“Google has taken great pains to appear more open than Apple, licensing the Android operating system to third parties like Samsung and allowing users to install apps via other methods than the Play store. Apple does neither. When it comes to exclusivity, Apple has become synonymous with “walled garden” in the public imagination. So why did a jury find that Google held a monopoly but Apple didn’t?”

  • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    They didn’t.

    They determined that Google colluded with others to protect their monopoly and keep competitors out.

    Monopolies by themselves aren’t illegal.

    • Serinus@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      “The big difference between Apple and Google is Apple didn’t write anything down,” Sweeney said

      • 5200@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Many companies have already implemented aggressive email “retention” policies, where only specifically tagged and marked emails can be saved in a system that will periodically require the user to verify if it is still required. All other emails get purged.

        This to avoid years old emails surfacing in those nuisance lawsuits and prove the company willingly did illegal things.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yes, but when a court order to retain documents comes down, the legal department of those companies knows how to do so.

          • 5200@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Sure, the legal hold will be implemented so no new emails will be deleted that meet the requirements. But anything already gone is gone, so no getting bit in the ass by 5 year old mails… is the idea.

            • Serinus@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              Yes, this situation just doesn’t fit that bill. They kept the purge in place after the court order, otherwise they’d be fine.

              • 5200@lemmy.world
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                11 months ago

                oh, my apologies, I wasn’t commenting on this specific case. I was more adding content in general.

                The fact that a company actively purges relevant data they where supposed to retain, should automatically lead to the inference that the data was “the most damning possible” and take it from there.

    • billwashere@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      So basically Google treated certain folks differently than others and Apple said “Fuck off” to everyone? Is that the gist?

  • Zagorath
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    11 months ago

    They didn’t. Only one of the cases was by jury, so it’s wrong to claim that “a jury found Google held a monopoly but Apple didn’t”.

    And even if they were both jury trials, they’d be different juries, so it’s not like one group of people looked at all the facts and decided Google did the wrong thing and not Apple.

    That’s in addition to the different facts in the case which this article is primarily about.

    • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      I wouldn’t expect anything more form the guardian. They’ve become pretty clickbait and reactionary lately. Quality has dipped.

      • pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        I disagree, The Guardian is objectively one of the best free News outlets out there. Also Op is literally just citing a side sentence out of the article. Which makes me to believe you didnt even read the article. The article make is very clear what the differences are and that the Apple case just didn’t have a jury at all.

        • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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          11 months ago

          You’ve misunderstood what I was commenting on. I am bemoaning the quality in general of the guardian as of late. Not the specific article.

          The guardian is a good newspaper, don’t get me wrong, but it was way better back in the day under the previous editor. The quality has absolutely dropped over the past six years or so and any balance to an article is often rendered right at the end under a clickbait headline. These things have changed.

          Buy look, that’s my opinion and you surely have yours. That’s fine too 👍.

  • perviouslyiner@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    The jury, he argued, was essentially allowed to conjure up damning evidence in their minds that may not have existed

    Well yes, that’s exactly what the court will do if they find that you’ve been deleting evidence - they assume that whatever you deleted must have been damning to the case otherwise why would you have told employees to use “delete after 24h” communication channels?

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah right? That’s the long-standing procedure for deliberately destroyed evidence — the fact finder gets to make all reasonable negative inferences.

  • Moltz@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Google claimed to be open but ran backroom deals to ensure low competition. In doing so it proved its weight in the industry could squash competition, proving its monopoly, which is illegal.

    Apple never made claims it was open.

    As simple as. Toss in one case was decided by a jury, and the other a judge, and you’ll quickly see neither are related.

    Basically your question was nonsense from the jump, and pushed by blogs and the like to get idiots to click. Had you read the news, you’d get it. By why read when others will explain it for ya.

    • Solivine@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      Your explanation is right, but the last sentence makes you insufferable

    • merde alors@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      11 months ago

      hello fellow lemming,

      i’m sharing an article that i thought is interesting, on a related community.

      i quoted a paragraph from the article, i am not asking a question.

      sharing an article won’t even necessarily mean that i agree with it.

      only those who care about “clicks” blame others for doing things for clicks. I don’t give a damn about clicks.

      what the fuck is wrong with you?!

