It wasn’t my argument, it was yours.

Excellent, so you agree it’s not the problem you made it out to be?

That’s fine so long as you don’t mind carrying your notepad and calendar around with you everywhere you go. I don’t think most people want to do that considering there’s already a pocket computer they’re carrying around with them.

Seconding tasks.org

River City Girls is free on Epic right now. Side-scroller fighting game a la Ninja Turtles. Only 2P though.

loaded with spyware, ads, and shitty monetization practices

I mean that’s already the case with PC games…? Only slightly better because they are not Google and don’t allow straight-up ads for third-party products and services, which is what most of these “free” mobile games run on anyway. Valve has the potential to make a much better experience.

If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.

Because steam already is on windows and linux?

Really? You’re really going to pretend Windows and Linux are alternatives to Android? Can we just have an honest conversation, please?

It took a legislative fight with the eu and quite a few fines before they decided to stop being ass much of a bunch of assholes.

You’re mistaken. They’re still a bunch of assholes. If you specifically live in the EU you might be able to distribute your own apps but they still require Apple’s rubber stamp and Apple still gets to collect the vast majority of their tax. Not the case for Android (anywhere). And it’s been this way from the beginning.

I’m very familiar with the case.

and the only reason for it to become a case, was the monopolistic position.

The reason it became a case is because Epic violated the ToS (intentionally).

That’s gone now, they’re free to refuse service to whoever they want, whenever they want, for no reason at all…

…what is gone, exactly? You think this settlement suddenly made them no longer a monopoly? That’s not how that works. Further, companies that are not monopolies ALSO have to comply with their own ToS, so I’m honestly very confused about what you’re trying to say here.

It can also be delivered with said advertising company completely removed from the system. Because it’s open source.

Did you notice how the alternative wasn’t even involved in this discussion? Why do you think that is?

It’s called diversity. It has its drawbacks but for the most part it works just fine. That’s why it’s the most popular mobile OS in the world.

Seems to work just fine for me and all of my 3rd party apps and stores 🤷

Extremely well. Not perfect.

They can do whatever, it’s their store.

No. They can’t.

which…lets Google ban anyone they want from the Google Play store

No it didn’t.

…would you like to explain?

I’m sorry you feel that way, I don’t know what to do about that.

I don’t understand what that has to do with the discussion.

FUTO Voice and Transcribro both use it but they run on device.

Bro why are you being so argumentative?

What are you talking about? Do you expect me to just reply to everyone who provides a response “Yes, you’re correct” and move on? Am I not allowed to participate in the discussion I started?

Valve didn’t expand Steam into Linux to gain market share in a new market

…I didn’t say anything about Linux?

there isn’t a successful second app store that isn’t tied to hardware

That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be.

even Amazon quit Android

Well everything I’ve read about Amazon indicates that it was atrocious for everyone so that’s unsurprising.

Now that I’m thinking about it they’d probably have to de-list those cross-platform games from the Google app or make them unavailable, which would probably lead to a lot of confusion.