If you are here, thank you for Conversations, Daniel, it has been my go-to for years for communicating with friends and family.
The farmer take care of his pigs but only to the point they get slaughtered.
(Long) distance communications, just like public roads, breathable air, potable drinking water and so on do not fit into a "free market economy" paradigm.
They simply don't fulfill the basic requirements that make the "market" idea work.
Specifically, a free market needs goods from different suppliers to be easily interchangeable. You cannot sensibly build multiple roads parallel to each other, or have multiple water pipes installed and you have only one airway to breath through.
I think part of what makes a utility a utility is that the nature of the service is naturally a monopoly. For example, you can only realistically have one set of waterways, so the company providing tap water as a service is a utility. Same with power lines, you can only realistically have one set, so the electricity-supplying company is a utility. With phone/internet service, I imagine that also requires sharing infrastructure.
Google doesn't fit in that paradigm. The nature of their services don't naturally require sharing resources to compete. They a monopoly simply because they amassed a ton a money to do things that other people can't, like drive on all roads on Earth with special cameras, or host however many videos there are on YouTube, serving those videos throughout the world, and even pay livable wages to the creators of the videos.
There should be an agency you can complain to for monopolies which has the power to dictate new rules to the monopolist with far reaching power to crack down on anything that smells like anti competitive behavior.
e.g.
- force banking apps that try to secure themselves with google play services to make that dependency optional.
- force google to stop blocking newpipe, aurora, etc.
- force google pay to make itself available on any platform that wants to integrate it (apple, graphene)
- force google to allow alternative app stores to become first class citizens.
So anyway, the US government should run an open-access, quad-track railroad and fiber backbone along every highway. Maximize the ROI on that ROW. Also they should nationalize Android and iOS.
[0] Because slavery. The South really, REALLY hated any government roads because it diminished the economic power of literally owning a lot of people. Hell, one of the stipulations of the Confederate Constitution was to strip the General Welfare clause out of the constitution.
And there are other companies: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, K Telecom T-Store, Jio, MTN Play.
Not even close to a captured utility. And if it were, which state on the planet should own it?
Tell me about the different OSes each of Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor etc. run then that we can choose from.
It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
Other companies using Google's incredible R&D spend and selling phones that use it is not Google's failing.
And we're talking app stores. They all have app stores disconnected from Google's app store.
> It's like saying Windows doesn't have a monopoly in the PC space because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
No, on two counts. One: - and it's the same with Android - Apple exists, and so there's definitely not a monopoly from a lowercase personal computing perspective. Two: the conversation is about app stores. There are many app stores. It's like saying Microsoft doesn't have a PC hardware monopoly because HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS.
On the contrary. I disagree.
It's possible to build something so successful and difficult that it rises to the level of public utility.
If you make that comparison you clearly don't understand the point being brought up by others here. Which is fine. I'm not going to convince you, I'm just informing you how I'll be voting.
No they don't. Certainly not ones where my bank app or Netflix is. This is being obtuse on purpose.
Yes. They do.
> Certainly not ones where my bank app or Netflix is.
Blaming Google for this is just insanity.
> This is being obtuse on purpose.
Agreed.
Contrary to Google, Microsoft has a clear position on what OEMs are allowed to do with Windows.
Sure, they may ship a Samsung skin or preload some of their own junk, same as on Windows. That doesn't make what they ship a different OS.
The one exception would be HarmonyOS, but that's somewhat China specific.
Harmony NEXT is no longer based on Android.
If I buy a Samsung phone in North America or Europe today I get Google Play as the main app store, Google services etc. and if I want to develop an app for a Samsung Android phone, I use the official Google SDK and Kotlin like for every other Android phone.
They have their own skin and store, but nobody really uses that. Google Play it is, be it Samsung or Xioami. They're very far from offering any kind of genuine alternative to Google Play, Google or Android. Their stores are junkware no different than ASUS preinstalling some antivirus nobody wants.
> Harmony NEXT is no longer based on Android.
That's my point. Huawei is the only OEM offering something different, but not easy to get in Western markets and thus doesn't have app mindshare.
