The Verge:
Sean Hollister: What would you say the differences are between
the Apple and Google cases?Tim Sweeney: I would say Apple was ice and Google was fire.
The thing with Apple is all of their antitrust trickery is
internal to the company. They use their store, their payments,
they force developers to all have the same terms, they force OEMs
and carriers to all have the same terms.Whereas Google, to achieve things with Android, they were going
around and paying off game developers, dozens of game developers,
to not compete. And they’re paying off dozens of carriers and OEMs
to not compete — and when all of these different companies do
deals together, lots of people put things in writing, and it’s
right there for everybody to read and to see plainly.I think the Apple case would be no less interesting if we could
see all of their internal thoughts and deliberations, but Apple
was not putting it in writing, whereas Google was. You know, I
think Apple is… it’s a little bit unfortunate that in a lot of
ways Apple’s restrictions on competition are absolute. Thou shalt
not have a competing store on iOS and thou shalt not use a
competing payment method. And I think Apple should be receiving at
least as harsh antitrust scrutiny as Google.
Interesting interview, for sure. But I don’t see Epic’s victory in the lawsuit as a win for Android users, and I don’t think it’s much of a win for Android developers either. These new terms from Google just seem confusing and complicated, with varying rates for “existing installs” vs. “new installs”.
