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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

A monopoly can be so many things that the question needs to be "is it causing harm?"

For example, a trademark or a copyright or a patent is a monopoly on the use of that IP, and those are considered "good" by the governments and courts.

In my (IANAL) opinion, I think the important question for a mobile app store needs to be: do users and developers have a meaningful choice between iOS, Android, and just a website?

I really don't know the answer to that, though I expect the market share plays a part in it — if iOS was 10% or 90%, then developers surely would not have any meaningful choice.

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There was a lawyer and a judge in the Epic case that in fact did rule that Apple wasn’t a monopoly…

And now they've had a different court which, assuming antitrust and monopoly are the same concept, says they are.

As I'm not a lawyer, my understanding of their arguments is going to be strictly worse than ChatGPT's, and I know it.

Well the EU is not exactly known for well thought out jurisprudence or legislation when it comes to tech.

Could you give any examples? I'd say GDPR was an incredibly well-thought-out bit of legislation

You mean all 99 sections and 11 chapters?

And all we got was cookie banners

And it didn’t affect the big guys. It just made compliance harder for the little guys

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33561222

It’s a regulatory nightmare for smaller companies.

Apple’s Ad Tracking Transparency did more to affect privacy - according to companies like Facebook that admitted on earnings calls that they projected billions in losses based on iOS users opting out

All of the AI regulations are just going to make companies say - forget it in the EU. How much longer did open AI take to come to the EU as opposed to the US?

I’m also not a lawyer but my understanding is that anti-trust law covers broader stuff than just monopoly busting. There’s no reason to require Apple to be a monopoly before we start to worry that they might be engaging in anti-competitive behavior.

IMO arguing about whether or not they are a monopoly is a losing pedantry battle that misses the point. People will bring up exact market share, and what exactly is a market—honestly, some good arguments about whether or not Apple is technically a monopoly—but, who cares? They are clearly a major player and so if they are not competing fairly that’s clearly a major problem.

And how has that definition worked out for any tech company in the last 30 years?

How has any FTC action worked against a tech company in 30 years? Even Microsoft just got a slap on the wrist

In this case of Apple, we had a real judge in the Epic case saying that Apple is not a monopoly

What do you expect a definition to do?

Well, the definition that the FTC and HN users have tried to proffer has utterly failed on the US justice system.

Related, it also failed in the civil case brought by Epic

Like you said, the US helped Carnegie stage actual massacres before the case was made that they were a monopoly. It's entirely feasible that Apple has and abuses monopoly power, but the politics of implicating them don't align yet.

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