I can't help thinking that a lot of anticompetitive cases will be won outside the US now that the US is in all-out trade war with the rest of the universe.
> The US has shown absolutely no willingness to carry out antitrust cases the past many years
Lina Khan's FTC brought cases again Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Mastercard, and more. They also prevented mergers (consolidations) in a lot of different industries. Could they have accomplished more? Certainly, but they did certainly did display a willingness to bring antitrust cases.
It does feel like Lina Khan's FTC was much more willing to play the part in the adversarial system. Don't necessarily agree with every decision but was surprising to see how willing the FTC was to jump into things and make unpopular (to stakeholders at least) decisions
One of the main problems in the US is that the US has an extremely broad antitrust statute:
> Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is
hereby declared to be illegal.
> Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed
guilty of a felony, ...
It was passed in the era of robber barons and meant to be a strong hammer against anti-competitive practices. But because it was so broad, the courts kept chipping away at it over time through reinterpretation because by its terms it would prohibit a lot of things the courts didn't really want to get involved in policing, or they just made bad calls in years when the Court's majority wasn't that smart.
Meanwhile monopolists generally have a lot of money to pay expensive lawyers, so they structure their activities to fit within the loopholes the courts have carved out over the years and that makes it hard for an administration to hold them to account even when they have the will to do it.
Hyper-partisanship also makes this worse, because if everyone is convinced the other side is pure evil then they're going to try to undo anything the other party was trying to do without even considering what it is, which isn't compatible with long-term prosecutions that would have to span administrations.
The sentiment i picked up from HN is that she was more of an activist leader with a grudge against big corporations and that this clouded her judgement. The cases she bought were insubstantial and fell apart. She's a bad poster child for what the FTC should be.
I don't know, but that isn't what i'm talking about. She pursued weak cases, and overstepped her authority. she should have spent more time constructing a better case, or not bringing them in the first place. As it was she accomplished less then she hoped and wasted everyones time and cost the taxpayer money.
> she should have spent more time constructing a better case, or not bringing them in the first place.
I disagree.
As to the former, the case is what the case is: obviously everyone would like to construct the strongest possible case.
As to the latter, the joke about career prosecutors only bringing cases they know they can win to pad their record comes to mind. In a regulatory role, IMHO prosecutors should be as aggressive as the law allows them to be, especially against the largest companies. It's difficult to claim that Google can't afford to mount a vigorous defense for itself.
> i thought it was strategic - to ensure global dominance in tech
I don't like the way this is phrased because it nearly implies that doing this is an advantage to the US population.
"Preventing foreign dominance in tech" is plausibly a legitimate goal. Preventing a foreign tech monopoly is a good thing. But the assumption that this can only be achieved by a domestic one is the fallacy. A domestic monopoly is still a disadvantage compared to a competitive market with a multitude of domestic companies.
Unless you're an authoritarian that wants to leverage the monopoly for the purposes of e.g. censorship. But then you're an enemy whose goal is to harm even the domestic population.
Why do you think Windows, MS Office, MSSQL, Azure, and other MS applications are used extensively in the federal government?
Its to prop up American businesses, and as a form of corporate welfare.
We see this a lot in various vertical industries. The USG could pay and make it free, but they would rather prop up proprietary software as long as its US based.
> Its to prop up American businesses, and as a form of corporate welfare.
You say that like it's an actual policy goal. You don't think it's because those companies donate to the campaigns of the politicians doing it? It's corruption.
I do. There's reasons for that from previous employment that would indicate that as a policy goal.
Red Hat is also technically accepted by US Gov. Technically. But you need to use? They're bypassing all sorts of security shit with ongoing POAMs and doing their own thing.
And yes, I would agree that its corruption as well.
Getting it written down as a policy goal in formal documents or training materials for mid-level bureaucrats is a mechanism of action for the corruption.
It's a matter of whether it would happen even if nobody was writing a check, and it still seems like the answer is no.
A great case example of this corruption is the following:
AC-2 : Kerberos/LDAP/DNS/Shibboleth CAN suffice, but auditors will absolutely look for Active Directory. Most auditors don't even know how to prove Linux this way.
CM-6 : this is just a roundabout way of saying 'do you support GPOs? '. Sure, Puppet can work, as can on-login bash scripts stored on a Windows AD server. But why use Linux clients when you're already using Windows AD?
Now, nowhere in NIST actually says 'MS Windows'. Its just that the control is worded in such a way that proving it on Windows is easy, and Linux is very hard to impossible to prove.
There was a single exception to vendor agnoticism, and that was the requirement of McAfee security software. I can't find the control offhand, but now its called Trellix.
A domestic monopoly might not be the only way to prevent a foreign monopoly, but it is a guaranteed way so it makes sense to let it proliferate.
Look at the state of the industry vertically. There's exactly 1 company that can produce the cutting-edge chip fabs, ASML. TSMC utterly dominates using the fabs to actually produce the chips. That's already 2 foreign-controlled horizontal monopolies on which the rest of the industry relies.
If you want any sort of control in the industry (and not be bullied for access like we do to China), you need to be the biggest buyer / operator of those chips. And so we encourage US mega-tech companies buying up all the GPUs, so those other monopolies aren't used to cripple us (or at least they'd cripple the whole chain if they tried).
> A domestic monopoly might not be the only way to prevent a foreign monopoly, but it is a guaranteed way so it makes sense to let it proliferate.
It isn't in any way guaranteed, and you just listed an example of it failing. Intel used to be the world leader in fabs and now it's TSMC, because that's what happens if you let the domestic market consolidate until the incumbents feel they can rest on their laurels and then a foreign competitor throws down the gauntlet.
> If you want any sort of control in the industry (and not be bullied for access like we do to China), you need to be the biggest buyer / operator of those chips.
Or you need an actual diverse competitive market so that that sort of bullying doesn't work for anyone.
Suppose the GPU market had a dozen or more companies with significant market share and four of them were in the US. Then it doesn't matter where the other ones are, nobody can deprive the US of GPUs because the US can always get them from the US vendors or have them increase production.
