> IANAL but from what I've understood it mainly came down to the fact that G execs put the stuff in writing whereas Apple did not, so with G there was some real damning evidence of the anti-competitive behavior.
It mainly came down to the fact that they were in different courtrooms and the higher-level appellate courts haven't yet decided how they're going to reconcile the results (possibly by overturning one of them).
It's kind of an interesting case study in the arbitrariness of the law. The most important question in either case is if excluding competing app stores is permissible. It's obviously anti-competitive, but doing anti-competitive things is sometimes allowed if you have a legitimate justification. Apple's argument is presumably that they need to for security. This is, of course, BS, because a user who wanted Apple to vet all of their apps could still choose not to install any from outside of Apple's store even if Apple didn't prohibit them from doing so.
Google could make the same claim -- they have to discourage these filthy competitors because some of them might not be selective enough in what they include, so suppressing them improves security -- and it would be equally BS. But then you uncover some emails that make them look unsympathetic, or admitting that the pretext is a farce, and now it's less likely they get away with the charade.
The root of the problem here is that the rule that you can do something anti-competitive if you have an excuse has the potential to swallow the entire law. "Our competitors are smelly and vile and we have to protect our customers from interacting with them even if the customer explicitly wants to do that" is a generic excuse that could be used to justify any anti-competitive behavior. That's easier to see if you can read some emails conceding the underlying motive, but it's true in either case. Hopefully the higher courts will be able to see that in both cases once they've seen it in one of them.
Both of the cases have been appealed. Appellate court decisions set precedent within their jurisdiction. If the Supreme Court takes the case (not unreasonable that the two could be heard together), they'll issue an opinion and create a national precedent.
It mainly came down to the fact that they were in different courtrooms and the higher-level appellate courts haven't yet decided how they're going to reconcile the results (possibly by overturning one of them).
It's kind of an interesting case study in the arbitrariness of the law. The most important question in either case is if excluding competing app stores is permissible. It's obviously anti-competitive, but doing anti-competitive things is sometimes allowed if you have a legitimate justification. Apple's argument is presumably that they need to for security. This is, of course, BS, because a user who wanted Apple to vet all of their apps could still choose not to install any from outside of Apple's store even if Apple didn't prohibit them from doing so.
Google could make the same claim -- they have to discourage these filthy competitors because some of them might not be selective enough in what they include, so suppressing them improves security -- and it would be equally BS. But then you uncover some emails that make them look unsympathetic, or admitting that the pretext is a farce, and now it's less likely they get away with the charade.
The root of the problem here is that the rule that you can do something anti-competitive if you have an excuse has the potential to swallow the entire law. "Our competitors are smelly and vile and we have to protect our customers from interacting with them even if the customer explicitly wants to do that" is a generic excuse that could be used to justify any anti-competitive behavior. That's easier to see if you can read some emails conceding the underlying motive, but it's true in either case. Hopefully the higher courts will be able to see that in both cases once they've seen it in one of them.