Comment by applfanboysbgon
11 hours ago
> And you were making like 7x as much as they were taking. Without them, you would even get noticed and you'd have made nothing.
Jesus Christ you can always count on HN for the most sycophantic, bootlicking comments sucking up to big tech imaginable.
It's an absolutely fair argument and it just doesn't show great intelligence to go straight to namecalling rather than bringing up counter arguments.
I do believe that while Google and Apple are evil gatekeepers they also made it easier for non-tech people to install their own app without always calling their kids or neighbours. That's already a big win.
There is nothing about finding and installing apps that required Google/Apple app stores to make it easier and/or safer.
The way they are doing it is merely the way they are doing it, not the only way it could be done.
So no it was not a win at all and does not justify the method or the various forms of cost & overhead. Not just money but freedom, privacy, agency, discrimination, censoship, algorithm thumb on scale, support, etc.
It is not a win that we've given up our freedom and privacy to Google, Apple, Steam, etc. because people refused to learn how to click setup.exe.