[PeterisP]

Antitrust rules apply for abuse of dominant market power (which Google certainly has) even if theoretical alternatives exist. It does not matter that it's not literally a monopoly, as that is not the legal bar that needs to be passed for Google to be limited in what they can and can't do.

[bko]

Bandcamp is using their own billing system, bypassing Google's cut. Every app could do this and cut Google out all together. An app could just let you download the app, pay some amount when you're in the app which would unlock the functionality. I don't think its unreasonable for Google to have a problem with this. They want to get the reach of the app store, and make money off it, without paying a cut to the host like everyone else. What am I missing here?

[amelius]

In the 80s and 90s you could buy software running on Windows, where the vendor of the software didn't pay anything to Microsoft; in fact, I'm sure Microsoft was happy with them supporting and increasing the strength of their platform.

Why does this have to change now? Why does the platform need a cut?

[mattmcknight]

When you bought software at a retail store, the vendor didn't get the full retail price. It's not the platform getting a cut, it's the store. What we need to ensure is that platforms can't force you into their store.

[chongli]

As far back as the 80’s there were means of distributing software without paying a retailer a commission on every sale. Shareware [1] was one such model. The software was distributed by users copying it from floppy to floppy, handing it out at user group meetings, conferences, even on the school playground. It was later included in large CD-ROM collections packaged with computer magazines.

The point is that you could distribute your software any way you wanted to without permission or license fees paid to the maker of the computer or its operating system.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware

[Arainach]

You as the Shareware author were paying for the creation of those discs and their distribution. If you had an FTP server, you paid for the bandwidth.

Epic isn't doing that. Epic wants access to Google's customers, with Google paying all the bills, without paying Google anything. Despite the fact that Android allows them to run their own app store or sideload apps.

[IIsi50MHz]

Shareware disks _could_ be written and paid for by the shareware author, but user-to-user distribution, at the _user's_ cost was [seemingly] more common.

[drdeca]

I think this might be more compelling if Epic were the ones hosting the download, and Google were just like, listing the download in their listings, where the download button would go to Epic's servers.

[withinboredom]

And we might ask ourselves: why can’t Google do that? They just need to sign the binary, Google doesn’t have to host it.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

The ship has already sailed on that long ago.

If there's a new store on the iPhone, virtually no one will use it.

The default is good enough, it's already installed on ~1Bn devices, and most of those devices use it somewhat regularly already.

[pjmlp]

The software vendor instead payed for magazine ads, placement on shop shelves, had their own payment and distribution infrastructure.

[bobviolier]

Because back then you paid a lot of money for Windows and they also sold you on Office and the likes. Google's business model with android is exactly this, give the OS for cheap but earn money on the apps.

Not saying 10 or 30 is the correct amount. It's just different now.

[adrian_b]

During most of the time since Windows exists, the majority of its users have not paid for Windows separately, but as a part of the purchase price of a new computer.

Android could also be paid as a part of the purchase price of a smartphone and maybe it already is, but of course a one-time payment would be much less profitable for Google than a continuous stream of revenue from the apps.

[tester756]

majority of the world never paid a single cent for windows

[josh2600]

It was built into the cost of the computer.

[belltaco]

And cost of Android isn't or can't be?

They make most of their money from user data and search anyway.

[oauea]

Same for Android. Google charges a licensing fee from manufacturers.

[oauea]

I think you meant ads instead of apps.

[zyemuzu]

Not to mention that device makers pay licence fees to Google for the privelege to run the Play Store (and other closed source benefits).

[robonerd]

> Why does the platform need a cut?

To meet shareholder expectations of continuous growth.

[alasdair_]

Exactly. Epic have their own store for games. Would they be fine with each AAA game releasing on the store for “free” but required a credit card to be entered once it was run, with 100% of the money going to the publisher?

[mdoms]

Yes, the Epic store enables this exact scenario. Lots of free games on Epic make all of their month through micro transactions billed entirely through their own systems. See Rocket League for one example, but there are many.

[SXX]

I really unsure about EGS monetization model, but Psyonix (developer of Rocket League) are subsidiary of Epic.

UPD: At least while ago in 2019 Epic claimed to give a choice of payment processor to use for games on their store: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-12-06-epic-games...

