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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

This is just asking why acquisitions happen. There are plenty of reasons, and they typically don't demonstrate monopolistic behavior, certainly not in any legal sense.

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Except for the sense where it's an anti-consumer concentration of market power. Something Apple is fond of. [1] Is this particular action currently illegal? Probably not, because in the US we're in an era of extreme friendliness toward companies from anti-trust regulators. But that doesn't mean no reasonable market regulator would ever frown on acquisitions like this.

[1] E.g.: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343336/apple-tim-cook-im...

How is it anti consumer? What harm has a consumer suffered? It seems like your only answer to this is “there’s less weather apps”? If your viewpoint were the one used for antitrust then no acquisition ever would be acceptable.

Many people love Dark Sky, and Apple simply killed it.

Exactly. Comments here show that people had a good thing. Apple took it away from them to get a competitive advantage.

What did Apple take away here? The app icon? Android support has been gone since 2020 and most (all?) of the features of Dark Sky are integrated (and enhanced apparently) into iOS 16. So you have a situation where all the people that "had a good thing" now have it by default without an extra app they have to click on and now more people will have that good thing by default for free. If anything, this is anti-anti-competitive behavior because it's PRO-consumer. Apple is literally giving away a $4 app that was previously available ONLY to iOS users to all iOS 16 users.

If this is anti-consumer in your mind I would really like to hear what acquisition is not an antitrust problem from your perspective.

Android support was killed post Apple purchase so I'm confused as to how you could possibly _not_ see this as anticonsumer. Apple purchased Dark Sky and then they proceeded to remove access to it for the majority of the world's mobile users.

Apple produced a weather app and bought out a leading competitor. This hurts the consumer because there is a loss of consumer choice and competition in the space.

In a related vein, it's exciting that Apple is investing in Apple Maps as a competitor to Google Maps, especially since Google bought out Waze a few years ago.

So exactly what Anti trust regulations are they guilty of when they announced that they would support Android?

https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki...

Be honest: would you start an Android weather app that's totally dependent on Apple's goodwill?

Apple has had a public documented API for its podcast directory since 2005.

Would I be better off dependent on Google? A company that has the attention span of a crack addle flea?

Would I be better off depending on a small private company?

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