the room, monopoly in the context doesn't require to literally have no other choice. It's enough for the alternatives to be impractical as in not widely used in practice.