    • chepox@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      This is a discussion forum. Sometimes an obvious question sparks conversation well beyond the original topic. But someone needs to ask the question first. You don’t have to be rude. Just scroll right past.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Apple never made claims it was open.

      As simple as.

      Sundar Pichai: “All right, fellas, let’s comply with the court riling and raise the walls. No more eco system for anyone any longer.”

      • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I mean, Google can sure try lol. Pixels make up like 1% of market share. If they cut off Android from everyone else, they would fall completely out in no time.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Sundar Pichai: “Reach out to Samsung. Tell them either we and them enter an exclusive deal for a locked down Android or we all go down together. Kill the Pixel line. Killing our own products is what we do best anyway."

    • Margot Robbie@lemmy.worldM
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      11 months ago

      I would like to ask you to please not be so condescending, as it is against Rule 5 here. Thank you.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s also worth noting that Apple was never proven to not be a monopoly, only that Epic couldn’t provide enough evidence to prove that they were. US courts never prove innocence, only guilt.

      Google simply could have been worse that Apple at hiding what they were doing, making it easier to find evidence. Or perhaps Epic’s prior failure to provide evidence in the Apple case may have helped prepare them with what to look for this time for the Google one.

      Edit: Not to mention that the Google case was decided by a jury, whereas the Apple case was decided through a ruling by a judge, which adds another layer of difference between them.

    • evo@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      By why read when others will explain it for ya.

      Isn’t that also what reading the news is???

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    11 months ago

    I also would point out that Google and Apple sells very different things. Apple does not sell iOS. It sells hardware to customers and the right to access users through this hardware to third parties (game makers). Google’s product to begin with is software (Operating System) on multiple phone platforms. Different laws and rules may apply there.

    • EatYouWell@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Apple definitely sells the OS. That’s one of the main selling points and part of why their hardware is stupid expensive.

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        11 months ago

        Although ironically, the OS software itself is free to end users, as are future upgrades.

        Google also sells hardware, e.g. in its Pixel line, and there too the OS software is “free”, as are future upgrades, up to a point.

        Both sell listings in their respective stores.

        These concepts are getting murkier over time.

          • Cort@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            Yeah, I’d have paid $10 just for copy/paste functionality on early ios, but I don’t remember paying for anything when it came out on iOS 3

          • OpenStars@kbin.social
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            11 months ago

            If you’re an OG iPhone or Mac user, then you might remember paid software updates. Over a decade ago, long before iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, major Apple OS updates used to cost users around $10 for iOS and $20 for macOS. By iOS 4, though, Apple switched to free software updates, allowing users to update their devices for as long as they’re supported without having to pay a fee.

            Yeah, but nowadays it’s all “free” - as in you only pay for the hardware to enter their walled garden (but then no matter how much you pay, you can never really leave! at least not via normal, legal means, if you want to ever come back - Welcome to the Hotel California 🎶…!:-P).

            • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
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              11 months ago

              Welcome to the Hotel California

              Coincidentally, Apple is headquartered in California…

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        11 months ago

        You do not pay, but Google does collect money one way or another. Regardless, it is their product, which is different from iPhone being a product.

  • random65837@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Because in practice, the term “Monopoly” is subjective. Anti-business, anti-capitalist call every big business a monopoly, whether it is or not. They think anticompetitive means not actively helping your competition get ahead of you. Actual monopolies are almost always a creation of government regulation, which is why they get away with it.

    • 5200@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      That is a silly thing to say. Being big AND abusing your market power in an anti-competitive way is being a monopoly.

      • If you sell my competitors product, you will not get the discount all other clients are getting, and your orders will go to the bottom of the pile. (Intel crushing AMD)
      • If you offer your product on any other point of sale, your product will never be highlighted. (Amazon to any seller)
      • You have no other choice than to buy electricity from us, so you will pay whatever price we say. (Power companies)
      • We will hard-code all our applications to use our own browser, make changing the default as convoluted as possible. (Microsoft in the browser select)
      • If anyone other than us repairs our product, the software will simply not allow you to use the product. (Apple, John Deere, many other companies)
      • We will take all the sales data, find the biggest earning products, have them produced for us too, and then undercut your product and bankrupt you by always pointing the customer at our knock off version instead of yours. (Amazon again)

      How are these A cReAtIoN oF GoBeRmEnT ReGuLaTiOnS?

    • puppy@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Can you explain how Microsoft became a monopoly because of government regulations in the 90s?