> A settlement has been reached with Google LLC, Google Ireland Limited, Google Commerce Limited, Google Asia Pacific Pte. Limited, and Google Payment Corp. (“Google”) in an antitrust class action lawsuit about the Google Play store. The lawsuit was brought by U.S. app developers. The lawsuit alleged that Google monopolized (or attempted to monopolize) alleged markets related to the distribution of Android OS apps and in-app products in violation of U.S. and California law. Google denies all allegations and the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by Google.
That last part has always irked me in settlements like this. Like how is it not an admission of wrongdoing if you finally say "Ok, I'll give you money for this problem to go away". You might say that you're not admitting you're at fault but the conclusion of you paying "victims" what they are "owed", you are admitting you're at fault.
Imagine someone stole something from you, that you value at 100 USD. Then when you try to convince them to give it back because they took it from you, they say "Ok, I'll give you 100 USD but that doesn't mean I'm admitting I took it, I just don't want to deal with it", wouldn't you take it as that person actually admitting they took it, although they don't want to confess to it?
>Like how is it not an admission of wrongdoing if you finally say "Ok, I'll give you money for this problem to go away".
Because an admission could be used against you in future litigation, thus defeating the purpose of settling in the first place. Settlement functions as a method of allowing litigants to liquidate their conflicts without wasting court resources and expending exorbitant amounts of money going through all steps of the court mandated conflict resolution procedure.
Even if you don't agree that you are at fault, there is some chance that a judge may not agree with you. If you think that chance is 10%, and the suit is worth 100M + you expect to pay 20M in fees, wouldn't it make sense for you to settle for 10M? Regardless of how the case turns out, you're 10M ahead of your anticipated fee spend and 20M ahead of your risk adjusted expected result, and the other side ends up with the risk adjusted value of their claim.
Consider a similar case where you probably favor the defendants. Random patent troll company registered in Texas files 1000's of lawsuits against companies that it alleges infringes on a trivial patent, i.e. one click checkout. All companies settle because the cost of going to court is greater than the requested settlement amount of $500k. Should we also see these companies admit that they infringed on (likely frivolous) patents?
That's always bothered me too. I think someone should be forced to admit to wrongdoing, or else keep battling in court to prove their side.
That said, how does Google monopolize Android app distribution? You're free to install APKs yourself. So why isn't Apple being prosecuted? There's no such ability on that platform. Why does it always feel like Google is constantly being hounded about stuff that Apple gets off scot-free for? Not that Google should go scot-free, but Apple should be dealt with first as it's the bigger offender and has far more marketshare.
> how is it not an admission of wrongdoing if you finally say "Ok, I'll give you money for this problem to go away"
Have you never paid a fine or penalty that you totally did not deserve and that you could probably have gotten out of if you made a mountain out of a mole hill?
> Imagine someone stole something from you, that you value at 100 USD.
Now reverse it and imagine that someone accuses you of stealing something from them that they value at 100 USD. They say they have witnesses and video surveillance camera recordings to prove they're right! You would never do something like that, but considering the costs of litigations in tens of thousands, would you agree to say
> "Ok, I'll give you 100 USD but that doesn't mean I'm admitting I took it, I just don't want to deal with it"
That's because they might not be at fault. Companies settle when they did nothing wrong - they settle because the cost of going to court and paying those fees to prove they did nothing wrong is expected to be higher than settling.
This is like someone stole $100 from you, and you _think_ it's Henry, and Henry says "it wasn't me, but I'll give you $10 to stop bothering me." Maybe Henry did it, maybe he didn't.
No. It not necessarily. Maybe it is cheaper for them to just pay up. Even if they aren't guilty, there might be a chance a court would find them guilty and the punishment would be far worse.
What alternative is there? For the court to say to both parties, “no, you’re not allowed to come to this mutually agreeable resolution. Keep paying lawyers to litigate this and keep using up the court’s time.” ?
I mean… maybe there’d an idea in there, but I’m not sure it’s practical.
Imagine someone stole something from you, that you value at 100 USD. Then when you try to convince them to give it back because they took it from you, they say "Ok, I'll give you 100 USD but that doesn't mean I'm admitting I took it, I just don't want to deal with it", wouldn't you take it as that person actually admitting they took it, although they don't want to confess to it?
Imagine that defending yourself in court was going to cost you $250,000 regardless of whether you won or lost. Wouldn't you just give them $100 with the caveat that it's not an admission of guilt?
I'm too lazy to dive into the proceedings proper. How did the suit handle the presence of sideloading from arbitrary sources, and the fact that F-Droid is alive and somehow popular?
Or was it mostly about in-app purchases?
> That last part has always irked me in settlements like this. Like how is it not an admission of wrongdoing if you finally say "Ok, I'll give you money for this problem to go away"
If it'll cost you Y to settle, and Y is substantially less than the cost across defending yourself, PR Hit, and time spent not on core business. You might want to settle.
Sure you could fight, win, sue for damages, etc. BUT that's really unlikely to win when the plaintiff isn't another multi-national court and the lawsuit wasn't totally frivolous.