It would mean that the US can't do the bullying anymore because then others could buy from the non-US vendors, but what is the rest of the world doing not causing that to happen on purpose?
It's necessary to distinguish between the things that happen and the things we would prefer to happen as citizens if we want to get from one to the other.
I just read the prospectus investment strategy, and it looks like it trails the trades by up to 30-45 days? Seems like the majority of that upside might be gone by then, no? They explicitly list that in Reporting Delay Risk.
Also I didn't see any info on whether the fund manager can beat hft et al to the punch once disclosure happens.
It would interesting to know how it performs relative to other index funds even with the delay risk. A few people have been saying Nancy is getting better returns than Warren Buffet
Big Tech isn't exactly Trump's base. Trump collects wins[1] for his base at the expense of his non-supporters. Not sure how this makes Trump "not smart".
1 - Regardless of what you think of tariffs, his base largely considers them wins.
Trump collects wins for himself and his base flip-flops along with him and his every whim.
It's not about smart or not, he doesn't care beyond what he can get from it. He doesn't care about any retaliations and he knows he has his base eating outta the palm of his hand. Smart doesn't play into any of it, it's not needed. The Project state takes care of the smarts part of the administration
I think what might happen is all these other markets are going to end up “playing fair” while the US remains an abused ecosystem- because it’ll be the only place left Apple and Google can push their advantage.
I strongly doubt that US-Australia trade relationships played any role in the judges decision on this case (and, of course, everything else in this case occurred before Trump was even re-elected). Judges aren't in a role where they are negotiating, or particularly care about, international trade at all. Judges are intentionally separated from the political wing of the state in just about every western democracy.
In some ways you are probably right, however do not discount the fact that America’s relative weakness has opened up avenues for this type of action that otherwise would have likely not happened out of internal pressure due to concerns about that relationship, external pressure on the government to scuttle these kinds of efforts, and/or general lack of alternatives to the American market.
Especially with the rise and seeming power of BRICS there is surely a sense that the pressure is a bit off from the USA, America will be unwilling to add on to pressure against Australia that is close to core BRICS, etc.
Do not discount the rising awareness of the real weakness the “American” empire finds itself in suddenly.
I agree with this. I think potentially someone may have suggested the federal court sit on the decision until the 10% tariff was confirmed a couple of weeks ago. Mostly because the announcement pre Tariff might have resulted in a long Truth Social post from DT followed by a knee jerk reaction. But I highly doubt it would factor into the decision.
Australia is also in the process of regulating platforms and I'd expect it to end up a little closer to Europe/Japan in the next couple of years anyway. They will watch to see what loopholes Apple/Google exploit and try to deal with that in the regulations upfront.
Important context for anyone not aware is that Australia is one of the few countries that US runs a large trade surplus with.
Lol at you believing courts or judges don't follow their countries dictates. Most of the time such cases would be routed to a judge that will do what is asked without making any noise.
Where I come from, there is no need to route cases. I used to believe in Western justice systems, but as I've grown older, I've come to realize that much of the corruption money from Asia, Africa, and South America is parked in these same Western countries. Many of the corrupt officials who have fled their home countries are now living in these same Western countries, and in many cases, their families have been granted citizenship. The behavior of the ruling elite in Western countries tells me all I need to know about their justice systems. It seems that a large portion of the population has willingly, maybe unknowingly, put on blinders to their own countries' systems and behaviors.
Judges don't get elected in the US (except for some state and local judges) and yet the US is a superpower. I don't think judicial selection plays a major factor in determining superpower status.
Can you name any country that has ever been a superpower where judges (of the national judiciary if it has separate judiciaries for constituent parts from the national one) were predominantly democratically elected?
I do think this is a great counterexample, but it is largely a bug in the law specific to patents that was closed in 2017. Even then, IIUC on appeal your case would still be randomized.
That was the ‘old’ DOJ, Tim Apple was in the Oval Office a few days ago to pay tribute in gold… it got them exemptions from tariffs and I wouldn’t be surprised if the DOJ dropped this case soon.
Grovel? I thought it was making fun of the POTUS. What made it even funnier was that it'd go right over DT's head. Excellent messaging- pleases the wanna be monarch, shows investors that he's willing to work with any country's heads to ensure the success of Apple, and makes a mockery of the office with such a gaudy display.
> Cook presented Trump with an engraved piece of glass designed by a former Marine Corps corporal who works at Apple. The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold, Cook said, as he set it up on the Resolute Desk in front of Trump. “You’ve been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing,” Cook told Trump. Apple, Cook said, is “going to keep making investments right here in America and we’re going to keep hiring in America.”
> the actual publicized investment plans are barely any different
On the contrary.
> The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold
My recollection, which may be way off, is Biden preferred fine grade silver dinner ware and free Uber passes...
It is amazing how quickly centralized power can not just become deeply and openly corrupt, but operate free of credible challenge. The centralization in this case being years of tightened coordination within one party, acting on all three branches. The internal leverage created by such processes provides a natural habitat for final consolidation by an opportunistic individual.
And suddenly the standards of governance are unrecognizable. The unsurprising result of successfully centralized power.
It has long occurred to me that by not having limits on party power (seat limits? term limits? Cross state limits? Cross branch limits?), the US Constitution left a huge power coordination loop hole, free of checks and balances.
That loophole holds up an eternal carrot of legal one party rule. Temporary one party rule in theory, but the constant drive for that grinds down bipartisanship and respect for any shared power.
No one party should ever have a dominant majority of congress, much less dominate all three branches.
At that point, in-party incentives overwhelmingly push party solidarity above any other issue.
(Another great side effect of party seat/term limits would be the breakup up of the party duopoly which even when "working" lowered the bar for each party to the floor, i.e. neither party needed to do much but not be the latest disappointing incumbent. And a duopoly is incapable of providing choices reflecting a complex reality. They are reduced to competing via team identification/shibboleths.
Lots of ways to achieve that. I am not going to pick here. That’s an interesting discussion in its own right. But simple examples that demonstrate limits: parties can only operate in 10 states or less (for congressional candidates). Or parties can only hold 30% or less of congressional seats in either house. Etc.
