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Comment by loudtieblahblah | Hacker News Reader

Ms wasn't merely sued for bundling browser with OS, the absolute dominance of Windows was a factor in that. A dominance that iOS doesn't have.

Unfortunately you have the limited hardware, walled garden app store approach of apple

Or the crap privacy of Google.

Pick your poison or wait for the Purism phone.

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> the absolute dominance of Windows was a factor in that.

The absolute dominance of Windows was the reason it was an issue in the first place.

Controlling your own platform is not a monopoly. Controlling a market is, and at the time, Windows controlled the market for PC operating systems. Without a monopoly, it's much, much harder to make a reasonable legal case for the government stepping in and telling you what you can and can't do with your own platform.

Just bundling IE isn't what got Microsoft in trouble. In addition they also used a combination of payments, discounts and threats of withholding access to software to prevent PC manufacturers and sellers from both providing alternative operating systems and browsers.

It's called oligopoly, and can also be legislated against. ios and android together run the mobile market.

What you’re describing is a cartel under competition laws. It would be hard to prove that Apple and Google are conspiring together against other market players.

Don't they both take a 30% cut?

Android at least lets you use other app-stores and easily distribute and install apps by sideloading. On iOS you have to use the Apple App Store - everything else is a massive inconvenience or against Apple’s T&Cs (e.g. Facebook+Google’s use of enterprise certs).

I disagree. An oligopoly does not need to be a cartel, but a cartel is a special case of an oligopoly, and here I'm talking of oligopoly, not the narrower case. A structural deficit in a market can lead to oligopolistic markets and exploitation without collusion, sometimes with regulation and sometimes wihtout. For more details, see (for example) here: https://www.diffen.com/difference/Cartel_vs_Oligopoly

You can also go the LineageOS route in the meantime.

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