Breaking Up with Google Play: Why Conversations Is Now Free (gultsch.de)

See what I did there?

We don't need better support. We need a way to fire Google via a robust market full of alternatives.

I have not worked at Google, but rather at 4 different companies that built automation machinery (ie multi discipline execution between mechanical, electrical, and software engineers). In none of those cases was it ever “the hacker ethos”. It was mid to upper level management whose incentive loops tended to be associated more with either shareholder perception or HR head counts. All of the engineers were usually begging the company to do a better job (allocate resources) to last mile customer support. Engineers build things, and are usually more satisfied if the products they build are well received because of the “last mile” bit where someone helps a customer appreciate their creation.

Say we do what you're suggesting. There's now three stores on Android devices when you take them out of the box: Google Play, Crumbt, and Dipple. Crumbt quickly gains a reputation for hosting sketchy software, with some diamonds in the rough, but users also regularly report getting malware on their phones. That said everything is free, which makes it the #1 stop for people who have to buy the down-market phones anyway because they can't afford apps either. Dipple, meanwhile, promises no AI features or content, and immediately gets a following with the more monied crowd that not only will pay for apps, but prefers to to avoid ads and spammy generative content.

The problem, as I see it, is we still have the old, bad experience from google, and we now have one other experience that lets anything in, so people are still getting malware, and we have still a third that's offering premium features to users with cash to spend and leaves everyone else out in the cold.

I know I'm being negative with my examples, but at the same time, the PROBLEM, as I see it, is power asymmetry: lack of oversight on the part of the platforms means nasty shit gets through, and lack of actionable routes to be remediated means the risk lands squarely on the user, who is disempowered already. Additional app markets solve none of that.

Like, sure, an app market could come along promising to be on the user's side: it will immediately not attract developers, because developers will (correctly) see that it's riskier there than elsewhere. And there's not really a monetary reason to make an ethical app store, whatever that happens to mean, because far more money is made being an unethical one that hangs it's users out to dry.

I just don't think these are problems yet more markets can solve, because fundamentally, what's broken about them is what makes them so wildly profitable. And I can't fathom another store not coming along and, even if not at first, doing the exact same thing again anyways that Play has already done, because it works. Because Play itself was immitating/innovating on the same axis as Apple's App Store.

My hypothesis: turkeys think the farm is an amazing life until the week before Thanksgiving. Nobody really groks that Google is shit until it's too late.

> They are just so big, they can afford not giving a shit at all.

You have to realise your idea that people use them for no reason is not very likely, don't you?

And there are other companies: Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Honor, K Telecom T-Store, Jio, MTN Play.

Not even close to a captured utility. And if it were, which state on the planet should own it?

There should be an agency you can complain to for monopolies which has the power to dictate new rules to the monopolist with far reaching power to crack down on anything that smells like anti competitive behavior.

e.g.

- force banking apps that try to secure themselves with google play services to make that dependency optional.

- force google to stop blocking newpipe, aurora, etc.

- force google pay to make itself available on any platform that wants to integrate it (apple, graphene)

- force google to allow alternative app stores to become first class citizens.

I think part of what makes a utility a utility is that the nature of the service is naturally a monopoly. For example, you can only realistically have one set of waterways, so the company providing tap water as a service is a utility. Same with power lines, you can only realistically have one set, so the electricity-supplying company is a utility. With phone/internet service, I imagine that also requires sharing infrastructure.

Google doesn't fit in that paradigm. The nature of their services don't naturally require sharing resources to compete. They a monopoly simply because they amassed a ton a money to do things that other people can't, like drive on all roads on Earth with special cameras, or host however many videos there are on YouTube, serving those videos throughout the world, and even pay livable wages to the creators of the videos.

But yeah, if you need a predictable way is either APN or safari push notifications.

2. Lots of Chinese technology never leaves China for political reasons, rather than economic/technology ones.

3. If you want to buy a semi-professional machine as an advanced hobbyist, often your only option is China.

4. Apple is wildly known for taking existing designs and improving on them. Why is it good for Apple to do that, but bad for China to do that?

How do you know that?