Your reasoning shows why it's so much harder to fix a duopoly than to fix a monopoly. If there was no Apple then Google would get its comeuppance. If there was no Google then Apple would get its comeuppance. But because we have both Google and Apple, we can't punish either.

The mathematician in me wants to solve the problem of the duopoly by first reducing it to a monopoly, which we have known solutions for.

We both agree that there is a speed limit and it needs to be adhered to, regardless of who it is.

The problem with Google is that it may have started at 8 over the limit, but it advertised itself as sticking to the limit but always hovered slightly above it pushing the boundaries. This has skewed our perception into believing that Google's was acceptable and we have been gradually raising our threshold itself to a dangerous level.

Now Google is not too far behind Apple that it can't catch up.

> 'Why not both' is an argument, but clear as day what Apple does is worse. There's no alternative.

'Just start somewhere, anywhere, please' is another argument.

Ironically, Apple allows alternate app stores in the EU now, while Google is moving to disallow them everywhere.

There's a workaround if you want it enough.

I noticed that reddit was setting a use_redesign (I might have the name slightly wrong) cookie when I explicitly visited the old.reddit domain, and this caused old reddit to persist. Since I do occasionally want to use the new site for image posts and the like, I set up a bookmarklet to set/unset that cookie on command.

I've since found that setting this cookie bypasses the old.reddit login page, allowing me to view the old site while not logged in. No idea how long that will last though.

When did this start? I didn't even realize at first because I use Redlib.

I actually think the menacing messages are on point but should apply to play store apps as well. Most of the people I know are incredibly cavalier about running mystery software from unfamiliar developers on by far the most sensitive device that they own.

The goal is not to prevent a Google monopoly. The goal is to have competition to prevent Google abusing its monopoly to lock down users.

There is Samsung Galaxy store.There is Xiaomi store.There was Amazon app store which failed to gain traction as it was not pre-installed but had decent number of apps. This is even before we get to open stores like F-droid.

Now their viability is a question in the long term, if Google has complete discretion over what is allowed.

On my Nokia (featurephone) you don't need to install apps, you just run them.

I think the old reddit redirect extension gets around this somehow, that has worked for me lately (occasionally with some toggling of the extension). Although maybe it's best to just use less reddit tbh

I use redlib https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib and librediret instead.

There are solutions and then there are workarounds. what we see are workarounds, not solutions.

Even in software, you can only patch so many workarounds without fixing the issue. Eventually fatigue sets in or we run out of workarounds and just publish the bug as "expected behavior" don't we?

I don't want the workarounds to distract from the need for a proper fix.