Senators want to rein in Apple and Google’s alleged app store monopolies

seattletimes.com

26 pointszvrba2 comments

Good. Another shocking revelation relating to app stores can be found in this unredacted bit from the Epic lawsuit (https://reclaimthenet.org/google-paid-phone-manufacturers-to...), showing that while Google pitched Android as a “platform”, they also paid off manufacturers to keep third party app stores off their devices. Isn’t this a clearly anti competitive situation?

Apart from ludicrous abusive rent seeking and the inability to use our hardware freely, I am also concerned about general market competition due to the sheer size and vertical integration of these companies, going beyond just app stores. And then there are the numerous privacy concerns from scanning our private data (https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/08/20/researchers-who-b...) to normalizing breaches of our right to health privacy (https://reclaimthenet.org/apple-google-and-samsung-move-to-n...). It’s time to rein them in.

Legitemate question - why can't apps give simple cost breakdown when users are purchasing stuff from within the app?

If I let's say topup credits used for microtransactions for $10 from within an app, user will pay the price, which subtracted by 30% of it's value will equal 10$ - in this case 14.28. Unlucky users who don't know about possibility of purchasing same stuff let's say from the website will pay and forget about it, lucky ones will go to the website, pay $10 for the same thing and understand why is the difference (apple tax). This is simple transparency which actually is present in US when people are paying the price + tax, unlike Europe where people are seeing price with tax included. Am I missing something here?

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