The thing with Apple is all of their antitrust trickery is internal to the company. They use their store, their payments, they force developers to all have the same terms, they force OEMs and carriers to all have the same terms.
I think the Apple case would be no less interesting if we could see all of their internal thoughts and deliberations, but Apple was not putting it in writing, whereas Google was. You know, I think Apple is… it’s a little bit unfortunate that in a lot of ways Apple’s restrictions on competition are absolute. Thou shalt not have a competing store on iOS and thou shalt not use a competing payment method. And I think Apple should be receiving at least as harsh antitrust scrutiny as Google.
Google and Microsoft generally are the backstop against an Apple monopoly. Don't like Apple making so many decisions for you as a user? Windows and Android are right there.
Google and Microsoft have gone too far in the direction of shoving ads into all my interactions with their products that I now have no interest in using, much less paying for, most of them. The only Google services I still use are Nest and YouTube (both of which I pay for). I use MS for some of my email, but I’m migrating away. Unless Google and Microsoft see the light and accommodate users who hate ads, it’s going to be mostly Apple and Linux for me.
To attack Apple you'd have to attack vertical integration in general more aggressively, not just when it's "unfair". Which Epic won't do because the integration between their games, their engine licensing, and their store is also a key part of their identity today.
I think the only part of what you describe that is potentially a vertical tie is the Unreal Marketplace license requiring that assets you buy only be used in Unreal.
Otherwise, you can put non-Unreal games on EGS, and you can put Unreal games on other stores. EGS does not give you benefits if you choose to publish an Unreal game on EGS, and I'd be surprised if all the games EGS buys exclusivity for are Unreal games.
Epic does sell their own games on Epic Game Store, but they also sell most of their games on Steam too (with the huge exception of Fortnite, though it's free to play)
I stand corrected but your "False!" is in bad form.
Here's the docs, search for Epic Games Store in this FAQ. They waive the 5% royalties when sold on Epic Game Store. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq
Hey I said, "I think", and was ready to accept that there was more to it. Yours was assertive about that being wrong without providing any supporting evidence for your claim. You made me find it instead. Hence the "bad form".
I'm not sure how "I think..." conveys certainty.
It's just an abrasive thing to do running around going "False!" and "Wrong!" on the Internet. So yeah I'll give you flak for it.
I put in effort to try to not be abrasive because people call that out when I do. You're just receiving the same.
What's he supposed to say? "Sweetie, you might maybe be possibly wrong maybe. I might be wrong too but i think it could be saying..."
He didn't attack you or act abrasive. You are right that "I think" is not supremely certain language, but it does actually carry certainty with it since you're not saying "I don't know anything about this, but I think..."
Conclusion: I believe you're being a bit overly defensive, and should relax a little. He wasn't personally attacking you, he was saying you were false when you were objectively false, without much in the way of personal insult or even arrogance, and cited his source reasonably well.
Except fairly doesn't mean the same deals with different customers? It's perfectly fair to charge lower fees to someone already proven, while charging higher for someone who is just starting out. It's perfectly fair to have the same asking price for something, but sell it for less to someone who actually negotiated for it.
No, you're not completely free to make different deals with different customers, the imperative word here being "completely".
For example, RRPs are generally considered illegal, you can't force your customers to sale at specified minimum price, and more crucially, you can't do it selectively.
Well, the exact definition depends on the jurisdictions, but just about any market has fair trading regulations that at least outline what is considered unfair treatment.
That's not collusion. Collusion is a pattern of behaving between multiple competitors which has an end effect of coordinating on price. The policy focus on regulating collusion should be on patterns of behavior which reduces competitiveness in markets.
IMO there's a stronger policy argument for saying that Apple shouldn't be copy-pasting prices from other places like Playstation. That's much closer to collusion.
And this entire post is basically a question of "But what about Apple?" When Google licenses out Android they've essentially created an Android marketplace. Apple avoided this problem by not being open.
> And I think Apple should be receiving at least as harsh antitrust scrutiny as Google.
They both deserve antitrust attention, but Apple is the far worse offender.
The cellphone is more essential than the car, and here are these two companies basically owning and taxing the roads, fuel, destinations, activities, and in-car entertainment. And you can't upgrade or change anything.
Given that US/FIVE-EYES surveillance is a prerequisite for all American smartphones, I'd at least appreciate them using their state power to benefit the customer for once. The US' negligence in prosecuting any of the transparently corrupt FAANG companies makes it obvious how they don't want to butcher any of their own cash cows. Trusting corporations to dissent this late in the game is a futile and sad way to watch your hope for humanity deteriorate.
