Today’s links An Epic antitrust loss for Google: They can’t help but put it in writing. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2008, 2013, 2018, 2022 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading An Epic antitrust loss for Google (permalink) A jury just found Google guilty on all counts of antitrust violations stemming from its dispute with Epic, maker of Fortnite, which brought a variety of claims related to how Google runs its app marketplace. This is huge: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/technology/epic-games-google-antitrust-ruling.html The mobile app store world is a duopoly run by Google and Apple. Both use a variety of tactics to prevent their customers from installing third party app stores, which funnels all app makers into their own app stores. Those app stores cream an eye-popping 30% off every purchase made in an app. This is a shocking amount to charge for payment processing. The payments sector is incredibly monopolized and notorious for its price-gouging – and its standard (wildly inflated) rate is 2-5%: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping Now, in theory, Epic doesn’t have to sell in Google Play, the official Android app store. Unlike Apple’s iOS, Android permit both sideloading (installing an app directly without using an app store) and configuring your device to use a different app store. In practice, Google uses a variety of anticompetitive tricks to prevent these app stores from springing up and to dissuade Android users from sideloading. Proving that Google’s actions – like paying Activision $360m as part of “Project…Pluralistic: An Epic antitrust loss for Google (12 Dec 2023)