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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

Arguments of this form always rely on nebulous definitions of what counts as a "choice." Sure, if you're banned from a specific app store, you cannot use that specific app store, because that's just what is means to be banned. You can, of course, still access any other app store.

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Imagine if Google decided tomorrow to ban App Stores other than Google Play Store on Android.

This would mean that there's only two app stores: Apple's and Google's.

Google doesn't do that because that would be an abuse of their market position and they would get rinsed in the courts. Since the same laws apply to Google as Apple, and Apple clearly has significant market power in smartphone and tablet computers, it stands to reason that Apple should be prohibited from doing the same thing.

> Google doesn't do that because that would be an abuse of their market position and they would get rinsed in the courts.

Are you sure that Google doesn't do that because the Android platform is an extremely viable and lucrative alternative to iPhones, and that people who value the ability to sideload software on their smartphones flock to Android for precisely this reason?

Whether they want to or not is beside the point, which is to consider whether it would be anticompetitive for Google to ban other app stores from Android.

As far as I can see, what distinguishes Apple from Google is status quo. Apple never did allow app distribution other than through the Apple App Store. i.e. "We've always been doing it"

> which is to consider whether it would be anticompetitive for Google to ban other app stores from Android

That's what I'm getting at. Is it anticompetitive to deliberately make your product worse by removing a key differentiator between your product and its closest competitor?

Or come at it from another angle: would it be "anticompetitive" for Apple to (in new iPhones) completely remove the App Store and thus all reasonable expectation to be able to run third-party software? Is it anticompetitive to sell a handheld computer than can do email, play music and videos, etc., but not run third-party software?

Google is abusing their market position as well, because they purposely hinder third party app stores by putting restrictions in Android that prevent them from implementing features that the Play Store has had for years.

A simple litmus test:

Is F-Droid in Google Play ?

It is not.

Not only is it not in Google Play, but it can't update apps in the background the way Google can.

For every update, times every app you have to click through a stupid screen "Are you sure you want to install this update? It requires no special permissions."

Ironically this onewould be super helful for the recent Firefox update disaster where they switched from the bit outdated Fennec to the new and faster but totally unfinishec Fenix.

With auto updates this was quite a wakeup call...

Another nice thing is F-Droid listing multiple versions, another thing sorely lacking in Google Play.

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