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1. Engineering staff
2. Hosting costs (probably tens of millions of dollars annually)
3. All other liabilities
Apple for that 30% 1. Charges a credit card
2. Pushes app updates
3. "Verifies" app quality (aka ensure theres no payment links)
How is that remotely the same?
The costs to consumers are why we're talking about this, and why, as a society, we try to police it.
I don't have to participate in a market.
Free markets are a battle ground. Businesses should use what ever advantage they have over each other to get ahead.
This is why I am very against people that often beg regulators to come and reduce on the so called "unfair" business practices.
The free market is not some place where businesses gather together around a fire singing Kumbaya Or as brothers in arms breaking bread.
This confusion as to why businesses should be left to fight each other is what I mostly disagree with people on.
Including illegal monopoly power? If we gave Ma Bell and Standard Oil free reign I don't think the free market would be any better because of it.
The word illegal doesn't mean unethical or wrong. So you will have to be very specific with what you mean.
Just because some politicians decided to write something on a piece of paper doesn't make it right.
How would you want the free market to be any "better"?
The philosophy of a free market means a "free" market. Freedom for businesses to use what ever strategy they want to participate. Their is nothing it is specifically optimizing for.
> The word illegal doesn't mean unethical or wrong.
Nor does "monopoly" necessarily mean "illegal" in many cases. You might not agree with the politicians, but largely we agree with democracy and can empathize with victims when they present reasonable harms. In this case, enough people within and without the Apple ecosystem are motivated to compel Apple to change. If you believe in freedom of self-determination, you should be looking at this from the perspective of Apple choosing which markets they consider worth competing in.
> The philosophy of a free market means a "free" market.
You can be as philosophically correct as you want, but that doesn't change how law regulates the market (nor how other nations will behave). Governments intervene in the market. You're free to feel however you want about that, but first-world governments generally don't roll over when they're being exploited.
Anti-trust was started for a reason, we know how this ends long term, little competition and increased prices for everyone.
Think banks, insurance, pharmaceuticals, law etc.
Your opinion is like blaming American food being bad on the FDA. Without the (few) places where the FDA draws the line, that food would not get any better. Trust me.