No, I think the state will do a better job at preserving individual freedom than the free market will. Normally I wouldn't take that stance, but the alternative is Apple's lock-in mentality and Google's neverending advertisement/data treadmill. Given that a secure smartphone is off the table anyways, I'd prefer the state as a custodian for digital rights. Plus, then nobody's confused about who holds all the power.
> And why are you quoting an article about Russia?
To emphasize the scope of influence on Apple software and the precedent for state control.
Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? You've unfortunately been doing a lot of that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Let me introduce you to a little state you might have heard of called Florida where the governor is punishing a company for criticizing a law that was passed and trying to expel a student group that is not pro-Israel.
Or other states that make it a crime to boycott Israel.
You think the app review process is Byzantine. Wait until you try to get 8 justices to review your app and how long do you think that will take?
Nationalization and competition are hardly the same thing.
In one case you still have a monopoly, but operated by the state. This generally goes poorly. A state agency is only weakly accountable to voters and not really accountable to customers at all. This is only marginally better than a private monopoly, if at all.
In the other case you break a private monopoly and move to a competitive market. The competitors are directly accountable to customers, who can choose someone else if anyone tries to charge high fees or the customers otherwise don't like you.
No one mentioned side loading here and it seems clear that you pulled the weakest possible interpretation of their point to respond to. Please don't do that.
As long as Tesla isn't approaching a dual-poly or worst a monopoly, that is on me.
But if the choice is between two car manufacturers because your work parking, your banks' branch access, your governments' departments driveways, the city halls where a lot of events are organised, and just about anywhere you want to go is designed to allow only cars from these two car manufacturers, then knowing "in advance" is pointless; because there is no real choice.
First, the main problem here is that Google is activelly colluding with manufacturers to keep the Google Play monopoly, second, and more importantly, many Apps doesn't work without Google Services or whatever it is called now on Android, some apps from Banks doesn't run on "root" or "open" version of Android even with Google Services.
And what can you do with banking apps that you can’t do by going to their website?
Beliefs have consequences. If you are one of the relatively few that value “openness” when the market has spoken otherwise, you have to deal with the consequences
We, as a society, have already made many such decision where certain kinds of goods/services cannot be legally sold and certain business practices are deemed illegal, even if people would choose to knowingly buy them in advanced.
It is unfortunately that the idea of people being allowed to do what they wish with the devices they purchased and, supposedly, own need is the side that needs justifying.
Yes because people not being able to run Linux on their Apple Pencil is such a severe societal problem that we need government intervention.
Or could it be that geeks hate when people make their own choices based on their own free will and other people’s choices aren’t aligned to a relatively few geeks
The tone and hyperbole adds nothing to the discussion.
You know very well that the argument is that companies should not have the right to dictate what you can and cannot do with your property.
The world would be worse off if our ovens only operate for manufacturer-approved recipes since it would “increase oven reliability and safety”.
Look at printers. Yes customers know the horrible situation before buying into it, but that in no way justifies their blatant power grab over what you can do with your own devices. The same for label makers. What those companies are doing should simply be illegal.
The problem with Apple is that while they don’t have a monopoly on cellphones, they seem to have a monopoly on good cellphone experiences. Your choice is a couple of platforms that are closed but works decently well, and other more open platforms that are much more chaotic and poorer user experiences. Linux phones or android phones not running Google’s stack being examples of the latter.
Suppose there were two cellphone platforms and they were both equally terrible, or equally good. But each one locked the customers out of their own property -- you have to use their app store, their cloud services, you can't install their operating system on anyone else's hardware or vice versa. Mandatory lock-in to all of their other services, competition impaired.
This is not okay just because there are two of them instead of one, because it's what causes there to be two of them instead of dozens. You can't enter the market without replicating the entire vertically integrated conglomerate because someone who makes only hardware, or an operating system, or an app store, can't use it with the existing ones.
It removes consumer choice, and each of the conglomerates could continue extending the stack in either direction until you have to buy your house and car and all of your groceries, appliances and media from the same company as you get your phone.
This is not the same thing as vertical integration. The same company could make a CPU and an app store without having them bound together so that you can't choose one without the other. You could choose to get everything from the same company, but you shouldn't be required to just because that's what the company wants.
It feels silly to me to assess based on number of companies playing.
