Epic is asking a court to stop Google from yanking Bandcamp off the Play Store (opens in new tab)

Why does this have to change now? Why does the platform need a cut?

Other comments describe a few specific examples of that abuse (like also thwarting Epic's attempts to be preloaded by OEMs), but I think it's more interesting to look at how money is changing hands as evidence of market power being abused.

In particular, consider that Google in theory should be fine accepting payments as low as their hosting costs (and probably much less since their app store helps attract phone purchasers to fuel their ad network, since they also take a cut from OEMs, etc). Compare that to each individual developer on the store who in theory is able to afford at most some large fraction of revenue for the privilege of being on the store. Note that the latter number is (usually) much greater than the former and that the latter is what's actually being paid. If there were any real competition for something as trivial to build as an app store then you wouldn't expect Google to be able to successfully price discriminate across so many orders of magnitude of prices and extract nearly all of the surplus value from the end user purchasing an app. The fact that they're able to do so and are doing so should serve by itself as a strong indication that something suspiciously anti-competitive is happening. My $20 app wasn't 20x harder for Google to host than your $1 app, so why are my fees 20x higher? Because they can get away with charging that much because they stomp on any competition.

That isn't any kind of nail-in-the-coffin proof mind you, but it serves as a useful heuristic for spotting abuses of market power in many markets. Throwing that same idea at the right to repair movement, the amount paid to John Deere for tractor repairs is many times greater than what people have been able to achieve on their own (when they've been able to do so), and the only barrier is DRM that was added to prevent unauthorized repairs. If John Deere were really that much better at repairing their tractors than third parties then they wouldn't have to artificially exclude everyone else from attempting it to retain market share and command those prices.

Nobody's saying that Google or John Deere shouldn't be allowed to profit from the things they make, but using existing power to hamper competition and seek greater rents isn't good for society as a whole.

No, they don't. Most antitrust cases don't involve monopolies, since those are actually quite rare, and most monopolies don't involve anticompetitive behavior.

Antitrust is about regulating anticompetitive market activities, which ranges from price fixing to monopolies.

I'm sure that will be consolation to the growing number of victims whose businesses and livelihoods were destroyed when an overworked reviewer or an algorithm allowed to go rampant kicked out their products from the app stores where the overwhelming majority of users could discover them.

Your definition of monopolies and applicable antitrust rules is divorced from reality, and from the legal framework based on which these monopolies have been repeatedly fined, and will be forced to open up their platforms.

Google controls the platform and they're the ones who set up scary warnings for installing apps via sideloading (despite malicious apps being not uncommon in the Play Store itself.)

In this case, the leveraged market is the app store, and the restrained market is mobile payment processing.

No, it's preloaded on every device, that's why.

If some other App Store, 'App Store B' were preloaded on every device, and App Store were not, then that 'App Store B' would ultimately be 'that much better'.

That said - I don't agree with Epic here.

If you want your merchandise in Walmart, it's fair that Walmart does the selling and the checkout. You can't put your merch in there, and expect to be able to buy it 'online' and walk out with it. This is irrespective of Walmart's position in the general market.

Google Play preloads are another question.

Sideloading is also another question.

But stuff in Google Play, I think it's fair if they set the rules there.

Do you suggest they shouldn't warn someone when they download an APK? It's also browser specific and I imagine all major browser give the same kind of warning because , you know, downloading an APK directly from a website might be harmful.

There are plenty of good apps I've sideloaded, but thinking of the majority of the population being relatively tech-illiterate, there's a big difference between a bad actor having to convince someone to change their settings to enable sideloading (despite a big, scary warning) and then convincing them to install an app versus just convincing someone to run/install a random APK. Case in point: a huge percent of the population unknowingly opens and/or installs random bad binaries on Windows every day.

Sideloading (and all that entails) should absolutely be allowed, but the "scary warnings" do a great job preventing a huge portion of people from unknowingly opening a huge threat avenue to some of their most valuable devices/information.

It is about doing payment within the app once it is installed. In that case Epic is paying/maintaining its payment infra. Your point is irrelevant

So if back in 1999, internet explorer only allowed you to download something, if they took a percentage fee, then you'd be OK this with use of monopolistic power.

There are roadblocks and deficiencies though, a major one being that sideloaded app stores cannot automatically update their applications, making them permanently inferior and crippled compared to Google's offering.

Say I sell my album for $10 for easy math.

I think Bandcamp takes something like 10-15%, there’s a small PayPal fee (~1%) and the rest goes to me.

That’s ~$8.41 in my pocket.

If Google takes their cut at the beginning for providing…the App Store where the buyer downloaded the app… the artist’s cut becomes ~$5.89. For a $10 album.

It just doesn’t line up with the whole point of Bandcamp.

Well you should. Because regardless of if Epic bought bandcamp or not, the fee that google charges would come directly out of musicians pockets.

Regardless of who is running bandcamp, that feel would directly cause artists to not make as much money.

> I personally feel that 30% isn't even outrageous

Ok, and now the end result is that fee is coming out of artists pockets.

If you don't care about artist compensation, and want them to make less money, well fine. But don't pretend like you are on the side of artist compensation.

To qualify you must

- App primarily offering video, audio, or books in which users pay to consume content - Over 100,000 monthly active installs on Google Play - High quality user experience with strong Google Play rating - Developer account in good standing - Integration of specific Google platforms and APIs based on type of media content - Additional requirements apply depending on the type of media content