Google SDK naturally doesn't have the support for OEMs specific features.
Leaving just one Samsung example here, too lazy to dump everything else,
https://developer.samsung.com/mobile/galaxy-sdk-getting-star...
I am yet to see anyone disable OneUI, MIUI, HyperOS, EMUI for bare bones AOSP UI.
Pretending, some other company could come stroll along and take over Google's turf, completely ignores the underlying reality.
People don't talk on two phones at once, they only use one search engine regularly and they even only use one browser to surf the internet.
That bottleneck leads to market capture due to inevitable logical reasons, not because I say so.
If you want autonomous states, each one has to control their own infrastructure. Just don't forget to question your assumptions.
But try telling the internet that their "morally pure" addiction to skirting compensation is actually what is killing (killed?) the web.
Every competitor dies in the cradle because 40% of the internet won't pay them while using their service.
Youtube with ad-blocking is the best video service on the internet, and no one can touch that.
When Google charges me a monthly fee for storage, takes a percentage of my Play Store sales, or manufactures a Pixel that I purchase from their online store, I am absolutely their customer. I may also be providing data they will sell, but I am still paying them for goods or services and that makes me a customer.
The problem is that they continue treating their customers like livestock, and it seems they have little incentive to change.
The problem is that there's no pressure on them to act any differently. If they made 100x as much money from app purchases, they wouldn't suddenly treat app developers better just because of that. They might treat them better if the app developers had better alternatives, but that would also be enough to force Google to behave differently even with the current amount of revenue.
My hypothesis: turkeys think the farm is an amazing life until the week before Thanksgiving. Nobody really groks that Google is shit until it's too late.
They are just so big, they can afford not giving a shit at all.
> They are just so big, they can afford not giving a shit at all.
You have to realise your idea that people use them for no reason is not very likely, don't you?
"your idea that people use them for no reason"
I definitely know my reasons why I still use google despite knowing they don't care about me. That does not change the complaint.
That's not why.
I called the bus company, a native speaker of my language immediately picked up, rescheduled the ticket, and told me to pay €2 extra to the bus driver.
I was shocked that customer support could be so simple.
BTW I spent 6 hours total spread along 12 months calling an Indian customer service before I got my money back for the cancelled flight.
They introduced a phone verification step for the support phone number that you provide. But their apparent assumption is that app authors are individuals or tiny companies. They expect to be able to send a text to the support number, or have it answered instantly by a human to validate the number. Any kind of IVR means the number can't be validated.
I have been going back and forth with their support for a year. It takes months at a time for them to respond, to say "we fixed it try again" and I try again and the process is identical.
Is is annoyingly ironic because I am sure that Google themselves could not pass this process to get listed in the Play Store. Their advice of "just redirect your corporate number to someone's cellphone to get validated" is laugable.
You now need a business address and a bunch of other documents for apps that will probably lose money.
Google has also decided they really don’t like users installing apps outside the Play Store. Today it’s a bunch of scary warnings, soon it’s a convoluted process to enable all installs and eventually they probably just ban it all together.
Literally nothing about Android is worth while to me now. iPhones are more stable , easier to use and have vastly better end user support.
The App Store is also a living hell for developers. They will look for any excuse to deny you an account and later reject your app.
Dare I say programming isn’t as fun anymore. I guess I can still build WebGL games. Best not speak too loudly, Apple and Google might go after that next
I listed my reasons for IOS. It’s ultimately just a much better user experience. You just have to give up on writing your own code to run on it.
[1] (Disclosure: the AI gave me this link) https://unifiedpush.org/news/20250131_push_for_decentralized...
Interestingly, the link you posted relates to Unified Push, which is a protocol that relies on a "distributor" app which acts as a proxy, receiving reliable notifications on behalf of other applications. And it happens that Conversations can be configured as a UP distributor, because of how good it is at that/how well the XMPP protocol lends itself to it.
Long way to say you should give XMPP a shot, it really works well!
The trade off is that you gain some extra privacy with simpler architecture and accept that some notifications will be delayed as ios decides when to run the bg job for the app.
source: I develop e2e app with self-hostable server (145 lines of zero deps python for the whole server).
