The Vergecast - Fornite kicked off the App Store and Microsoft’s Surface Duo arrives on Sept 10th

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

Nilay, Dieter, Tom, and Dan discuss the timeline of events that lead to Epic Games suing Apple and Google after being kicked out of mobile app stores. They also discuss Microsoft's announcement of the Surface Duo's release date and technical specs. Stories discussed this episode: Big Tech pledged a billion to racial justice, but it was pocket change US passes 5 million coronavirus cases Big airlines are hoarding cash to survive the pandemic Vaping linked to higher risk of COVID-19 in teens and young adults, study finds Microsoft opens xCloud game streaming beta early on Tuesday Apple confirms cloud gaming services like xCloud and Stadia violate App Store guidelines Microsoft condemns Apple’s App Store policies Facebook slams Apple’s App Store policies, launches Facebook Gaming on iOS without games Fortnite vs Apple vs Google: a brief and very incomplete timeline Epic offers new direct payment in Fortnite on iOS and Android to get around app store fees Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store Watch Epic’s Nineteen Eighty-Fortnite short mocking Apple right here Epic Games is suing Apple Fortnite for Android has also been kicked off the Google Play Store Epic is suing Google over Fortnite’s removal from the Google Play Store Google forced OnePlus to decimate a Fortnite launcher deal, claims Epic Games Fortnite vs Apple vs Google: a brief and very incomplete timeline Epic rallies Fortnite players against Apple with a warning that they’ll miss the next season Microsoft’s Surface Duo arrives on Sept 10th for $1,399 Microsoft releases Surface Duo press event video with 30 minutes of demos The Xbox Series X could launch on November 6th Microsoft’s new Xbox Series S console confirmed in leaked controller packaging When I don’t buy the new Xbox, Microsoft will laugh all the way to the bank Android is becoming a worldwide earthquake detection network Google is re-adding a Calendar app to Android Auto so you can see how to get to your next appointment Google Maps finally works with CarPlay’s excellent dashboard mode Google promises the next Wear OS update will launch apps up to 20 percent faster Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Vergecast, Tom Warren and Dan Sefert joined me in Deeder to talk about the big antitrust fight in the world, Epic versus Apple and Google. We also talked about the game streaming controversy on Apple's App Store. And we got to talk about the Surface Duo, Microsoft's new folding phone with two screens. Let's come up now on the Vergecast. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in.

Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Proms something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to Retool.com slash Vergecast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports. And mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Blay and welcome to the first cast. The flagship podcast with the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section 2. I was thinking I would start at like a bar review lecture class. Welcome. Please open your barbary text. Anyway, I'm not going to do that because that's horrible. And I just gave myself vivid flashbacks studying for the bargain.

Anyway, this is a Vergecast, a show about technology, but today kind of about antitrust. I'm your friend Eli. Dieter Bone is here. I'm your valued business partner. Wow. That's a lot, Dieter. Tom Warren is here. Hey, Tom.

Hey, I am with the EU. Actually, you're not, though, right? Until the end of the year Okay I mean technically no I don't know I don't know what's happening Who knows a lot

I'm here Dan Sievert is here Hello I'm not with the EU It's like I just talk about gadgets A lot going on In the tech world this week There was a fight

About game streaming apps On the app store Epic the maker of Fortnite sued Apple and Google Got Fortnite kicked off Of those app stores The Surface duo Was announced

that's Microsoft's dual screen folding phone. There's a bunch of Android news. There's just a lot happening in technology. I needed this crew to talk about it all. We're going to spend a lot of time on this antitrust stuff. It's a big deal, and I think it's going to change kind of the nature of the industry. But before we do all of that, as usual, all of this is happening in the context of the pandemic, the movement for racial justice in this country.

So just some updates on our site because we're covering that stuff very heavily. I'm at this point, I think, legally obligated to note that it has been 20. 22 weeks since Donald Trump presented to the nation a flow chart about a testing plan where you would go to a website that, Dito's Google that was building the website, right? 45 million Google engineers. Yeah, 45 million Google engineers. And then another 4 million alphabet engineers. And then verily also part of alphabet was going to do a bunch more.

Actually, a real thing verily done is they've set up their own approved testing lab. So they're like, they're starting to be vertically integrated. Wow. But the website still doesn't exist as far as I know. Well, there is a website. But it's not the nationwide testing strategy that we need to actually overcome the pandemic before a vaccine. Twenty-two weeks since that happened, we're just going to keep counting. Other pandemic news, the United States, on a similar note, passed five million coronavirus cases this week, which is not a great milestone. You might have heard that Russia said it approved a vaccine. Marybeth Greggs are signed.

said I wrote about that. It's an unproven vaccine. It has not gone through the appropriate set of trials. It's very controversial. You should read that piece to gain an understanding what's going on there. And then sort of the, I keep saying the second order of the pandemic is important. The things that are changing because of the economic impact of the pandemic, big airlines are now just hoarding cash to get through it because travel is obviously down. That's one of those stories. The airline industry is just deeply changing because of it. That's on the site. And then this probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but vaping has been linked to a higher risk of COVID-19 and teenagers and young adults. I'm glad that we did a study to prove it.

It should have been common sense for everyone. Don't monkey with your lungs in the time of COVID. Or ever maybe, yeah. And then lastly on the racial justice front, Jay Peters spent weeks and weeks and weeks assembling data around the pledges from big tech companies to racial justice initiatives. So in total, a billion dollars was pledged from big companies ranging from Comcast to Disney to Apple to Facebook. And he made a bunch of charts and put it all in context. It turns out compared to their profits, compared to their spending on other things,

this is just pocket change. And there's a lot of controversy around big companies using charity and using philanthropy to launder their public image. And you look at these charts, that argument becomes a little more compelling. I think my favorite one is AT&T spent $73 million on an ad campaign for fake 5G, which is like almost as much money as if they've committed to racial... justice. So read that piece. It kind of helps contextualize the scale of the problem and the scale of the scale of the effort that the corporate side of the world is putting into it. Great piece. Very proud

of J for it. All right. I never want to ignore that stuff. I think those are the two biggest stories in the world. But I usually say, but there's tech news. But I actually think the antitrust stuff in tech is going to have long-term massive impact on the entire tech industry, on the consumer industry, is we're all sitting at home, you know, the economy is changing around us. We're all mediated by screens. Who gets to put what on your screen? Turns out to be of earth-shattering importance. And a lot of the action this week in tech was about who gets to put what on your screen. So I think obviously everyone knows the big story is epic suing Apple and Google, baiting them into a situation where they could file that lawsuit. We'll get to that in a minute. I want to step one day back. It was like one day before this. The context of this is Apple was in another fight around streaming game services. So the one that's the top of mind is XCloud from Microsoft. Tom, walk us through what happened there. So basically, Microsoft's going to launch this XCloud game streaming service, but only on Android.

They did a test of the iOS version earlier this year, and it was a really weird test. So on the Android side, they had like a bunch of their own games. I think it was around about 100 at one point. On the iOS side, they had one, which was Halo. And they put it down to complying with Apple App Store policies. They didn't actually say we specifically which section or anything like that, but that was that was literally what they said back then. Fast forward to now they obviously want to launch it in September, bundling it with Xbox Game Pass, but they're not launching it on iOS. And initially they, they kind of didn't really say much about it.

They were like, I'm going on hiring and you know, we're keeping this on the sort of down low. But then they actually came out and basically sort of condemned Apple essentially for, for, for for blocking them from launching it on the App Store. After Apple issued a statement saying, you know, Google Studio and XCloud and stuff are not allowed on the platform. Did Apple say why they're not allowed on the platform? They're saying they're not allowed under a sort of remote desktop sort of clause in the app store where they, you basically, like, they don't want you to connect to a remote computer

that isn't your own, that you don't own strictly. I mean, it's so complicated. it's hard to actually break down. So what happened was the Microsoft did the thing, we're like, they're not an iOS, and Business Insider went to Apple and said, hey, what the hell? And then Apple gave them the statement,

and Business Insider printed the entire statement. It was actually the exact same statement so far as you know that they gave to Mark Garland and Bloomberg, like way back in March. But because we can look at the entire statement as just like a block quote, here is Apple's justification. It's like, it's so obvious that what we're doing here is like arguing about the moderation rules and like parsing out like why this but not that.

And it just caused everybody to like take another look and be like, what the hell? Why are VPN apps allowed but not game streaming apps? Oh, because you're connecting to a computer that you don't happen to own sort of. VNC apps, not VPN apps. Yeah, VLC apps. Sorry, VLC apps. Okay. Well, why is Netflix allowed but not game streaming apps?

Apple's claim is for games, apparently, they want to review everything that you can play. So they want to be able to review themselves every single Xbox game and every single Stadia game. And they want all those games to be listed individually inside the app store. So for all intents and purposes, they're banning game streaming apps. So I feel like a very important piece of context for all of those. of this is the fact that Apple makes most of the money on the app store from games. Yeah. And most of the services money that they make is from the app store, right?

