20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences.
I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.
That reductive summary is repeated but isn't accurate.
Microsoft didn't get in trouble for adding its own IE web browser to Windows. (Software companies always add new features and enhancements.)
The key nuance that triggered the government lawsuit was anti-competitive actions such as using obscure/undocumented Windows API functions to cripple Netscape and forcing computer manufacturers to avoid other software when licensing DOS/Windows. All of that is in the long document: https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.
Non-google app stores cannot automatically update aps, side-loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.
IOS forcing you to use safari no matter what, and there is no way to side-load apps, nor any non-apple app stores.
chrome de facto sets web standards, giving them slight edge over other browsers - and they do use chrome specific APIs to cripple other browsers - like YouTube working worse on Firefox due that reason.
And that's even without taking into the consideration all the tracking in form of telemetry on the devices, coupled with their own ads markets.
Apple on the other hand has a vertical monopoly, they control the whole stack from hardware to software. While their influence on iPhones is absolute, they don't have outsize influence on other phone vendors. Also while popular iPhones don't have a majority of really any phone market.
Antitrust considerations are different for different monopoly types. Unless a company with a vertical monopoly also had a market monopoly position and used that position to actively influence/harm other companies it's really hard to legally pursue them. You can't fault a company for building their own products and trying to make money from selling them. If a Samsung washing machine has some cool feature when paired with a Samsung dryer, just because Samsung has a monopoly on Samsung appliances doesn't mean they're violating some antitrust laws.
If anything Google is in bigger danger of antitrust suits since they have a more horizontal position in the phone market. While they have token entries in the hardware market they're an OS and service provider. Which is likely why they're supportive is sideloading and alternate app stores, if they behaved like Apple but with a horizontal monopoly the DoJ would be all over them.
Apple isn't exclusively a hardware/OS company. They compete horizontally with digital media services like Amazon (books), Spotify (music), Netflix (video), etc. They use their OS and APIs to squeeze out weak competitors and suck up to stronger competitors. They make more money from apps than hardware.
Keep in mind, it's not just current competitors. It's also the potential competitors that don't even bother to start due to Apple's predatory practices.
You're forgetting how that ended. Remember, the DOJ threw the book at Microsoft. It was an intensely publicized trial, with pretty much all the country hating Microsoft and Bill Gates. Waffling over the word "ask", the infamous "knife the baby" email, the Halloween documents and Embrace-Extend-Extinguish. That all came out as part of the DOJ antitrust suit. It's hard to remember how visceral the hate for this was. During the height of that, The Simpsons decided to portray Bill Gates on the show, not positively [0]. A game developer released a title called "Microshaft Winblows 98" to positive reviews and very good sales [1].
The judge makes their final verdict. Microsoft clearly stepped over the line, there were no easy answers. They were too big a company, the only possible remedy is to break them up. Into at least two companies, but probably more; at the very least, the apps and OS needed to be split up into the "Baby Bills", they were going to be called.
Then George W. Bush comes in, guts the DOJ to a fifth of their size, and basically all but tells them "never do that again, please". The case quickly and silently went to appeal, where it was reduced from "Microsoft needs to be broken up" into a small fine [2]. And after other tragedies in the early 2000s, the nation quickly forgot.
So, no, despite the fanfare, despite the judgement and ruling, the DOJ antitrust case had very limited effect on reality. And the message from above seems to be "try that again, and get your budget demolished even more". That's, uh, why antitrust isn't a thing anymore.
Except, well, it did have one effect. In the midst of everything, Bill Gates was basically forced to resign and go into philanthropy to clear their image, resulting in Ballmer taking over. Some believe that was the true punishment for Microsoft.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_SZRhWr1s [2] https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/bush-administration-a...
They got a massive fine and were and forced to do things like open up the client server protocol used between Windows Domain Controllers and Windows Clients.
They came pretty close to being forced to open up the Office document formats, but the EU backed down from that one.
Apple literally has banned competitors. Google at least allows them, even if they make every effort to keep them out, it's still possible to install them without hacking your phone (which hasn't really been possible on iPhone for years).
I just hate that they're grouped together as if it's equivalent.
Apple and Google aren't. You have a choice between iOS and Android, both vibrant and thriving.
It really is that simple. And it's not just the legal but common sense definition of monopoly too -- do you control the market or not?