Even Android is not predicatable from my testing or I'm doing something wrong
That just about sums up Big Tech
Free to read online - https://charleseisenstein.org/books/sacred-economics/
The truth is that these corps are so entrenched because people love love love the ad model. I mean, they hate the ads, but they are so sold on access being free that introducing a cost would come off like charging money to walk in a public park. Totally confusing.
And frankly the other path wouldn't be all roses either. There would be a wealth divide in technology where poor people wouldn't be able to afford to use all the stuff available to them now for free.
I was going to thank you. I still thank you if this is true.
How do you know about the bank checkbox?
My bank is huge and I’m skeptical they give a crap about me any more than Google. Their app certainly doesn’t look like it.
(I noticed your account has been posting a lot of what I consider to be “garbage comments” in this article, so I’d like some kind of claim to fact check.)
Of course they're not doing this out of good heart. My theory is that China wants to have a popular smartphone that is completely independent from US companies. But hey, once upon a time Google were "the good guys" too, so enjoy the party while it lasts.
An interesting point is that it's important to have powerful China around because they're a capitalist competition to the US.
I'm not saying it isn't an improvement but this feels like choosing centos because you don't like the direction fedora is taking.
Semi-capitalist at best. They're good for cloning things invented in the West, but the problem is that that is much cheaper than inventing, so things get commoditised and the places that can do expensive R&D have to find other ways to make money all the time.
2. Lots of Chinese technology never leaves China for political reasons, rather than economic/technology ones.
3. If you want to buy a semi-professional machine as an advanced hobbyist, often your only option is China.
4. Apple is wildly known for taking existing designs and improving on them. Why is it good for Apple to do that, but bad for China to do that?
I'm not saying that's the case.
If a customer has used your product already for long time 20 days+, extra steps to set up payment one time, especially when you do not auto charge short trials, the customer is happy.
How do you know that?
Regardless of my whataboutism, I still think tax is an very apt description of what the Google Play and App Store fees effectively represent. I would be happy to call it a fee if the stores would actually allow effective competition. But as it stands right now, the "government" like behaviours make the wording tax fairly accurate.
Btw thanks to the author. I got Conversations to work with Micro (https://micro.mu), the personal assistant I'm building. Its a nice XMPP client. Now just need to figure out how to do encryption for queries going into the model itself.
Google Play's app registration is so much more complicated now that Good Luck getting to production ever.
And even then the same thing on every update. If you're a small business and your livelihood depends on that then it's a nightmare to deal with.
And no, kicking them out won't be a problem. No sky is going to fall. Vacuum would be filled in very quickly.
Couldn’t have said better. We all allowed it to come to this.
And yet people (in general) just dont care, because they don't truly feel the pain until it's too late - issues like privacy and such are like that.
The fact is, google engineered their app store to be monopoly, following apple's model (which is also engineered - they had more foresight about it).
There are no good artificial monopolies, and natural monopolies should be regulated to prevent undue influence (and unwarranted profit).
> For years I’ve felt like I was in a toxic relationship with Google, and the only reason I stayed was economic dependency.
Not slavery: one party makes you supply widgets or you aren't allowed to eat or sleep. Another party gives you widgets for picking cotton.
We should all be happy to participate in the not slavery society, right? We should all feel great because we aren't slaves.
Yes, Android is a rather Google-ified experience, but there is life outside of Google. Let's live it.
+1.
Google wants you to believe the only way to get an app is through them. They have programmed society to believe this - despite the fact that you have never needed Google to download and run apps on your laptop. Apple also wants you to believe this, which is why they keep making it more impossible to run Mac apps without the Apple Store. They too want to extract your wealth and control you.
FOSS was created because people didn't have a way to cooperate and share the source code for their programs, to let users fix their own problems. Like the "right to repair" but for software. But Apple and Google wouldn't exist in the forms they do today without our FOSS. Our own software is being used to manipulate us, take our money, and take away our freedoms. Ironic.