So Apple's big narrative is we're now a services company. We've hit the ceiling of iPhone growth. Almost every other product they make is an accessory to the iPhone. So all of their growth is limited by the size of the iPhone market. And so their big narrative over the past few years has been where services company, all these people have iPhones, we might collect more money from them. Inside of that, the biggest chunk is the app store. And inside of the app store, the biggest chunk is in-app purchases and games. Candy Crush. Well, and maybe Fortnite, actually. And maybe Fortnite. And I just, all of these

conversations kind of center around abstract principles. Like, are you going to allow this app or that app? I just think it's very important to remember there's a ton of money from games at stake here. And so I think we're seeing with game streaming with epic whatever that's where the most action is like Spotify's mad too but whatever like they just kind of like go along with it you know amazon is mad they can't sell can't like it's not the biggest chunk of money in the game well and the idea that this is an argument over like you know platonic principles of how a platform should work and is it is it we can have a whole what's a computer discussion and the difference between a console and a platform and a computer if you want i'm i will have that discussion for days with you it's a spectrum

you see. But the idea that this is about those principles and not just about the money, like Apple will only talk to you in the terms of principles. It's literally about power. Well, you look back and like Amazon got a deal. 15% right, according to the documents and the emails. It's about power, right? If you open up your platform and let someone build on top of it, hello Windows and Steam, you know, Microsoft does not have power over that store. They didn't create a game store on the Windows store, so they've lost that power there. Apple has created this app store. They created it, and kudos to them.

They did a great thing with the mobile side, but now they're trying to control it, and they want the power over it, and anything that goes on the platform, they control. There's no way of side-loading those apps on. There's no way of getting around that power. And I think that's like the core problem, and it comes into the epic game stuff as well, but that's the core problem, right? Like, they want to control what's on their platform. Well, no, I agree.

I just think very specifically the two big disputes between some of the most powerful players in the game, Microsoft, Facebook, Epic, Apple. They're about games for a reason because that is the biggest chunk. It's the biggest entertainment industry, right? It's the biggest entertainment industry, but it's also the biggest chunk of Apple's services revenue narrative. And so if you break that, their narrative actually kind of goes sideways because they're not making all those billions of dollars in services. revenue on Apple Music. I guarantee it's not Apple Music, right? They're not making it on Apple News Plus the worst product that Apple makes.

They're making it on in-app purchases and games, and they're pretending that it's all the other stuff. They're pretending in their TV service is meaningful. Sure. And on top of all of that, like in the context of all that, is that X-Cloud is obviously launching on the Android side, but it's not launching with in-app purchases in the Google Play Store. Correct.

It's like Microsoft's actually cut a deal with Samsung. We don't know what percentage. The default that Samsung offers is 30%. But they do specifically in their guidelines mention that, you know, you can cut a deal with us. Essentially, that's what they say in their guidelines. You can cut a deal with us when your apps getting approved, basically. I asked Samsung for comment and they're like, we'll get back to you. And that was that was 15 hours ago.

Okay. So I got deep into this tangent of services revenue. But really what you're looking at is XCloud, Facebook games, this next genet, the next generation of game services looks like the games run on a server somewhere. The video streams to you over the internet and you stream control back to the games, right? And in a world, like the one promise of 5G that I believe is that the latency on the mobile network will be low enough to make that worthwhile on phones. Yeah. And you could tell that that's brewing to be the future when Facebook, Apple, Google, maybe not Google so much, but Microsoft, they're all sort of like

arguing about it, right? Like, Google has suspiciously not said much about Stadio on iOS. Well, I think they got to make it. They want to make it happen, presumably. Well, first, it has to work. They got to make it happen before they can make it happen. Like, step one, it works, okay? We're 50% of the way there. Step two people are using it. That's a little, it's maybe harder for Google. Anyhow, so the comparison, Netflix here is really apt, right? And I think credit to Renee Ritchie, I think he made this point in a YouTube video the other day. Netflix, you hit play video streams at you from a server somewhere. Apple's not getting in the way of that. They're not reviewing every show on Netflix or Hulu or whatever.

When it comes to game streaming services, Apple is saying, oh, we need to review every game available to you. So we're not going to let a catalog app like Netflix show up with games that stream and control streams back. That more than the V&C argument. is where it just falls down for me, right? Like, what is really the difference between streaming video from a game running on a computer somewhere and streaming video from a TV service on a computer?

There isn't one. Like, the interactivity of control is like not, it's not a meaningful enough difference to me. No, and I think if you put it in the context of, if that's Apple's argument, that they want to review every piece of content, all that sort of stuff, and if they truly think games streaming

is different to video streaming, then you have to consider things like Bandersnatch. What was that then? Was that, were you watching a TV show or were you watching an interactive TV show that you... I just want to point out, importantly, Bandersnatch was not available on the Apple TV. Really?

Yeah. Yeah, but that's probably more of a technical thing, maybe. I don't know. Oh, you mean, the Apple TV that has the same processor as various iPads? Yeah. Like, if this thing can run on a Roku that is basically a hamster wheel of a processor,

I mean, I think what happened was they started to test it on the Apple TV, and they lasted five minutes with Apple's remote. Like, you know what? Not worth it. Reed Hastings was like fumbling. He's like, screw this. It's not worth it. But I think Apple is enforcing this distinction around interactivity with game streaming in particular in a way that doesn't hold up to this scrutiny of we need to keep your kids safe, right? Because if that was true, they would review all the other video that you can stream from things, whether or not that video is generative like video games or.

pre-recorded like Netflix. And they certainly are not reviewing live TV, which, who knows what your kids will see on various live TV streaming apps. So that's the context. So Microsoft is mad. Facebook launched Facebook gaming on iOS without any games this week, just to say, like, look at what Apple made us do. We're going to take a break in transition in Epic. But I think one of the issues for both of these companies is that nobody's rooting for them against Apple this way. Right? Like, XCloud isn't a thing. yet. Facebook gaming is run by Facebook. When they're mad at Apple, I don't think they, they build up that wave of support. Does that feel right? Yeah, well, like when Facebook is

taking you to task, you know you've got issues, right? Like, but I don't think, like, I don't think people are really backing Facebook to have mini games in their Facebook gaming app, which, you know, people, people are using Twitch. We've seen, we saw that with the mixer closure. Everyone went to Twitch, I think really go to Facebook gaming. So I think they're kind of an irrelevant part of the conversation. But XCloud could be, obviously X-Cloud is connected to Xbox. We're about to have an Xbox moment with the new generation of consoles. That feels much more fraught for Apple.

But at the same time, what they're enforcing is the status quo, right? It's not a thing that people have that's being taken away. It's not a thing that people even know they want yet that they can't get. It's everything's just the same for iOS users as ever. I think that's a, it's just. important to sort of land there. This is the context. In particular, the Xbox thing could be coming for Apple Heart because Tom's talked about this bunch. John Holliser wrote a great piece on this. Like, I don't think I'm buying an Xbox, but I might buy GamePass Ultimate and like get a gaming

PC and annoy Dan for six months about how to, you know, which one I should get and how I should do it. And if Microsoft actually is successful in its strategy of it's not the console stupid, it's the service, they could have a huge group of customers that are just like annoyed at Apple and annoyed at their phone. And like the big question for Apple is, are they going to be more worried about customers being annoyed at them and switching to Android

or are they more worried about like, you know, losing that service as revenue? I think it's also going to depend on what Apple does in this space, right? Like, assuming that they will be a player in this space somehow in the cloud gaming space, so you'd imagine they might be. Do they create like an Apple TV-esque app for cloud streaming? I don't know.

Like, who knows what they'll do? But I assume they haven't figured that out yet. But Apple is also, and I say this with love, historically bad at video games. Yeah. Right? Like the essay of Apple games now, or Apple Arcade. And it was great to begin with. It sort of has died off.

You don't hear about it quite so much. There was some reporting that game developers were being pushed. to make games that had higher engagement rates, which sounds like the bad place. Like, you hear that phrase, and you're like, oh, we're just making trashier things. And it's to prop up that, like, make the subscription worthwhile over time.

So you're not paying 49-a-month for games you don't play or not, don't play a lot. Whether or not they can transition all of that into, we're going to stream AAA games at you. I mean, you can barely play a AAA game on the Mac. You know, like, they don't have that infrastructure. They don't have those developer relationships. They don't have any of that stuff,

except for the free-to-play games in the app store. Yeah, I think ultimately their play is probably, and we're at like a really weird point in hardware, especially on the iPad side, where, like, you know, the only reason that Fortnite is on these mobile devices, they've got so much more powerful now, right? Fortnite is not a mobile game.

It didn't start on mobile. But it runs really well now, like 90 frames second, just crazy. So, like, in the next five years, what are these devices going to enable us to do? And does Apple want to give up that, you know, the native experience of running these games? Like, should they just say to Microsoft,

no, bring Halo to the iPhone? If that's how you want it to run on the iPhone. So there's so much going on with those devices and the way it's heading, like there's a crossover. And the traditional console players see that. They know it's happening. They know it's about to happen.