In the short run, it enforces bipartisanship,
In the long run, it kills long term incentives to attempt to achieve single party rule temporarily, permanent or effectively permanent. Which has been a very destructive incentive driving tremendous organized partisan efforts. (Even when not achieved, the pursuit kills bipartisanship and competition on policy, in pursuit of a lasting hold on power.)
And it would open up elections to more parties, more choices, and force more flexibility, adaptation and collaboration from all parties, instead of more two party polarization and entrenchment.
Limits on parties like you discuss are a dumb idea, because they are trivially evaded by factional alliances that aren't formally parties.
OTOH, you wouldn't even need to have a reason to consider them if you simply had an electoral system that didn't lead to national duopoly frequently consisting of regional monopolies, e.g., if the legislative branch was elected in multiseat districts with a system structurally providing roughly proportional results, like Single Transferrable Vote.
The social technology of democracy has advanced since the 18th Century, but the most important parts of that advance, have been ignored in the US, at least at the federal level and statewide levels, though some local use is seen.
Maybe, but if Trump wanted this to go away he's had a good 7 months to make that happen and he got a million dollars cash gift for his inauguration, certainly worth more than a gold bar trophy stand. This antitrust stems from a 2019/2020 congressional investigation into "Big Tech" that occurred during his first term too.
That investigation in 2019/2020 came from the Democrat-majority House Judiciary - not from the DOJ. The DOJ was likely investigating in the background but nothing of public substance actually happened until 2024 when they filed suit. And looking at the docket now, every one of the DOJ attorneys who had filed that initial suit in 2024 have left the DOJ.
Several states joined the suit so things very well may continue but the stench of corruption is pretty thick on everything the current DOJ touches.
Compared to Europe, the US has significantly more neutral enforcement of laws for domestic prize jewels. The EU, by contrast, barely enforces its own provisions (such as anti-bribery law) against shining European stars.
If you really want to talk aviation, Boeing pled guilty and settled and got fined billions of dollars and had to change safety practices. Compared to Airbus which was well known to be a major briber abroad and was protected in the EU until the US eventually brought FCPA action after it got ridiculously out of hand and EU regulators did nothing.
The administration has indicated that the EU shakedown efforts are going to be addressed. It's reasonable to assume that EU crown jewels like LVMH are going to be subject to a reciprocal shakedown.
> Epic may have lost its antitrust battle against Apple in the U.S., but it won its lawsuit against Google, which was found to have built an illegal monopoly in the Android market.
Amazing. You can install third-party app stores on Android, just not via Google's own Play Store. Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
The iOS case is far more egregious. It seems the US courts are heavily biased in favor of Apple.
Do remember, however, that the judge is viewing this purely through a legal lens. That interpretation is probably quite an easy one to get to where if you have built a product and never allowed a competitors product in, and nor have you taken over someone else's by using unfair business practices then you're not a monopoly given the legal definition, not the dictionary definition.
From the point of defence of the dictionary definition, Android is huge in Australia, and outside the US generally.
From what I recall reading, it was a matter of market definition. They defined the Android app market to be all devices that run Android, and then said Google monopolized it; whereas the iOS market is just devices made by Apple.
I don't agree with the outcome, but that's the twist of logic that allows the more open ecosystem to be the one being attacked as a monopoly.
People complain about it here often, but the EU setting clear rules in the DMA is probably a significantly better way to ensure a level playing field instead of relying on judges and agencies to figure it out. Apple winning the case while Google lost theirs seems increasingly arbitrary.
Walled gardens are not illegal under existing law. You have to change the law before walled gardens become illegal, as the EU did with the DSA.
Nintendo's various platforms, Microsoft's XBox, and Sony's PlayStation have been perfectly legal walled gardens for decades.
However, claiming to introduce an open platform and then using anticompetitive means to retain control of that "open" platform is plainly illegal under existing law, as Google found with Android and Microsoft found with Windows.
First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim". Moreover, what you are suggesting is that it is okay to do something bad if you say it's bad, but not to do something slightly bad if you say it's good. That's absurd. What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".
> First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim".
They explicitly made the claim that Android was open on many occasions.
Remember when a major Android selling point was that Android was "open source" before they started moving all the updated versions of the developer APIs into the Play Store?
> What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".
It’s objectively not despite what you claim.
Apple never promised you an alternative, you got exactly what you paid for. Google promised you an alternative and while you weren’t looking tried to strangle it in its crib.
Do you have reading issues? Because that’s not what I argued at all. I argued you can’t say one thing and then do another and it seems the courts agree.
Apple is what, less than 20% of phone sales? So it's hard to see how that constitutes a monopoly. And if banning 3rd party apps is enough for a lawsuit, then why doesn't that apply to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for their game consoles? Why doesn't it apply to Amazon's Fire tablets, or Kindles, or Huawei phones, or Oculus headsets? All of those devices have similar restrictions.
Unless customers are coerced or misled, or returns/refunds are difficult, I don't see the need for government intervention. Apple's software restrictions hurt the iPhone's market share. The same goes for charging high fees for app purchases. Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them. If an informed adult chooses a locked down platform because they prioritize other features, why should the government stop them?
I can see an argument for requiring labeling (similar to warnings on cigarettes), but a total ban seems like overreach.
Since the article is about an Australian court case and comments discussed the US & EU, I was using figures for the whole world, which seems to be 16-18% depending on the source.[1][2] Even if we restrict numbers to the US, 57% is rarely considered monopoly. You'd need significant barriers to entry, and the smartphone market has enough manufacturers that it would be hard to argue that such a barrier exists.
Similar policies and pricing? You can get Android phones for much cheaper than iPhones. And many smartphone manufacturers let you run whatever you want on their devices. The largest smartphone manufacturer in the world (Samsung) ships most of their phones with two app stores, and lets customers enable side loading with a few taps.
If you're talking about policies and pricing for developers, then why not apply that argument to app stores owned by Sony, Microsoft, & Nintendo? Those are much more restrictive than anything in the smartphone world. Heck, even Steam takes a 30% cut.
