00:00 – Mishaal Rahman: Are Google’s proposed Android changes an epic victory for users or only for Tim Sweeney?
00:04 – C. Scott Brown: And is it finally time to say goodbye to Google Assistant?
00:08 – Mishaal Rahman: I’m Mishaal Rahman.
00:10 – C. Scott Brown: And I’m C. Scott Brown and this is the Authority Insights Podcast where we break down the latest news and leaks surrounding the Android operating system.
00:18 – Mishaal Rahman: So, Scott, we may finally be nearing the end of the Epic v. Google lawsuit. That lawsuit that began way back in 2020 during the height of the pandemic. Google and Epic have been embroiled in this controversy for many years, but they have finally agreed to settle their lawsuit after Google committed to making several sweeping changes to the Android operating system as well as the Google Play Store. These changes will not only make the Android app ecosystem more competitive, but they will also improve the availability of applications for users, potentially also reducing prices for users. But whether or not they will really benefit anyone other than Epic remains to be seen.
00:57 – C. Scott Brown: Yeah, and while Google’s big changes come as a surprise, what’s not surprising is the demise of Google Assistant. We’ve recently spotted the first clues that Google is killing off Assistant on Android. We’ve known it would happen for a long time now, pretty much ever since Bard came along, if anyone listening to this can remember Bard. But are we really ready to say goodbye to Google Assistant?
And should you say goodbye to your current device and upgrade to one with the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5? That’s the question we set out to answer in our in-depth benchmarking of the new chip in one of the most powerful gaming phones out there.
01:36 – Mishaal Rahman: But before we dive into those benchmarks, let’s first dive deep into the biggest story of the week by far. And it’s the fact that Google and Epic have finally reached an agreement to settle their lawsuit. So, this agreement, to be clear, hasn’t been finalized. The judge still has to sign off on it, but this agreement that they have reached has a lot of big changes coming to Android and the Play Store. So for a bit of context, on Tuesday evening, Sameer Samat and Tim Sweeney, they jointly announced on their X accounts that they have reached an agreement and they published the legal document and we poured through this document to actually find out what are the terms that they have agreed to. So, for a little bit of context, this is the near finalization of the lawsuit that began in 2020 when Google kicked Fortnite off the Play Store because Epic had tried to implement an alternative payment option within Fortnite alongside Google Play Billing. And for those of you who don’t know, that is not allowed. Right now, at least before these changes that Google is proposing to make, you are only allowed to have Google Play Billing as an option, as a payment option within applications if you’re buying something digital I don’t know, a loot box or something in a game or a skin or cosmetic or a lot of different things that are purely digital.
But Epic has basically argued for a very long time that this is, you know, this is monopolistic. that Google should allow developers to show alternative payment methods alongside Google Play Billing, that they shouldn’t be allowed to pay OEMs to bundle the Google Play Store and all these other applications, that they shouldn’t be able to basically pay off companies and prevent them from launching their apps on alternative app stores that all these sorts of things that Google’s been doing for years to kind of solidify its dominance. Epic has argued that Google should not be allowed to do this. And they won their lawsuit. Epic actually won their lawsuit and Google was in the midst, they were about to be forced to make a lot of changes that they would not want to have made. But before that we reached the point before they were forced to make changes they didn’t want to make, they reached an agreement with Epic earlier this week and these agreements were jointly agreed upon by both companies. So a lot of things that probably Google doesn’t want to implement, but you know, this is the best that they can work with considering the alternative.
So some of the things that Epic, or sorry, Epic and Google have agreed to is that basically, Google will finally put third-party app stores on equal footing with its own Play Store. So a future Android release will add support for something called Registered App Stores. These are basically certified stores that can be installed with a single click and once you do, they are automatically granted the permission to install other apps. Another thing is that Google can no longer stop OEMs from pre-installing third-party app stores or placing them on the home screen. Google will no longer pay off companies that want to build their own Play Store competitors. Google won’t impose any fees on running a third-party app store or charge for any downloads originating from those third-party app stores. And they are also giving developers more freedom in terms of what app store they want to launch their application on. For example, apps can now show an alternative payment option side by side with Google Play Billing. And as you can see in the screenshot, this is the thing that Epic tried to implement in Fortnite, which got them kicked off. This is now going to be allowed going forward. Google, however, can still take a service fee on transactions that are completed using alternative payment options, but they are no longer allowed to block devs from communicating to users about those alternative options. So if a developer wants to send you an email or a notice inside the application, they’re free to do so. And finally, Google can no longer pay developers to favor the Play Store for new application launches, but they can basically strike deals with developers to say, hey, if you want to launch on Android first, we can give you some kind of incentive to do that. But developers will still have the opportunity to choose which Android app store they want to launch on. So, there’s a lot of things are changing with Android and Google Play Store. So if you want the full details, a full breakdown of everything that’s changing, I highly recommend you go check out this 2,000 word article that I wrote on Android Authority because that has all the intricate details.
... continue reading