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I'm guessing it's because this was a jury trial and Apple's wasn't.


Practically I get that but legally I don't get it. Aren't we virtually dealing with the same evidence, arguments and laws?


We're dealing with the same laws, but not the same evidence.

There wasn't much evidence in the Apple case that Apple was explicitly taking action to disadvantage or harm third-parties, and there was even less evidence that Apple utilized their economic power to ensure their dominance.

If anything, the evidence in the Apple case showed that Apple treated all developers with relative parity.

The evidence in Google's case showed that leadership was so paranoid about a third-party store rising to prominence, since the platform technically allowed it, they were constantly wheeling and dealing to suppress competition.

Google essentially wanted to have their cake (side loading is fine! Android is open!) while eating it too (The Play Store dominates).

And they accomplished this by spending a lot of money, and giving certain developers better deals than others, etc.


>If anything, the evidence in the Apple case showed that Apple treated all developers with relative parity.

Basically as long as you strip away your users rights equally, you're fine. Not exactly great news for future tech...


Both cases were about anti-competitive behavior, not user's rights.


Epic suffered pretty hard vs Apple when internal memos came out that Epic was intentionally breaking app store rules to get a strike, with the intent to sue over that strike. That's the kind of thing that a jury is more likely to let slide than a judge, as well.


Yeah - but give the same case to 10 different juries, and you'll get different decisions.

Probably will get at least one outlier with different 10 judges, too.


There's two possible decisions the jury could make, and the jury is composed of a group of people who are chosen by both sides to prevent it from being a biased decision. Obviously not perfect but a lot better than you describe.


> and the jury is composed of a group of people who are chosen by both sides to prevent it from being a biased decision.

No, it's not.

It's chosen at random, and they have a chance to rule out people they think would be biased - and you can't just toss anyone for any reason.

It's not like Google can toss anyone they see playing a game or using an iPhone or something.

And it's definitely not like Google gets to pick 6 Google groupies and Epic picks 6 Epic groupies to be on the jury.


I didn't say they were individually selected and yes they can just throw out a certain number of potential jurors without any reason.

Maybe I worded my comment poorly but the point still stands.


The judiciary seems ridiculously slanted in favor of pro-business. That a bench trial would decide in favor of monopoly power is entirely unexciting & expected.

That a jury trial would decide in favor of consumer choice & be anti-monopoly quite reciprocally mirrors that strong anti-trust feeling Americans very widely feel, but which their government won't do.


So why didn't they go for a jury trial with Apple?


Because it’s always been the case that OS vendors to third party manufacturers get treated differently than integrated players




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