And the things are shifting up. So cloud is the way for them to go because they can't get on these mobile devices. As long as I'm talking about App Store policy stuff, I should disclose again that my wife works for the App Store for Oculus, such a division of Facebook, and I recuse myself from reporting on Facebook or Oculus or VR,

so I don't really know what their policies are. I'm excited that the birds are going to join us for the rest of the show. We're going to take a break. Tom's going to take a broom and try to chase the seagulls away. It's going to be great. We'll be right back, and we're going to get into Epic versus Apple versus Google. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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So we laid the content. text of pressure on the app store, right? We obviously had the hearing the other week, big deal, Tim Cook in front of Congress that came after the app store. We know about Hey, and DHHH. We've heard about the streaming services. There's a lot of pressure on the app store. But I think what happened with Epic this week is the thing that broke it open. Deeter, this timeline is incredible. Do you want to walk us through it? So, we're recording this on Friday. So Thursday morning, a update, to Fortnite appeared on iOS and Android devices,

offering a permanent 20% discount on V-Bucs if you buy it direct from Epic instead of via the in-app purchase standard thing on either iOS or Android. And this is deeply against the rules, because on games, on Android, you have to use in-app purchases, and on everything on the iPhone, you have to use in-app purchases. Also, probably not, you know, according to the rules to just silently push a server-side update

with that major functionality included, just a thing. So it was very clearly designed to be a thing. Like make these companies do something about it. I mean, they put out a blog post being like, screw you. Yeah. And to Tom's point, there are not many apps that can do what Epic did with Fortnite, right?

They pushed a server side update. So they did not have to go through app review and they enabled new functionality in their app. Like, many apps can do that. It's not even server site. Like, it's basically like you have a shell of an app and then that downloads the whole of the game. files within the app.

And it's only really games to do it. And it's only the really bigger games. So that happened. Apple did not back down. Apple said, yep, you banned. No, no, it took a long time. I mean, this happened in the morning. Yeah, yeah.

And it was the late afternoon. Right. So Epic got to, everyone wondered what was going to happen. For some time. And then we got a statement from Apple. And we got a statement from Apple. Do you want to read that statement? That's very long, but I'll read, I read the good parts.

We broke this, neat. We had it first. Today, Epic Games took the unfortunate step of violating the app store guidelines that are applied equally to every developer and design to keep the store safe for our users. Keep the store safe for our users. It's going to come up a lot. As a result, their Fortnite app has been removed from the store. Epic enabled the feature in its app, which is not reviewed or approve of Apple,

and they did so with the express intent of violating apps for guidelines regarding in-app payments that apply to every developer who sells digital goods or services. And then this, that's the first part. We banned the app. Here's why. the second part is like this is Apple's line it's actually it's Google's line too as we'll hear but this is kind of their rationale and this is where they're going to keep landing epic has had games on the app store for a decade and have benefited from the app store ecosystem including its

tools testing and distribution that Apple provides all developers epic agreed to the app store terms and guidelines freely we're glad they've built such a successful business on the app store the fact that their business interests now lead them to push for a special arrangement does not change the guidelines create a level playing field for all developers and make the store safe for all users. We'll make every effort to work with that back. There's always violations so you can return Fortnite to the app store. If you remember, their line with, hey, the email app was Basecamp is at apps on the store for a decade. They've built a business.

They haven't paid us a dime. This is Apple's argument. We built the store. We own the platform. You haven't paid us. And in the same way that AT&T deserves credit for the success of the iPhone and smartphones, Apple deserves credit for the success of any app on it. platform. I mean, it's, I think depending on who you talk to in my mentions, that argument is either

very convincing or not convincing at all. There is no middle ground. So this is like gamesmanship. And I want to be clear. I, Epic issued the update, knowing that they had a video to release, knowing that they had a complaint written and ready to file. Apple issued the statement, I'm more certain than not knowing all those things were going to happen. Oh, for sure. I don't if they knew to the extent to which Epic was going to go hard. So Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, very famously spiky and angry about this stuff. So they knew he was going to do something. I don't know that he was going to release a shot-for-shot remake of Apple's 1984 ad fighting

against the evil corporate monopolist that they were going to try and break. I mean, that part is very good. It was pretty epic. You might say that we're in the middle of a battle royale right now. If the Seagulls can hear me attack Tom. So Apple releases a statement. They pull the app off the store. The news breaks.

It's chaos. Epic is not saying anything, right? We're asking for comment. We're DMing Tim. And they're not saying anything. They release this video in Fortnite. They're saying we're having a special Fortnite event at 4 p.m. They released this video called 1980 Fortnite.

is very good. Regardless of what you think, it is very clever. And the hashtag at the end of the video is free Fortnite. We're taking on the apps for a monopoly. We got kicked off the store. Hashtag free Fortnite.

They are leveraging the army of Fortnite fans to change the public opinion of Apple. At the same time, tugging at like, like, it seems like, like this remake of the commercial is not going to,

like, people who are playing Fortnite right now are probably not going to know the original and understand the reference, but we do. And so the rest of press and Twitter blows up with this look at what they did

and then the people in Fortnite can latch onto the free Fortnite hashtag. So it's like this double play to get press interest and like general interest in the tech community and also interest from the Fortnite user base at the same time to come against Apple

with this movement that Epic is trying to make. Although I will say if you watched any of the streamers that were playing Fortnite, the general reaction was like, what was that? Or was that it? That's exactly what I'm saying. Like, they don't know what this is referencing. But like we do.

You know who else does is like Phil Schiller, Tim Cook, all the old guarded Apple? And it really does box Apple in a little bit because Apple cannot credibly say that they aren't a Titan. Right. Apple not being the underdog anymore is like this big theme. So they do this thing. And the reason I want to talk about that before. any of the legal stuff is unlike Microsoft and X cloud, unlike Facebook gaming, now you've got an

audience of people, kids who are at home, who are probably able to play this game on their consoles and not their phones, who are having a thing taken away from them that they love and they have a hashtag. Right? That is like, that is a much better, from just a PR standpoint, point, right? Like, that is a perfect, and Epic is big, it prints money. They are not afraid of Apple, clearly. Tim Sweeney is not afraid of the fight. They were able to do the update on their end to get kicked off the store. There is not another company that is situated to be in this fight. I think it's interesting that they chose now to do it. Like, Fortnite has been on the app store for, what, two, three years, whatever now. Like, Epic must have looked at their growth trajectory and

been like, we are at the point where Fortnite on iOS is kind of hitting saturation. They're not, like, getting a whole bunch of new users downloading. So we are going to play this move now to try and play our hand when it's not going to affect us as much in terms of our app growth, right? Like, how many people are new users downloading Fortnite at this point on iOS? So it was very calculated in terms of, like, the timing of waiting this long to do it and doing it now. and then knowing, obviously, that Apple was going to respond by pulling the app.

Epic knew exactly what was going to happen. That's why they had this video ready. That's why they had what we'll talk about in a few minutes with the lawsuits. So it's like, it's almost like they are taking this principled stand now because the business is safe already. Like, they already have the user base. Epic isn't an accident. You know, I mean, like, Fortnite isn't an accident. Tim Sweeney isn't the CEO of one of the biggest gaming companies world because he's bad at business.

Like he lined up his, right? He lined up the dominoes and then waited to push him over. And like, I think that makes sense. I think he also waited until after this hearing. And he waited until pressure was forming and then he dropped a bomb. And I think a lot of the legal machinations are of the same type. And we'll get to that. So that's, I just want to keep going through the chronology.

So I dropped this video. They released the lawsuit. Incredible flex on how they released the lawsuit. They tweeted a link to a PDF. Yeah. just a straight PDF on one of their services. Like, no one does this. They're like, here's our argument.

It's a fucking PDF. Like, it is the filing. We want you to have the primary source. It's not a website. You know, like, Spotify does it. It's a beautiful website. Yeah. And like, how unfair it is.

They're just like, here's our complaint. Yeah. Oh, God, I want to talk about the plate. We can't. We got to go through the rest. I promise we're going to get there. I just, I'm setting all the stage. Because I think that the moves in the complaint are as considered as all these other

moves we're talking about. I think they're all of the piece. At the same time, so this is all happening with Apple. They've made the video. The fight is with Apple. And we're like, well, they did it to Google too. What is Google? And Deeter and I had this conversation yesterday. I was like, if Google is smart, they would just do nothing. Right? They would just be like, well, that was weird, huh? But they eventually start, the wheels started turning and eventually. Eventually, it took them quite a bit longer than Apple to react, honestly. But they eventually did. So Google had to know that the lawsuit was waiting for them, too. Of course they knew. Right. But it's like, it's, you know, it's a percentage how much Apple knew the orchestration.

I think they knew. Yeah. But you don't know for sure. With Google, they watched the whole cycle play out with Apple, and now they have the information. They could have just waited like three days. You know, they could have done it on Saturday morning when no one was paying attention because they were all playing Fortnite, you know? Nope. No, like, let's have the last thing that happens to today's new cycle be epic coming after us. And then everyone goes to bed. Let's. That's a great plan. I was very mad because I had to read the complaint. They issue a statement, and we had it first.

It was the open Android ecosystem, let's developers distribute apps through multiple app stores. That is like a number one thing that Google wants to tell you. There's some issues with that, but we'll come back to that. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have consistent policies that are fair developers and stay for users when Fortnite remains available on Android. While Fortnite remains available on Android,

We can no longer make it available on play because it violates our policies, but we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussion with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play. So Google's whole thing is, hey, man, you can get apps on Android however you want. They specifically here aren't calling out sideloding because they know this already happened with Epic once. Epic went off the Google Play Store and said side load it. And then it turns out that sideloding on Android kind of sucks because you got to click a bunch of scary prompts, right? And this is why Epic came back.