Maybe it's time for a new software license that does discriminate against the rent seekers. Not because we deserve money when someone uses our free software. But because our freedoms are being trampled by the companies who use our software.
I think we should define that new license, abandon the old projects using the old licenses, and start using new ones. We already did this for Rust tools, I think we can do it for new licenses too.
Open ALL stores.
Okay, so sell mobile platforms separately but make desktop platforms with one license. That would still be nice and comparatively hassle-free for your customers. Not so fast, though! Desktop app stores also prohibit free apps with unlock mechanism. So you have to put unlockable versions on your website. However, app stores explicitly prohibit even just mentioning that the user doesn't have to buy an app if they have already bought it elsewhere. They strictly prohibit pointing the user elsewhere to check whether they could use it for free. Consequently, unless your users are extremely well educated about those platform quirks, many of them will erroneously buy your app twice.
But wait! There is an exception in Apple Store and Google Play Store. You're strictly prohibited from putting an app on there that needs to be unlocked by a license key, but you are allowed to ask the user to create an account or log into an existing account with a user name and email address. As long as users can also purchase the app on the respective store, that's allowed. So you can tie the app to an account and unlock it if the user already bought it for another platform. For some reason, unlocking an app with a code is strictly prohibited but unlocking it by providing your email and a password and then contacting a server is totally fine. That's why so many apps have those shitty login requirements. I wasn't really aware of that.
In a nutshell, apart from "freemium models" there are two major ways to sell cross-platform software that really is cross-platform. First, make the user pay individually for each platform, make them buy your app again and again with all the hassle that brings. Second, force them to login with an email and a user name with some direct contact to some centralized hub server.
IMHO, all of these options are strictly worse than just allowing your users to buy the app anywhere they like and unlock it for all other platforms.
* 'toothbrush', anything that is a constant tiny irritant going away can be absurdly triumphant
And they're annoying and often screw up the review process.
Google is always going to make money off any work they do. That's just business. They're not going to put more money towards better reviews without taking more money. And without the reviews, even as crappy as they are, a lot of really crappy software would be on the store. And a lot more would be actively malicious
And you were making like 7x as much as they were taking. Without them, you would even get noticed and you'd have made nothing.
We know this because almost nobody installs FDroid, and the other stores like Samsung make basically nothing for developers, even though they're preinstalled on so many devices.
Imagine if all streets were owned by two large companies who charged you enough to use them that you'd be paying as much in fees as you are in paying for gas. People would still use cars. The streets could be in horrible condition, the two companies would be making an insane amount of profit, but there would still be people out there saying that if it wasn't for those companies we wouldn't be getting anywhere and it's just business.
In fact the legal system punishes you for having an open platform. The very reason the author can leave the play store is the same reason why the play store is a "monopoly". So sure, maybe the play store is a monopoly with some rigid definitions that lack nuance, but lets not throw away logic here.
Something like the DMA and gatekeepers exist in part exactly because of the status quo and entities like Apple. I personally see the gatekeeper approach as a solid base, but know that it can be quite unpopular within the industry.
If I had an app, I'd have to pay Apple whatever they want to charge in order to get access to one part of all mobile phone users and Google whatever they want to charge in order to get access to the other.
Maybe calling that a monopoly wouldn't be good enough in an economics paper, but I don't see much of a practical difference. I get to accept the price or not do business.
And to set off some more bots: We desperately need regulation in this space.
Jesus Christ you can always count on HN for the most sycophantic, bootlicking comments sucking up to big tech imaginable.
I do believe that while Google and Apple are evil gatekeepers they also made it easier for non-tech people to install their own app without always calling their kids or neighbours. That's already a big win.
The way they are doing it is merely the way they are doing it, not the only way it could be done.
So no it was not a win at all and does not justify the method or the various forms of cost & overhead. Not just money but freedom, privacy, agency, discrimination, censoship, algorithm thumb on scale, support, etc.
The terrible support is really deeper than support. You literally stopped doing business here, because the lack of a feedback channel that allows Google to improve their business (i.e. realize they need a way to quickly correct stupid automated decisions) been Google's worst enemy and best friend. By ignoring support & feedback, the friction for internal decision making is low (no pesky customer demands, the product manager is king, management gets their way), but it leads to I think a lot of Google's products failing because they do not really understand their users, and the why behind the what they use.