I'm talking from the point of view of app developers.
Sure I'm open to the idea that there's fierce competition on the hardware, on the software though, there's absolutely zero signs of it.
> then why not apply that argument to app stores owned by Sony, Microsoft, & Nintendo?
We do have signs that there's competition in the console world, if you want to make that parallel, when was the last time Google or Apple paid for an app exclusive similarly to game exclusives?
Apple and Google make apps exclusive all the time. They just do it by acquiring the company that developed the app, then integrating the app's functionality into their OS. Examples for iOS include Siri, Dark Sky, Shazam, and Workflow. Google did it with Waze, and failed with Sparrow, Quickoffice, and a bunch of others. Samsung did it with LoopPay (which became Samsung Pay) and Viv (from the developers of Siri), which they turned into Bixby.
I wouldn't consider most of those exclusives but company titles. They also exist on the console world but are a different concept (like Halo for example)
I'm unaware of a single contract where Google or Apple paid some money to a company to keep the exclusivity like what happens on console.
AFAIK it was on the basis that Google pretends to be an open ecosystem, while Apple is pretty upfront about the fact they control everything you do with your device.
> Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
Apple did malicious compliance and only technically complied with the requirements in a specifically geo-restricted area (the EU) without allowing anyone else to benefit. (Although I think it was later ruled that they didn't actually manage to comply thanks to all the malice.)
> “Well son, I think I speak for your mother and I when I say, UH DUHHHHHHH.”
Man, it just doesn’t work outside GIF form, but the point is the same. Anyone with two brain cells could understand how vertical monopolies are still monopolies, and the walled gardens created by Big Tech are just company towns customers pay into and can’t leave without enormous disruption. All of that came through rubber-stamped M&As that depleted the market of competition and, now that ZIRP is over and AI is riding high, depleted the market of well-paying jobs in the process.
Competition is efficient, in that it creates more jobs and more opportunities for money to flow between customers and businesses. When your goal is to have all the money, though, competition is bad and must be destroyed.
At least with tech we can force change through code instead of armed law enforcement like monopolies of old.
Apple has a monopoly on distributing apps to iPhones. That is a true statement, using the real meaning of monopoly, and is being used correctly.
You can disagree with whether or not that statement is a "real issue", in that you can buy a completely different phone and install apps provided by other vendors, but it doesn't take away any truthiness from the initial statement.
From my perspective, though, that monopoly is a real issue. Some 55% of the adult US population own an iPhone. A monopoly in a market made up of the majority of the US populace should be thoroughly examined.
I really don’t get why people are so bent out of shape about iPhones being a closed ecosystem.
But I am a game developer and console app distribution requires laborious requirements to ship anything meaningful, it’s just an ordinary part of playing the game.
Ironically: all our games end up being better* optimised for all platforms because of the requirements and accessibility is not an afterthought. But hell, is it arbitrary sometimes to get a cert pass and it is definitely frustrating.
> Google does not have a monopoly on distributing apps on Android phones.
> Microsoft does not have a monopoly on distributing software on Windows.
It's a different degree but both control who can effectively distribute software on their platforms to some extend. Google does at lot to make outside the app store a miserable experience and Microsoft has a nice protection racket where if you don't play by their rules and pay the fees your software might just get deleted from your customers systems.
And they're getting sued for that in various places, but at least you (the user) have the option to click through the scare screen, wait 10 seconds to click through the second scare screen, and still do it. On Apple stuff you just can't.
Sure, the example is any company that doesn't run a market, and any company where its marketplace is fungible with another marketplace. AirBnB may have four times the market cap of Vrbo, but their addressable market, both vendor and consumer, is the same set of people.
The monopoly that Apple controls is not Apple's goods, it's the control of the sale of goods of other vendors to consumers who have no comparable choice but to transact via Apple. The consumers are the people who would have to spend $1,000 to switch to a different market, and then have to re-purchase every good they'd purchased from the previous market.
It's not like Walmart, where the consumer can walk across the road to Target and buy the exact same thing at a similar price. Imagine if every time you wanted to switch which big-box store you shopped at they charged you a $500 entry fee and you had to re-buy all of your household electronics.
I would also, in a general sense, suggest that in the only obvious direct competitor market, Google does not exert monopoly power, because you can install F-Droid as an alternate marketplace. They are anti-competitive in other ways, though, to your earlier point.
> consumers who have no comparable choice but to transact via Apple
A comparable choice would be to use a telephone from another maker. And they come for much less than $1000.
> Imagine if every time you wanted to switch which big-box store you shopped at they charged you a $500 entry fee and you had to re-buy all of your household electronics.
I'm imagining it, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Apple or Google or their conduct. When I buy a new car, any old accessories I have purchased for the old car will obviously not fit.
> AirBnB may have four times the market cap of Vrbo, but their addressable market, both vendor and consumer, is the same set of people.
Same for Apple. Vendors are free to develop for several platforms and users are free to have cell phones of different marks.
In this particular subject of search engines, Apple and Google have acted in an anticompetitive way with the bribe payments. That doesn't have much to do with monopolies.
> In a judgment that spanned 2000 pages, Australian Federal Court Justice Jonathan Beach, ruled that Apple had a substantial degree of market power. The Judge said both Apple and Google had breached Section 46 of Australia’s Competition Act. The companies had abused their market power to stifle the competition. But, it wasn't all in favor of Epic Games. Beach rejected the claim that Apple and Google had breached consumer law, he also said that the companies had not engaged in unconscionable conduct.
2000 pages! I can see why the case took something like 5 years.
It sounds like a mixed ruling so Epic didn't get everything they wanted here, but if they're able to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS in Australia that's a pretty big win by itself.
While courts take years and write multiple volumes to justify any kind of measure at all, the corporations move fast and keep changing the way they extract value from society.
I'm not sure the system will ever catch up this way.
Plus, if a regular citizen without deep pockets breaks the law, somehow it never takes years and thousands of pages to convict them. I can easily believe it's not about the complexities of the case, but the depth of the pockets.