And they came back to Android. Like 18 months later, earlier this year, they came back. And Tim Sweeney's statement was like, yeah, we're back because this sucks, because no one's doing it because Google is awful. And these warnings on Android are terrifying. So this sucks, but I guess we're back, whatever. So Google specifically isn't talking about sideloding. They're talking about competing app stores, which is weird. Because in the world where people use Google Play everywhere with China, it's a joke that anybody really really.

wants to use any other app store. It's like your phone is a failure if you don't have Google Play, look at Huawei. But increasingly, Samsung is pushing its app store super hard. Both Microsoft and Epic are encouraging people to install their app via Samsung store because they don't have to pay as high a fee, apparently. But otherwise, like, raise your hand if you've ever installed Apple's underground app store. I'm raising my hand, but I guarantee you it's me and like three people that are listening to us right now.

No one else raised their hand. So this whole thing where you can go and install via third-party app store is true. It does give Google an out that Apple does not have and does not want to have, which we could maybe argue about. But it's not a clean, pure as a driven snow. Like, we are morally better stance because third-party app stores don't work as well on Android as the Google Play Store. And in Epic's complaint, it gets into that. So I want to break these into two. So that's the chronology of the day.

And then Epic sues Google. And Epic immediately sued Google. Yeah. Which we were all waiting. It was like an anti-climax. Like, okay, it's finally here. Yeah. They didn't do a video there, did they?

They didn't, no video. Google doesn't have an amazing fucking historic commercial that has embedded itself in the psyche of America. So no, no video. I mean, the video part where all that, like, a bunch of teenage streamers and YouTubers are now all going to make explainers about the 1984. Like, it's genius. It's great. You have to just appreciate it.

They could have done a Scrooogood video. Oh, my God. There's like three people who remembered screw go. They're all on this phone call. Okay, so there's two lawsuits now. I want to take them separately. I will say there's a lot of shared language between the lawsuits, a lot of shared claims, a lot of, they obviously mirror each other.

one thing, and they're both filed by the same set of law firms, one of the law firms here, which I think is, and I want to, like, get to conspiracy theory on it, you know, like, don't overread this, but it's very interesting to me that Epic hired this law firm, Cravath, Swain, and Moore. This is a huge mergers and acquisitions off. They're like a legendary law firm. They're usually on the side of big stuff. Okay. Right. So. Oh, hang on, Epic's not small. They're like a 17 billion dollar company. No, but in this specific way. They also represented Qualcomm against Apple. Yeah, that's what I mean. So they represent Qualcomm against the antitrust action from the FTC, and they just won. One of the most famous, and this will come up as we talk about this case for the next 10 years of our life.

Wait, 10 years. This case is going to take 10 years. Why not two weeks? That would be appropriate. Nope, 10 years. There's an Amex, American Express, went all the way up to the Supreme Court in an antitrust case on a very, novel theory of what's called the two-sided market. So merchants were suing Amex for unreasonable fees. Amex argument was, look, prices for consumers are getting lower. You have to consider the

whole market. No one thought this was a winner. Very few people thought that was the right decision. Guess who won that case? After one decade of litigation, Kravath swain and more. So they're usually on the side of big stuff. You know who Kravath also represented? Time Warner in the merger with AT&T against the DOJ who was trying to break out that case. So this is a huge lawful. firm that is usually on the side of consolidation. They usually wins the cases for consolidation in market power. So it's very interesting that they hired this firm to file this lawsuit. And if you look at some of the lawyers, you've got an ex-FTC commissioner, you've got an ex-federal judge. This is heavy hitters. We've covered other apps for antitrust cases

before, and it's usually very rickety email apps, like whatever, right? Like, this is not that. This is the real shit. So just from the kind of the beginning, you're looking at, Epic is in it. They're paying the money. And this law firm, which has had this streak of antitrust defense wins, is now on the offensive. And you can pay lawyers to do anything. I mean, I can say I was a lawyer. So like, it's fine.

But law firms like this, they value their reputations. So they're not going to be on the streak of defense wins and then go on the offensive if they don't think they have a chance. Right. That's, again, I don't want to overread it. I just want to set that up. Like, I'm reading the filings. Here are the things I'm noticing.

Before we get into the legal stuff, can we just point out that the, like, just like the video, the intros for both of these things, they specifically needled each company for Don't Be Evil and for the 1984 thing. And they're specifically, like, just the first two pages, you should go and read them because there's nothing legal about them. It's strictly a moral argument designed to appeal to, you know, everybody from me down to, you know, a 12-year-old kid who wants Fortnite back on the app store for the iPhone. This is tweeting the PDF. They want you to read this. Yeah. They want this argument to be the thing. They want people to make these arguments in public.

Okay. So the Apple one, they're long. I will say this. I read the Apple complaint, and I'm like, this is an episode of the Vergecast. That's what it is. It has a long argument in there about lock-in. It has a long argument in there about switching costs. It has a long argument in there about who else gets to distribute apps in the app store.

Have you been listening to this show for a long time? You're going to read this complaint. You're going to be like, tick, tick, tick. I recognize. all those arguments. Regardless of what side you're on, this complaint brings all that stuff to a head. So the heart of it is they define markets for each company. And the reason I want to take them separately is the Google market and the Apple market are differently defined entirely. So with Apple, the market that Apple is monopolizing and using like illegal contracts to maintain

is one, the iOS app distribution market. So if you want to enter the market of iOS apps, Apple has a monopoly, and they're using their contracts to legally further that monopoly. That is, who, okay. Yeah, it's a lot. And the iOS in-app payment processing market, which is the other part. So there's two things here that they are talking about. One is if you want to distribute an app on iOS, that's a market that Apple controls. The other one is if you want to accept in-app payments, that's another market that Apple controls.

Now, one of the most common things about this argument is you say, well, if you want an app on the app store, you sign the contract with Apple and you agree to it, you're screwed, right? What these complaints are about is those contracts are illegal. Those contracts illegally further these two monopolies and these two markets that we defined. So if you just like take a step back from basically everything we've been talking about, public opinion, your own instincts, whatever, what is this case about? Whether Apple's contracts in relation to their markets as defined here are legal or not legal. Whether you are using your power in one market, whether you're taking your power in market, whether you're taking your power and we won't market and then using a contract to tie another service into it illegally.

It's the classic tying and bundling that Microsoft got in trouble for. So this complaint very much mirrors the Microsoft arguments. Yeah. Right. And there's a reason. Like, lawyers are smart. They're saying that was a winning argument back then. We're going to structure this thing to look like that.

And we're going to pursue it under that. So how does this structure that are the contracts, are they using their market power in having created the iOS ecosystem to make illegal contracts because they have monopoly on it, get around the obvious thing that I'm sure Apple will say immediately and be very pissed about, which is like, we have a monopoly on the thing that we made. Yes, so? Like, we made the thing. We can't control the thing that we made?

What the hell? There is no iOS marketplace unless we make iOS. And that's, so we saw that in that statement, right? We're very proud of you for making money on our platform. Right. Deal with it. This is where the lock-in argument comes in. So this is like a long section of this thing

after they lay out all the harms and how there's monopoly. So in a normal case, you would have competition. This is Apple's like hilarious argument in front of Congress. Like, if people don't like it, they can just write their app for the PS4. Yeah. So this is like a long piece of the complaint

where it says Apple's power in the relevant market is not disciplined by competition in the sale of mobile devices. There's no market force here. making Apple act better. Isn't there Android, though? Right. Apple mobile devices, this is from the complaint. Apple mobile device customers face significant switching costs and customer lock into iOS ecosystem.

These conditions manifest themselves in Apple's ability to maintain its power in the sale of premium smartphones and tablets. And then here's this fairly wonky argument. Apple's power in the market is not disciplined by competition because consumers cannot account for and switch away from Apple's anti-competitive conduct through their device, Purchasing behavior. The cost of app downloads and in-app purchases are unknowable by the consumer at the time that you buy a smartphone and less than price of the device. So when you buy an iPhone, you are not as a consumer aware of its contractual relationship with Epic games. Unless you're a Vergecast listener. And God bless you all. You're not aware of it. Or now that you're like a teenager in Fortnite being like, what's the 1980s? But you're not aware of it. And you're certainly because the price is like the marginal cost to you is so low. depending on the contract, 15% versus 30% to you as a consumer is pennies, right? It's not going to play a factor in your decision. So they're saying, actually Apple's lock-in is preventing this, is preventing consumers from exercising their power in the market and forcing Apple to be better.

This is like the heart of this argument is ecosystem lock-in, which again, if you've been listening to the show, like when I say, like, I read this thing like, oh, this is the Vergecast episode. Like, what have we always talked about? It's ecosystem lock-in. How many times is iMessage mentioned in the... Dude, I scrolled through this so fast looking for... It's not in here. Damn it! So there's like this one argument that it's too hard to learn Android if you're on iOS.