I think for the purposes of law, the statement exists for the purposes of not being admissible in further cases, but in non-legal discussion of if a company did something wrong, we should all be comfortable agreeing they did something wrong.
Google would far rather defend their position in a lawsuit like this if they had a case for a multitude of reasons outside of plain cost, except for the fact that they are aware they are liable and can avoid the heaviest penalties by settling.
so I recently say an image of a paper check that was issued for an equifax data breach class action lawsuit settlement and it was for something like $5.71.
If the expected value of (the cost of defending vs the accusation + the cost of losing the defense) is sufficiently greater than $100, it makes sense to pay the $100.
What if you were rich and hated talking to people? If someone falsely accused you if stealing a hundred dollars wouldn't it be rational to just pay them to go away? (ignoring second order effects like reputation)
That's not to say Google aren't 104% at fault here though. It's even possible that they're at fault but don't realise it (or can't admit it) and so think they're paying to make a false accusation go away, despite the legal reality.
We developed a free social media application back in 2016 that cost us about $500,000 to build. We provided multiple safety filters including world filters, neural net pornography detection for profile avatars, etc. The application had a user profile search function. We had about 100,000 downloads in less than a year. I'm sure that 99.9% of user profiles did not contain any sexual material. Certainly less than Twitter has, where you can search for explicit porn. Google found a rare edge case that our ML model missed and removed the app from the Play store. With a single automated email half a million dollars was gone from my bootstrapped company. Is there anything I can do?
Be quick at contacting a lawyer, because you may have a limited time frame to act on it. It could even be that the terms already expired, but given the entity of the damage it is well worth paying a good lawyer for a consultancy.
I was banned around that time, myself. I ported to objective-c and applied to iTunes. the exact same app. made it through their manual review process. Still banned in the dev console even after this settlement. If there’s any way to get back in, someone please let us know. Unfortunately, I believe the only answer is to create a LLC.
Genuine question: how was Apple rarely sued in similar fashion?
Not just compared to Android/Google, but also the way they bundle programs in their operating systems, compared to Microsoft browser case in the US/EU.
To my untrained eyes, they're worse in almost every aspect.
Is it just the boring answer "they have better lawyers", or are there things fundamentally different?
They vertically integrated beyond the scope of the law.
Microsoft got in trouble for forcing their hardware suppliers to only ship windows machines. By taking the hardware in house, Apple does the same but it's legal.
Google loses an antitrust case for monopolizing app stores on Android. By making alternative app stores technically impossible, Apple doesn't have the same issue.
It really feels like the went mega-monopoly so hard that the law doesn't apply to them.
In my opinion, its based on the perception of the companies combined with the impact they have on the general consumer market. Eg 70% of phones run Android, only 27% run iOS which makes Google a much better target to go after.
Same situation with personal computing, Windows was like 80% of the consumer/business market when the whole browser thing took place. MacOS was something like 5%. Also I've never really heard of someone complain about Safari compared to IE/Edge so maybe there wasn't any traction for something like that
Maybe someone has a better/more accurate answer than that but thats just how I've been perceiving it.
Because they have cornered the market for top 5% incomes while leaving the rest 95% to their competitors. Since their market share is always less, they always get less scrutiny. Outside of developed world, no one uses apple products unless paid by their workplace (for example mac books) or if they are in the top 1% of their country.
> but also the way they bundle programs in their operating systems, compared to Microsoft browser case in EU.
Microsoft was blocking competitors by requiring a fee for every processor sold by a manufacturer that offered Windows, whether that machine was sold with Windows or not, causing any other operating system sold on licensee machines to be more expensive for consumers. It wasn't bundling that was the issue in Microsoft Corp v Commission, it was tying applications together, such that if you purchase one application, you are forced to purchase another.
I don't see how it relates. Apple bundles software but does not sell what it bundles, nor even the OS, which is also free, nor is the consumer unable to remove that software or required to pay a licensing fee to Apple whether they run their OS or not, unlike with Microsoft Windows and Explorer. You can delete Safari and every application Apple bundles, including the OS, and you can not purchase it because it's free with the hardware. Apple is not tying applications, and there's nothing anti-competitive with their bundling.
[+] [-] capableweb|3 years ago|reply
That last part has always irked me in settlements like this. Like how is it not an admission of wrongdoing if you finally say "Ok, I'll give you money for this problem to go away". You might say that you're not admitting you're at fault but the conclusion of you paying "victims" what they are "owed", you are admitting you're at fault.
Imagine someone stole something from you, that you value at 100 USD. Then when you try to convince them to give it back because they took it from you, they say "Ok, I'll give you 100 USD but that doesn't mean I'm admitting I took it, I just don't want to deal with it", wouldn't you take it as that person actually admitting they took it, although they don't want to confess to it?
[+] [-] ABCLAW|3 years ago|reply
Because an admission could be used against you in future litigation, thus defeating the purpose of settling in the first place. Settlement functions as a method of allowing litigants to liquidate their conflicts without wasting court resources and expending exorbitant amounts of money going through all steps of the court mandated conflict resolution procedure.
