Hacker News Reader

Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

It is time to sue Apple. It is time for the DOJ to break them apart. They are a monopoly, and this is unjust. Plain and simple.

If technology had evolved in an open fashion, this form of taxation would never have developed. The web could have been a completely open platform with a fully native experience. Instead Apple and Google shit on the web and force us to use their competing standards.

Both of these companies are a hindrance.

There should be one native experience and SDK. WASM has a chance to get us back to that enlightened path.

View on HN

> They are a monopoly, and this is unjust.

Over what market does Apple have a monopoly?

This is going to sound contrived, but they have a monopoly over the Apple App Store.

You might argue that this isn't the definition of a monopoly, but the DOJ gets to decide that, not you. And there is a case to be made that this is, in fact, anti-competitive.

Apple is forcing businesses that want to deploy paid software to pay their tax. You might say there are alternatives: Google.

Google does the same thing and should also be punished.

Before Apple started this extortion racket, there were ways to deploy paid software that could reach customers without having to go through a gatekeeper. Now there are very few ways to do so.

Both Apple and Google have undercut the web. You can't write streaming video software that isn't native. You can't have any sort of first class experience.

This is one of very few markets where there are no alternatives and the duopoly has actively done harm to the open alternative.

Is this Apple's responsibility or fault? Absolutely. And I remind my legislators of this.

If you're a developer that doesn't work for Apple or Google, you should feel a call to action to fight this asymmetric advantage they hold over us.

Stop buying Apple products.

Android can side load + web apps.

This is a non issue as an Android user.

It's not a non-issue! You might not be an Apple user, but the rest of the market has quite a few of them.

You're also never going to teach the majority of Google users how to side-load as Google has done no work to make this a friendly, safe, and simple process. (Their interests are aligned against doing so.)

The services you subscribe to have to charge you as an individual more because their subscriber base is being taxed. That isn't fair as a business or as a consumer.

> Google has done no work to make this a friendly, safe, and simple process

It's very easy, when you try to install from a non-Play Store source you are presented with a security dialog which leads directly to a page where you can toggle installation from that source.

I can't see how it could be much easier.

> This is going to sound contrived, but they have a monopoly over the Apple App Store.

It is contrived. Put aside the fact that the Mac's market share is in the teens. You're saying that Apple has a monopoly over a market for products they created which are designed to run on a product they created.

So: Nintendo has complete control over distribution of games through their console; indeed much more total than Apple. Do they have a monopoly? How about Sony over the Playstation?

> You might argue that this isn't the definition of a monopoly, but the DOJ gets to decide that, not you.

I'm going to argue that this isn't the definition of a monopoly. Monopolies are over markets. The Apple App Store isn't a market. More importantly, having a monopoly isn't illegal. Abusing that monopoly to eliminate competitors or to broaden the monopoly into other markets is illegal.

I intensely dislike what Apple is doing here. But I'm not sure we have much legal recourse.

> So: Nintendo has complete control over distribution of games through their console; indeed much more total than Apple. Do they have a monopoly? How about Sony over the Playstation?

Nintendo and Sony have been actively subsidizing third party developers to attract them into their platform rather than threatening them to pull off from the market. This is possible since game publishers have much more negotiation power than App developers against the platform owner. The point is, being monopoly itself is not illegal. Abusing monopolistic market power is.

> Abusing monopolistic market power is.

Apple doesn't have a monopoly over its "market" any more than Nintendo has a monopoly over its. Because a marketplace is not a market.

Regardless, you need to be specific as to what "abusing" means. The FTC is pretty exacting about what unfair competition is via monopoly. What exactly is Apple doing with its (non-)monopoly that is illegal?

Apple and Google taken together comprise most of the computing the average human will do or come into direct contact with. It's also broad, generic computing: banking, email, phone, messaging, dating, job seeking, entertainment.

If that isn't an entire market, then I don't know what is. You can't compare the Nintendo Switch or PS4 to that. Not only is there an order of magnitude more competition, but it doesn't match in scale or scope.

Apple gets to tax you when you want to find a partner. When you want to watch a movie. When you want to do your taxes.

It's not fair. It's suffocating.

> Because a marketplace is not a market.

https://stratechery.com/2018/apple-app-store-follow-up-aws-a...

Ben already has addressed this kind of defense.

> What exactly is Apple doing with its (non-)monopoly that is illegal?

See the following article. And note that this is just the tip of the iceberg. You might heard about Spotify v. Apple and the recent Hey situation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/09/technology/ap...

Not sure if you believe that Apple is on a safe ground for antitrust issues but Apple doesn't seem to share your optimism.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/09/apple-says-it-changed-app-st...

> They are a monopoly, and this is unjust.

Every store has a monopoly over the contents of their own shelves. That's why 'monopoly' is a concept that applies to markets, not to individual stores.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com