I don't buy it. But then there's this, which does make sense. Switching from iOS may cause significant loss of personal and financial investment that consumers put into the ecosystem. You have a bunch of apps that you've bought that you're going to have to let go of. You have a bunch of in-app content that you might have bought that only works in that phone. You might not get all the apps that you want.

All this stuff is. there and you've put it into iOS. You've spent all this money investing in iOS. And then you've got family and user lock-in. So if you have all your family members on iOS and all of your purchases are shared, switching to Android is a very high cost. FaceTime isn't there. So that's in here. Oh, IMessage isn't here. FaceTime, find my IMessage AirDrop. These are all features that you might use to prevent you from switching. So they're making the argument that you're switching cost as a consumer is so high compared to the marginal, right? It's $7.99 if you buy V bucks from Fortnite Direct. It's $9.99 if you buy it with Apple. That $2 is not enough to offset your

lock-in cost, your switching costs. And then argument, you're also in the Apple ecosystem. So if you're an iPhone, you're likely to buy a Mac. You're likely to buy an iPad. That ecosystem lock-in prevents you, the consumer from exercising a market power. This is, to me, it's the argument, right? They're saying the market doesn't function because you can't, consumers cannot actually switch away to protest Apple's policies. They might not know about them. The switching cost is so high. And the marginal cost to consumers of 15, 30, 20, whatever percent is a dollar.

So why would you care? So the argument here isn't so much Apple shouldn't be allowed to have a locked-in ecosystem. It's that a function of the locked-in ecosystem is that people really can't switch away because it costs too much. and therefore it should be better regulated. It's a little bit more nuances of the traditional, how dare they walled garden. It's go ahead and have your walled garden,

but because you have a walled garden, somebody needs to be able to go in and prune the bushes. I think this is more of the argument of, well, we built iOS. We should get to do whatever we want on it. It's you've built iOS. You've also actively built barriers to access to customers on iOS.

And if you believe, as I think most people believe, that phones are the most important computer in our lives, then that, we should evaluate that, right? Like, is this a computer? Is this a general purpose computer? This is like the console argument, right? Like, Epic is ensuing Sony and Microsoft about PS4 and Xbox policies because those are game consoles.

Like, they're targeted devices. There is competition between the two. But these are general purpose computers, and they can point to the Mac, which they do in this. They're saying all of these arguments Apple is making that security and privacy and user safety, they could make about the Mac, but they don't do it on the Mac, and you can see the competition of the Mac. Now, is that a good argument relating to Mac and Windows desktop applications? I don't know. I don't know. But it's right there for them, and they go ahead and make it.

So the specific piece of the puzzle are, here are the markets. The market is iOS app distribution. Here's where the market has failed, right? Here's where the market isn't getting signal from consumers what they want. And they're not getting signal from developers, because well, actually the other way on. They're getting a lot of signal from developers saying, we don't like this. But because there isn't pressure from the other side, Apple is the gatekeeper and saying we actually don't have to react to the market of developers. Can we do a Vergecast antitrust lightning round with terms that I think our listeners have probably heard before? And there's two specifically I want to talk about market definition and consumer harm.

Because when we've talked about antitrust in the past, we've been like, well, the definition has been, does it make, does consumers have to pay more money? and like that definition sucks, so we need some other definition. I don't know what that is anymore. And then there's like market definition, which is if you have a monopoly, you have to control the market, but if you like redefine the market to be some other bigger thing, then it's no longer monopoly. So in Google's case, it's we don't have a monopoly on web ads because there's the market is all of advertising and all of history, right?

Amazon makes the same case with retail. We don't have monopoly because we compete with, you know, Joe's, you know, popsicle stand or whatever. So do those two things that we've talked about a bunch apply to what's going on here? They do. And I think they're related in this very specific way, which is antitrust law over the past, longer than that, 40, 50 years, has gotten increasingly more technical and, like, math-based because of the consumer welfare standard, right? So the consumer welfare standard says it's not a problemless prices go up.

And then that invited a million economists to show up and issue surveys and data and studies about whether or not prices grow up. Math ruins everything. Well, it just became this very tangled, complicated math problem. And I think that has led people to approach components of the legal arguments as math problems. So it's not a problem unless you have 51% of the market, right? Right. And then you can define the market and you can do that.

I think that's a mistake. And one of the big pushes sort of in response very lately is to get away from that hyper-technical economic approach to antitrust law and to say, look, you can feel it. And one of the reasons for that is Amazon, like Amazon lowers prices. Google's services are free. Like, how can you prove prices will go up when the price is free? Or buying another competitor will just mean more free stuff paid for by monopoly profits somewhere else. So there's a big push on there. But I think it, I see this from like my Twitter replies or our audience. Like, the law isn't a math problem, like built into the structure of how cases are decided is the very real possibility that judges will get it wrong and be overturned.

And then those judges will have gotten it wrong and someone else will look at it and maybe we'll overturn them. So there's not like an algorithm here that says if you have 51% market share and you define it this way and you make this much money, it's definitely wrong. There's just a bunch of people in suits yelling at each other in a structured way. But like the on the margin, it's, yeah, the first thing you have to do is define the market. What market are you talking about? That's a first argument. And you obviously want, you know, here Epic wants to define the market such that Apple is obviously the monopoly, iOS app distribution.

And Apple will define the market is app stores. And so look at how many app stores there are. I think that's just sort of less, it's less important about what the percentage is because the big push here is what's actually happening to users. That's the political climate that we're in. And I think that's very important. So that's the Apple argument. They make three.

There's like six federal claims. There are a bunch of California state claims. I always think those are just thrown in. Like, maybe California a lot stronger. You know, like, but basically they're saying the iOS app distribution market is a meaningful market. They've got monopoly power. They do something wrong. The payment market is a valid market.

They're doing something wrong over and over again. If you read the complaint and you should, you will note that it's written as though everything is true, that everything they're saying. thing is absolutely true. Yeah. Because that's how complaints are written. That's how, like, they're saying, they're saying what they believe. Apple will have to reply.

We'll see what Apple has to say. But that's the Apple one. It is very much about ecosystem lock-in. Like the heart of this is this market has failed because consumers cannot express their preferences about Apple's prices because they're locked in. That is very different to the Google argument. Right. Epic's point here with Google is that the first market they define is the merchant market

for mobile operating systems, which is very boring. But all that basically means is that Windows phone failed. Just be honest, that's what that means. And we're going to talk about the service duo. It's like, there's a theme here. Right, if you want to make a phone, you have to use Android, unless you're Apple. And they're very clear about this. And so if you want to make a phone, you have to use Android.

If you want to use Android, you end up in Google Play Services. You end up using a Google Play Store. Again, it sounds like an episode of that broadcast. Once you do that, Google has a lot of power over you. We've talked about these contracts a lot. And so if you want to make an alternative app store, the argument here from Epic is, yep, you can make your own app store, but Android is designed to make that scary. It will tell you that side-loaded files are dangerous. It will pop up warnings about how you shouldn't do it.

It has security features like Play Protect that restrict you. You have to enable side-loading and it warns you. alternative app stores are not allowed to do auto-updating, which is a key feature of app stores. So they're saying, yes, they've got this argument. Yep, side-loading is available to you. But at every term, the user is told not to do it. So that's a design decision. And then there are multiple examples in this complaint of contractual restrictions placed on phone vendors to keep them from working with Epic.

So this is why when I was talking about Google's statement about how Android is open and you can sell any store you want, it's fuzzy because it's, historically, like in the misty mists of time before the iPhone was released and, like, broke the carrier monopoly and everything was what crapware. The most important thing about phones was what was on deck. And on deck meant what got preloaded out of the box when you, you know, bought it from the carrier, those games. That was the only way to make money with an app, full stop. And so all of the negotiations for software were these like really complex, gnarly backroom, smoke room filled room deals with carriers and manufacturers, right, ahead of the phones release.

And then the iPhone came along and it was like, you know what? We don't like AT&T and we think this thing is pretty good. So we're just not going to do any of that shit. And it worked. And then everything was beautiful and glorious until Samsung wanted to get a deal from Verizon and things started turning down a little bit. But it turns out that the story was never that clean on Android anyway because Google has been using its power with the Play Store to get all sorts of stuff on deck from Mexico. manufacturers and carriers, you know, when you open up your Android phone and there's a folder that says Google on it, there's a reason for that. There's money behind that.

And Epic is specifically sort of like pulling the curtain back a little bit more on some of those like backroom deals to get stuff on deck to push the Google Play Store than we were aware of before. We knew some of it from Russell Branum got some, you know, looked at some contracts in France, I believe it was. the EU has gone after Google specifically for this stuff, and we could get into all the browser ballot, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, like, fundamentally at the core of Epic's case is Google's stance that Android is open, you can do whatever you want. Fundamentally isn't true because Google exercises so much power behind the scenes before the phone even shows up in the store.

Yeah, and that power is basically something called Google Mobile Services, which is like an API layer that they sort of bundle with any phone at the phone. they say you can get access to Google Play Store. But what that actually does is if you're a developer, you create an app, say I created Snapchat. I rely on some, like, no, camera APIs or something like that. Google's been bundling more and more of those into GMS over the years. So basically, you become reliant on this layer that comes with Android, Google, Google Android, that's called it, not Android AOSP.