Now you might have other criticisms of app stores, but basing them on the Microsoft-monopoly-argument isn't going to be helpful or useful. You're going to need a different legal foundation for that.
But app platforms are not commodities. There is considerable vendor lock-in, by design. It's not like one just takes an iOS app and instantly ports it over to Android when Apple's terms no longer suit; there is considerable sunk cost. Platforms cleave the market into captive audiences that can and are abused.
And what to do if you are little guy who invested everything in one of those two platforms and didn't have the foresight to write your app in a way that it was easily ported? Well, screw you.
So these platforms actually compete with each other to offer "value adds" which are really just like traps for vendor lock-in.
Anti-trust laws are full of flawed and antiquated reasoning that is unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century marketplace. And there is precious little understanding of these technological issues in courts and legislatures.
* Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly.
* Microsoft had no effective competitors.
You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.
They effectively have a monopoly over their customers from other customers and can leverage that monopoly to control their vendors.
And Google and Apple secretly working together as "one company" literally defines trust behavior:
'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."'
They also conveniently had the exact same app store fee for years. Doesn't make much sense if they were actually competing with each other
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/anti...
>> You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.
The realities of being a primary OS, App Store, or browser vendor today are both more significant, and more well known than in the 90s. They have financial consequences many times greater.
I don't see how you can come to an intelligible concept of monopoly, market power and such with a general, legal-friendly theory of monopoly. The logic needs to be reversed.
NEW UNDERPANTS PLAN:
0. Forget about proving a monopoly exists to strengthen your case that X is acting as a trust.
1. Use evidence that X is acting as a trust, as to make the case that monopoly exists instead.
2. ???
3. Profit.
The problem is that we don't have a step 2. What happens when markets mature into an monopoly dynamic? We need an answer, because some have.
From the article: After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
As I understand it, the law sees detrimental effects on consumers.
I know because due to that incident we had to follow online formation every god damn month about antitrust. You don't have to have a "monopoly" to trigger antitrust legislation. The mere mention of "deals" or "cooperation" or "understanding" in the same conversation that involves competitor can be enough evidence to cause huge trouble.
[source needed]. The only tariff change Apple ever made was ... due to a real threat of an anti-trust lawsuit. And Google followed straight away.
I can't recall any competition between both companies, they just have their own distinct market.
At least on Android you can install you own market if you're so inclined. I have yet to find an alternative app store for ios though(might be just me not knowing where to look though).
Edit: Forgot to add that when you're talking about Apple vs G I don't see it as 1 big "smartphone" market. It's 2 different ones. Apple hardware running iOS vs generic hardware running Android.
There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school if the state considered any sort of App store laws.
Apple I agree with.
Microsoft got out of that, though. They barely paid a fine. I don't disagree that there are antitrust concerns with all sorts of big company behavior. But this is the world we live in. If you want the government to regulate this stuff for you you need to elect a government willing to do that (or rather, willing to appoint judges willing to do that).
Let's make a point of starting here. There's room for the legalistic standpoint, especially if we're trying to understand legal processes... but this isn't a law forum. It's near impossible to discuss antitrust usefully from a mostly-legalistic perspective. The laws, precedents, legal doctrines and economic doctrines they relate to are extremely patchy, flimsy and often barely exist.
I think a core part of the problem is a weak, badly grounded antitrust framework in the first place. Key definitions like "monopoly" use contradictory conceptual frameworks, from different eras. Generalizing from one instance to another is difficult. A lot of key concepts don't have definitions at all, or really wishy washy ones.
I think the nature of monopolies has a lot to do with this. One possible definition of monopoly is an singular market entity... IE not generalizable, by definition. Are courts supposed to be punishing violations, or structuring markets and doing industrial policy? Are they supposed to be regulating monopolies, preventing them, or declaring their existence so that a different set of regulations kick in? Is monopoly a normal occurrence in market maturity, or market failure?
At some point, Peter Thiel gave away the game when he said that "monopoly is the goal." If you read microeconomics basics, but conceptualize it as software companies instead of a auto manufacturing... you tend to think of monopoly, rather than commoditization as the equilibrium point that's never quite reached. Successful tech companies don't try to make money by competing in a level field with lots of competitors. That's for appstore app developers, salesforce plugin consultants, spotify artists and such.