I'm not sure being a monopoly alone explains Google's behavior here, but it could be as simple as that: who cares about one small customer... it's not like they have a viable alternative.
Like, their pipeline has been broken for months. No way to contact them. There is a support page for the api, but they close all issues as "the api is working". Well, sure, you accept the street view so the api is technically working, but haven't processed any for months.. It's probably a different team, but no way they would bother talking to each other..
The last line contradicts the first line. Being a monopoly means they don’t have to care. If Apple and Google were required to allow competing app stores as first-class citizens then they would have to provide better service or no one would use their stores and they’d lose out on all of the rents they’re collecting from app developers.
Say we do what you're suggesting. There's now three stores on Android devices when you take them out of the box: Google Play, Crumbt, and Dipple. Crumbt quickly gains a reputation for hosting sketchy software, with some diamonds in the rough, but users also regularly report getting malware on their phones. That said everything is free, which makes it the #1 stop for people who have to buy the down-market phones anyway because they can't afford apps either. Dipple, meanwhile, promises no AI features or content, and immediately gets a following with the more monied crowd that not only will pay for apps, but prefers to to avoid ads and spammy generative content.
The problem, as I see it, is we still have the old, bad experience from google, and we now have one other experience that lets anything in, so people are still getting malware, and we have still a third that's offering premium features to users with cash to spend and leaves everyone else out in the cold.
I know I'm being negative with my examples, but at the same time, the PROBLEM, as I see it, is power asymmetry: lack of oversight on the part of the platforms means nasty shit gets through, and lack of actionable routes to be remediated means the risk lands squarely on the user, who is disempowered already. Additional app markets solve none of that.
Like, sure, an app market could come along promising to be on the user's side: it will immediately not attract developers, because developers will (correctly) see that it's riskier there than elsewhere. And there's not really a monetary reason to make an ethical app store, whatever that happens to mean, because far more money is made being an unethical one that hangs it's users out to dry.
I just don't think these are problems yet more markets can solve, because fundamentally, what's broken about them is what makes them so wildly profitable. And I can't fathom another store not coming along and, even if not at first, doing the exact same thing again anyways that Play has already done, because it works. Because Play itself was immitating/innovating on the same axis as Apple's App Store.
The company's philosophy on the issue seems to be rooted in the hacker ethos of not giving repetitive work to humans if a machine could do it. When a machine can't do it, Google's thinking is to improve the machine. If the systems are good enough, nobody will need support.
The systems are not good enough, and that has been true for a long enough time that a reasonable company would have realized that a good support team is necessary until some far-future time.
I have not worked at Google, but rather at 4 different companies that built automation machinery (ie multi discipline execution between mechanical, electrical, and software engineers). In none of those cases was it ever “the hacker ethos”. It was mid to upper level management whose incentive loops tended to be associated more with either shareholder perception or HR head counts. All of the engineers were usually begging the company to do a better job (allocate resources) to last mile customer support. Engineers build things, and are usually more satisfied if the products they build are well received because of the “last mile” bit where someone helps a customer appreciate their creation.
Google is a crazy town, data driven by cherry picked post-hoc rationalizations driven by perf. The user never enters the equation.
I'd like to support that this goes "both" ways for companies who destroy their customer service. Not only do they not know what their customers want/problems they're having, but they don't know what their customers wouldn't want/problems they're not having. Like you say, it "lowers the friction," so some dumb, destructive idea that somebody has gets implemented based on title and force of personality.
But that's a monopoly. Nothing they do is destructive, other than putting any more work in than is necessary. If the store went down for weeks at a time, they might have a problem. The problem would result from this personally irritating and inconveniencing a regulator/politician, judge, or major stockholder/owner.
Sure, but they also won't generally bother if the fees are the same as the installed-on-every-device Play Store
The speed of government is slow, incredibly slow. It's measured in election cycles. It takes government eight, twelve years to simply turn around and notice. But once it does, it's a juggernaut.
