• conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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      22 days ago

      One example (of many) where their requirements have directly impacted the growth of a market is refresh rate. Android ereaders are excellent devices, but because of Google’s arbitrary limitations, devices until recently (when the technology they impeded with their monopoly developed far enough to meet that restriction) were forced to require users to jump through multiple extremely convoluted hoops to enable the play store.

      This made them almost entirely inaccessible to normal end users and almost certainly played a huge role in the availability of options. That’s textbook anticompetitive.

      It’s not the only restriction, just the first to come to mind.

      • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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        22 days ago

        I honestly don’t understand anything you said. There’s a refresh rate requirement for Android? And the refresh rate requirement made it convoluted for people to enable the Play Store?

        • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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          22 days ago

          The play store is their monopoly that they abuse. There’s a refresh rate requirement to distribute your device with the play store.

          Otherwise, the user has to go to a Google website page from the device, sign into a Google account, and copy paste serial information of the device in order to be allowed to install the store. That’s not something normal customers can do, and it massively impeded the growth of the Android reader space.

          • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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            22 days ago

            There’s a refresh rate requirement to distribute your device with the play store.

            Is there? I’ve seen lots of Android e-readers that are way less. Maybe just because they’re Chinese and don’t give a shit. Presumably that requirement is to ensure a positive experience for Android users. Android is obviously not intended to be used for e-readers.

            Regardless, a limitation of your OS is absolutely not in any way more anti-competitive than not distributing an OS at all. I feel like this is pretty straightforward…

            • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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              22 days ago

              You have to manually enable the play store on all of those devices. It’s why they’re so niche and only made by Chinese companies.

              It’s not in any way a limitation of the OS. It’s a business decision that is using their market position as the only source of most Android apps in order to control what manufacturers are able to make and sell.

              And again, your core concept isn’t just flawed. It completely lacks understanding of what antitrust is. You can make decisions that only affect your own hardware. You cannot claim to be open and use that “openness” to make yourself the standard, then use that market position to pick winners and losers between your “partners” using that product, especially when you’re also one of them. That’s anticompetitive. Google wants all the benefits of being “open” while completely dictating the entire market.

              • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                22 days ago

                It’s not in any way a limitation of the OS.

                Requiring a specific refresh rate for the OS to be installed isn’t “in any way” a limitation of the OS? Not sure how you arrived at that.

                And again, your core concept isn’t just flawed. It completely lacks understanding of what antitrust is.

                No, I think you just don’t understand that I am not having a legal discussion. I am having a rational discussion. If the law is irrational, then it is fucked and needs to be updated. Imposing rules that apply to businesses that are more competitive by sharing their IP (with caveats), then going back and saying that other businesses that operate in essentially the exact same space, but refuse to share any IP (anti-competitive), are exempt from such regulations, is fucked.

                Neither of them are okay, and both should be regulated more heavily, but the fact that the more competitive one faces more penalties is fucked and just further enforces Apple’s “walled garden” ideology, as well as encouraging other businesses to operate similarly.

                • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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                  22 days ago

                  It has nothing to do with the OS. It’s for the play store. But again, a limitation of the OS would be something that the OS can’t do, not the OS just refusing to allow hardware for business reasons.

                  Your opinion on rational is just as flawed. People should be able to make their own products. It’s specifically pretending to be open to form a standard that multiple independent companies join in on, then unilaterally controlling that standard to make decisions for the entire market that’s abusive.

                  There are many companies that do what Apple does and run closed operating systems on their own hardware. Apple built their market share on the strength of their walled garden providing an excellent development environment. It’s not what a monopoly is. Controlling the behavior of hundreds of competing products is a monopoly.

                  • helenslunch@feddit.nl
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                    22 days ago

                    People should be able to make their own products.

                    Of course they should. You’re intentionally missing the point. They should not be allowed to make their products anti-competitive and anti-consumer by preventing the user from installing the software they want to use, in order to funnel more money into their pockets and essentially extorting it from businesses that want to write software for its’ customers with exorbitant fees.

                    There are many companies that do what Apple does and run closed operating systems on their own hardware.

                    And they shouldn’t be allowed to do that either. And especially not if they become one of the top 5 wealthiest companies on the face of the Earth in the process.

                    Apple built their market share on the strength of their walled garden providing an excellent development environment.

                    And absolutely nothing about allowing users to install whatever software they want without paying extortionate and exorbitant fees to Apple impedes that strength.

                    It’s not what a monopoly is

                    Fucking el oh ol. There’s simply no world where Google is a monopoly and Apple isn’t, and the insinuation of such can only be described as fanboyism.