It was ruled previously that Apple don’t have a large enough market share

EDIT: Added source from where I read it.

~~From some other comment I read,~~ it apparently was due to google paying companies to set Google's stuff as their default. Something Apple does not (have to) do.

This comment by AnalogyBreaker on the article seems to explain it pretty well:

The "this doesn't make sense" crowd are missing the point. Android is open source, anyone can use it. Google licensed it that way to spur adoption and (in theory) not solely be responsible for its development. They could make their own closed OS, kept it exclusive to Pixel phones and have a closed app store... but we can can all guess how well that would have went... not well. So the open source route makes sense.

Because Android is freely licensed to anyone, there is a market for apps that Google theoretically doesn't control and resides on non-google produced devices. They do control Play Services, however. That's not open source and includes proprietary apps basically essential for an operating smart phone such as Google sign in, Maps, and of course the Play Store. Google used their market dominance in those fields to prevent third parties from launching or installing competitors to the Play Store by denying Play Services to those who didn't comply; paying them off directly or brokering sweetheart deals. That's appears like an obvious abuse of their market position.

If Google wanted to be treated the same as Apple, they'd have to develop phones the same way as Apple. They didn't do that, instead they rely on third parties and those third parties have protections from Google abusing their monopoly position against them. To suggest they should be treated the same as Apple is akin to wanting to have your cake and eat it too. For the record, I'm not a fan of the Apple ruling, but there are clear differences between the two cases and seeing different outcomes shouldn't be a surprise.

Source

There was another comparison I read using an example if Microsoft paid stores to not sell PlayStations, but I can't find it anymore.

Yeah, it seems Google is way more open to side loading and fdroid existing. Not sure how Apple got away with it when they are so much more restrictive.

Can this ruling be used in the future against Apple?

ITC: Someone not understanding the difference between not understanding and not agreeing.

No it doesn't, it just says that the case was different and that it wasn't in front of a jury, it doesn't give the details of the difference. You have to go read the entire article from a few years ago

Increased competition is ALWAYS better for the customer.

You're forgetting AppBrain from like 15 years ago.

I agree on the concerns, but it's a virtually universal truth, so long as they're actually forced to treat other app stores fairly. We might end up with a true third party stepping in to claim the throne, at least until the mega-corps reverse all the optimization they've created for their own benefits (even things like searches for apps are not fully intended to benefit the user right now, things most people don't really realize).

problem here was that Google was doing deals to undermine those things

Different case. This hung on the anti-competitive nature of Google’s backroom deals with big players. That’s what fucked Google. Different rules for different developers.

Apple: this is our system and we've always been upfront about it. We're dictators of our ecosystem. You can't compel us to open up. Yes there's less customer choice, but we have a right to say how our own system is run, and we've always made that clear to everybody. Forcing us to open up our system is like forcing Nintendo to allow Microsoft games on the Switch, bypassing paying Nintendo anything.

The courts say fair enough, that's correct.

Google: we claim to have an open ecosystem, but actually we don't. We're using our market position to impose terms on phone makers, if they're big like Samsung we might give them permission to have their own app store, with certain concessions. We have backroom deals not to take revenue from some large companies, but to take it from others. We have power over OEMs and we use it to further consolidate our monopoly. They will agree to our terms because they have no other choice than to comply.

The courts say whoa that seems like an abuse of your dominant market position.

You're looking at it from the perspective of user choice. That's not what the courts care about, they care about the law. The Google case was always more likely to be a win for Epic, despite Reddit and Lemmy not realising it.

But Epic v. Google turned out to be a very different case. It hinged on secret revenue sharing deals between Google, smartphone makers, and big game developers, ones that Google execs internally believed were designed to keep rival app stores down. It showed that Google was running scared of Epic specifically. And it was all decided by a jury, unlike the Apple ruling.

It's something else. Here it's US antitrust monopoly.

Google made deals with games and special contracts with other apps in order to kill competition.

I imagine Epic doesn't really care about that so much as not giving Google 30% of in-game purchases in Fortnite.