This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.
Even more so when you consider how much larger these companies are set to get yet (Google will double in size again within ~5-7 years). It's the Microsoft case if Microsoft had been allowed to continue to build its power out for another 10-15 years unchecked. In the 1990s a parade of magazines ran stories about how Microsoft wanted to set up a toll road on the Internet, to position itself to take a bite out of all ecommerce. They were of course meant to be scare stories to garner attention as Microsoft wasn't close to accomplishing something like that at that point.
And yet, here we are two decades later, Apple and Google control two big Internet toll roads and are drastically larger and more powerful than Microsoft was in the 1990s. IBM was seven times larger than Microsoft in 1997. Microsoft of the 1990s looks downright quaint by comparison, an emerging big tech company playing at being giant (back then there were still far larger and more powerful corporations); today, Apple and Google - big tech broadly - are the most powerful and largest companies. Caterpillar, GE, 3M, General Dynamics, GM, Ford, Honeywell, etc look like sad jokes standing next to Apple or Google.
Google for its part has three monopolies which have amazingly been left entirely alone: search, YouTube, Android. They must have signed one helluva protection deal with the intelligence apparatus back when PRISM was getting set up, they got a ten year get out of jail free card (it's in the interests of the intelligence community to have these giant intel-hoovering companies that sprawl and span the globe).
It was a choice, but most decided to cave in and only sell PCs.
Here that isn't the case, most shops selling iPhones also have other brands available. Customers aren't forced into buying iPhones.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....
In a more reasonable market, like smartphones or phones in total, Apple just does not have a monopoly. There are alternatives.
By that measure, there is very little competition in the smartphone segment—it is highly concentrated and so the major players (both Apple and Google) should face greater antitrust scrutiny.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman...
From the linked documents:
> If Android competed with iOS on app transactions, the market competition would make Android apps cheaper for users and attract developers to launch their apps first (or even only) on Android. [...] After a meeting involving senior executives of Google and Apple, notes of the meeting were exchanged between the two companies. The notes reflect: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
Epic's lawsuits are alleging that both Apple and Google have engaged in anti-competitive behavior here, albeit sometimes in different ways. Even bolder, they're claiming that Google and Apple engaged cooperative anti-competitive behavior that benefited both companies. What consumer-ready alternatives exist for users outside of Apple and Android? If a developer announces that they're building a smartphone game, and that it won't work on Android or iOS, do you think it's reasonably possible for that developer to make money with that game?
Apple has massive amounts of competitive leverage over the smartphone ecosystem; they control the most profitable app store. And the vast majority of non-iOS phones are running the Google Play Store. In that context, locking down the hardware has much bigger implications than it would in a truly competitive market. I think the question is, do we actually have a competitive smartphone market when it comes to smartphone app stores and OSes?
I do shudder at the day of seeing websites that only work on Chrome for iOS, an app that I will never use.
A monopoly is not needed for anti-competitive behavior to be illegal. All that is needed is significant market power.
Apple has 50% of the smartphone market. Which is around where courts have stated that anti-trust laws start to apply.
50% of a highly concentrated market is not a slam dunk anti-trust case, by any means, but it is within the realm where courts might rule against it, depending on numerous factors.
Have any references where someone was sued for antitrust while having <50% marketshare (of course, using the market determined by the court at the time)? If what you say is true, is the cutoff for antitrust action just "when media outlets report on it long enough to actually be put in sight of regulators/congress"?
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
The cutoff is as follows "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors"
If you want statements from a judge, regarding the 50 percent specifically, you can look up the following court cases and read from the primary source.
"See Hayden Publ'g Co., Inc. v. Cox Broad. Corp., 730 F.2d 64, 69 n.7 (2d Cir. 1984) ("[A] party may have monopoly power in a particular market, even though its market share is less than 50%."); Broadway Delivery Corp. v. UPS, 651 F.2d 122, 129 (2d Cir. 1981) ("[W]hen the evidence presents a fair jury issue of monopoly power, the jury should not be told that it must find monopoly power lacking below a specified share."); Yoder Bros., Inc. v. Cal.-Fla. Plant Corp., 537 F.2d, 1347, 1367 n.19 (5th Cir. 1976) (rejecting "a rigid rule requiring 50% of the market for a monopolization offense without regard to any other factors")."
