[Jan454]

I don't understand why Google (and Apple) at all are allowed to deny apps on their own. This is self-administered justice! They are monopols. If they say "there are alternatives, just go to Apple/Google/China/F-Droid" that's just a farce that should be punished hard.

[valuearb]

I agree. Apple and Google should be forced to use their resources to distribute apps for any developer under any terms the developer wants.

[newbie578]

Oh what a burden it is to host APKs of 10 MB for people to download and use..

Let's stop the pretense that Google and Apple are doing us a big favor with hosting our apks for download. They are not paying for my cloud storage or cloud functions which my users actually use, but me personally. The only role Apple and Google have is to be the troll to take the toll to "allow" me to put a link and download my app from the stores.

I would love to just put the same APK on my website and have people install it directly.

[valuearb]

Unlimited free downloads is not an inconsequential benefit. Imagine if Spotify tried to host their downloads on a SquareSpace account, how many microseconds would it be before that account was banned. Even a 10 Mb APK isn’t cheap to host when you have millions of monthly downloads.

And then you can just ignore all the ancillary services that add value to being on an App Store, such as app review, marketing promotion, international market access, etc, etc.

It’s as if you somehow think all those services appear out of the air instead of requiring thousands of expensive employees to design, build, test, and maintain.

[vbezhenar]

That's not the problem with Google, as there are other methods of distributing apps for Android. But with Apple it's a different story.

Also AFAIK Android's browser is more advanced than Apple's one, so you can create web applications with more capabilities for Android compared to iOS. But web applications do not seem very popular for some reason I don't understand.

[seaman1921]

>I don't understand

put that on a tshirt