The whole premise of the tech miracle is that monopolies are the bull case. How else to expect/justify/realize tech company valuations.
Imagine pitching an investor like Thiel on your idea to spend a billion dollars making youtube content for ad revenue? That's all wrong. Your bull case is that you'll temporarily profitable, if successful. Even if you're very profitable, its temporary. There are zillions of youtubers and squillions who could be. They'll copy you, or maybe your content will just get stale over time. A youtube policy change could wipe you out. In the turbulence of youtube's free market for online videos, profits don't last at scale. To get Thiel's attention, you need to go for your own monopoly.
"Commoditize your compliments" has long been a tech motto. Well... what's the corrolorary? Monopolize your market segment.
Commoditize PCs. Monopolize the OS.
Commoditize smartphones. Monopolize the OS.
Monopolize consoles, Commoditize games. Platform/Content. Market/Vending. Users/Advertising. Data/Advertising.
By platform, I mean an ecosystem a private entity creates which they monetize through content created/uploaded/deployed by external parties.
AWS and others fall under this definition too. The truth is, cloud computing should be a low margin industry in the long run. Yes, software has close to 0 marginal cost of production, but the same is true of your competitors. Basic economic principle implies that in a competitive market, the price to customers should be close to the cost of production.
In the old days, the economy was largely physical goods based, so it was very easy to simply buy a competing product if you don't like the one you have now. That by and large didn't entail becoming entrenched in a whole ecosystem.
Laws need to be updated to tackle the inherent monopolistic elements of platforms, social and so on. China is taking this path, so it will be interesting to see how that develops.
It's important to recognize too, that leveraging a monopolistic position to produce excess profit is effectively a direct transfer of wealth from the littler guys to the bigger guys.
e.g. Apple taking a 30% cut on the app store directly takes from app creators, who may raise prices 30%, which ultimately hits customers.
In these cases, generally, the law acts when other parties push it. Mainly big actors. The app stores are generally build by those major actors. May be regulations will happen in several years.
Also, there's nothing antitrust about bundling web DLLs in an OS, or using the web shell for applications. That's what a Chromebook did.
What MSFT did was abuse its monopoly position to take advantage of other companies and customers.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
Regulatory capture.
Edit: Not sure why accusation of corruption is downvoted? It's a very difficult crime to prove and requires resources to pursue, so there is no appetite to prosecute. Big companies and civil service know that. If these companies pay off developers, they would have no reason to pay anyone else in their way and that would unlikely result in any consequences.
...
> This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service.
Insane reading.
Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite. Better to just take your share of monopoly profits than work hard competing, unless you expect to win their place.
This stuff is the norm. Maybe we should switch to being surprised (delighted?) when these guys compete at all.
^https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...
It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1]
> Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits.
This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely surprising if it was unprofitable on an operating basis. [2] The reality is that search is so huge that it's worth competing in, even if the incumbent has 30X your market share.
[1] https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321
I don't think this analyst is aware that DDG already has a lot of Google influence and isn't for sale right now...
> Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.
> Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
A few years in federal prison for the CEOs of Apple and Google might change the situation.
They're literally a cartel.
Why the hell does Apple have a film studio? Why does Google have a game studio and cloud? If they keep going, they'll be the MGM and Whole Foods too. (Oh, wait!)
Famgopolies also shouldn't be allowed to dictate their payments stacks, software distribution systems, app approval processes, browsers, or monitoring. Especially not if they're going after every single possible market, snuffing out all of the oxygen in the ecosystem.
If a famgopoly does over 100 things, it shouldn't be allowed to keep growing like the blob.
I really don't want my startup to be a gazelle at the savannah, waiting for the lions to bite at the jugular because they like my idea and market. If I put so much on the line to innovate, only to have these titans duplicate and crush me, what's the point?
I never thought I'd ever cheer for patent suits given all of the trolls, but I was genuinely happy that Sonos won over Google recently. We need more of that.
Edit: incoming famgopoly downvote brigade.
If someone can trace that directly to pricing ... well price collusion is definitely illegal.
Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.
With those powers behind her she can do some harm, otherwise I'm afraid she'll be just a sitting duck in front of FANG's lobbyists.
Here’s an FTC commissioner explaining the history of it and why we should probably change it. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...