And if you want to go to another store and run that app, side load it on another store, it just won't work because that layer is not there. Like a lot of these apps just don't work. Like you'd be surprised at how many do work. So this is specifically called out in the complaint. So where the heart of the complaint against Apple, and I call it the heart, I mean, it's a very long complaint,

but that big lock-in argument that Epic makes against Apple is here in a pared-down form. But what's really here in the Google complaint that's not in the Apple complaint is that license. So they call it the mobile application distribution agreement through that agreement, Google requires OEMs to locate the Play Store on the home screen of each mobile device.

They must further pre-install up to 30 Google mandatory apps, locate those apps on the home screen and next screen. These requirements ensure that the Play Store is the most visible app store any user encounters and places any other app store to significant disadvantage. And then it goes on to say, hey, we actually tried to make a deal with One Plus, right? Where One Plus has high refresh rate screens,

we are going to pre-install the Epic Game Store, we were going to run at the highest frame rate possible, and then Google stepped in and said, no, you can't do that. And we actually only launched that deal in India in one market where Epic could get away with it. The quote from One Plus to Epic, Google is particularly concerned

that Epic Games app would have the ability to potentially install and update multiple games of the silent install bypassing the Play Store. Getting around this, the app would be rejected due to the Epic Games Act serving as potential portfolio of games and games update in competition with Play Store. So we've got this evidence from Oneplus.

They were going to make this deal to do side-loading and run Fortnite at a higher frame rate. And Google stepped in and said no. LG had the same. There's evidence here of LG saying it had a contract with Google that blocked side-downloading off the Google Play Store this year. But if you use a Play Store, we can definitely make Fortnite available. Google prevented LG from installing the Epic Games app on LG devices. So what you're looking at is, yep, they've got this technical out. You can check the box.

Side-loading is available on Android. But at every turn, Epic's claim is that Google makes that hard for consumers, impossible for OEMs. This, I think, gets to the other thing I've seen all over Twitter in the past day. What Epic really wants to do is make its own store and take its own cut. This is totally self-serving. All Epic wants to do is take even more money and make steam for funds. Yes. I think they want to do that.

I think the game here is if they did that, would you trust it as a consumer? would you trust that it was as safe and secure as the iOS App Store or the Google App Store? Would they offer a lower rate to developers? And would that force the rate on the Google and Apple stores to go down? Because that would just be competition. I think it's totally acceptable for Epic to have a very self-serving interest here. Because what you want is competition for app distribution. And that, I should have said this at the top.

But at the beginning of both of these complaints, Epic says, we are not after money. We do not request any money. We don't request any compensation. don't want any damages. We just want this changed so that we can compete, which I think is very smart. Also, Epic Prince money in Fortnite. They sell fake money to people for real money. That's their business. It's incredible. There's also the context that... They can just do that. Yeah. And of course they want app stores within app stores. Like, this is literally Tim Swinney's argument with Windows and with the HoloLens and stuff. He's been big against the Windows store and all that.

sort of lockdown that Microsoft attempted there. For good reason. By the way, the other line here, there's something called the developer distribution agreement that Google makes everybody sign. If you want to deliver an app in Google Play, it restricts you from selling an app store in the Play Store. So, like, well, if you made it your own app store, what would be the best way to put it out in the world?

Would be to put it in Play Store. And so Epic's argument is you're making it at every turn you are making it hard to side load on Android. And one of the places we're making it hard is we can't put the Epic Game Store. in the Play Store, which is very circular. You know where you can't get the epic game stars in the Samsung Galaxy store. That's amazing.

So then there's this long part, and I'm just going to read these words to you, and I just want to see if you guys laugh as hard as I did. Direct downloading Android mobile devices, however, differs dramatically. Google ensures the Android process is technically complex, confusing, and threatening, filled with dire warnings that scare most consumers

into abandoning the lengthy process. This makes it seem like your phone, It's on fire when you try to silent it. And I'm like, is it? It doesn't feel like that. It's not that bad. It's not as nice as it could be. I agree with the fact that like the warnings are just like 10% more arcane and scary than I think they need to be.

But Google has an incentive to do that. If you, you know, like if they don't make them a little bit scary, then, you know, people are just going to go install a bunch of really bad pirated shit. Right. That's that's the reason. if you want to give Google the benefit of the doubt on those warnings. And I think it's fair to say that consumers have gotten used to the idea of an app store now. So like trying to side load apps with like weird security warnings is going to make people go, huh? Should I do this?

Well, so let's take, I think Google and Apple both have valid security arguments. Let's just like take them in face value. There are more phones than any other kind of computers in the world. More people use them at every level of sophistication. Android phones in particular have had malware issues in the past. Phones are high-profile targets for hackers and security people. Shouldn't they be locked down? Right?

Like, if you make a world in which there's a bunch of malware on the web saying, download this app store and then the app store can download whatever apps it wants, like, aren't you opening up the bad thing? I mean, I would have more sympathy for that argument if we didn't somehow survive 1975 through 2005 without the apocalypse coming, right? Like computers managed to continue working? There were some close apocalypses along the way. Okay, sure.

But you just read Sandworm? Yeah, okay. I did just read Sandworm, and it's a lot. I don't know. The thing about Android in particular is even if you never install a single app from the Google Play Store, but you still have Google Mobile Services, they're scanning your apps and checking for stuff. And they can remotely reach into your phone and pull something back.

out if they know something bad is on there. There's actually a much higher level of control separate from the app store on Android in particular that doesn't get talked about all that often because it doesn't, we don't see it on most of the big name apps, but there's a slew of like just bottom of the barrel garbage malware stuff that Google just has an index of and is looking for constantly and can just reach into your phone and pull out whether you side loaded it or installed it via the Play Store. Tom, I feel like the Windows example is kind of instructive here.

Yeah. Right. Like Windows has had to get increasingly more lockdown after sort of the Windows 95 free-for-all. How does that model work? Well, I mean, it's kind of similar. So it's some of the stuff that like Google does, especially on Android, because they're pretty much the equivalent, right? Like Android is the mobile equivalent of Windows in very many ways. And like these agreements and stuff like that, that's exactly what Microsoft used to do in the 90s.

They used to force all their partners to bundle certain things or like they couldn't do this and they couldn't do that. like it's just the classic sort of thing that Microsoft used to do with Windows. How it's changed is obviously Windows has now been influenced by mobile. Everyone's got a computer in their pocket now. And Microsoft's tried to respond by like trying to lock things down, but not in the same sort of fundamental way. So the difference here is that like if Microsoft was to win in the HoloLens generation, if they won that out and everyone was wearing a computer on their face and that's the next

thing that we'd all do, then the difference is they've actually committed to, allowing app stores on that platform. And Tim Swinney was part of that announcement. It's something they've committed to do. Like, they probably won't win it because, you know, Google and an Apple have that dominance there that Microsoft just can't play off if we're ever going to wear these things on our faces anyway. But yeah, like on Windows itself, they tried to like,

I guess sandbox apps. So you wouldn't get these like ransomware malware, malware, crapware sort of stuff happening on Windows. So they've tried to take them some good. aspects of the mobile side and try to apply them to Windows. Tom, Windows has a scanning utility, much like Dieter described on Android, right? I think maybe they don't have the ability to reach in

and grab something, but if you download a file, like I think it's called Smart Screen, is that right? And you try to run it. They have like an index that will stop you from installing it. Yeah, Smart Screen will basically flag up something. And obviously Chrome does it as well. There's multiple layers of this stuff. And then there's Defender, which is like they're antivirus.

But Smart Screen basically sort of like takes a check of the far says, hmm, does anyone actually download this regularly? And it will say, you know,

this hasn't been downloaded regularly or this, this isn't like a certified file. Do you sure you want to run it? And you have to go through some scary prompts to allow it.

You have to kind of like really dig in to actually allow it to run. Well, so, you know, on the Mac, Apple is doing code signing for Mac applications now.

So you can download a Mac application from anywhere. But if the developer hasn't signed it with Apple and Apple doesn't have some keys, you have to jump through some hoops, right? The reason I wanted to

get into it is, I think that is Apple and Google's best argument here. We have seen, we have looked chaos in the face with open app distribution on the desktop. There is not one, but two orders of magnitude more of these devices in the world. And there are cameras and microphones that people care, and location trackers that people carry with them all the time. The stakes are higher. I always think it's very funny when Apple and Google are like, we're not smart enough to solve this problem.

Like, come on. I think that you are. And there are these, like, mechanics that you use on the desktop that you could maybe apply. I think that, like, I don't have a point of view on it, right? I think it's, that's the thornyest part of this is one of the reasons my parents have iPhones is because I just don't have to worry about some of this stuff. Yeah, like, I don't think the answer is to, like, have a second app store on, on the iPhone. I mean, it's just complicated for consumers.

It's just, you know, like, it will be it will, it will. create good competition, sure, maybe. But I think the answer is just for the policies that Apple applies to be more fair. And they're cut, like, they can take a cut, like they're entitled to a cut for running that service. But I don't think 30% is the cut, right? That's a huge amount. That's a difference, especially when we're talking about games, it's a difference between a studio hiring two more people for a title or, like, you know,

not focusing on so many games, actually putting some love into a title, than them not. We were talking about two giant corporations at the moment, but this really goes all the way down to Indies. You see, Tom, in 1987, if you wanted to buy a software from Babbage's, you had to walk into a store and pay for a cardboard box, and they took like a 50% cut or more. It's true, yeah.

