- Judge James Donato intends to dismantle Google’s Android app store monopoly, following an earlier ruling declaring it illegal.
- Google argued that opening its store to competitors would be too costly and complex, but the judge dismissed this claim, emphasizing that barriers will be removed.
- Proposed remedies include banning discriminatory practices against rival app stores and setting up a committee to monitor compliance and report regularly.
The only problem I see is Google already allows a lot of malware and junk in their store, this would only make it worse.
Can you explain in technical detail why? Because I don’t see this really being much of an issue.
Google can vet the app store but they are not going to be able to vet every app that’s inside that app store.
I’m not completely clear on whether Google will just be forced to allow alternate app stores into Google Play or allow more apps into Google Play. Either way I’m not sure I see the point of an app store inside an app store. We can already install whatever app stores we want.
There’s also the existing problem of app stores like the Samsung app store updating apps that weren’t downloaded from their store, which seems to me would open things to security vulnerabilities if one of the front ends gets hacked and then starts updating apps that you didn’t even download from that app store.
That’s a good mental backflip.