Even the judge in the case said that Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." [1]
This new situation may be a slam-dunk, but no dunking may actually happen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
They even had quotes that showed intent and understanding of the illegality:
> "Schmidt responded that he preferred it be shared 'verbally, since I don't want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?'", the Reuters news agency quoted the court filing as saying.
https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-google-settlement-idIN...
For a long time Google was the Apple maps provider (exclusive) on Apple - they had near seamless integration there and in a variety of areas (search etc) - very much acting as one company.
They competed in other areas (google photos on iphone has always been very much second class), google music has struggled vs the apple music player etc.
All these monster players - they are so big that if they were fighting each other on every front it would be a huge mess.
Apple both bitterly competes against Samsung (who copies plenty from iphone) while simultaneously working as a big customer to them.
AWS has the same issues in many area - they will do things like cooperate in some areas with enemies (ie, they'll host Microsoft workloads and MS will facilitate) while competing in other areas (AWS vs Azure etc).
This is why Epic is suing them, to have a judge prohibit Google from illegally anticompetitive behavior.
The difference is that the console market has real competitions which gives more leverages to developers. Google didn't have to do this thanks to its iron grip on the market until Epic have revealed its arsenal. This is why we need to bring more competitions in the app store market; Even if it doesn't bring any real alternatives, this tiny possibility of competition will force Google and Apple to yield more and more to developers.
The first step should be breaking the Duopoly cartel. It's only possible because Apple has no competitions and Google simply enjoys its follower-ship, enabled by their non-aggression pact. Force Apple to allow third party store and payment solutions to dismantle its unfair advantages against competitor apps thanks to 30% fee. This will force Apple to develop Web and Android version of its services which will effectively nullify the non-aggression pact.
https://mobile.twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428417681351348...
> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
Just incredible.
Why would you even think that after the whole salary fixing scandal? There's no enforcement of antitrust law and no incentive not to collude freely and egregiously.
Had Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Paul Otellini, and everyone else directly involved in the wage fixing scandal, spent a year in federal prison per violation, the situation might have been different.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/p970st/after_another...
Obviously, I don't claim these two comments are correct. I do claim, however, that people are better served by not quoting random statements from a lawsuit without understanding either the context or the applicable law. Especially when only one side in the lawsuit is quoted from.
Personal feeling after the whole salary fixing case and now this, Google should be forced to move it's head quarters and it's top management to some place like Waco Texas.
I see the exact same duopoly as in Apple-Google world. There's Sony and Microsoft(with no independent app stores). Nintendo isn't in the same market as the other two.
Nintendo might be a running joke amongst hardcore gamers but ironically they're the most successful console manufacturer out there.
The Switch is going from strength to strength and I'd estimate it will outsell the Playstation 4 before Nintendo retire it (it's been outselling the PS4 since 2019 already but that's to be expected given the expectation of the PS5). And from the same trial that bought us this submission we've seen Microsoft admit that they've never made a profit on the Xbox. Let's also not forget that games on the Switch are typically more expensive than the same game on other platforms. And that's without even touching the topic of Nintendo's 1st party games -- they make an absolute killing on their IP. Animal Crossing, for example, was seen by many as the unofficial game of the 2020 lockdown.
I predict Nintendo's market position will only get stronger too. With many Xbox fans giving up on buying new consoles because they're basically just PCs at this point. So switching to PCs that can be upgraded over time and still have access to Xbox content. Plus the struggles Sony have had just shipping their latest consoles and many gamers there saying they might just stick with the PS4. Yet Nintendo have calved out their own corner of the market that sits between the ultra competitive hardcore market and casual gamers who want more than crappy mobile apps. And it's a segment that's increasing in size too.
It'll be interesting to see how Valves offering does. I can't see it competing with the Switch directly but it might take more market share away from Sony and Microsoft given Valves new portable offers the capability of desktop gaming on the move.
So anyway, back to your point. You might scoff but actually Nintendo are in a far more stable and successful position than Sony and Microsoft (with regards to consoles).
As a case in point, it's clear that Nintendo themselves think they are competing with Microsoft, Sony, and the PC space. They pay tons of money to game developers in order for their games to not show up on Xbox, PS, and PC. That would make no sense unless there was some actual competition. I could mention Hades and Monter Hunter Rise as two recent examples where Nintendo paid money to devs in exchange for exclusivity.