Nothing can stop it. Nothing can avert it. Nothing can prevent it. And as everybody from Facebook to Microsoft knows, once it starts moving, you're screwed.
In the US, the oil companies thought they were too big. Then the telco companies thought they were too big. What really happens is eventually people just get pissed off, and then it's too late.
Google is fast approaching that. They almost had chrome and other things ripped away from them, and now they've got requirements to have alternate play stores. If they don't turn course, and turn course blazingly fast, they're going to have their entire empire wrenched away from them.
Oh well.
Unfortunately, that's no longer the case with the app store monopolies. While Apple is under some partial enforcement on parts of their app store policies, Google managed to play the game of regulatory brinksmanship better and largely avoided that for their app store. So the regulatory powers (such as they are) have already taken their best shot and this is where we are.
Juggernauts do not have to be fast. And the judge has seen Google being intractable and sneaky with alternate app stores too:
https://www.theverge.com/policy/979852/that-is-not-acceptabl...
There is now a record of this. The next action against Google, will see people pointing out each step they took to avoid compliance.
A case a year down the road about AI, will see stubborn attempts to comply like the above cited.
Google, with the gold plated shovel, digging a hole for itself. Put another way, breaking up a company typically comes after other methods don't work. Such as being sneaky and making them not work.
Or even because the required competition didn't occur, regardless of fault.
It's not over. It's a step taken, with a positive outcome, and a judge who is making sure there's follow through. Next step will be more stark.
Like you don't want to have fundamentals and pronciples change hardly ever. So you might take a long time to create or destroy say the FDA, but the FDA could be responsible for being on top of time-sensitive FDA things.
Maybe there could even be a body whos job is only to decide if something is time -sensitive or not, allowing other bodies to move as they need to, yet not just have no limits or accountability at all even within their own domains. So a rapid action can be done, then shortly after determined it was a bad idea and undone, or partly wrong and needs adjustment, and have that all be justified by a seperate independant process that judged or agreed "this is something that needed rapid action".
I don't think we have anything so organized yet. We do have some things where a body is responsible for a domain and can act more quickly within their scope, but we also have a lot of things where we get both forms of bad, making big changes on immediate whims, and being unable to make clearly needed even small changes simply because "government is slow".
We do have some examples of a reasonable organization and heirarchy and layers, and a whole lot of not, all together at the same time.
If they didn't develop Android they'd be paying $10s of billions annually for the prime positioning their apps and services and search enjoy too, so even if you buy their accounting tricks the development is paying for itself many times over.
But if the court allowed, Google would be paying that company $10s of billions for the prime real estate their software, search and services enjoy and it would then be a very weak argument that only IAP funds its development. Just like it is when Google earns $100s of billions in revenue from Android now.
Now that they have, they are also turning around on bits of that too.
it is parasitic to try and prohibit competing app stores and then leverage your monopoly by charging monopoly prices.
everything google is trying to do to discourage graphene, newpipe, competing app stores, etc. is parasitic and it's right that they are being fined by the EU for this behavior.
I think a more honest way to say this might be: Android OS development is massively funded by Google, and the Play Store feeds into this hugely. No other store does this, so it shouldn't be surprising that they can charge a lower fee. They're just doing the easy bit.
The basic services Google provides can effectively only be consumed by humans individually, creating an inevitable bottleneck.
Such bottlenecks impede interchangeability of goods, as you can't reasonably entertain multiple suppliers simultaneously there. And that means, you cannot have a free market, because you can't really have meaningful competition.
Google has captured services that really are public utilities. Them being "new" doesn't play a role.
https://stripe.com/managed-payments
This is what Apple said about it:
> Stripe and Paddle are leading full-service, turnkey payment processing, and merchant-of-record providers handling all the services necessary for link-out, including payment processing, tax compliance, fraud detection, and customer service. Across the top apps, the mean implied processing and merchant-of-record fee based on Stripe’s and Paddle’s rack rates (which few, if any, large developers actually pay because they negotiate discounts or provision in-house) is 8.1% using Stripe rates, or 7.8% using Paddle rates.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36...
