Both companies need to be made to support sandboxed web installs sans taxation.
I think you are even now overestimating that number.
This is exactly what Android supports. APKs can be and are distributed on the web.
Nobody ever accused Microsoft or Sony of "getting to decide what games were allowed to be made" because they strictly controlled what works are allowed on their platforms. There are always other platforms one can publish on.
The real problem is that consumers have accepted an Apple/Google duopoly over mobile computing, which isn't defeated by destroying the free choice of corporations, but by creating a viable competing alternative. This currently exists in the form of jailbreaking, the use of third-party app stores and sideloading. Ultimately it should take the form of a competing smartphone OS.
Quite frankly, Linux is beginning to look more and more capable of breaking into this scene, and this will fundamentally turn the current broken system on its head when it happens. Android being open source and Unix-based only makes it easier since a ton of the foundations already exist.
Consumers don't have any choice. Apps are typically only available for iOS/Android. The difference with Xbox/PlayStation is that those aren't general purpose platform. Nobody needs an Xbox to access their bank or government functions. But people do (realistically) need to use smartphones. Regulation is absolutely appropriate here.
My question to you would be: why not regulate? What concrete harm do you think it would cause?
they've been general purpose platforms for years.
they just don't look like it because the manufacturers are even more restrictive with access than apple.
Phones are ubiquitous, and the vast majority of businesses have a Compelling Reason to have a presence on these devices. Allowing two companies to make any decision they want regarding what nearly every non-trivial business Can and Can Not Do, is the very definition of anti-competitiveness.
When you are a monopoly and you can influence other businesses in such an overarching way, it is Extremely Appropriate that you have to follow a Different Set of Rules than other people, rules that are more closely regulated to ensure that you are not abusing your position
Game consoles are not. Smartphones are. Obviously.
You'll need a stronger argument to claim that something that almost everyone uses despite significant cost isn't essential.
And to be clear when you say essential you mean for everyone alive right?
And for the record, governments have laws to step in when gasoline or food supplies become unavailable. And in the US, at least, being able to drive is seen as a right in the eyes of the public.
Yes, grocery stores are essential. Yes, gasoline is essential, being the only source of energy for all long range transportation.
Yes cars are essential in many places where there's no good alternative. For example most of America, geographically.
I’m trying to establish what other industries are “essential” so I can try and understand how we regulate such industries and in what ways they are similar to the discussion here about Apple. If grocery stores are essential for example does that mean they should have to stock competitor store brand products if the competitor want to sell at that store? If I live in a town with only one grocery store and I want to pay with Bitcoin should they have to set up that payment mechanism? Should they have to accept all payment mechanisms? There are lots of questions here that you can open up that draw parallels with Apple here w.r.t being “essential”.
One of the many differences is that the duopoly of Apple and Google in mobile markets is effectively unbreakable without government regulation. Today there is no amount of billions you can spend to break their moat. In contrast, grocery stores are highly competitive because they don't have insurmountable barriers to entry. Anyone can lease retail space and sign up with a distributor. There are lots of independent grocery stores operating in many towns.
There is no exact point. It is a spectrum.
And phones are clearly on the side of essential.
We do not need an exact cutoff point to make judgements about an obvious case.
The criteria would be "Whatever a jury or judge determines what the definition of essential is, in each specific lawsuit or case". Thats how the law works.
The law is not determined by some sort of exact programming code.
Instead, the law is determined by people. "I'll know it when I see it" is an actual argument, that the supreme court gave, for determining a similar question about what the definition of pornography is.
So, the answer for what "essential" is, is the same answer that the literal supreme court used, which is "I'll know it when I see it" or "whatever the judge/jury decides".
If that answer is good enough for the supreme court, then it is good enough for me.
> You’re invoking the fallacy, not me
Actually you were the one using the fallacy. Because you are attempting to demand an exact cutoff point, which is not necessary. The law does not need to define exact cutoff points ahead of time.
Instead, the law can consider those questions, as they come, in a court case/trial.
Again this is incorrect. I have not “demanded an exact cutoff point” at any time.
> Instead, the law can consider those questions, as they come, in a court case/trial.
So in other words you’re making a claim and then your defense of that claim is “the law will decide in a court case”. Ok… lol.
You said this "I asked at what point something crosses over "
This is literally you asking at what point something crosses over.
You shouldn't ask questions in the way that you are, if you don't want them to be interpreted in this way.
Because the poor way that you are asking questions, is such that other people have noticed the same similar issues that I am noticing with them, by looking at all the other questions/way that you are interreacting with people.
And now that I clarified what I meant you are still going on about it. Why? Are you interested in a discussion or are you more interested in trying to play "gotcha" on the Internet?
The issue here, is that the way you are speaking, and phrasing your questions, is leading everyone else to believe that you are the one playing gotcha. Thats what everyone else is saying to you, based on their responses.
When you ask bad questions, that you should know the answer to, it comes off as a disingenuous attempt to trick someone up (Because, since the question should have an obvious answer, it is not clear why you are asking it in the first place).
But in general something is essential when it is required to participate/function/exist/live/thrive meaningfully in society. These days lots of governments require that you have a smart phone to check in when you go somewhere or to show a digital vaccine certificate. Before that some big social media platforms (which is a big part of society) was either exclusive to mobile or designed to work best on mobile. Some services requires using a mobile app to interact with said service (account management). My current bank is mobile only as an example.
The mobile duopoly is like having a duopoly on printing or paper manufacture.
It would be crippling for businesses to have to pay a Paper Tax for all paper use, with a special surcharge for check or invoice printing, over and above the purchase cost of printer hardware.
Mobile payments and app ecosystems are no different. There might be a case if Apple was far more careful about app quality, curation, and security than it pretends to be.
But realistically it's just not doing a good enough job with any of them to justify its cut.
Would you be fine with being taxed for breathing if two or three companies hypothetically bought all the forests in your town or even state? After all, they own the things producing the oxygen you breathe, it only seems reasonable that you'd pay them.
Sometimes, maybe it's not reasonable for companies to justify their bad behaviour simply because they "own" something.
> Nobody ever accused Microsoft or Sony of "getting to decide what games were allowed to be made" because they strictly controlled what works are allowed on their platforms. There are always other platforms one can publish on.
I often just see the "consoles aren't general purpose" cop-out here but I'd go further and say: we should -- we should accuse them of being anticompetitive too.
Yeah because you could publish a game on tons of different platforms. There was competition. Sega, Nintendo, Atari, Sony, and that was just consoles, they too competed with Microsoft PC, then Microsoft XBox which was the same company but introduced additional competition nonetheless, and on top of all that, you could publish a game for Mac. And then there were the arcades, and gaming moreover competed with games that were electric but analog, like pinball and bowling. And that's excluding gambling. Another popular form of video games that didn't involve the companies I mentioned was watching a single viewer play a video game using a telephone as a controller and watching on a local TV channel, with thousands others watching the kid play, there were more platforms right there.
There was competition, and it was culturally accepted that if you wanted to show something to the world, there were many ways to go about it, but you had to go through a publisher, or a distributor, something.