Reply to post: Re: A pox on both their houses etc

Re: A pox on both their houses etc

Michael Habel,

What exactly does the Android OS have to do with the PlayStore?

Because Android without the Play Store component doesn't contain half of what the users would consider to be core parts of the system. And what used to be in the system, and has since been moved into the Play Store module by Google. Possibly partially as a way to get updates to users for important core bits of the OS - to get round the OEMs crapness at doing this. But also probably to give Google more control - and make the open source version less attractive.

However you can run other app stores, even on stock Android. It's a buried setting, but that's not an unreasonable design/security choice.

However Google's Play Store are still a monopoly.

Having a monopoly is perfectly legal. It's just an expression of a market state in which a player has excessive power in the market - as Google and Apple clearly do in mobile gaming.

Abusing a monopoly is not allowed. Which means setting prices that are too high and using the barriers to entry to the market to stop competition from under-cutting you. 30% is an awfully high cut for what is essentially payment processing and file hosting. Although if that's standard across the industry then regulators will either have to say it's fine, or start having a go at Steam, the console makers etc.

Obviously profits have to be provably excess in order to prove this, it's a high bar to regulators doing something. Athough I believe on sign of this is when competitors have the exact same price, and also when prices are non-negotiable - as normally bigger companies get discounts for bulk. So if everyone's paying 30% that's also a sign of a potential monopoly.

The other thing you're not supposed to be allowed to do is to set prices too low, in order to leverage your excess monopoly profits in one market to take over another. Hence Microsoft were found guilty by the EU of killing Netscape Navigator with Windows profits subsidising free Internet Explorer. That's clearly what Google did with Android - but even if found guilty (like Microsoft) it will be too late to save competition in phone OSes. That ship has sailed.