Your local monopoly of water provider charges a fee not a tax (although many collect taxes on behalf of the state that sanctions the monopoly)
Platform apps stores tend to be a monopoly (specially in iOS case) and that decreases incentive to provide a decent service/product to their customers who hate that fact - not because customer have no representation.
I never submitted an app to play store but knowing how Google handles app customers (or any customer of their services/products) its believable that app devs are shafted too. I personally wonder if there's any differentiated service level between an app that results in revenue for Google vs one that is 100% free. I'd be pissed if my 15% fee is not buying me priority over the latest adware filled flashlight app
We don't need better support. We need a way to fire Google via a robust market full of alternatives.
You don't have a real choice in an app store on android (except recently, and even then, the alternative stores don't behave well for google-based apps).
That's why it's not a tax when you choose to buy DQ burgers, but a tax when you choose to deploy an app to google app store.
I agree Google is using a tax here but the rule you suggested doesn't work
Because burger meat is commonly sold in the smallest of grocery stores, and is not technically dependent on what buns, sauces, tomatoes, lettuce … or other ingredients you pair them.
And you can grow your own veggies, and bake your own bread.
It is an entirely componentized market. No gatekeepers.
Even single groceries in tiny towns continue having to compete with larger stores in bigger towns. Because they carry small selections most people make the drive to load up their larder regularly.”
You need to find an example that matches the point you are trying to make.
TLDR: Analysis reveals burger markets are nearly perfect economic opposites of centralized app store markets.
This is getting confused. Just find an example that does make your point.
You do, and you also can pick iPhone. Or not a smartphone. Or not use apps.
> (except recently, and even then, the alternative stores don't behave well for google-based apps).
Google provides planetscale services like Google Maps for free and you want to build apps that use their services but not pay them 15% for their store, and still complain they don't work perfectly? You seem to be outsourcing a lot to Google but expect to give them nothing in return.
There are numerous examples of people needing a smartphone to do things in their daily lives. I’ve read compelling stories of people who ran into trouble after ditching their smartphone.
There are lots of parallels to the railroad monopolies. Choice is not as available as you say it is.
How so?
> I’ve read compelling stories of people who ran into trouble after ditching their smartphone.
It'd be helpful if you mentioned them instead of just saying everyone should trust that you were compelled by stories.
I thought it’s self evident that products like Gmail, Search, Maps and others aren’t free because Google is aiming to do charity but because your personal data allows them to build a digital model of you and charge other businesses for access to that knowledge.
Around me I can’t think of a bank that allows any remote operation without a TAN only available on iOS or Android. That’s the root of a lot of future problems, not the least of which being that the bank charges you more for in person operations.
I'd agree you have a choice with 3rd party stores but they're working on limiting/killing those tiny markets, already.
"Reee!! It's not a monopoly!!! It's a duopoly!!!!" screeched the pedant.
> Or not a smartphone. Or not use apps.
"Submit to the duopoly or else you're not allowed to develop for the most common consumer computing device on the planet"
some smart alec would then point out that because even the cheapest, shittiest beef isnt free that this price is justified.
See what I did there?
#mmt bay-beeee!
Given that, I think the world would be improved by reduction of such “development”.
2. Android comes bundled with chrome (and thus google search) as default. Google pays Apple $20B+ a year to keep Google search the default on Safari. That should tell you how valuable controlling Android is for Google's margins.
Like no-one at google seriously thinks they need to take a 15% play store cut to justify funding Android.
I just don't understand how these companies can get away with that. These are the aspects of life that tells very clearly how most Govts are not chosen and ran for "the people" but the few, not the conspiratorial spirals. These are the smaller, but harsh Kafkaesque realities of life that says we lost this to the power of the "rich" - and it's an abstract power, it's not fixed, and if someone from the "masses" manages to become part of it they also reap the benefit but by the design of things that number has to be really small.
Okay, it deviated. The point is
> provides terrible support for their own play store.
Something like this is so abhorrent and yet is it normal and I didn't even start at how they can just charge 15 and 33% for of the incomes.