Auto Blocker is Not Anti-Malicious Compliance, It’s Designed To Prevent Competition, But It Is Against Google and Partners

Today’s lawsuit is designed to prevent or discourage the “malicious compliance strategy” that is being pursued by Google and partners. You could argue that the judge wanted that, because he told the lawyers that he wouldn’t grant their request for an anti-circumvention provision.

We’ve asked Samsung to confirm or deny whether Auto Blocker actually scans an app for threats or suspicious activity, and whether it worked with Google on the feature. We have not heard back yet.

This new requirement of a 21-step process to download third-party app store onto a SAMSUNG phone will likely cause some users to give up on the experience, because it’s much more difficult.

There aren’t any relevant search results when I look for turn off auto blocker in my phone’s universal search bar, and I have to tap through several screens to stop it. One of them asked me if I agree with their claim that the auto blocker keeps the phone safe.

“The thing’s not designed to protect against malware, which would be a completely legitimate purpose,” says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. The thing is designed to prevent competition.

He says that the 100 million target for the store has been exceeded by 10 million Mobile installs. That is not a enormous amount, according to him.

Why do we want to protect ourselves against malicious software? “We don’t want to be careful about what we do,” says Sweeney

Sweeney tells reporters that it is not about reasonable measures to protect users from being attacked by malicious software. “It’s about obstruction of competition.”