'Fortnite' developer Epic has pushed back on Google’s control of the Android app store. The courtroom showdown could force the search giant to offer users more apps, at more affordable prices.
There are monopolistic things about the Play Store, but compared to competing platforms it’s a lot better than most. Android allows you to install apps from outside of the store without any extreme hacks. Contrast that vs iPhone or game consoles.
But yes, the fact that Google doesn’t want anybody else to have official stores bundled on Android/Play-services supported devices is a huge anticompetitive action. Also, the Play Store does get some premium support from the OS.
But I’ve used 3rd-party stores in addition to installing direct-downloaded apps and the workflow isn’t bad at all. I just wish you could whitelist a domain when using the browser, so I could say “I only want to download APKs from HumbleBundle.com since their app is gone” without opening up APK installs from all domain names in the browser. Possibly some kind of store-signature system would be better for this instead of controlling by installing app.
There are monopolistic things about the Play Store, but compared to competing platforms it’s a lot better than most. Android allows you to install apps from outside of the store without any extreme hacks. Contrast that vs iPhone or game consoles.
But yes, the fact that Google doesn’t want anybody else to have official stores bundled on Android/Play-services supported devices is a huge anticompetitive action. Also, the Play Store does get some premium support from the OS.
But I’ve used 3rd-party stores in addition to installing direct-downloaded apps and the workflow isn’t bad at all. I just wish you could whitelist a domain when using the browser, so I could say “I only want to download APKs from HumbleBundle.com since their app is gone” without opening up APK installs from all domain names in the browser. Possibly some kind of store-signature system would be better for this instead of controlling by installing app.