Technology

The biggest reason is most likely that the cases had different judges.

Apple produces hardware for their walled garden, whereas Google imposes their terms on third parties. I can't speak to how this works legally, but thats the main difference as far as I understand.

How the judges see it:

Google forces conditions onto other OEMs. They have to include a bunch of Google stuff on their phones if they want the play store and play services, which they realistically need, that's just a market reality. They have no real choice but to do whatever Google says. Google is abusing their market dominance to push their ecosystem, and the OEMs have no real choice but to play ball.

Apple doesn't force anybody else to use their products. They make their own ecosystem for their own phone. If iOS was available on non-Apple devices, and Apple was forcing stuff onto those OEMs knowing they have little other choice, Apple would be getting the same treatment.

Would like to know the answer, but feel like I already know.

WTF, they can rule Google can't offer perks for exclusivity, but epic does that shit with it's game store.

So they will have the same judgement for apple right?? And not the same bullshit excuse that since it's even more locked down it's okay for them to do it?

Play Store

This is all about the Play Store though, it has literally nothing to do with competing stores. I use F-Droid today and there are no restrictions from Google about what apps I can install through that store, whether I can pay for apps through that store (some apps have donation buttons inside), etc. There's nothing stopping Epic from distributing their own app store like F-Droid does even before this decision.

So I really don't understand what "cracking open Android" means here. All that seems to be happening is that Google is restricted from certain actions within its own store, which is absolutely fine by me (I don't use the Play Store), but I don't see any actual changes to Android or third-party app stores.

The closest is this one:

Offer device makers or carriers money or perks not to preinstall rival stores

But Samsung already has its own app store, no? So is there any actual evidence that this was ever a thing?

They should place these restrictions on Apple, not Google, because Apple is the one doing all of this nonsense. Yeah, Google should be reigned in a bit, but they're really not the problem here.

droid-ify :)