If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
> If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
Obviously not. Regular joes almost always have relatively simple situations relative to multinational corporations, otherwise they wouldn't be regular joes.
Can you explain the obviousness? Other than a lot of money being involved, what makes it "obvious" that the way corporations break the rules is more complex than the way natural persons break the rules?
What makes it obvious or inherent that a corporation breaks the law at some edge case of the law that requires a lot of time and detail and multiple lawyers to figure out, and not so for a random guy? I think you are confusing money with complexity.
I don't see how a person modifying their car in their garage is a more complex way of breaking the law than WV making cars so they cheat emissions tests. This is not about the complexity of engineering, or the complexity of logistics. Those things do not matter. What matters is whether the law was broken or not, and what the just penalty is. It is not at all obvious to me the way VW did it is more complex. You just claim it without any supporting evidence or argument.
Probably not. Large corps are willing to bear the costs of maintaining a lot of control over customers just to keep them from being exposed to a competitor. If they ever open it up, it'll be due to laws, not change of heart on Apple's part.
This is a consequence of publicly listed companies.
They can't just go and eliminate a giant revenue stream because it would be morally right to do so. They need a court or a law to force them to do it, otherwise the board will be removed from their position for people who will maintain that revenue stream.
They actually can. Fiduciary responsibility does not mean you can only do the most profitable thing and nothing else. You just need leaders willing to do it and a board to agree. Boards and officers are given wide latitude to do what's right, and shareholder suits have a really high bar to pass to prove officers or the board were really wrong.
The idea that public corps MUST do everything possible to make a penny is a myth perpetuated by the people who run those large corps and WANT to be evil because it's the most profitable path for them.
Not just that, the demand for growth and improving quarter over quarter results require they continue to expand those revenue streams. Enshittification is a result of inertia.
Region locking isn’t going to stop anything. The cat is already out of the bag.
They don’t need to provide that service, but now it is evident that they are deliberately restricting their users choice to have that feature - and so they will need to permit a feature equivalent service from other vendors.
That is how it will play out. These walled gardens are being knocked down. They will just kick and scream as much as they can while it happens, harassing their users in the process. I just hope the fines get to their maximum as soon as possible - at least then we will be compensated for their childish behaviour.
Amazon already handles purchases on iOS and Android via their own payments infrastructure for physical good. Apple and Google carve out a weird exception for "digital" goods so you can't, for example, buy Kindle books directly on an app. You get directed to a website.
There is absolutely no reason sufficiently large companies can't handle their own payment infrastructure. You should be able to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu or Disney+ without paying the Apple Tax.
A 30% cut is somewhat defensible for small companies that have no payments infrastructure or simply don't want to manage that. There are all sorts of compliance issues. There's something to be said for a seamless user experience.
But 30% for a large company becomes a huge incentive for large companies to attack you in the courts (as Epic did or prodding Attorneys-General to file suit) or by lobbying governments.
I've consistently said that courts and/or governments will end up dismantling the app store monopolies because of the payment monopoly and it'll be far, far better for Apple and Google in the long term if that happens on their terms, not the terms set by courts and governments.
Qualify certain providers to handle their own payments and take 0-5% to pay for things like malware scanning, distribution, etc and you've addressed the strongest monopoly argument (ie payments) and reduced the financial incentive for competitors to attack you.
Attacking you could even risk your qualified payments partner status and you could lose that privileged position. It's such an easy win.
> There is absolutely no reason sufficiently large companies can't handle their own payment infrastructure. You should be able to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu or Disney+ without paying the Apple Tax.
its not only that (an annoying tax) but its actively harmful to some customers/businesses where the payment flow isnt one-person-one transaction; some businesses have multiple accounts per customer or have trial periods incompatible with appstore's in-app purchase model and people get confused, to say nothing about the bugs this causes on the backend...
And what will the punishment be? When the penalty for such practices is just that you have to stop, there's no reason for anyone to not do them as much as they can get away with. The penalties must be so ruinous that companies dare not engage in such behavior in the first place.
I can't help thinking that a lot of anticompetitive cases will be won outside the US now that the US is in all-out trade war with the rest of the universe.
The US has shown absolutely no willingness to carry out antitrust cases the past many years - at a significant harm to a lot of people.
The implied corruption is likely not from these other countries that start making these cases now, but is a persistent feature of US governance.
> The US has shown absolutely no willingness to carry out antitrust cases the past many years
Lina Khan's FTC brought cases again Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Mastercard, and more. They also prevented mergers (consolidations) in a lot of different industries. Could they have accomplished more? Certainly, but they did certainly did display a willingness to bring antitrust cases.
It does feel like Lina Khan's FTC was much more willing to play the part in the adversarial system. Don't necessarily agree with every decision but was surprising to see how willing the FTC was to jump into things and make unpopular (to stakeholders at least) decisions
> Could they have accomplished more?
unfortunately a lot of these things are on an election cycle.
One of the main problems in the US is that the US has an extremely broad antitrust statute:
> Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal.
> Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, ...
It was passed in the era of robber barons and meant to be a strong hammer against anti-competitive practices. But because it was so broad, the courts kept chipping away at it over time through reinterpretation because by its terms it would prohibit a lot of things the courts didn't really want to get involved in policing, or they just made bad calls in years when the Court's majority wasn't that smart.
Meanwhile monopolists generally have a lot of money to pay expensive lawyers, so they structure their activities to fit within the loopholes the courts have carved out over the years and that makes it hard for an administration to hold them to account even when they have the will to do it.
Hyper-partisanship also makes this worse, because if everyone is convinced the other side is pure evil then they're going to try to undo anything the other party was trying to do without even considering what it is, which isn't compatible with long-term prosecutions that would have to span administrations.
The sentiment i picked up from HN is that she was more of an activist leader with a grudge against big corporations and that this clouded her judgement. The cases she bought were insubstantial and fell apart. She's a bad poster child for what the FTC should be.
To me, a good regulator should be losing big cases.
