So according to Apple [edit] one isn't allowed to say bad things about a company publicly or they are allowed to ban your account? Interesting view.
That's the issue with all these providers. Every couple of weeks there's a story from someone whose Google account was suddenly closed with no way to access their emails or pictures again.
Once you buy a smartphone today you and everybody who wants to do further business with you are at the mercy of a monopolist. For Apple 100%, for Google only 98% because you could side-load. But not a secure and practical solution today.
Combined with the "must be very big" requirement it better fits what is going on in the tech world.
Yes, you have a choice once every couple of years while you might want to install an app several times a year. Free markets would also be the wrong word to describe the situation.
A customer is only looking for either iOS or Android apps, and isn't going to choose an Android app if they have an iPhone, or vice versa (IOW, iOS apps don't compete with Android apps).
Imagine only one company sold diesel fuel, and only one sold gasoline. Wouldn't you say they each had a monopoly?
Said another way, you might be right about US antitrust law, but when that law was written the technology didn't exist to create "vendor lock-in" on millions of products at once.
I am curious about the example though, from a legal perspective. Would the only seller of gasoline have a monopoly, even if other fuels were available, and the only barrier to using them was the switching cost of buying a new vehicle?
Edit: For what it's worth, wikipedia uses the word monopoly when "a single vendor controls the market for the method or technology being locked in to".
Why can I run code Apple loathes on my Mac ?
The DMA was always phrased from the wrong perspective (which is just classic EU, they literally cannot ever get regulation right). The correct phrasing is: once a computer operating system achieves a certain level of market adoption (say, 50M+ active installations), it is designated as a systemically critical operating system. Among other regulations, one thing systemically critical operating systems must allow is the independent and unrestricted installation and execution of applications from the internet.
Regulating the market (App Store) itself is just dumb. Apple should not be forced to have Epic Games as a customer. It destroys trust in the App Store's review process, and legitimately does from my perspective infringe on Apple's rights as a business to do business with partners as they please. There's a gulf of difference between "forcing the App Store to distribute some application" and "allowing that application to be freely distributed on the internet". Regulation should be specifically targeted toward the second situation; and leave the App Store alone.
It is Apple who decided that third-party software distributers must comply with certain restrictions, and must sign a contract with them.
And it was Apple which tried to prevent Epic from signing that contract, and who's now backtracking… before it's forced to do so by the EU.
Android allows the installation of alternative app stores but Google still retains large effective control over the app market.
I would argue that the EU recognised that and therefore regulated Operating systems and app stores because the former one isn't enough apparently.
If things continue along this trajectory we may see the utility argument at the store level and at the OS level.
Looking at how the electric power distribution industry is regulated it already works like this (at least here in Germany).
On the one hand grid operators are heavily regulated (as you say) and must allow companies without infrastructure to resell power to end customers.
On the other hand the actual owner of the last mile infrastructure is also forced to do business with all customers and has very little freedom to refuse(e.g. non-payment is a temporary valid reason).
We may very well see something similar in the software distribution market since it's becoming such an integral part of life.
Decades ago people were crying out against it, but nobody with power listened because they thought we just wanted to steal music[0]. Well, we did, but that didn't make us wrong. Now the world economy is owned by a handful of oligopolist-elected dictators who have maximally exploited the laws in question to make meaningful competition literally illegal.
No, seriously, try and ship a phone without big tech's blessing. It won't work. Hell, Amazon and Microsoft both tried and failed. Everyone only writes apps for Google Play and iOS, and any attempt to make them work elsewhere is a criminal felony.
[0] To be clear, their real concern was finding ways to legally bind China to pay us for "our IP" on pain of being shut out of world markets. Dictatorship is fractal.
It sounds like the problem isn't Google being able to refuse service, but instead that Google doing that has the power to kill your smaller company. No one company should be allowed to have the power to decide which companies live or die.
If I founded a company that specializes in manufacturing Pokemon toys under contract, and Nintendo (for whatever reason) pulls the contract, it's perfectly normal for the business to no longer be viable and to be liquidated.
If all restaurants are Taco Bell, is it reasonable to allow such bans by taco bell?
Apple is not a monopoly anywhere on the planet and has no such requirement.
But this is not about Apple's right as a company to refuse any business with Epic, they still have that right.
This is about Apple not complying with a law that targets them due to their anti-competitive behavior; a law that requires them to give the means to operate an App Store competitor to anyone who requests it.
Apple is the one who decided to require an Apple developer account in order to operate an App Store competitor, so they effectively gave up their right to refuse any business with Epic by adding this unnecessary requirement.
I personally think it’s silly to believe that Apple cares even a little about Epic’s criticism. They probably thought they had a legitimate case that would let them stomp out a potential big App Store competitor before it could get off the ground.
The fact that Apple is now regulated is definitely not a symptom of the illegality of their terms. Definitely not.
The European Economic Zone sets regulations around economic policy. Their creation of the DMA was that while the markets did not have monopolistic abuse, that there were areas that still did not have _enough_ competition.
Now I would argue the DMA is misguided, because they are basically trying to regulate in a counter to the network effect. The problem is (for example) that even with barriers lowered, an upstart messaging app cannot compete with WhatsApp because they still cannot grow by the network effects the way WhatsApp did, because WhatsApp already exists and is popular. An upstart will still have to already be on target to become larger than WhatsApp in order to supplant them.
Alternative Marketplaces have been possible on Android for years and really haven't succeeded except in markets where Google Play is unavailable. Why would developers put time and effort into being where nobody is? How does anything in the DMA change their minds - better transaction fees on no sales?
The DMA does give companies an opportunity to innovate, such as how MacPaw is going to have a SetApp Marketplace which is a subscription service for mostly utility apps (similar to Apple Arcade as a first-party marketplace for games). But I would argue there is no way SetApp will be as popular as the App Store - it is a business opportunity, not market competition. I would say this is akin to F-Droid - it is an alternative marketplace on Android, but not one that really competes with Play.
It is not an illegal contract. It is a contract that Epic _hopes_ is illegal.
I don't get to ignore my home mortgage payments without consequence even if I believe in my truest of heart that giving money to a bank is wrong. In this metaphor, Apple here is the bank saying that Epic has a habit of not paying back loans, and has publicly stated how they think the loan they are applying for is 'hot garbage'.
No, according to Apple, they believed Epic was going to violate their developer agreement again, and when they asked Sweeney for a commitment he sent them a two sentence email. His public actions were only a modifier on top of his seeming lack of committal and previous history of being a bad actor on Apple’s platform.
Spotify says bad things about Apple all the time, but they've never been banned because they've never violated Apple's rules.
I don't really think that's according to DF, more so Apple.
On the other hand, I'm definitely not saying this is okay or sane just because it's standard practice in the US. It's also how we got legalized segregation and we had to pass laws carving out exceptions to create protected classes such that you're not allowed to refuse service because a person is black, for instance. Just doing this splintered the country and created the modern GOP with its southern strategy.
So it's nice to see these large web companies having to respect the laws of other jurisdictions and not just the US with its hallowed history of property rights over all else, going all the way back to chattel slavery. If the EU can force saner norms on the web, I'm all for it.
There are enough really obvious counterexamples to that statement that I wonder why you'd write it.
In particular in this case, we have many pass example where even in the US, companies have be found to violate anti trusts law be either refusing or strongly conditioning doing business with a third-party.
I think you mean Black 3.0 (or the other versions from the same artist) which cannot be used by Anish Kapoor.
Worth nothing that the artist making that paint is british and not american.