Even if you don't agree that you are at fault, there is some chance that a judge may not agree with you. If you think that chance is 10%, and the suit is worth 100M + you expect to pay 20M in fees, wouldn't it make sense for you to settle for 10M? Regardless of how the case turns out, you're 10M ahead of your anticipated fee spend and 20M ahead of your risk adjusted expected result, and the other side ends up with the risk adjusted value of their claim.
[+] [-] eric-hu|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] midoridensha|3 years ago|reply
That said, how does Google monopolize Android app distribution? You're free to install APKs yourself. So why isn't Apple being prosecuted? There's no such ability on that platform. Why does it always feel like Google is constantly being hounded about stuff that Apple gets off scot-free for? Not that Google should go scot-free, but Apple should be dealt with first as it's the bigger offender and has far more marketshare.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
Have you never paid a fine or penalty that you totally did not deserve and that you could probably have gotten out of if you made a mountain out of a mole hill?
[+] [-] maratc|3 years ago|reply
Now reverse it and imagine that someone accuses you of stealing something from them that they value at 100 USD. They say they have witnesses and video surveillance camera recordings to prove they're right! You would never do something like that, but considering the costs of litigations in tens of thousands, would you agree to say
> "Ok, I'll give you 100 USD but that doesn't mean I'm admitting I took it, I just don't want to deal with it"
[+] [-] rendaw|3 years ago|reply
This is like someone stole $100 from you, and you _think_ it's Henry, and Henry says "it wasn't me, but I'll give you $10 to stop bothering me." Maybe Henry did it, maybe he didn't.
[+] [-] chrismcb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
I mean… maybe there’d an idea in there, but I’m not sure it’s practical.
[+] [-] onion2k|3 years ago|reply
Imagine that defending yourself in court was going to cost you $250,000 regardless of whether you won or lost. Wouldn't you just give them $100 with the caveat that it's not an admission of guilt?
[+] [-] nine_k|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bushbaba|3 years ago|reply
If it'll cost you Y to settle, and Y is substantially less than the cost across defending yourself, PR Hit, and time spent not on core business. You might want to settle.
Sure you could fight, win, sue for damages, etc. BUT that's really unlikely to win when the plaintiff isn't another multi-national court and the lawsuit wasn't totally frivolous.
[+] [-] ocdtrekkie|3 years ago|reply
Google would far rather defend their position in a lawsuit like this if they had a case for a multitude of reasons outside of plain cost, except for the fact that they are aware they are liable and can avoid the heaviest penalties by settling.
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
just insulting all around.
[+] [-] elefanten|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] water-your-self|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y_Y|3 years ago|reply
That's not to say Google aren't 104% at fault here though. It's even possible that they're at fault but don't realise it (or can't admit it) and so think they're paying to make a false accusation go away, despite the legal reality.
[+] [-] 6451937099|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cft|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GTP|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventurer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kobalsky|3 years ago|reply
Where you using the same content rating as Twitter?
[+] [-] JanSt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrdbndndn|3 years ago|reply
Not just compared to Android/Google, but also the way they bundle programs in their operating systems, compared to Microsoft browser case in the US/EU.
To my untrained eyes, they're worse in almost every aspect.
Is it just the boring answer "they have better lawyers", or are there things fundamentally different?
[+] [-] dahfizz|3 years ago|reply
Microsoft got in trouble for forcing their hardware suppliers to only ship windows machines. By taking the hardware in house, Apple does the same but it's legal.
Google loses an antitrust case for monopolizing app stores on Android. By making alternative app stores technically impossible, Apple doesn't have the same issue.
It really feels like the went mega-monopoly so hard that the law doesn't apply to them.
[+] [-] resfirestar|3 years ago|reply
The settlement website: https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com/
Summary of the settlement: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/26/app-store-changes-devel...
[+] [-] as1992|3 years ago|reply
Same situation with personal computing, Windows was like 80% of the consumer/business market when the whole browser thing took place. MacOS was something like 5%. Also I've never really heard of someone complain about Safari compared to IE/Edge so maybe there wasn't any traction for something like that
Maybe someone has a better/more accurate answer than that but thats just how I've been perceiving it.
[+] [-] allisdust|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dvngnt_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Maursault|3 years ago|reply
Microsoft was blocking competitors by requiring a fee for every processor sold by a manufacturer that offered Windows, whether that machine was sold with Windows or not, causing any other operating system sold on licensee machines to be more expensive for consumers. It wasn't bundling that was the issue in Microsoft Corp v Commission, it was tying applications together, such that if you purchase one application, you are forced to purchase another.
I don't see how it relates. Apple bundles software but does not sell what it bundles, nor even the OS, which is also free, nor is the consumer unable to remove that software or required to pay a licensing fee to Apple whether they run their OS or not, unlike with Microsoft Windows and Explorer. You can delete Safari and every application Apple bundles, including the OS, and you can not purchase it because it's free with the hardware. Apple is not tying applications, and there's nothing anti-competitive with their bundling.
[+] [-] skyfoxxy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geekbird|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6451937099|3 years ago|reply
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