For the next three years, Google must meet the following criteria:
- Allow third-party app stores for Android, and let those app stores distribute all the same apps as are available in Google Play (app developers can opt out of this);
- Distribute third-party app stores as apps, so users can switch app stores by downloading a new one from Google Play, in just the same way as they’d install any app;
- Allow apps to use any payment processor, not just Google’s 30 percent money-printing machine;
- Permit app vendors to tell users about other ways to pay for the things they buy in-app;
- Permit app vendors to set their own prices.
Google is also prohibited from using its cash to fence out rivals, for example, by:
- Offering incentives to app vendors to launch first on Google Play, or to be exclusive to Google Play;
- Offering incentives to app vendors to avoid rival app stores;
- Offering incentives to hardware makers to pre-install Google Play;
- Offering incentives to hardware makers not to install rival app stores.
I don’t understand the second one “Distribute third-party app stores as apps, so users can switch app stores by downloading a new one from Google Play, in just the same way as they’d install any app”.
In real life you don’t see big supermarkets spread their flyers in competitors’ stores, how does that make sense digitally?
It’s a bit like how you use Edge to install Firefox
Well, to make your metaphor more fitting, the whole town would have to be owned by your supermarket chain and they chose to put the town hall into one of their stores.
Now the court forces them to hand out build permits also for competing supermarkets.
Google made the Play Store the primary (and only, for most people) way to install apps on Android.
But sideloading and OEM stores (Samsung, Huawei) have been available for years?
Preinstalled stores are limited to manufacturers and distributors and they suck, so nobody uses them. It’s pretty easy for someone with a tiny bit of tech knowledge to do some research and find out how to enable the ability to download APKs from the internet, but sadly, that’s not most people. Google doesn’t have a monopoly because Play Store is good (it isn’t), they have a monopoly because they’re anticompetitive.