If the market were three or four companies all behaving exactly like Apple, there still is a clear & present need for government intervention, a clear "consumer harm" by creating technological intermediary overlords with total control over information technology.
Apple defenders love pointing out that there is choice, that folks can go to Android. But what if Android were just as lawful-evil malevolent a force?
> Apple defenders love pointing out that there is choice, that folks can go to Android. But what if Android were just as lawful-evil malevolent a force?
There were non-Google and non-Apple choices out there (I used Windows Phone for awhile and kind of liked it), and people still didn't want them. I personally don't care what other people buy, but I don't want the choice taken away from me to buy into what I see as a much saner platform than the free liberalized non-evil overlord choice that would be forced on me for what people would claim for my own good. Consumer choice should really account for something here.
> But what if Android were just as lawful-evil malevolent a force?
Unnecessarily hyperbolic.
I don’t see it as “malevolent” that there aren’t multiple app stores of questionable quality, where I have to go hunt for apps I need. I don’t begrudge anyone who chooses not to use an Apple device, who chooses not to publish their program on an Apple device, or who prefer a device they can change anything on.
But I would think we don’t need every single phone to be identical to satisfy a small number of Android users who don’t want to understand any use case but their own.
They have a monopoly on selling software to iPhone users. I can't accept that we should treat the software market as an owned component of the hardware market. And yes, that same logic should apply to Google Play devices, game consoles, and computers.
Apple has 58% market share in the USA. It's irrelevant if Android has bigger market in Europe or China. The anti-trust laws being discussed are for the USA
It looks like I was wrong. Same family of hardware/drivers, different OS. Same principle and concept, though; I think BSD's success in the console industry proves that open OSes can find use (albeit as components of closed systems).
I'd say the main reason is that BSD licensed oses are attractive to these locked down devices because there is no requirement to keep your fork open source as well. Play Station 3, and if this is true then apparently Nintendo Switch as well, and so on.
What? Why would devices locked down at the OS-level to only a 1st-party store and only permitting installing through that 1st-party store be hardware-bound?
Winphones were bound to the Windows store, but were 3rd-party devices.
I think a better lesson would be to comply with the law, do not destroy evidence, and to do what you say you are doing. Google sold Android as being open. Once Android succeeded, Google started closing it and making anti-competitive deals. Many of these deals were illegal because Google had a monopoly and abused its monopoly. Please explain why Google's conduct should not be punished? Why should Google be allowed to violate the United State's anti-trust laws?
> Lesson learned: just lock down your platform like Apple. Corrupted freedom is apparently worse than totalitarian control.
Probably not a sound lesson. People are rightly pointing out how little sense this makes -- you can exclude competitors but not disadvantage them?
But it was different cases in different courts. Now the higher courts will have to sort it out. They could very well side with Epic in both cases or neither of them.
If the promised freedom doesn’t actually exist, then you have open totalitarian control vs. obfuscated totalitarian control. They both suck, but at least one’s honest about it.
Or, if you don't assume that Epic's case is automatically righteous, it may simply be that Apple acted legally while Google acted illegally. Certainly, there is evidence that Google used their market power to crush alternatives.
The thing that landed Google in hot water was that they licensed Android to multiple vendors and then used anticompetitive shenanigans to control the marketplace.
Look at XBox and Windows at Microsoft.
XBox is a walled garden and you can't create a game for it without Microsoft's permission and giving Microsoft a cut. There have been zero legal repercussions for this.
Windows is licensed to multiple vendors and Microsoft has faced antitrust actions many times in many jurisdictions for their anticompetitive actions related to Windows over the years.
Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo sometimes lose money on hardware sales. Operating system venders never lose money on software sales because software costs nothing to reproduce (they can still lose money but the loses do not increase as sales increase).
I do not know anti-trust law but I think the difference in business models should be acknowledged.
Software costs money to develop, and is largely given away for free as a loss leader in today’s market.
I know you’re probably trying to focus specifically on cost to provide the software and not the cost before that (which I’d argue is flawed) but you’re also then missing out on the support cost etc… from there on out.
> Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo sometimes lose money on hardware sales.
Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss, Sony hasn't done it since the PS3 in 2006 and Microsoft since the 360. So it's not the norm since more than a decade.
Maybe you're playing a semantic game with "console", but both the 3DS and Wii U were initially sold at a loss. I think the Wii U may have always been sold at a loss. (Edit: Apparently only the the first three years, though I guess it's questionable the degree to which it sold at all after that.)