The market forces are there, I know. Yeah, but like there are multiple stores. Yeah. I mean, that's like, this all comes down to there used to be a lot of competition, and maybe the numbers were higher. But if you were a software vendor, if you were, and what was it, Mac who made Oregon Trail, if you were like making Oregon Trail and like,

you're like, I'm mad at Babbage's. I'm going to Software City. Like, you could do it. And it also comes down to, like, when Steve Jobs launched this app store in 2008, he specifically said, like, he said to like Wall Street that we don't think this can be be a massive profit generator and stuff,

even though they had the 7030. split, but we think this is going to improve the value of the iPhone and make us sell more of the iPhone hardware, which is where we're making our money. Like, that was their original, I mean, whether he truly thought that or not. But I think it comes down to that. Like, should Apple be allowed to take that 30% car on everything now, just because they've created this railroad? Or should they be a bit more flexibility there?

I don't know whether another app store of SolSoul. that. I don't know whether kidding some of these iOS policy solves that, but I think the key thing is that 30 percent. It's been a sticking point for Spotify, you name it. Everyone else, everyone's upset about that 30 percent cut, because it gets everything. To bring this back to where we start, right, I think that's a great point. Apple's statement with Hay, with Fortnite, with Spotify is we're very happy you built a business on our platform, but it's our platform. And with Hey, they're like, you never paid us a cent. And here it's like, we give you tools and distribution and advertising.

We make these great phones, like, pay the money. And either you find that very convincing or you think that is a bad argument for Apple to take a cut of everything that happens on its phone. Right? Like, that is, I would just point, Apple is the richest company in the world. They do not need to take a cut of every, they, they have so much money. They, every time they do results, they're doing share buybacks and dividends, right? they're returning money to investors at a high rate.

They don't need the money for R&D or investment or tooling or whatever you need to make the next phone. So you got to, I mean, I don't have a position on it. Like, should Apple get a cut of everything that happens on the phone? Like, maybe. Like, I think it's great that my parents credit card is like not being entered into text fields all over the internet. That makes me happy, you know? But is the argument we built the phone and now you're going to pay a tax if you want to access a consumer, a good argument? Like, that's very much at the heart of all this.

Okay, I want to end on a, well, this is not going to end. First of all, this case, I read these complaints. Epic is not backing down, right? They're not asking for money. There's no amount of money that you can pay Tim Sweeney to make him go away. They're asking for structural change to how these stores work. They've hired the fanciest law firm they can hire for this thing in opposition to that law firm's own history of litigation. That law firm also wants a big halo win.

There is a congressional antitrust investigation going on. There are state-level antitrust investigations going on. They're in this thing for the long haul. Either Apple and Google are going to back down tomorrow, which I don't think they are going to do, or they're going to litigate this thing to the Supreme Court. So I think we're going to be talking on this for a long time. I think there's going to be a lot of discovery and emails and all that stuff is going to happen. So we can stop talking about it now because we're going to talk about it for the next 10 years of our life.

But I will end on this, the most verge-cast, wonky thing. So I'm reading the complaints. I get to the counts. And I notice that all the counts are the Sherman Act, which is one of the antitrust regulations in America, and not the Clayton Act, which is the other one. The Clayton Act is very specific. It prevents tying, right? It has anti-tying, anti-exclusive dealing, like outlaws those things specifically because

the Sherman Act was not specific or powerful enough for Teddy Roosevelt. This is a real thing. Okay. I tweet, I don't understand this. Why didn't they use these specific? specific laws in the Clayton Act. And a bunch of lawyers replied to me, the Clayton Act only covers the sale of goods,

physical goods. Ooh. Are Fortnite skins goods? I mean, they're good, but are they good? But are they good? Are they commodity? Are they sheets of copper piping or whatever? Right?

Like, that's where we're at with the law. The laws were written in like 1917. I think, I think that's the problem, right? These laws are so old. And things move so fast. Like, I didn't even realize it was Friday today. I would like more credit for my two-week joke, but we should move on to the next section.

The Sherman Antitrust Act is 1890. The Clayton Act is 1914. And so it's a real question whether a digital good in Fortnite meets the requirements of goods. I don't know, man. But like, in terms of Vergecast questions, it's a pretty good one. All right. We got to take a break. We're not going to do another hour on the meeting.

of goods. Although Dieter, I can see his eyes or look out. He's a rarend to go. We'll have a special episode of The Vergecast of Deeter just ranting about the nature of virtual scarcity. Look for that. Never. All right, we're taking a break. We're going to have back and talk about the service duo. Support for the show comes from LinkedIn.

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And that's because it's a platform built by developers for developers. MongoDB, it's a great freaking database. Start building at MongoDB.com slash build. All right, enough antitrust law. Let's talk about some flippy phones. Phones? Oh. What is a phone?

I thought Lauren Good had a great piece at Wired where she was like, Microsoft made this ultimate mobile productivity device. And now they have to convince you that it's good on the couch. It was fun. It was a funer. But Tom, service duo is out. Notable piece of hardware. Tell us about it. Yeah.

So it's coming September 10th. I mean, we kind of know about it, I guess. We knew most things apart from the specs inside. And I think that's been quite the conversation this week, the specs and the price. Those are the two sort of things we look. earned this week. So it's 1,400 bucks, which is probably, I'd say, 400 more than it should have been. It's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money. And the specs are old. You got an 855, I think, in there, Qualcomm 855, Snapchat and 855 processor in there. No NFC, no 5G, and the battery's kind of diddly for two screens. I think there's just a bunch of questions around it. But like, and I know everyone's going to talk about that and all that sort of stuff. But I think that is kind of like an aside to what they're trying to do. And I think like when the first Surface Pro came out, everyone was doing the same thing.

Like, what is this thing? This is weird. And then Surface Pro 3 came along when it was like, oh, okay, I understand their vision. I think that's where they're trying to go with this. It's whether their vision is correct, whether you need two screens on mobile to, like, do more. If you believe that, I think that's the fundamental. And whether they can twist the arm of an operating system that they don't technically control into making those two screens work. I mean, they're like literally adorable on Twitter at each other right now.

Right. Yeah, but they're not the developers of all the other apps that you use on Android. Yeah. So like, I mean, like, Android has supported tablets for so long. And the story with Android is that tablet apps basically don't exist on Android. So like, can Microsoft make that work? But I think the only way, I think the way that they're doing it initially, with this hardware, and I know it's not as sexy

looking as the fold, too, and I think. But having those two screens separate actually gives them that kind of like app advantage in a way, because those apps do run separately. They don't have to span across the bigger display. So they're kind of getting away of it initially. And sure, this thing's going to fold in a couple

of generations, right? I actually think the Surface Duo looks better than the Galaxy Fold, but I don't know if it'll work better. Let me give you my hottest, hottest take. You ready? They couldn't fit good big enough battery in there. They had to go with an older processor. I don't actually care about that. I'm not like if the specs are bad. It's going to be bad. I love the

pixel 4, for example, so it's possible to overcome mediocre specs. I'm very worried about the camera, and I'm worried that they're not going to nail it on the first try. So my hottest, hottest, hottest take is they know that they don't have it yet, that it's going to take a little while longer for them to get better at hardware for it to be what they want it to be, and they got to work on the software. And because the specs are bad and old, they chose to price it high because then fewer people would buy it, because then it will be less likely to tank the thing in everybody's minds because only a core group of enthusiasts will buy it, and that will give them time to continue iterating on it for V2 and V3.

I mean, yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, the way I think about it, right, with any surface to us, whenever they launch a new one, it always brings me back to this quote from Ralph, who's their design lead, Ralph Grown. He said we have like three generations of a surface product when we launch one on three tables in a secret room at Microsoft. So they know where they're going. The third generation is like the perfect one. That's where they're going.

So you always have to look for that third generation of surface stuff because that's ultimately the vision realized with the hardware they're able to do. So I think anything that they do up and to that point is like testing the wars and getting developers interested because they need something for people to build on to get these things going. So they always brings me back to that. So yeah, I wouldn't surprise me if that's there. around the plan. When they announced it, we had Panas on the podcast. We got to use it for a minute. He let me swipe

through his phone. I've seen Sachin Adela use it as his phone in another event. But then I'm reading the coverage and like Harry McCracken at Fast Company had one. He was like, this is pretty buggy. Yeah. And so I'm like, what happened? Like last year, it was like I was watching the CEO of Microsoft. Maybe he was just like pretending to use it, but like it looked like he was using it for real. And like we flipped through Panos and it looked fine. So I'm curious what happened along the journey to making it complete. So they haven't really demonstrated much of it. If you remember when we had it, we were able to take photos.

We couldn't really touch it and play around. One of the first public demonstrations they did, it was like a developer event. And it crashed in the middle. Like they couldn't span apps and stuff. It was super like just laggy because of the two screens. And everyone was like, you know, it's beta. It's still coming. And then they did the press event the other day, the behind closed doors thing.