[mdoms]

As I said there are lots of free games on Epic which use their own store fronts for transactions.

[oauea]

Google is running an app store. Why should they have any right to involvement whatsoever after the app has been installed? Once the user has installed the app the transaction has been finalized. And if that app is given away for free, and Google has a problem with that, they should ban all free apps and require charging a fee.

[lolinder]

> Google is running an app store. Why should they have any right to involvement whatsoever after the app has been installed?

Running a store means deciding what goes on the shelves. The only features that Google could use to decide whether they want to sell an app are the features that are apparent after installation. Your argument would suggest that they shouldn't be allowed to curate their content at all.

[zyemuzu]

Google use licensing models for many of their products. I'm sure they could devise a model whereby a company such as Epic pay a fee per client download of their software. It could be negotiable. That way everyone wins, and customers get user friendly access to the content they want.

[bombcar]

Should you (or Disney, but costs always end up at the customer eventually) have to pay a fee for every single device you sign into Disney+ on? It’s bad enough you can’t use it on an Xbox without Gold Live or whatever it is.

[hansvm]

It's one thing for Google to have a problem with something and quite another to anti-competitively leverage their other market positions as the solution.

Other comments describe a few specific examples of that abuse (like also thwarting Epic's attempts to be preloaded by OEMs), but I think it's more interesting to look at how money is changing hands as evidence of market power being abused.

In particular, consider that Google in theory should be fine accepting payments as low as their hosting costs (and probably much less since their app store helps attract phone purchasers to fuel their ad network, since they also take a cut from OEMs, etc). Compare that to each individual developer on the store who in theory is able to afford at most some large fraction of revenue for the privilege of being on the store. Note that the latter number is (usually) much greater than the former and that the latter is what's actually being paid. If there were any real competition for something as trivial to build as an app store then you wouldn't expect Google to be able to successfully price discriminate across so many orders of magnitude of prices and extract nearly all of the surplus value from the end user purchasing an app. The fact that they're able to do so and are doing so should serve by itself as a strong indication that something suspiciously anti-competitive is happening. My $20 app wasn't 20x harder for Google to host than your $1 app, so why are my fees 20x higher? Because they can get away with charging that much because they stomp on any competition.

That isn't any kind of nail-in-the-coffin proof mind you, but it serves as a useful heuristic for spotting abuses of market power in many markets. Throwing that same idea at the right to repair movement, the amount paid to John Deere for tractor repairs is many times greater than what people have been able to achieve on their own (when they've been able to do so), and the only barrier is DRM that was added to prevent unauthorized repairs. If John Deere were really that much better at repairing their tractors than third parties then they wouldn't have to artificially exclude everyone else from attempting it to retain market share and command those prices.

Nobody's saying that Google or John Deere shouldn't be allowed to profit from the things they make, but using existing power to hamper competition and seek greater rents isn't good for society as a whole.

[novok]

Google also makes google chrome and doesn't get a single cent off of transactions done on that web browser too.

[ydlr]

A horrible injustice that will one day be corrected. It just takes a couple generations to change expectations.

[colechristensen]

That Google’s cut of payments is very high which points to market position abuse

[lolinder]

High compared to what? It's the same as Apple's, so you're not comparing to other app stores. Amazon charges the same percentage on Kindle for eBooks.

When people claim that the app store fees are excessively large they're usually comparing to payment processor fees, but neither major app store functions solely as a payment processor. So if not that, what are we comparing to when we say the fee is high?

[withinboredom]

The fee could be lower. They (the App Store owner) only needs to sign a blob. They (Google/Apple/Amazon) choose to host the blobs, and then charge the developer for it. They claim “marketing” too, but as far as I can tell, that usually involves a sale and the app owner has no choice but to sell their app for less without their consent. I think Apple sometimes has “curated” lists, but it’s questionable how “effective” that is since they don’t release much numbers. What is the ROI of getting randomly chosen to be on that list? Is it worth 30%? We will never know.

[gigatexal]

But it does matter what the law says. If they’re not a monopoly in the eyes of the law what can a judge do?

[AnssiH]

The parent meant that antitrust laws usually apply even if there is no monopoly in the strictest possible sense (i.e. literally no competitors). A dominant market position is enough.

