mil24havoc t1_ix07k95 wrote
Reply to comment by EelTeamNine in Epic lawsuit claims Google paid Activision Blizzard $360 million to prevent Play Store rival by Sorin61
This is something of a misunderstanding of how monopoly power is abused according to US law, at least. Monopolies aren't illegal. Using your power as a monopoly to maintain your monopoly is illegal. It simply doesn't matter if the other side (Epic, for example) accepts the payout to not open an app store. According to antitrust and monopoly laws, Epic isn't the victim, consumers are. You (the victim) prefer a single app store because it's all you know -- you haven't observed the counterfactual competitive app market and so are unlikely to be able to assess the impact it will have on your experience as a user. Historically, competitive markets have lead to lower prices and greater options for consumers. The alternative (that can also be good for consumers, in certain circumstances) is a single regulated monopoly. Think, for example, power companies. However, what we have now is an unregulated monopoly which exclusively benefits the monopoly holder.
Also, monopolies are market specific - so a market over OSes is different from a market within a given OS (e.g., an app store).
EelTeamNine t1_ix086iv wrote
Good breakdown.
I guess I'm not the affected party of this lawsuit either because I do not spend money on anything in the App store.
jazir5 t1_ix22a2j wrote
>Epic isn't the victim, consumers are. You (the victim) prefer a single app store because it's all you know -- you haven't observed the counterfactual competitive app market
This is a bad example in this specific instance IMO, because the Epic Games store on PC vs Steam is an extremely comparable situation. Most people very much so dislike Epic Games on PC and it's userbase is much smaller. Competition with Steam has produced absolutely no results, and the prices on Steam are often better than epics. Steam does not base their pricing vs epics, Valve has pretty much ignored Epic since they opened their store.
Now I don't know if the exact same would hold true on mobile, but I really don't see it playing out much differently.
That's not to say they shouldn't be given the chance though. If Epic wants to compete, let them.
mil24havoc t1_ix28che wrote
... Except that you don't know what the situation would be like if Epic wasn't able to open an app store -- because steam didn't prevent them from doing so. I get what you're saying, but the fact that steam has better deals than Epic is fairly weak evidence against a competitive market.
Furthermore, steam never had close to a monopoly like the phone app stores have. Steam has always competed with direct sales, publisher stores, brick and mortar, and the windows store, among others. The fact that one more store didn't make a huge difference isn't surprising because the market was already operating properly.
ukezi t1_ix2s6or wrote
I bet they will argue that the market is mobile phones and that there is Apple as alternative.
Just like that ISPs are not monopolies apparently even if they divided the markets into regions.
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