If they aren't, it means they're not pushing the boundaries of their authority hard enough.
I don't know, but that isn't what i'm talking about. She pursued weak cases, and overstepped her authority. she should have spent more time constructing a better case, or not bringing them in the first place. As it was she accomplished less then she hoped and wasted everyones time and cost the taxpayer money.
> she should have spent more time constructing a better case, or not bringing them in the first place.
I disagree.
As to the former, the case is what the case is: obviously everyone would like to construct the strongest possible case.
As to the latter, the joke about career prosecutors only bringing cases they know they can win to pad their record comes to mind. In a regulatory role, IMHO prosecutors should be as aggressive as the law allows them to be, especially against the largest companies. It's difficult to claim that Google can't afford to mount a vigorous defense for itself.
i thought it was strategic - to ensure global dominance in tech
> i thought it was strategic - to ensure global dominance in tech
I don't like the way this is phrased because it nearly implies that doing this is an advantage to the US population.
"Preventing foreign dominance in tech" is plausibly a legitimate goal. Preventing a foreign tech monopoly is a good thing. But the assumption that this can only be achieved by a domestic one is the fallacy. A domestic monopoly is still a disadvantage compared to a competitive market with a multitude of domestic companies.
Unless you're an authoritarian that wants to leverage the monopoly for the purposes of e.g. censorship. But then you're an enemy whose goal is to harm even the domestic population.
Why do you think Windows, MS Office, MSSQL, Azure, and other MS applications are used extensively in the federal government?
Its to prop up American businesses, and as a form of corporate welfare.
We see this a lot in various vertical industries. The USG could pay and make it free, but they would rather prop up proprietary software as long as its US based.
Not even being a monopolist matters.
> Its to prop up American businesses, and as a form of corporate welfare.
You say that like it's an actual policy goal. You don't think it's because those companies donate to the campaigns of the politicians doing it? It's corruption.
> You say that like it's an actual policy goal.
I do. There's reasons for that from previous employment that would indicate that as a policy goal.
Red Hat is also technically accepted by US Gov. Technically. But you need to use? They're bypassing all sorts of security shit with ongoing POAMs and doing their own thing.
And yes, I would agree that its corruption as well.
Getting it written down as a policy goal in formal documents or training materials for mid-level bureaucrats is a mechanism of action for the corruption.
It's a matter of whether it would happen even if nobody was writing a check, and it still seems like the answer is no.
A great case example of this corruption is the following:
AC-2 : Kerberos/LDAP/DNS/Shibboleth CAN suffice, but auditors will absolutely look for Active Directory. Most auditors don't even know how to prove Linux this way.
CM-6 : this is just a roundabout way of saying 'do you support GPOs? '. Sure, Puppet can work, as can on-login bash scripts stored on a Windows AD server. But why use Linux clients when you're already using Windows AD?
Now, nowhere in NIST actually says 'MS Windows'. Its just that the control is worded in such a way that proving it on Windows is easy, and Linux is very hard to impossible to prove.
There was a single exception to vendor agnoticism, and that was the requirement of McAfee security software. I can't find the control offhand, but now its called Trellix.
A domestic monopoly might not be the only way to prevent a foreign monopoly, but it is a guaranteed way so it makes sense to let it proliferate.
Look at the state of the industry vertically. There's exactly 1 company that can produce the cutting-edge chip fabs, ASML. TSMC utterly dominates using the fabs to actually produce the chips. That's already 2 foreign-controlled horizontal monopolies on which the rest of the industry relies.
If you want any sort of control in the industry (and not be bullied for access like we do to China), you need to be the biggest buyer / operator of those chips. And so we encourage US mega-tech companies buying up all the GPUs, so those other monopolies aren't used to cripple us (or at least they'd cripple the whole chain if they tried).
> A domestic monopoly might not be the only way to prevent a foreign monopoly, but it is a guaranteed way so it makes sense to let it proliferate.
It isn't in any way guaranteed, and you just listed an example of it failing. Intel used to be the world leader in fabs and now it's TSMC, because that's what happens if you let the domestic market consolidate until the incumbents feel they can rest on their laurels and then a foreign competitor throws down the gauntlet.
> If you want any sort of control in the industry (and not be bullied for access like we do to China), you need to be the biggest buyer / operator of those chips.
Or you need an actual diverse competitive market so that that sort of bullying doesn't work for anyone.
Suppose the GPU market had a dozen or more companies with significant market share and four of them were in the US. Then it doesn't matter where the other ones are, nobody can deprive the US of GPUs because the US can always get them from the US vendors or have them increase production.
It would mean that the US can't do the bullying anymore because then others could buy from the non-US vendors, but what is the rest of the world doing not causing that to happen on purpose?
It's an advantage to the part of the US population that matters to decision makers.
It's necessary to distinguish between the things that happen and the things we would prefer to happen as citizens if we want to get from one to the other.
It is. Some members of congress somehow magically end up buying tech stocks right before they go to the moon or selling them right before tariffs hit.
It's as if they have some insider knowledge or something, and also a lot of skin in the game to protect these monopolies.
You can buy the Pelosi ETF (NANC) and enjoy the same upside!
I just read the prospectus investment strategy, and it looks like it trails the trades by up to 30-45 days? Seems like the majority of that upside might be gone by then, no? They explicitly list that in Reporting Delay Risk.
Also I didn't see any info on whether the fund manager can beat hft et al to the punch once disclosure happens.
It would interesting to know how it performs relative to other index funds even with the delay risk. A few people have been saying Nancy is getting better returns than Warren Buffet
https://x.com/HawleyMO/status/1919738880204345581
I compared it to .SPX, and the 12 month charts look almost identical.
Which makes sense to me, 45 days is a loooooong time, and I kinda doubt this fund is cutting edge speed trading on disclosures when they do show up.
…and enjoy the same upside!
No, you won’t. That ETF is a trailing indicator, and it’s trailing so far back it won’t even show up in the rearview mirror.
That, and if you load a comparison chart with .SPX, they look almost identical. No upside, and greater risk.
Thank you for an honest comment in a world of so much grift.
