Apples store should have to be installed in the same way, IMHO. It should also remove itself regularly to ensure it continues to do so. Only then will the process to add and use 3rd party stores be fair.
If you don't know what you're doing, on ios you need a separate video with instructions (or fumble around) to figure out how to install a third party app, while on android the prompts guide you.
On android when you download an apk and try to install it, you get a popup saying something like "Chrome needs permission to install unknown apps." with a button to cancel or go directly to the settings and give chrome the permissions, after you enable the permissions you also get the prompt to install the apk right away. This is the equivalent on windows to just clicking next half a dozen times to install some software, on ios you have to trigger the install, go manually to the settings and enable the permission, then trigger the install again.
I guess europe in this case extends to Americas, by the existence of French Guiana and other outermost EU regions. I am wondering if that could pave way for some technological quirks if these things do not trickle into NA quick enough.
mstolpm wrote:
> There is already the opposite situation: "available on iOS AppStore (except in
> EU)". And that might pop up more often in the future.
We already have lots of that related to website access. "Not available
due to GDPR" is a pretty common error message for me.
If anyone wants to reply that "I've just dodged a bullet thanks to EU
blocking unethical websites" then all I can say is I know how to dodge
bullets by myself, thanks.
>If anyone wants to reply that "I've just dodged a bullet thanks to EU blocking unethical websites" then all I can say is I know how to dodge bullets by myself, thanks.
These websites did not get blocked by the EU. These websites chose to block themselves because they did not want to put in the effort to be GDPR compliant.
Which is functionally the same? EU can’t ban websites, but the threat of very high fines is effectively the same.
Also when it comes to random news websites (especially smaller local ones) what sort risks are there? The aren’t handling your personal information and if you’re afraid about them selling your browsing history to third parties there are way to fix that locally
> what sort risks are there? The aren’t handling your personal information
The sites themselves disagree with you. They think there's risk, which is why they decided to not work in the EU. EU does not "threaten very high fines" to sites that do not collect PII. GDPR does nothing if you don't collect information. But they obviously do collect it, despite your denial.
The analytics services gather enough detail to personally identify you. You know, IP, browser fingerprint, geolocation, corroborated with other sites you visited gets you gender, age bracket, lifestyle... the noose slowly tightens. This stuff is public knowledge and has been discussed ad nauseam.
How else than technically should they comply with the GDPR? Morally? They don't do that either. They gather as much as possible and deduce as much as possible from it. Are you actually claiming services like Google Analytics aren't interested in knowing much about a site's visitors?
I'm looking forward to this, even if only to have an alternative Android store that doesn't take such an egregious fee. I just want the market forces to decide the cut, instead of the monopolies. The only thing left to fix is Apple's ridiculous "fee for not putting things on our store".
Hopefully someone will do this soon, if the Epic store isn't this (or is this for just games).
If you're on Android try installing the F-Droid app store, lots of open source apps are available on it (and Droid-ify is a good looking client for F-Droid if you want an app store UI with Material design)
I already have F-droid, Obtainium, etc, but these are pretty niche. It will be great to have something mass-market (not just for FOSS) that most consumers will have on their phones.
Amazon has had its App Store on Android for years. It was a good source of high quality apps given away for free for a while. If Epic does that too, consumers win.
"I just want the market forces to decide the cut, instead of the monopolies"
Ironically it is the fetish with free market economics that produces the monopolies. I wonder how many "techno optimist" libertarians are also cheering the fact that Apple has been forced by government regulation to allow competitors onto their platform.
> Ironically it is the fetish with free market economics that produces the monopolies.
Not really, it's the fetish with taking free market economics to the extreme. You can't really have a free market without regulation, though now we're getting in a GPL-vs-MIT-like argument of whether "free" means "without restrictions" or "with restrictions that ensure the desired outcomes are produced".
>> You can't really have a free market without regulation
The definition of a free market is one without government regulation. There is no such GPL-vs-MIT debate here. Perhaps you are thinking of the term “capitalism”?
> The definition of a free market is one without government regulation. There is no such GPL-vs-MIT debate here.
Actually, there is, because I was able to find several other definitions that include minimal government regulation. This is also how most of my friends and family use the term.
> Ironically it is the fetish with free market economics that produces the monopolies.
only when there's not sufficient regulations from cartel like behaviour. At the risk of invoking the no-real-scotsman fallacy, i would say that a real free market cannot support a monopoly, unless said monopoly is taking as thin a cut of the profit as possible (thus leaving no room for competition as the initial outlay of capital would not be worth it).
On the other thread, people complain that Google didn't take down a scam app fast enough.
People obviously complain about the 30% commission fee for digital goods.
So if people don't want to pay the commission, and they want Google to police all the apps, isn't that just a giant cost for Google without a way of making it sustainable?
Unless people are ok with drastically higher initial phone hardware costs to make up for the loss revenue on app store commissions? For example, let's say the average phone now costs $1,000 and Google can collect 30% commission. Let's say countries ban the commission. Google has to make money somehow. They make the phone cost $2,000 now and also they no longer make Android open source to restrict workarounds. Would people prefer that more?
Why? Is MS expected to do this for Windows or Apple for macOS?
Obviously they can still charge the 30% for their own app stores and use that money for moderation. Why would anyone expect them to be responsible for 3rd party stores?
