Epic v. Google: everything we learned in Fortnite court
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We’ve covered bad apps at The Verge for a while, particularly on the Apple side of things, and Epic is now casually suggesting that Google Play is no better than a direct app download from a website because Kleidermacher once called it a dumpster fire and, separately, said, “We’re not particularly good at keeping knockoffs off the store.”
I don’t know if Epic’s sticking the landing here with so few visceral examples of bad apps (we saw just two user reviews calling out a scam, and the title S-ON Sexual Therapy), but Kleidermacher did amusingly suggest that Google allows users to download the bad apps without warnings because of user consent.
“There is user consent in one place, there is not user consent in the other place,” he said.
Epic pounced — how could a user’s decision to download an app from a website not constitute consent? Kleidermacher suggested the consent comes as part of Unknown Sources: “You’d have to authorize the browser to install first.”