[ChrisLomont]

>Antitrust rules apply for abuse of dominant market power (which Google certainly has)

Antitrust rules apply to monopolies, and Google has no where near monopoly over app stores or phones, the relevant systems here.

[gamblor956]

Antitrust rules apply to monopolies

No, they don't. Most antitrust cases don't involve monopolies, since those are actually quite rare, and most monopolies don't involve anticompetitive behavior.

Antitrust is about regulating anticompetitive market activities, which ranges from price fixing to monopolies.

[dessant]

> Antitrust rules apply to monopolies, and Google has no where near monopoly over app stores or phones, the relevant systems here.

I'm sure that will be consolation to the growing number of victims whose businesses and livelihoods were destroyed when an overworked reviewer or an algorithm allowed to go rampant kicked out their products from the app stores where the overwhelming majority of users could discover them.

Your definition of monopolies and applicable antitrust rules is divorced from reality, and from the legal framework based on which these monopolies have been repeatedly fined, and will be forced to open up their platforms.

[RC_ITR]

>which Google certainly has

You’re conflating some ideas here. A marketplace owner always has “dominant market power” over the market they own. That’s the nature of marketplace, the owner gets to set certain rules like the types of payments accepted at the marketplace, because that is literally the job of a marketplace.

Google also has dominant market share, since their App Store is the best for android, but that’s legal (keep in mind Amazon, another $1tn company actively competes in this space) - the government does not want to force consumers to use worse app stores. Competition for the sake of competition is not pro consumer.

What Google probably isn’t doing (and what is illegal) is using its OS market power to crowd out other app marketplaces. As mentioned above Amazon meaningfully competes in this space. The closes you could get there is Google doesn’t publish its own apps to other app marketplaces, but that’s likely not across the bar of anti-competition.

[goosedragons]

One of things revealed because of the whole Fortnite issue was that Google squashed Epic's attempt to bundle their Android app with various OEMs.

Google controls the platform and they're the ones who set up scary warnings for installing apps via sideloading (despite malicious apps being not uncommon in the Play Store itself.)

[gamblor956]

No, Google is attempting to engage in a vertical restraint of trade. That is one of the behaviors generally considered to violate antitrust rules, if the company is using its leverage in one market to attempt a vertical restraint of trade in another market.

In this case, the leveraged market is the app store, and the restrained market is mobile payment processing.

[RC_ITR]

>No, Google is attempting to engage in a vertical restraint of trade.

My friend, does Lyft take Mir as a payment method? Can you choose to use Stripe to pay for your Airbnb (vs. their in-house processor)?

I really am curious about the legal precedent you're relying on - when has a marketplace ever been found to be acting anti-competitively by choosing the payment rails they use?

[jollybean]

"Google also has dominant market share, since their App Store is the best for android, "

No, it's preloaded on every device, that's why.

If some other App Store, 'App Store B' were preloaded on every device, and App Store were not, then that 'App Store B' would ultimately be 'that much better'.

That said - I don't agree with Epic here.

If you want your merchandise in Walmart, it's fair that Walmart does the selling and the checkout. You can't put your merch in there, and expect to be able to buy it 'online' and walk out with it. This is irrespective of Walmart's position in the general market.

Google Play preloads are another question.

Sideloading is also another question.

But stuff in Google Play, I think it's fair if they set the rules there.

[saurik]

These are in-app purchases, right? Imagine if Walmart demanded a 30% cut not of merely the sale price for anything they sold you, but had a policy that any later sale that that product caused--such as an app on a phone, if the phone was purchased for Walmart ;P--had to use Walmart.com's billing and they were entitled to a 30% cut... and then place that ridiculous scenario in a world where half the people in the US only could shop at Walmart and the other half only could shop at Target (and it would cost the user $500 to switch stores and then they would only be able to use the other store). If you want to say that apps shouldn't be free with later purchase, that would at least make more sense? Like, sure: Walmart isn't going to stock and hand out phones for free. But I feel like the honest version of that business makes it so that app developers just pay Apple for hosting fees--which would correlate with downloads, not revenue--which is how all of this really should work.

[RC_ITR]

> If some other App Store, 'App Store B' were preloaded on every device, and App Store were not, then that 'App Store B' would ultimately be 'that much better'.

Did you enjoy your Fire phone, because that's exactly what you're describing. Somehow people decided they did not like it...