And given how hard Sony and Microsoft compete to pursuade games to be released exclusively on either platform isn't it a bit of different dynamic?
Meanwhile, in desktop land, there are real alternatives because almost everything you’d want to do runs in the browser well enough (for regular home users at least). But on mobile the browsers are locked down, so the web is not a credible mobile app strategy. Linkedin and facebook oroginally tried a mobile web strategy and discovered that mobile browsers aren’t good enough. The lack of real competition, especially on iOS keeps mobile browsers underpowered for apps and maintains the strong gatekeeping function of mobile app stores.
For me a possible solution is to force platform owners to allow real browser competition on their platforms (again: especially iOS) and hope that is enough to kickstart a browser arms race like we enjoyed on the desktop a decade ago, with the end result being that mobile web apps become a real alternative and we weed out much of the bad behavior by apple and google because they have a genuine competition for the native platform.
That's old news =] — now they just purchase all of the studios and "let them do their thing". Probably for significantly less % at the dev end, but, I digress.
In my view, the market dominance of the big players has led to a new type of hidden taxation and a "winner takes all" Internet economy. Almost all digital markets require you to pass through large companies to get visibility or offer your services, and they get increasingly good at extracting every bit of profit you make. This really needs to stop.
If there is going to be competition for the big players, it will come when closed markets like Russia or China develop enough to threaten them. It is possible that Europe at some point will also follow their example.
There are two options:
- We have to wait for the next technological revolution.
- It is simply just more costly to be an entrepreneur. It's not about throwing together a website or app, it's much more costly to break through the existing monopolies. While you can still make a website or app yourself, I think you do need more and more capital to market it.
The US which only regulates rail safety but not the market, has a bunch of local monopolies and calls that a market, being in total denial that markets need to be regulated to actually allow competition.
Want to advertise? You had to go through radio stations with license monopolies. Or maybe you had to go through a newspaper, historically there were usually one or two that thrived per city, and usually one dominant super paper in a given city (2-3 times larger than its smaller competitor). Or maybe you had to go through one of the few big broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox). Just a few behemoths dominanted television.
Want to transport goods? Say hello to the railroad oligopoly, going back more than a century now.
Maybe you needed a lot of vehicles for your business, circa the 1950-1970s. Say hello to the GM and Ford oligopoly, your dependency.
Maybe you wanted to buy airplanes, it's 1971 and you're starting a version of Fedex. How many choices do you have? How many suppliers are there in terms of dependency?
You want to get something on a store shelf across the country? Let me introduce you to Sears, Pennys, Kmart, Woolworth, WT Grant, Genesco, Allied, McCrory's, May. That's 50 years ago, they owned retail.
The new boss, same as the old boss (today some of them are even bigger, that much is true). You can't escape it. Unless you own all the platforms, you will always have to go through other platforms, other gate keepers. The best you can hope for is to intelligently diversify your risk exposure, so it takes more than one of them to cripple you.
what you 're describing is NOT a monopoly, because the winners were local, physical separation prevented monopolization, and crucially there was more than one dominant player. There is a whole new world on the internet where for every verb there is one, single monopoly for the entire world. In the end , one can look at the money flow: How many people were employed in newspapers vs how many people are in googleplex
And regulated as a common carrier[1].
Tech monopolies will likely fade away over time like the early industrial revolution monopolies did just at an accelerated pace due to things working at internet speed. Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network.
Google literally built their business on a decentralized worldwide developer network.
Edit: I understand during the legal case, employees can have life changing implications for commenting on it. Well the cases can end up dragging for years. So for all those years, are we just going to keep silent? I mean if our moral compass is controlled by how corporate thinks of it, I guess we are not free after all. The next big decentralised thing is a compromised dream already.
Also if you want to really make an opinion, for those who feel like voicing but cant, make an alt account. Every voice matters.
Disclaimer - I am a Googler.
P.S. Rather than passing snark comments about what others do, maybe try talking to any of them. Any employee of a significantly sized company could have guessed that.
100% this. Even if we come here and express our opinions, or even express them internally on discussion forums and email, or chat, any of those communications are open to discovery by the plaintiff. If the plaintiff sees any value to anything an employee of the defendant company says, said employee could then be pulled into the lawsuit, be deposed, and many other non-fun things.