And a couple of times the apps crashed there as well. It seemed a lot more polished and a lot less laggy and stuff. And these are Microsoft's own apps, right? Like this is like Office and Outlook and like Word crashing. There might have been a Kindle crash. Yeah, there was a third-party app crash. I can't remember which one it was. But I mean, these things happened during demos and stuff.

But like, it would not surprise me. there's, yeah, if there's going to be some bugs around the edges here, especially just having to pay out two displays as well. So someone pointed this out at me when Parnas was on the Vergecast announced, we said, how much is it going to cost? Because what do we, honestly, if you're an executive, you show up with a new product and our show and doesn't ever price, I'm asking how much costs for an hour. Just be ready for it.

What's pricing on that thing going to be like? I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you. Am I going to be happy or unhappy? Super happy. Describe my feelings. Mike, you will be late. I like elated. Yeah. I think you'll be pretty pumped about it. I am. Are you happy?

I don't know that $1,300, $1, $1,39. I don't know that that was the number at his head when he told me I was going to be super happy, right? Like, that can't be the case. But at the same time, I think it's like 240 chess to say they raised the price so high so no one would buy it and they could skate out of first shiner. Like, I said it was a hot day. I know it's hot take, but like, you know who's going to get? You're going to get one. And Joana's, you're going to get one. And Joana's. going to get one and Lauren and Marquez and like all of these reviewers that people like and trust are going to be like this is very expensive this processor is a year old and this Kindle app is a mess right like that is still going to be in the world like they stuff like Pennos is not out there trying to make a half bank product like he obviously cares about the products being good I maybe the spec thing and maybe the development in COVID pushed it back but I think the part where they're trying to hide a bad product by announcing it with like the world's most adorable tweets at the operating system vendor.

You know, like I just don't think they're playing that game. No, I think the fundamentals of it, whether you look at the basic hardware, like I was saying, you can look at the hardware and the price and that sort of stuff, but it's really whether you need two screens and whether that's actually going to change the way we use phones. Like, because this is the promise that Samsung, like, what did Samsung say? It was like their pillar of their future or something like that. It was a pretty grand statement. So if Microsoft bit in that as well, something's happening here.

I don't know that it's necessary, but I will tell you, having just used the busted-ass fold a couple of times, yes, I want to have a thing that folds out into a bigger canvas. Full stop, it's great. I love it. You know, like, we have iPads at home. And I would say, like, half the time I'll catch myself just like on my phone for half an hour and my iPad is two feet away. It's like, what am I doing? Why am I not using the good screen? And so having the thing that you're going to pull out and look at anyway be the good screen is very, very compelling.

Yeah. I think I kind of agree with Samsung and Microsoft, but I'm just apprehensive about whether the hardware will truly get there soon. So I think the software and stuff, you can do anything in software, right? Like, that's less of an issue. But getting that hardware there in the next few years is, yeah, it's going to be interesting. Is it like foldable glass? So I will, I mean, I just recall Panos being very skeptical of plastic screens, right? Yeah.

And like, there was just been a lot of hints in the world that where Microsoft wants to go is foldable glass and they're waiting on Corning and Corning has some prototypes out there. Like, I think the big bet for all these companies is a form factor shift, right? Like, that's what they're saying. Like, we've done rectangles. We lost at rectangles. What about squares? Microsoft's time to shine.

And like, whether or not you believe the core screen technology is good enough to enable that fold and you're going to start with dual displays and just get people there, I think it's smart. I think the big question is, right, it's app developers, it's ecosystem. It's whether, I mean, I just, I probably said this anecdote on the rich chest 10,000 times. So I just remember Tony Fidel being like every year we change the way the iPod looked, right? Like one year it was fat and one year it was skinny and one year it didn't have any buttons.

and the next year they're like buttons again. And like they just made it look different a lot. And that kept consumer interest high in what was effectively the same product over and over and over again. And like that is just, it's a lesson that is stuck with me as the phones like continue to be rectangles.

How do you make it look different? You make it fold in half. And so if Microsoft can just capture that moment and get people to buy it on their Android phone and like cut a deal with Epic and be like, Fortnite's on this phone. Like it's a pretty,

there are big moments for them to capture attention. Yeah. No, I agree. I think the app development side is going to be crucial, isn't it? Especially given the Android situation with tablets and stuff. Yeah, I mean, both Microsoft and Android have shown an incredible ability to get developers to make apps for new platforms. The interesting sort of thing about all of this, though, is that like, basically

Samsung engineers are like, well, before COVID, we're on site at Microsoft working on some of this stuff. Like, their little partnership that they've got going on. And now they've got the same. sort of thing going on with Google. Like all three of those are trying to do similar sort of stuff, but from their own perspective. And it's going to be super interesting to see like where Android adapts and changes. And it also would also be interesting once Apple comes into this side of things, shakes it all up as well.

Because I don't think they're going to be that far off, right? Probably like two or three years away, maybe. Yeah. I mean, I think Apple's Apple and Samsung are just like different in that way, right? Like Samsung will put out the not ready technology and be like, this is, This is it. They want to be seen as innovative, right? Deere, what's your read on the Google side of it?

Because they seem very happy to have another vendor that wants to compete with Samsung. Microsoft and Samsung are super close, though. And Samsung is obviously doing all this app store stuff. Like, what is the, what's Google's position here? Well, there's a rumor that there's a foldable pixel coming along, so that won't matter. Sorry. They have been very, very excited about foldables for a couple of. couple of years now.

I would, like, they, you know, I get to go and look at the version of Android that's going to be, like, official with all the new features pretty early. And it's been, like, two, almost three years that they've been like in foldables, man, it's real. And maybe that's just they knew the surface duo is coming and knew the galaxy fold is coming. But I feel like there's one more turn in the hardware that Google knows is coming that it's excited about. And it also knows that Android or something, Google needs some kind of operating system.

on a big screen that isn't ChromeOS in schools, right? They just, they do. They don't have a general computing platform that you use for your work unless you were like into ChromeOS and you stick with ChromeOS after you get out of school, right? Because Android is terrible on big screens. And so Foldables gives them another crack at having a successful platform outside of phones. Because they've got it with ChromeOS in one context, but they don't have it in the generalized context the way that like Windows, Mac or iPad does.

Yeah. Like the thing that's really super interesting to me about all of this is that when they announced the duo Microsoft in that event in October, they also kind of announced a partnership with Google, right? With it, like they kind of didn't really dig into it, but the rumors are that there's like gives and takes that will go far beyond just Android. And if you said it in the context of like what Apple's doing on the Mac and arm side and you see where that's going, where that can potentially lead to, then you see Samsung and Microsoft

doing their partnership. You can obviously see that's going to go up against that. And then it's like, where does Google fit in there? And where does Chromeways fit in and Windows? And like, how do all those things sort of come together? Because Windows is basically the desktop equivalent of Android, Android, the mobile equipment in Windows. So do we in the future see a partnership between Microsoft and Google where Android apps run

on Windows? Oh, for sure. I totally buy that's going to happen. It's got to happen, right? Something's got to give there. And the same with like the Chromewurst stuff, like, where that goes. But there's definitely

such a different mix going on. And the duo is just a part of that. And it's trying to be the future of mobile devices and stuff. But I think the fundamentals

that are going on behind the scenes are going to be super interesting to watch to see who does what and who gives what whether it means, I don't know.

Microsoft's obviously gone down edge route with chromium. Like what does that mean in the future? Like there's so much stuff going on. I think the only obvious

answer is that Microsoft and Google are going to merge. One more five our antitrust episode when that happens. We have gone incredibly long. Deeder, I just want you to read the four Android headlines because there's some Android

headlines. Google is making every Android phone a seismometer to create a worldwide earthquake detection network. They're not the first ones to use phones for seismometers, but they're putting it in all of Android, which is huge. They have added better accessibility options to their lookout app. They have, Dan loves this one. They've put the calendar app back in Android Auto, which is great.

And then Dan especially loves the new WearOS news. Can't wait, 20% faster. It'll almost be fast. That's great. And then Tom, you scooped the new Xbox Series S out of a controller. Oh, yeah, that was a crazy weekend. Xbox Series X coming on the 6th. Maybe it'll have Fortnite on it.

Maybe it won. Who knows? Well, maybe it'll come out on the 6th. Maybe. November 6th. It's definitely coming out in November. That's all we know, for sure. All right.

A lot of news this week. Thank you for sticking with us through this, my 1L, in a trust seminar. I had a good time. Thank you, gentlemen. Let's see if I can do all the Twitter handles. Dan is DC Sefert, Dieter's Backlon, Tom is Tom Warren. I'm actually at EU.

If you have any questions about Microsoft, just tweet it for EU. See if they have any answers. You can read Deader's newsletter, processor, the verge. com newsletter. There's obviously all kinds of other policy news happening in the world. Casey's News was interface. It comes back next week. On Tuesday, this interview was super fun.

Lana Swartz, who's a media professor at the University of Virginia, has a book about money and how money is a communications medium and network. We got all the way into how, at one point, the CEO of Starbucks was like, I will control one of the only digital currencies in the world. Wild book. That's coming out on Tuesday is the interview episode. We'll back next Friday with the chat show. That's it.

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