Comment by heavyset_go
4 years ago
This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.
Consider contacting your state's Attorney General office, and the US Attorney General office. Many states' AG offices have antitrust divisions[1].
The US Dept. of Justice also has an Antitrust Division[2], along with a page that details how and why[3] to get in touch with them:
> Information from the public is vital to the work of the Antitrust Division. Your e-mails, letters, and phone calls could be our first alert to a possible violation of antitrust laws and may provide the initial evidence needed to begin an investigation.
The FTC has the Bureau of Competition[4], as well.
[1] https://www.naag.org/issues/antitrust/
[2] https://www.justice.gov/atr
[3] https://www.justice.gov/atr/report-violations
[4] https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi...
It should be noted, as discussed by other HN people below, that there is a good chance that author (edit: not OP) is quite sketchy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28730865
At the very least, they are not telling their story with an attitude of transparency.
> It should be noted, as discussed by other HN people below, that there is a good chance that author (edit: not OP) is quite sketchy.
It should also be noted that this is just an opinion. I don't find it to be sketchy.
Note that I am the "OP" as in I posted the link to HN but I am not the author or the developer whose story this is about.
Awesome links! Google deserves the entire book thrown at them. This is so fucking unacceptable, we have built their fucking product lines for years with their bullshit every shifting APIs.
> This is a good example of how innovation, competition and small businesses are being stifled by the anticompetitive behavior of the mobile app distribution cartel.
No, it's an example of how small businesses are foolishly making their business model dependent on a company that is known to be unreliable. What should be happening is that mobile app distributors should not be depending on Google at all; alternate mobile app stores should be out-competing them by providing better service to developers. If there is a "cartel" that is making that difficult, it's not the mobile app store gatekeepers, it's the mobile phone companies that are tilting the playing field sharply in favor of the Android phones they distribute, which are tied to Google Play Store, instead of allowing free and open competition in phone operating systems.
What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do? Ask customers to sideload? Tell people to use f-droid? If they do that they're restricting themselves to a tiny fraction of the possible audience and thereby removing any chance they have of being profitable.
> What else is a mobile game dev supposed to do?
Start a startup to make a mobile app store that out-competes Google. Somebody is going to have to do it sooner or later. Young devs with nothing to lose are the best people to try.
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Phone OSes are hard. Tizen was a big play for it and that ended up being a dud. Windows Phone was also another well-funded competitor that fell on its face.
Really, the problem is that phone manufacturers want to be where the apps are, and app developers barely keep it together making native apps for the two dominant OSes. Another competitor would need to make it really, really easy to make apps performant when ported over with minimal work, because the ugly truth is that no one is going to hire a full third team to develop for another OS that's just starting out.
> "Windows Phone was also another well-funded competitor that fell on its face."
Google had a hand in that, though, by intentionally blocking interoperability with YouTube and other Google services for WP. Even back then they were willing to play dirty to keep their monopoly.
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> Another competitor would need to make it really, really easy to make apps performant when ported over with minimal work
But this is completely impossible, and Google helps make it that way. Their SafetyNet API lets apps verify that the device is running an official, unmodified Android build, and a lot of very popular apps will refuse to run otherwise.
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The manufacturers' hands are tied. People aren't going to buy a phone that they can't run Snapchat and Netflix on.
> The manufacturers' hands are tied.
By "mobile phone companies" I didn't mean mobile phone manufacturers. I meant mobile phone providers like Verizon, T-Mobile, etc. They are the ones who have wormed themselves into the role of gatekeepers for phone purchases (with government help). If phone manufacturers' hands are tied with regard to what they can put on their phones or what app stores their phones can use, they're tied by the phone providers, not by users.
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I don’t care about running either on my phone.
I have watched YouTube instructional videos, but I can’t see the appeal of watching a movie on a tiny phone screen. As to messaging apps, SMS and email work just fine but for anyone who cares I suspect they would simply jump to whatever messaging app did work.
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maybe if there was any other option. It's not like everyone on Android has a million distribution options. It's the most popular OS in the world and there is essentially one company that makes its own rules controlling what gets onto phones.