>App stores are the way they are not because of any fundamental limitation of app distribution over the Internet, but because users have chosen that model.

Users have not chosen. App developers have not chosen. Apple has chosen and Google copied them.

Google and Apple effectively have a duopoly over app stores.

>Developers should simply stop distributing apps through Google Play if they don't like Google's behavior. That's how a free market is supposed to work.

No, the free market is supposed to work by having a seller and a buyer find each other and make a deal. However, with app stores, a middle man forcefully inserts itself into that equation in a way that cannot be sidestepped by buyer and seller. Some buyers and sellers are fine with it, but some is hardly all.

The option app developers have right now is to either be obedient to the app stores, or change profession.

>Regulating companies worth billions and trillions just makes it harder for companies that aren't worth billions and trillions to compete.

You're talking regulatory capture, which indeed is a concern. That's why I mentioned the "gatekeeper" definition of the upcoming EU DMA... It considers size and (market) power, and only regulates large companies.

>But you have something a lot more powerful: the ability to boycott.

Boycotts are a joke in general. They only work if you find a majority supporting that such a boycott, and often to a degree where it actually hurts. It doesn't do anything to protect any (large) minority. So when e.g. black people got redlined, were they supposed to boycott the banks that refused to do business with them in the first place? Because the white majority clearly didn't care enough; they got their loans, they were happy and content, and often didn't even really know about the plight of their fellow citizens.

>The US Congress has approval ratings in the single digits and incumbent reelection rates above 90 percent. That's a huge sign that you can't fix whatever problem you want to fix using the government.

The US political system can be changed. The Tea Party demonstrated that, Obama and Bernie and Trump demonstrated that (whether one agrees with these people is another matter, the point is that even in the US, which is plagued by the first-past-the-post voting, change is possible).

And you don't necessarily have to replace people, just make them fear enough that they might be replaced if they do not play ball. You could consider that a boycott at the ballot ;)

>The fact that the government does some good things does not mean government regulation is a good thing all things considered.

No, it doesn't necessitate that. But historically, it is, all things considered.

>And even with the "good" things you describe, you don't see their downsides.

Yeah, I somehow fail to see the downside of the government preventing companies from dumping toxic waste in my backyard, or government enabling me to get health care when I need it.

>You don't see what the world would have been like if people had chosen to use free market power to regulate those things instead of the government.

But I have seen that. I explicitly mentioned the East India company. I saw banks redlining people, fuel producers putting lead in gasoline, industry working people to literal death (making them sick, or working them in unsafe conditions) because human resources were cheap and replenish-able, and people were willing to do that work to avoid almost certain starvation and homelessness if they did not. And then there is this profession that doesn't care about laws anyway: narcos and other criminals. And they bring havoc wherever they go.

I have seen enough.

>Companies only get such power if governments give it to them. Your example of the East India Company illustrates that.

You're basically advocating for no government (or an entirely toothless government). In your system, the East India company would have existed, with one difference: It wouldn't have had to ask the monarch for permission first. They had power not just because of the special privileges (which they wouldn't even need in your no-government system), they had power because they had money. And that money allowed them to form an army and declare themselves rulers of India. If there was no British government, they'd still be ruler of India today (and probably quite a few other places).

>Why are developers continuing to feed these monsters?

Because they got dragged in with rosy promised of profits, became entangled in the network effects, and are now beholden to their feudal rulers, unless they want to be risky and change professions. Which they usually don't, until they are forced to, like the guy in the article probably will be.

That's like asking a person in a sweatshop why they still work there. Or the Uber driver who barely makes ends meet, or the amazon warehouse worker who wears diapers because a regular pee break would take too long.