But yes, typically, if a company has less than 50% of a market, anti-trust law does not apply. But the word "typically" does not mean "always". (And Apple has 54% of the US market)
And whether it applies, would defend on "other factors", as according to the quote I linked, and there is a good argument, IMO, that a duopoly would be a reasonable "other factor".
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/
"In 1955, the date of this merger, Brown was the fourth largest manufacturer in the shoe industry, with sales of approximately 26 million pairs of shoes and assets of over $72,000,000 while Kinney had sales of about 8 million pairs of shoes and assets of about $18,000,000."
And even more relevant:
"Another important factor to consider is the trend toward concentration in the industry. It is true, of course, that the statute prohibits a given merger only if the effect of that merger may be substantially to lessen competition. But the very wording of § 7 requires a prognosis of the probable future effect of the merger.
The existence of a trend toward vertical integration, which the District Court found, is well substantiated by the record. Moreover, the court found a tendency of the acquiring manufacturers to become increasingly important sources of supply for their acquired outlets. The necessary corollary of these trends is the foreclosure of independent manufacturers from markets otherwise open to them. And because these trends are not the product of accident, but are rather the result of deliberate policies of Brown and other leading shoe manufacturers, account must be taken of these facts in order to predict the probable future consequences of this merger. It is against this background of continuing concentration that the present merger must be viewed."
Are smartphones a natural monopoly? And at what levels? Hardware (including plugs and jacks, physical button locations and functions?), software, data federation? Like where do you draw the line?
If smartphones must allow alternatives, then why not gaming consoles? It's a similarily integrated device. Would Microsoft be forced to allow unlicenced 3rd party software on the Xbox?
One may argue that people rarely need a gaming console to pursue job opportunities, for instance. A smartphone, on the other hand, has become practically mandatory in many industries.
But in reality, in the wake of 9/11, USA thought it was more important to have extremely large companies, and it let them grow.
(And MS’ EU fine was related to not giving the API doc, and perhaps using fines as a political weapon).
Clearly, if US applied the anti-monopoly laws, it would shoot its own companies. In my opinion however, no single entity should dominate, govt or enterprise, and we must parcel large ones to keep competition fair, replacements rolling, class mobility high, the american dream possible for new entrants and more importantly, so that governance of our daily life is regularly given to the next generation.
Can you give any evidence of what changed after 9/11 in terms of pro-corporate policy?
Antitrust enforcement has more to do with the party in power than anything else. The Bush Administration wasn't interested in suing businesses, and now the Biden Administration is again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#2.5...
> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.
I’ve seen people saying in these comments often that you have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right now, what am I missing?
But if you can’t tell the difference, does it really matter?
Firefox on Android supports add-ons, in particular uBlock origin. Firefox on iOS does not. That's a huge difference.
Apple standing against that is important for the open web.
However, Apple isn't extending its dominance in the smart phone area (Apple has 53% market share of mobile devices, Microsoft had above 90% market share for intel compatible PCs https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f... ) to its licensees for iOS.
Apple not forcing Samsung to bundle Safari on the Samsung branded iPhones to the exclusion of Chrome.
Yes, Apple isn't licensing iOS to others and that's a key difference. Furthermore, Apple has half of the market dominance that Microsoft had in its day.
> and when they're colluding with the "competition".
Unless you have evidence for that, that's just libel.
> '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."'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman...
With 53% market share, Apple alone contributes over 0.25 to the HHI. 0.25 for the entire market is regarded as highly concentrated.
The 2001 decision was comparing desktop options at a time when they weren't any. Today's mobile users have plenty of options, plenty of brands and OSs to choose from.
Android is Linux under the hood. It just doesn't use any of the cruft that desktop Linux usually has, like Xorg.
- Mac OS X Public Beta (2000)
- SUSE Linux 7.0 (2000)
- Debian 2.2 (2000)
- OpenBSD 2.7 (2000)
- Solaris 8 (2000)
- AmigaOS 3.9 (2000)
- and so on... [0]
Hardly “no alternatives” in my humble opinion.
And in office space, MS-DOS was still a thing for quite some time.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems#...
Firefox worked, as did Flash (hello NewGrounds!), Java (RuneScape), you could do a ton and be nigh invulnerable to all the malware on the internet of the early 2000s.
It's interesting to think that the project has survived for so long, even if nowadays the Libre office variety is more widely used.