News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team. Parent comment

Re:Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play ... by noarchy on Sunday August 18, 2019 @07:26PM (#20733608)
>The iOS app store is a monopoly. Are you arguing otherwise? There's no way to run an alternative store there.

I have to agree, it is a monopoly within the context of iOS devices. Apple works fairly hard to patch iOS in order to prevent the latest jailbreaks, thus removing a major avenue where a user would have the freedom to sideload the apps of their choosing.

In Google's case, while I don't think the Play Store is a monopoly, it is clearly a dominant player on many Android devices around the world.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play ... by deogeo on Sunday August 18, 2019 @07:48PM (#20733703)
A better way of defining (near) monopolies is through market power [1]. It gets at the heart of the matter for which 'monopoly' is just a proxy - the ability of a company to shape the market, even if it has competitors.

For example, Microsoft never once had monopoly on operating systems...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power

[ Parent | on HN ]