Too bad the MER is so high at 0.74%.
This could not be more wrong. Lena Khan is on an absolute antitrust bender.
All those Silicon Valley types went to Washington to kiss the ring of the pope.
And give gold idols
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Precisely. Trump not smart enough to think about these retaliations. Would in some cases make tarrifs neutral
Big Tech isn't exactly Trump's base. Trump collects wins[1] for his base at the expense of his non-supporters. Not sure how this makes Trump "not smart".
1 - Regardless of what you think of tariffs, his base largely considers them wins.
They are gonna win so much they'll be completely indigent before it's over.
That's their right.
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Because he lives in a country. Going to war with half the people around you makes the whole country much poorer.
Works both ways.
> Trump collects wins[1] for his base
Trump collects wins for himself and his base flip-flops along with him and his every whim.
It's not about smart or not, he doesn't care beyond what he can get from it. He doesn't care about any retaliations and he knows he has his base eating outta the palm of his hand. Smart doesn't play into any of it, it's not needed. The Project state takes care of the smarts part of the administration
You're also about to see a lot of the 'Brussels effect' due to the EUs DMA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/index_en
I think what might happen is all these other markets are going to end up “playing fair” while the US remains an abused ecosystem- because it’ll be the only place left Apple and Google can push their advantage.
I strongly doubt that US-Australia trade relationships played any role in the judges decision on this case (and, of course, everything else in this case occurred before Trump was even re-elected). Judges aren't in a role where they are negotiating, or particularly care about, international trade at all. Judges are intentionally separated from the political wing of the state in just about every western democracy.
In some ways you are probably right, however do not discount the fact that America’s relative weakness has opened up avenues for this type of action that otherwise would have likely not happened out of internal pressure due to concerns about that relationship, external pressure on the government to scuttle these kinds of efforts, and/or general lack of alternatives to the American market.
Especially with the rise and seeming power of BRICS there is surely a sense that the pressure is a bit off from the USA, America will be unwilling to add on to pressure against Australia that is close to core BRICS, etc.
Do not discount the rising awareness of the real weakness the “American” empire finds itself in suddenly.
I agree with this. I think potentially someone may have suggested the federal court sit on the decision until the 10% tariff was confirmed a couple of weeks ago. Mostly because the announcement pre Tariff might have resulted in a long Truth Social post from DT followed by a knee jerk reaction. But I highly doubt it would factor into the decision.
Australia is also in the process of regulating platforms and I'd expect it to end up a little closer to Europe/Japan in the next couple of years anyway. They will watch to see what loopholes Apple/Google exploit and try to deal with that in the regulations upfront.
Important context for anyone not aware is that Australia is one of the few countries that US runs a large trade surplus with.
Lol at you believing courts or judges don't follow their countries dictates. Most of the time such cases would be routed to a judge that will do what is asked without making any noise.
Where I come from, there is no need to route cases. I used to believe in Western justice systems, but as I've grown older, I've come to realize that much of the corruption money from Asia, Africa, and South America is parked in these same Western countries. Many of the corrupt officials who have fled their home countries are now living in these same Western countries, and in many cases, their families have been granted citizenship. The behavior of the ruling elite in Western countries tells me all I need to know about their justice systems. It seems that a large portion of the population has willingly, maybe unknowingly, put on blinders to their own countries' systems and behaviors.
maybe wherever you are from that’s true, but not really in the developed anglosphere
This stuff is true in the US to some extent.
no it's not, but i get that it's "in" to hate on the US political structure. essentially all federal cases are randomly assigned
I don't think it's widespread by any means but the US Supreme Court has been directly pulled into this exact topic.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/21/g-s1-28919/supreme-court-judg...
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/judg...
https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/03/27/judge-shopping-expl...
this is more describing circuit shopping, which is a far cry from what OP is suggesting
In my country judges don't get elected. They pretty much sit in their ivory tower and fuck up anyone they want.
Which is part of the reason why the Netherlands is not a superpower.
Judges don't get elected in the US (except for some state and local judges) and yet the US is a superpower. I don't think judicial selection plays a major factor in determining superpower status.
Can you name any country that has ever been a superpower where judges (of the national judiciary if it has separate judiciaries for constituent parts from the national one) were predominantly democratically elected?
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/why-east-texas-ground-ze...
I do think this is a great counterexample, but it is largely a bug in the law specific to patents that was closed in 2017. Even then, IIUC on appeal your case would still be randomized.
Judiciary and law enforcement are some of the most corrupt people
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The DOJ is literally suing Apple for many of the same reasons right now -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2024)
That was the ‘old’ DOJ, Tim Apple was in the Oval Office a few days ago to pay tribute in gold… it got them exemptions from tariffs and I wouldn’t be surprised if the DOJ dropped this case soon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https%3A...
The corruption is so out in the open, it's ridiculous.
It's so unsavory to see Tim Cook grovel like that. No backbone at all, what a pitiful human.
Grovel? I thought it was making fun of the POTUS. What made it even funnier was that it'd go right over DT's head. Excellent messaging- pleases the wanna be monarch, shows investors that he's willing to work with any country's heads to ensure the success of Apple, and makes a mockery of the office with such a gaudy display.
> Cook presented Trump with an engraved piece of glass designed by a former Marine Corps corporal who works at Apple. The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold, Cook said, as he set it up on the Resolute Desk in front of Trump. “You’ve been a great advocate for American innovation and manufacturing,” Cook told Trump. Apple, Cook said, is “going to keep making investments right here in America and we’re going to keep hiring in America.”
And yet, the actual publicized investment plans are barely any different from what they were under Biden and likely would have been under Harris.
> the actual publicized investment plans are barely any different
On the contrary.
> The base of the glass plaque was made of 24 karat gold
My recollection, which may be way off, is Biden preferred fine grade silver dinner ware and free Uber passes...
It is amazing how quickly centralized power can not just become deeply and openly corrupt, but operate free of credible challenge. The centralization in this case being years of tightened coordination within one party, acting on all three branches. The internal leverage created by such processes provides a natural habitat for final consolidation by an opportunistic individual.
