Microsoft says antitrust bodies need to review Apple App Store | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft says antitrust bodies need to review Apple App Store

bloomberg.com

50 pointselsewhen25 comments

The huge tech companies that have emerged in the last couple decades have been anti-competitive than Microsoft ever was.

Remembering back to the Microsoft Internet Explorer vs US Gov't anti-trust case is almost comical next to the trillion dollar app monopolies that Google and Apple have setup.

As endless threads talk about the free-speech vs hate-speech angle, the real damage is being done thru these near-monopoly/oligopoly tech companies.

The governments of the world are either going to co-opt them into puppets or force their break-up. ...at least I hope it's one of those two, because the alternative is for them to take over and obviate any democracy we have left.

The App Store reminds me a lot of the abusive terms that came with 1980's compilers. They wanted money for a license an then a cut of your sales. Borland and Microsoft put those guys out of business.

>trillion dollar app monopolies that Google and Apple have setup.

How does Apple have a monopoly? They only own 25% mobile market share globally.[1]

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide

First of all, the jurisdiction of the US justice department means you need to look at the percentage market of smart phones in the US - not globally and not on non-smart phones.

But more importantly - It is no different that when Microsoft tied Internet Explorer to Windows. They didn't have a monopoly either - and you don't need one to run foul of anti-trust laws.

To break the law, you simply need to use your position to put anti-competitive pressure on your competitors, exactly by pressuring and tying products together like Apple has done.

The only reason phone manufacturers have forced users to their app store is exactly to create a little monopoly on their platform.

>But more importantly - It is no different that when Microsoft tied Internet Explorer to Windows. They didn't have a monopoly either - and you don't need one to run foul of anti-trust laws.

They did. Windows had > 98% of the desktop market.

What more proof could you need? In what universe would Windows' market penetration NOT be considered a monopoly?

> They didn't have a monopoly either - and you don't need one to run foul of anti-trust laws.

Not quite true - there are many examples of a monopolistic market where smaller players will leverage anti-competitive tactics that are only legal because of their small market share; if the monopolist used those same tactics, then it would be illegal.

To be precise though, you're right that you don't need a full-on monopoly - just dominant market ownership and actual leverage of that dominance, which can be evaluated in multiple ways. One ex:price-elasticity analysis arguments that compare changing prices to responses in the market demand. If I raise prices 100x, or charge a super high premium above what an efficient market would dictate, but demand doesn't change, then you can make a reasonable case for my market dominance.

As another analogy: if I make an phone operating system "HackerNewsOS" and charge a 80% premium to apps wanting to be in my app store, my market share of "one person" would not run roul of anti-trust laws.

(However, if I conspire with Apple to set the same premium on both of our platforms, then we're talking a different ballgame haha...)

>It is no different that when Microsoft tied Internet Explorer to Windows.

Yes and no - I would argue that Microsoft's dominance of the PC market in the 90's is >> Apple's dominance of the mobile phone market share. I'm really interested to see how the courts eventually settle on some of the definitions of the markets in question, as that would dictate how much leverage Apple really does have.

To attract antitrust scrutiny in the US you don't need to be a monopoly. You need something economists call "market power." A firm has market power when they are able to raise their prices with impunity because consumers are unable to switch to alternatives.

If Apple decides to raise the price of all the apps on its store tomorrow, what can you do? Those apps have no other way to get to you, all you can do is take the pain. That smells like market power. I guess you have the option of switching to Android, but that comes with a high cost. So figuring out whether that matters is the type of thing that would be examined in an investigation.

> If Apple decides to raise the price of all the apps on its store tomorrow, what can you do?

Funny enough, I was going to argue that you don't _have_ to use Apple, but you're absolutely right on the switching costs, and is a compelling argument. (If this was r/ChangeMyView, I'd give you a delta.)

Yet, from a customer experience standpoint I'm a tad worried about the implications: one solution would be to allow multiple app stores on a given platform. I know this group would support that, but it's already hard enough to teach my family how to use one app store, and to be careful about downloading shady apps - never mind MULTIPLE.

Ex: if my 60 year old uncle wants to play a game, I can imagine him asking "why do I have to download a separate app just to download the app I want?"

Imagine if Microsoft would have shut down every external program on windows and charged every software developer 30% merely for running software on windows. That's the world of app stores and Apple and Google.

I have absolutely no idea why Microsoft is often hated, despite the fact that I can run whatever I want on my windows machine, compile software, download stuff from the internet, doesn't matter, and that's despite almost universal market share for decades.

Windows at the end of the day may be proprietary software and they've pulled their share of nonsense but Windows was pretty much always a genuine platform that lets you do what you want. The state of the smartphone market is unacceptable.

It would’ve been great. No malware on windows. No shady creditcard transfers

The fact that there are apps in both stores that turn out to be malware makes this claim demonstrably false.

It's a bit like GW Bush, now that you have Trump you forget how awful he was (Patriot Act, War in Iraq, ...).

A simple solution for Antitrust authorities would be to allow users to download apps from outside the app store like on Android phones.

Do people do that on Android in the countries where Apple has more than a 1/3 share? I’m not sure of the exact countries, but there’s likely only a handful.

Other issues arise based on the app too. Like Hey’s app fight. I’d think any area with a culture to side load apps wouldn’t be a place that would get too many people [able to be] paying $100/yr service.

F-Droid is a thing. Amazon had its own app store for Fire devices. Gamers sideloaded Fortnite onto their Android devices.

It's not super common, but it happens.

While we're at it, there should be an officially supported API for app stores so you don't have to root your phone and install privilege extensions just to get the same convenience with F-Droid as with the Play Store.

Android phones sold in China don't have access to the Google Play Store so every phone manufacturer has their own store. Some apps (like Feiliao, ByteDance alternative to wechat) are distributed as .apk directly from the app website.

> Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said it’s time for antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe to discuss tactics that app stores use to take advantage of those who want to distribute their software.

I agree. Microsoft store on Windows 10 should accept browser engine other than Microsoft Edge like Firefox. It's insane on Windows 10S you can't use any other browser other than Microsoft Edge.

Has Firefox released a UWP version for the windows store?

> No. When you're using Windows 10 in S mode, Microsoft Edge is always the default web browser, and Bing is the default search engine. But you can access other browsers and search engines while in S mode. You can download any browser available in the Microsoft Store in Windows, and you can navigate to any other search engine website. [0]

Would it matter if it did, considering that it cannot become the default browser? If you cannot modify the default (without permanently switching out of S mode) then in all likelihood, even if you have downloaded a different browser, you'll end up using the default eventually.

[0] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4020089/windows-10-...

I think it matters whether a platform disallows an app or just disallows setting that app to default.

Microsoft should know. They got burned to the tune of tens of billions of $ trying to fight against Apple/Google duopoly with Windows Phone. I still miss it. It was truly a better designed system than both ios and android.

Microsoft, like many companies, wants the law to work one way for themselves and another way for their competitors.

Fun fact: Microsoft filed an amicus brief in favor of Google in Oracle v. Google. Yet in the 90s, they themselves asserted copyright over an API when Sun tried to get the Windows API published as an ECMA standard.

What you mean? They were punished for a crime and now are asking if someone doing similar things to what they previously did (not anymore) should not face consequences as well.

If I ran a red light 10 years ago, and got ticketed, surely I can demand that you be ticketed as well if you run a red light today.

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