I really, really thought Epic was building up to revealing that, having seen the Amazon threat, Google put up extra friction to keep people from installing the Amazon Appstore APK.

But no! Instead, Epic highlighted a 2017 passage that showed Google thought existing 14-step sideloading process already presented a “significant hurdle to switching to Amazon APK,” despite Amazon providing a 15 percent-plus discount to developers app store fees compared to Google Play.

I guess Epic’s trying to show the barriers to entry were already high due to Google’s work? “It did not become large,” says Rosenberg, of the Amazon Appstore.