Well I'm sure there are many googlers out there that would love to comment on this, for our own sanity, we likely wouldn't.
Is this true? I know this to be true for actual parties involved, and I'm sure you can't speak on behalf of Google, but I'm not aware of any law or even company policy where private citizens are barred from voicing their own opinions, without divulging non-public information, in a legal matter where they aren't a party (though their employer may be).
As for "fear of retaliation" from your employer, that applies regardless of whether this is an ongoing legal matter or not.
Edit: I did not mean to dictate what anyone must do, but as a person you are entitled to have an opinion, to stand up. If you are going to base your moral compass based on what others decide. May be one day, you wont even bother having it. Im not hatching a big conspiracy here, but we must always keep some actions in mind irrespective of what courts decide. Courts are run by humans too, and humans make mistakes.
To keep it more simple, think of how US let its telecom companies have so much power over its communication needs. How it’s affecting people.
> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
if it will be proven in court it's a firm base for anti monopoly/cartel case
And apparently there are a whole bunch of lawsuits against google, in multiple countries.
My money is on them losing at least one of them, in some way.
All that needs to happen is for them to lose a single lawsuit, somewhere, for the statement of "its in their right to do that" to be wrong.
True decentralization is impossible without drastic change in human nature. We can only replace global powers with smaller, regional powers, or a single power with multiple ones. Despite cartelization it is better than absolute control wielded by one entity.
Specifically w.r.t software, I can't for the life of me not figure out why major nation states are not heavily investing in home grown software (easier than home grown hardware), and instead of placing all their eggs into a few megacorps established under foreign laws and subject to control by foreign govts, like Iran's software situation illustrates well.
$gov pays 600eur/day for software developers (which they could hire for less than a third of the price). The pimps renting out these developers have zero incentive to ensure quality in any way. The longer a project takes, the bigger their cut. The developers don't care, they're being grossly underpaid by their pimps, so they ride it out until something better comes along. $gov has zero IT competence, and doesn't realize (or doesn't care) it's being ripped off. Government IT project failures are commonplace, with hundreds of thousands wasted per project, sometimes even millions. $gov can't hire software engineers directly, because governments have ridiculous rules about employment and wages and degree requirements. They can't pay developers as much as they could make elsewhere.
I think it would be a great idea for any government (local, regional, national) to start insourcing their own software developers. Starting small. There would be great value to having a few dedicated teams, in the true sense of the word, instead of a ragtag bunch of consultants. This will require changes to government employment laws. But in my book, it would be worth it.
Long story short: governments can't even get their own software in order. I don't see them promoting "home grown" software any time soon.
„Why anyone would expect better decisions to be made by third parties who pay no price for being wrong is one of the mysteries of our time.“
I have also wondered the same, especially seeing not just the massive spying, but also the shoddy quality and extortionate prices that characterize government software auctions all over the world. Especially as multiple regional and local entities often pay for exactly the same management software. It would seem a no-brainer that a national/regional software institute would produce huge savings, better quality, and strategic advantages if it created a national/regional software stack that could be used everywhere.
Alas, I believe that cronyism, market veneration, lack of understanding of software, and the high initial costs are acting to prevent any such effort from even seeming a thinkable idea.
So yeah, that's the reason.
It doesn't help that the way to win elections now is to start a culture war, not to make the country they govern a better place (see the UK).
> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
> That is a damning little piece of evidence.
Looks like it’s exactly the meritocracies Google and Apple claim to be, nothing monopoly-like to be found here... /s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...
This isn't an "infraction" you can police with a fine, jail, etc. It's an industrial structure. The competition is competition for monopoly, a superior & highly profitable market position of some sort. Those are what make Google, FB & so profitable.
Google competed with Yahoo & Microsoft for years in search marketing. I don't believe either ever made significant profits. Their "market share" in terms of users may have been 10%-20%. But, their share of market revenues was a fraction of that. Their share of profits was negative.
OTOH Google pays (for example) Apple $7bn per year to make Google Search default. That's better than best case scenario profits MSFT or Yahoo could have hoped to make, unless they managed to replace Google in the no. 1 position.
Competing is just a lot less profitable than cooperating in a lot of cases. What is Apple supposed to do, say "keep it, we're good?"
I disagree - governments legislate their markets so it is absolutely punishable if defined as such.