I have no problem believing that Googlers would have closed controversial deals over chat then deleted evidence thereof. Google seems to be full of internet thugs who consider themselves to exist on a greater plane. Ever since they used street view cars to harvest WiFi MAC addresses I have had this sense about them. The "fuck you, compile it yourself if you want checksums" approach to Chromium only further cements the idea that this is a company culture thing. I understand that it must feel exhilarating and powerful to work at El Goog, and I do envy them quite a bit and don't blame them much for their megalomania, but they should remember that envisioning themselves as God's chosen might be an incompatible mindset if the goal is to be sly.
106 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] threadSubmitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38623158 was posted, maybe we can try that one and see if the thread turns out any better.
Tim Sweeney:
The thing with Apple is all of their antitrust trickery is internal to the company. They use their store, their payments, they force developers to all have the same terms, they force OEMs and carriers to all have the same terms.
I think the Apple case would be no less interesting if we could see all of their internal thoughts and deliberations, but Apple was not putting it in writing, whereas Google was. You know, I think Apple is… it’s a little bit unfortunate that in a lot of ways Apple’s restrictions on competition are absolute. Thou shalt not have a competing store on iOS and thou shalt not use a competing payment method. And I think Apple should be receiving at least as harsh antitrust scrutiny as Google.
I've never considered switching to Android.
And despite the fact that I want a wide variety of options, I prefer MacBooks, I prefer many Apple services, including software.
Otherwise, you can put non-Unreal games on EGS, and you can put Unreal games on other stores. EGS does not give you benefits if you choose to publish an Unreal game on EGS, and I'd be surprised if all the games EGS buys exclusivity for are Unreal games.
Epic does sell their own games on Epic Game Store, but they also sell most of their games on Steam too (with the huge exception of Fortnite, though it's free to play)
This is false. If you sell a UE game in Epic's store they don't charge the engine licensing fee.
Here's the docs, search for Epic Games Store in this FAQ. They waive the 5% royalties when sold on Epic Game Store. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq
I'm not sure how "I think..." conveys certainty.
It's just an abrasive thing to do running around going "False!" and "Wrong!" on the Internet. So yeah I'll give you flak for it.
I put in effort to try to not be abrasive because people call that out when I do. You're just receiving the same.
He didn't attack you or act abrasive. You are right that "I think" is not supremely certain language, but it does actually carry certainty with it since you're not saying "I don't know anything about this, but I think..."
Conclusion: I believe you're being a bit overly defensive, and should relax a little. He wasn't personally attacking you, he was saying you were false when you were objectively false, without much in the way of personal insult or even arrogance, and cited his source reasonably well.
reason #1367 that HN commenters make horrible lawyers
For example, RRPs are generally considered illegal, you can't force your customers to sale at specified minimum price, and more crucially, you can't do it selectively.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion
IMO there's a stronger policy argument for saying that Apple shouldn't be copy-pasting prices from other places like Playstation. That's much closer to collusion.
They both deserve antitrust attention, but Apple is the far worse offender.
The cellphone is more essential than the car, and here are these two companies basically owning and taxing the roads, fuel, destinations, activities, and in-car entertainment. And you can't upgrade or change anything.
Given that US/FIVE-EYES surveillance is a prerequisite for all American smartphones, I'd at least appreciate them using their state power to benefit the customer for once. The US' negligence in prosecuting any of the transparently corrupt FAANG companies makes it obvious how they don't want to butcher any of their own cash cows. Trusting corporations to dissent this late in the game is a futile and sad way to watch your hope for humanity deteriorate.
And why are you quoting an article about Russia?
> And why are you quoting an article about Russia?
To emphasize the scope of influence on Apple software and the precedent for state control.
Both sides are have been guilty of suppressing free speech that they don’t agree with.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Yes, because then app restrictions that violate free speech/press will get slammed by the supreme court.
Or other states that make it a crime to boycott Israel.
You think the app review process is Byzantine. Wait until you try to get 8 justices to review your app and how long do you think that will take?
In one case you still have a monopoly, but operated by the state. This generally goes poorly. A state agency is only weakly accountable to voters and not really accountable to customers at all. This is only marginally better than a private monopoly, if at all.
In the other case you break a private monopoly and move to a competitive market. The competitors are directly accountable to customers, who can choose someone else if anyone tries to charge high fees or the customers otherwise don't like you.
What other interpretations would be common?
But if the choice is between two car manufacturers because your work parking, your banks' branch access, your governments' departments driveways, the city halls where a lot of events are organised, and just about anywhere you want to go is designed to allow only cars from these two car manufacturers, then knowing "in advance" is pointless; because there is no real choice.
