Google engages in anti-competitive behavior (ie. using their capital to increase the entry barriers for other app store markets on Android), so that they can then collect rent on their app store (among other things, like search/advertising).

The anti-competitive actions (paying off phone vendors) that Google takes are part of that rent-seeking behavior, just as companies that lobby politicians to increase barriers to entry so they can raise prices are engaging in rent-seeking.

If you want to nit-pick and say the play store pricing is the rent-seeking and the paying off of the phone vendors is the anti-competitive behavior, I wouldn't have a huge quibble with that.

It's not nit picking to say you're giving non sequiturs to the comments you were responding to.

> Google engages in anti-competitive behavior (ie. using their capital to increase the entry barriers for other app store markets on Android), so that they can then collect rent on their app store (among other things, like search/advertising).

There is an argument that could be made that companies taking a 30% cut of app store revenue is rent seeking, but it makes no sense to say that Google is paying Apple per-user search acquisition fees in iOS Safari so that Google can then turn around and collect fees in the iOS App Store (because obviously that's not a thing).

You're absolutely correct, I misread the original comment and doubled-down rather than double-checking, which is my fault. I was thrown off by the reference to the "OS space" in your comment.

I still think what I'm saying is true, but agree that it is not quite the same issue.

It seems like you're both right and we're just looking for the right words... there are anti-competitive as well as rent-seeking behaviors, would the combination of those be racketeering?