Let's simplify. Let's say I sell lemonade. It's 100% legit with USDA approval or whatever BUT I'm having trouble selling it. Grocery stores are happy with their own brand but maybe I'm lucky enough to get 1 Wholefoods to set up a counter. I can see the analogy of whole foods requiring me to not sell while in their store. However whole foods does NOT require me to white label. And they would not require me to change my website to not have alternative buying choices. In fact I do this all the time with foods I find in Wholefoods - I go to the website of foods I love and see if I can buy directly in bulk.
This is the CORRECT analogy. It's not correct to say that everyone is going into Safeway and stealing shit off the shelves. The OP should know that, and you should know that.
And on Android, developers are free to list their apps on F-Droid, Amazon Appstore or just let people download & install it from their own website. Unlike iOS, the Play Store is not mandatory.
> However whole foods does NOT require me to white label. (...) And they would not require me to change my website to not have alternative buying choices.
Grocery stores can and do ask anything they want of suppliers. Trader Joe's buys many products from suppliers like PepsiCo under a white labelling agreement. Walmart will fully dictate the packaging and pricing of your product (eg. demanding that Vlasic sell a Walmart-exclusive $2.97 gallon jar of pickles). Don't like their terms? Tough luck, it's their store.
I'm not saying that the grocery store analogy is a good one but it clearly works against your point. Actually I've only seen it mentioned to support dictatorial app stores.
In practice, it is. Only the Play Store can update apps in the background.
> Downvotes are not replying so I'm assuming they are just pissed that my logic checks out.
It breaks the site guidelines [1].
[1] Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
While at least 50% of the random grocery stores you would see are under one of the big 5 (or so) many of these stores are generally able to carry additional products not even necessarily approved by the top. Part of that is simply competition with local chains. And that doesn't even cover the fact that you have gobs of local and regional chains to contact and sell goods to.
But basically as a seller of lemonade you are highly likely to be able to sell your product without insane restrictions - as well have the ability to choose a chain or store that has competitive markup or a markup that you agree with.
If you sell phone applications you are dealing with exactly 2 entities that you HAVE to go through.