The article does raise an interesting point though about not thinking of these companies as "tech"; the Amazon argument can be applied to any private label I guess, hence the point about unintended consequences.
It is an interesting concept though, almost like the logical extension of the net neutrality argument. DirecTV, HBO and ATT merging would be something that directly runs foul of this. You either get to provide the platform (be an ISP) or be a content producer, not both.
Is she going to stop physical retailers from having store brands that “compete unfairly”?
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/15/sneaky-subscriptions-are-p...
However, US monopoly law is based on consumer harm, so...
I think on a mobile platform, with plenty of competition to not buy an iOS-based phone, a walled garden absolutely benefits consumers more than it hurts. There is so much PII on phones now. Given the total lack of InfoSec knowledge, especially at the mobile-user level, a walled garden is crucial: see every Google Store vuln that hasn't hit Apple.
the harm isn't consumer oriented, since it's somewhat diffuse, it's about concentration of market power in the industry.
we could live in a world where you target one distribution platform, and phone vendors compete to police malware, but instead we have walled gardens that police content & economically lock you to their environments and don't even do a good job about malware
That's true, but that's not how anti-trust law works in the US unfortunately. It's consumer-harm based.
That's not the point. The point is that Netflix, HBO, Spotify, et. al. have to pay the 30% Apple/Google tax while the movie, music, etc. products from Apple/Google don't.
Warren's proposed rule is, effectively, you can produce something or you can sell something, but not both. Apple would need to decide if they want to be an app maker or an app seller.
Also - having a security policy is different than taking a 30% cut of all commercial activity on the platform.
Hardware is a key part of security, too, but Intel doesn't have to run the marketplace.