So it is not that simple.
Beliefs have consequences. If you are one of the relatively few that value “openness” when the market has spoken otherwise, you have to deal with the consequences
As for your claims about markets and openness, I am not sure what are you even trying to say.
It is unfortunately that the idea of people being allowed to do what they wish with the devices they purchased and, supposedly, own need is the side that needs justifying.
Or could it be that geeks hate when people make their own choices based on their own free will and other people’s choices aren’t aligned to a relatively few geeks
You know very well that the argument is that companies should not have the right to dictate what you can and cannot do with your property.
The world would be worse off if our ovens only operate for manufacturer-approved recipes since it would “increase oven reliability and safety”.
Look at printers. Yes customers know the horrible situation before buying into it, but that in no way justifies their blatant power grab over what you can do with your own devices. The same for label makers. What those companies are doing should simply be illegal.
Suppose there were two cellphone platforms and they were both equally terrible, or equally good. But each one locked the customers out of their own property -- you have to use their app store, their cloud services, you can't install their operating system on anyone else's hardware or vice versa. Mandatory lock-in to all of their other services, competition impaired.
This is not okay just because there are two of them instead of one, because it's what causes there to be two of them instead of dozens. You can't enter the market without replicating the entire vertically integrated conglomerate because someone who makes only hardware, or an operating system, or an app store, can't use it with the existing ones.
It removes consumer choice, and each of the conglomerates could continue extending the stack in either direction until you have to buy your house and car and all of your groceries, appliances and media from the same company as you get your phone.
This is not the same thing as vertical integration. The same company could make a CPU and an app store without having them bound together so that you can't choose one without the other. You could choose to get everything from the same company, but you shouldn't be required to just because that's what the company wants.
If the market were three or four companies all behaving exactly like Apple, there still is a clear & present need for government intervention, a clear "consumer harm" by creating technological intermediary overlords with total control over information technology.
Apple defenders love pointing out that there is choice, that folks can go to Android. But what if Android were just as lawful-evil malevolent a force?
There were non-Google and non-Apple choices out there (I used Windows Phone for awhile and kind of liked it), and people still didn't want them. I personally don't care what other people buy, but I don't want the choice taken away from me to buy into what I see as a much saner platform than the free liberalized non-evil overlord choice that would be forced on me for what people would claim for my own good. Consumer choice should really account for something here.
Unnecessarily hyperbolic.
I don’t see it as “malevolent” that there aren’t multiple app stores of questionable quality, where I have to go hunt for apps I need. I don’t begrudge anyone who chooses not to use an Apple device, who chooses not to publish their program on an Apple device, or who prefer a device they can change anything on.
But I would think we don’t need every single phone to be identical to satisfy a small number of Android users who don’t want to understand any use case but their own.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softw...
How does Google, running closed and un-licensable Android with no phone to put it on, compete?
Android was first modern mobile OS to market that would run on 3rd party devices (unlike Apple and RIM).
Tizen was 2013. Win phone was 2011, and had license fees to use it.
Winphones were bound to the Windows store, but were 3rd-party devices.
Epic vs Apple: Epic loses.
Comments like OP: "Lesson learned: just lock down your platform like Apple"
My response: "If Android is locked down [like Apple] it never gets big"
Not sure why this is so hard to follow.
You're in one conversation. Many other people are in a completely different conversation, something like:
Isn't Android more open than tons of closed systems, who will never be punished... and isn't that evidence that the law itself is written poorly?
Probably not a sound lesson. People are rightly pointing out how little sense this makes -- you can exclude competitors but not disadvantage them?
But it was different cases in different courts. Now the higher courts will have to sort it out. They could very well side with Epic in both cases or neither of them.
Look at XBox and Windows at Microsoft.
XBox is a walled garden and you can't create a game for it without Microsoft's permission and giving Microsoft a cut. There have been zero legal repercussions for this.
Windows is licensed to multiple vendors and Microsoft has faced antitrust actions many times in many jurisdictions for their anticompetitive actions related to Windows over the years.
I do not know anti-trust law but I think the difference in business models should be acknowledged.
I know you’re probably trying to focus specifically on cost to provide the software and not the cost before that (which I’d argue is flawed) but you’re also then missing out on the support cost etc… from there on out.
Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss, Sony hasn't done it since the PS3 in 2006 and Microsoft since the 360. So it's not the norm since more than a decade.