- it should be illegal to lock down a device against its end user
- governments should stop protecting companies and helping prevent adversarial interoperability
Do you realize that given our current laws in the US, that this is pretty much impossible?
If another major store comes onto the plaform, then I am certain it wont have guaranteed access to play services, meaning more headache when selecting what services to use and when.
If your application is taking payments directly through the app (not using ads, and the app is no extension to the primary web portal) then a split community could cause havoc to the already struggling app developer.
There is a reason most developers do not create versions for the Amazon Fire, and this might end up being similar situation (if it goes the worse way possible)
If only Google had acted as a good faith steward of Android instead of pushing vendor lock in and closed source APIs in ways that make Bill Gates green with envy. Who am I kidding, their hilariously named "Open" Handset alliance even has a kill switch in the licensing agreements for anyone even thinking about competing with its services.
It's not just about the public knowing: Legislators and regulators aren't privy to non-public judicial information, and this is key evidence that Congress needs to pass strong laws that break the backs of Apple and Google.
The new info is that it is now available for legal action. The optimistic view would be that Epic is enough into it to bring more changes than Microsoft’s default browser ballot.
Is that materially different than this case? (Is it that Google already has a strong market position and Epic is an upstart?)
Thu Aug 19 17:54:55 +0000 2021
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Google has a secret initiative originally called "Project Hug" that offers app makers like Activision Blizzard special treatment in exchange for paying the 30% fee and being quiet about it.
Read Twitter without a Javascript or browser: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28071491
HN then changed the thread not to point to Twitter but to the Verge.
Now if Google has a program to make happy its customers so that they don't leave... I wish all companies strategies were like that!
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28255798, which we've merged hither)
It's pretty easy to see that FAANG-esque companies are totally dominant at this point, and have many pseudo-monopolistic elements about them.
Beyond specific names, there is a vast difference in both the scale, and the "ecosystem" or "platform" nature in modern software that effectively invalidates the applicability of anti-trust law as it is written.
Going even further, many laws protecting private companies likely will change in the coming years to account for different paradigm that software brings. Sometimes difference in scale is also difference in nature.
If you look into the aims of a lot of China's recent regulations, they are actually setup to create a competitive market, rather than have a few tech companies become dominant. Competition is ultimately good for the public, as it leads to lower costs to the consumer, and more incentive to innovate (once entrenched).
I don't suggest we go to the same extremes, but it's inevitable we'll start heading down that path, whether it be the next few years, or decades.
I think the only way out of this for companies - and governments - is to build AGIs and put them in charge.
I realize this will sound radical today, but we are getting closer and closer.
If we can carve a path where the AGIs see us as similar to parents, and we "teach" them similar to our kids, I can see how this could all work out (writing about this elsewhere).
My two cents.
This is like another layer on the stack of dysfunction in the contemporary (mobile) gaming market.
Facebook started forcing companies to use Facebook Credits and then forced a 30% cut. Zynga balked. Zynga and Facebook came to secret arrangement. If you were smaller, you were SOL.
EDIT: https://venturebeat.com/2011/12/12/zynga-history/11/
Netflix didn't want to pay Apple the 30% cut. Apple tried to keep Netflix. Eventually, Netflix got rid of new app store subscriptions.
EDIT: Apple offered Netflix concessions. https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase...
Look at Amazon's bookstore which forces sellers to not offer their books at a lower price elsewhere.
EDIT: https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/bookstore-files-antitrust-cl...
I'm struggling to articulate a payola analog for internet. I'll revisit Stratechery's Aggregation Theory, see how closely it fits. https://stratechery.com/aggregation-theory/
Meanwhile, if the tech titans want to claim the protections for platforms afforded by Section 230, they should probably stop acting like publishers. (aka having your cake and eating it too.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
Project Hug.
Your antennae should go up whenever you hear phrasing like this.
It's easy to complain, but if that's all that ever happens, how do you expect anything to change?
Case closed, no?
Yet tons of people continue to believe in and join the chorus about the wonders of capitalism, the free market and competition whenever any sort of government antitrust intervention or regulations are proposed. Its easy to defend capitalism in black and white terms as opposed to communism/socialism while completely ignoring the vast middle ground between 0 government oversight and total control. I hope these stupid tactics are one day broadly recognized by voters..