> also they no longer make Android open source
I don’t think that’s feasible at this point. Also $1000 per phone is not even remotely close to what they’d be losing (at least by a magnitude if not several..)
In any case Android is mainly there to funnel users into search and their other ad-funded services. Basically a cost saving measure to reduce the amount of money they need to pay Apple for keeping Google as the default search engine on iOS.
The reason grocery stores and meat packing plants are inspected, is that competition on price, on profit is a thing. So eventually in a competitive market, someone tries to cut costs by reducing safery checks.
Look at Boeing. Cutting safety in the name of profit.
So if there is a lot of competition for app stores, cost cutting could come out of reduced fees, "safety inspections" could be impacted.
Which means we'll need new laws and regulations for store owners, to make sure they are performing due diligence.
Boieing didn’t really operate in a competitive market, though. It’s a duopoly with a very heavily constrained supply. I doubt it was a conscious decision to prioritize profits over safety (obviously it was irrational to begin with because they just ended up with significantly lower profits than they would have otherwise) just a general culture that values and rewards gross incompetence
They can't have their cake and eat it too. When you entrench yourself in a monopoly, there are duties that come with it
There could've been other app stores. There could've been a choice at startup like there is for browsers. There could've been 4 or 5 app stores installed by default whether you're on a Pixel or on a Samsung device.
It is nobody's fault but Google's that they became a gatekeeper with their app store. Ie: How hard open OSes have to fight to de-googlify a phone. How they push to have it installed by default, which forces me to put my apps on the Play store as 99% of users would go there to look for my apps.
Then there are scare screens to fend off the installation of competing app stores. Then once you've actually managed to install a competing app-store like F-Droid, it has to beg you to go into the settings and check some boxes or it won't be able to perform installations properly.
>They can't have their cake and eat it too. When you entrench yourself in a monopoly, there are duties that come with it
I mean, it seems like people want their cake and eat it too. Not Google.
People want no commission, and for Google to spend resources policing the app store.
Since Google open sources Android, Google doesn't make money from the OS itself. They only make money through pre-installed Google apps and the app store.
At least Apple (and Google as well) have pretty great margins on their mobile offerings.
I expect those to go down. It isn't a law of nature that tech platforms are insanely profitable. Plenty of products are "just" moderately profitable and survive just fine.
If the market (with fair and active competition on the software side) is able to bear "average" phone costs of 1000€ so be it.
The complaint is "if we have to put up with your crap at there should at least be a reason beyond 'just because.'"
The argument you get from Google is that downloading APKs is dangerous so everyone should use the store. When they don't police the store anyway then it's obvious they're just abusing everyone.
Oh, poor Google, a company with billions in income and a CEO who makes 200 millions in a year, has to make money somehow.
I got an alternative suggestion. Instead of buying and building humongous office buildings, how about allowing their developers to work remotely? Then they can save also on the lavish free lunches and dinners, and the building space can be used for people actually living there.
Stop corp simping, it's tragic that there exist people like you who are worried whether a huge multibillion Corp like Google is making enough money. They are obviously one of the biggest and richest companies out there, and you make it sound like we, the ordinary people, have to be concerned about Google's financial wellbeing? The same Google that, in order to boost their stock price, just recently dumped thousands of workers in the blink of an eye?
Your account has unfortunately been breaking the HN guidelines repeatedly lately. I'm not talking about just this comment, but about a general pattern with your account - for example flamewar comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41251664 are unacceptable.
If you keep this up, we're going to have to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it. Among other things, that means not posting flamewar comments and not using the site for ideological battle.
I've always wondered why Steam hasn't gotten into Android game market. Feels like it would be just free money for them, and gamers like me would be happy if they could play some of the games from their library on mobile.
Even for the Steam Deck it's clearly a big project to get a critical mass of games working on a non-PC device, and that's much easier than Android (only one model of device, no need to port code to another OS and platform, no need to port game interface to touch UI, etc). Ask any Android game developer and the support & cross testing of the zoo of device models and OS versions is a huge part of the work.
Plus on Android they'd be trying to convince Steam publishers to enter a platform where users don't pay for games but rather watch ads or make IAPs, so they wouldn't really get the right kind of paying customers from there.
Question for someone who is a fan of brand-specific game stores: what do you like about them? Personally I find the idea of apps-within-apps annoying and convoluted, but I’m willing to entertain the notion that I’m a luddite.
I don't feel the need to pay a commission for a digital storefront. I know a lot of folks find value in app store/steam etc... but I find almost no value. At the same price, I would rather the money go to the seller of the product and I definitely don't want to pay more for a storefront.
I find the normal reasons people like digital storefronts not very compelling: safety, reviews, all in one place, etc...
I also worry about everything being in one account. If I lose my epic games account, I'm not going to worry too much. If Valve locks me out, I'm in trouble, so I would rather diversify away from Valve if I can.
> I welcome all the downvotes, facts are long gone
To be fair I’m only downvoting because you couldn’t provide any coherent or rational arguments or claims (and to be fair it’s not even clear what are you trying to say) and not because of some “ideological” reasons
As a layman I doubt this is compliant with the appropriate EU laws (specifically the DMA)
Unfortunately this behaviour does not come as a surprise but I certainly hope the regulatory "beatings" will continue until compliance improves.