• conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    The play store is their monopoly that they abuse. There’s a refresh rate requirement to distribute your device with the play store.

    Otherwise, the user has to go to a Google website page from the device, sign into a Google account, and copy paste serial information of the device in order to be allowed to install the store. That’s not something normal customers can do, and it massively impeded the growth of the Android reader space.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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      1 month ago

      There’s a refresh rate requirement to distribute your device with the play store.

      Is there? I’ve seen lots of Android e-readers that are way less. Maybe just because they’re Chinese and don’t give a shit. Presumably that requirement is to ensure a positive experience for Android users. Android is obviously not intended to be used for e-readers.

      Regardless, a limitation of your OS is absolutely not in any way more anti-competitive than not distributing an OS at all. I feel like this is pretty straightforward…

      • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        You have to manually enable the play store on all of those devices. It’s why they’re so niche and only made by Chinese companies.

        It’s not in any way a limitation of the OS. It’s a business decision that is using their market position as the only source of most Android apps in order to control what manufacturers are able to make and sell.

        And again, your core concept isn’t just flawed. It completely lacks understanding of what antitrust is. You can make decisions that only affect your own hardware. You cannot claim to be open and use that “openness” to make yourself the standard, then use that market position to pick winners and losers between your “partners” using that product, especially when you’re also one of them. That’s anticompetitive. Google wants all the benefits of being “open” while completely dictating the entire market.

        • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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          1 month ago

          It’s not in any way a limitation of the OS.

          Requiring a specific refresh rate for the OS to be installed isn’t “in any way” a limitation of the OS? Not sure how you arrived at that.

          And again, your core concept isn’t just flawed. It completely lacks understanding of what antitrust is.

          No, I think you just don’t understand that I am not having a legal discussion. I am having a rational discussion. If the law is irrational, then it is fucked and needs to be updated. Imposing rules that apply to businesses that are more competitive by sharing their IP (with caveats), then going back and saying that other businesses that operate in essentially the exact same space, but refuse to share any IP (anti-competitive), are exempt from such regulations, is fucked.

          Neither of them are okay, and both should be regulated more heavily, but the fact that the more competitive one faces more penalties is fucked and just further enforces Apple’s “walled garden” ideology, as well as encouraging other businesses to operate similarly.

          • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            It has nothing to do with the OS. It’s for the play store. But again, a limitation of the OS would be something that the OS can’t do, not the OS just refusing to allow hardware for business reasons.

            Your opinion on rational is just as flawed. People should be able to make their own products. It’s specifically pretending to be open to form a standard that multiple independent companies join in on, then unilaterally controlling that standard to make decisions for the entire market that’s abusive.

            There are many companies that do what Apple does and run closed operating systems on their own hardware. Apple built their market share on the strength of their walled garden providing an excellent development environment. It’s not what a monopoly is. Controlling the behavior of hundreds of competing products is a monopoly.

            • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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              1 month ago

              People should be able to make their own products.

              Of course they should. You’re intentionally missing the point. They should not be allowed to make their products anti-competitive and anti-consumer by preventing the user from installing the software they want to use, in order to funnel more money into their pockets and essentially extorting it from businesses that want to write software for its’ customers with exorbitant fees.

              There are many companies that do what Apple does and run closed operating systems on their own hardware.

              And they shouldn’t be allowed to do that either. And especially not if they become one of the top 5 wealthiest companies on the face of the Earth in the process.

              Apple built their market share on the strength of their walled garden providing an excellent development environment.

              And absolutely nothing about allowing users to install whatever software they want without paying extortionate and exorbitant fees to Apple impedes that strength.

              It’s not what a monopoly is

              Fucking el oh ol. There’s simply no world where Google is a monopoly and Apple isn’t, and the insinuation of such can only be described as fanboyism.

              • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month ago

                Controlling what happens on your systems is not anti-competitive. You can’t just re-define words to mean something that’s the exact opposite of what they are. The locked down system of Apple and consoles is their biggest value add. It’s not “something I tolerate to buy an iPhone”. It’s why I buy an iPhone. They make so much money because their control of their own product makes it better. There is no such thing as a “monopoly” on your own hardware. It’s literally impossible.

                Google is a monopoly because they are controlling the behavior of competitors with their market position. That is always a monopoly. Controlling your own product never is.

                • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                  1 month ago

                  Controlling what happens on your systems is not anti-competitive.

                  That entirely depends on what part of “your systems” you’re controlling. When you control how users of “your systems” can interact with other businesses, it absolutely is. When you say “if you want to create software that runs on our hardware, you have to adhere to all of our guidelines, no matter how absurd, and pay us 30% of any revenue received through this software” that’s anticompetitive…

                  The locked down system of Apple and consoles is hair biggest value add.

                  LOOOOOOOLOLOL okay so you’re not just a fanboy, you’re a shill!

                  Good talk. Bye bye now.