And suddenly the standards of governance are unrecognizable. The unsurprising result of successfully centralized power.
It has long occurred to me that by not having limits on party power (seat limits? term limits? Cross state limits? Cross branch limits?), the US Constitution left a huge power coordination loop hole, free of checks and balances.
That loophole holds up an eternal carrot of legal one party rule. Temporary one party rule in theory, but the constant drive for that grinds down bipartisanship and respect for any shared power.
No one party should ever have a dominant majority of congress, much less dominate all three branches.
At that point, in-party incentives overwhelmingly push party solidarity above any other issue.
(Another great side effect of party seat/term limits would be the breakup up of the party duopoly which even when "working" lowered the bar for each party to the floor, i.e. neither party needed to do much but not be the latest disappointing incumbent. And a duopoly is incapable of providing choices reflecting a complex reality. They are reduced to competing via team identification/shibboleths.
I’m not entirely sure what you think you’re arguing for or against here.
For congressional seat/term limits on parties.
Lots of ways to achieve that. I am not going to pick here. That’s an interesting discussion in its own right. But simple examples that demonstrate limits: parties can only operate in 10 states or less (for congressional candidates). Or parties can only hold 30% or less of congressional seats in either house. Etc.
In the short run, it enforces bipartisanship,
In the long run, it kills long term incentives to attempt to achieve single party rule temporarily, permanent or effectively permanent. Which has been a very destructive incentive driving tremendous organized partisan efforts. (Even when not achieved, the pursuit kills bipartisanship and competition on policy, in pursuit of a lasting hold on power.)
And it would open up elections to more parties, more choices, and force more flexibility, adaptation and collaboration from all parties, instead of more two party polarization and entrenchment.
> For congressional seat/term limits on parties.
Limits on parties like you discuss are a dumb idea, because they are trivially evaded by factional alliances that aren't formally parties.
OTOH, you wouldn't even need to have a reason to consider them if you simply had an electoral system that didn't lead to national duopoly frequently consisting of regional monopolies, e.g., if the legislative branch was elected in multiseat districts with a system structurally providing roughly proportional results, like Single Transferrable Vote.
The social technology of democracy has advanced since the 18th Century, but the most important parts of that advance, have been ignored in the US, at least at the federal level and statewide levels, though some local use is seen.
Maybe, but if Trump wanted this to go away he's had a good 7 months to make that happen and he got a million dollars cash gift for his inauguration, certainly worth more than a gold bar trophy stand. This antitrust stems from a 2019/2020 congressional investigation into "Big Tech" that occurred during his first term too.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/06/tech/congress-big-tech-an...
That investigation in 2019/2020 came from the Democrat-majority House Judiciary - not from the DOJ. The DOJ was likely investigating in the background but nothing of public substance actually happened until 2024 when they filed suit. And looking at the docket now, every one of the DOJ attorneys who had filed that initial suit in 2024 have left the DOJ.
Several states joined the suit so things very well may continue but the stench of corruption is pretty thick on everything the current DOJ touches.
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Compared to Europe, the US has significantly more neutral enforcement of laws for domestic prize jewels. The EU, by contrast, barely enforces its own provisions (such as anti-bribery law) against shining European stars.
As a US citizen I am curious to hear examples of the EU holding back enforcement. That's not the sort of thing that would get reported here.
Look at basically any example of a major EU company engaged in bribery, such as Airbus and Glencore
I don't know how you got to that conclusion, every single court case against a US giant is waived in the US.
See Boeing which got pardoned recently as another example.
While not perfect, the justice system seems usually more neutral in most EU countries.
If you really want to talk aviation, Boeing pled guilty and settled and got fined billions of dollars and had to change safety practices. Compared to Airbus which was well known to be a major briber abroad and was protected in the EU until the US eventually brought FCPA action after it got ridiculously out of hand and EU regulators did nothing.
looks at all the cases that never happened even well before Trump got elected
You should probably be thinking that the only places they can be won is outside the US.
Speaks a lot to the legal process outside the US if that is true..
I imagine much of not going after big tech was probably politics and the unwillingness to offend a major geopolitical and trading partner.
I heard they are targeting Andromeda with the next round of tariffs.
as long as they leave Squornshellous Zeta alone until I get my mattress
The administration has indicated that the EU shakedown efforts are going to be addressed. It's reasonable to assume that EU crown jewels like LVMH are going to be subject to a reciprocal shakedown.
The administration has a particular affinity for luxuries and shiny objects. I dont think that's going to happen
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> Epic may have lost its antitrust battle against Apple in the U.S., but it won its lawsuit against Google, which was found to have built an illegal monopoly in the Android market.
Amazing. You can install third-party app stores on Android, just not via Google's own Play Store. Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
The iOS case is far more egregious. It seems the US courts are heavily biased in favor of Apple.
The craziest part of this is:
Apple wasn't a monopoly because they didn't share their platform with anyone
The judge in the Google case said that Android couldn't be compared to iOS because iOS is only available to Apple products.
So while I can kind of squint and see this, the obvious signal the court is sending is
"If you don't want to be monopolistic, don't open your platform to anyone".
Do remember, however, that the judge is viewing this purely through a legal lens. That interpretation is probably quite an easy one to get to where if you have built a product and never allowed a competitors product in, and nor have you taken over someone else's by using unfair business practices then you're not a monopoly given the legal definition, not the dictionary definition.
From the point of defence of the dictionary definition, Android is huge in Australia, and outside the US generally.
Sure. If you claim something is open source and then make it impractical to use without closed source components you should get in trouble for that.
Huh, third party developers are what made iOS big ...
Hardware platform.
Which is even stranger because Samsung, by far the largest Android phone distributor, ships their phones with the galaxy app store on them.
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From what I recall reading, it was a matter of market definition. They defined the Android app market to be all devices that run Android, and then said Google monopolized it; whereas the iOS market is just devices made by Apple.
I don't agree with the outcome, but that's the twist of logic that allows the more open ecosystem to be the one being attacked as a monopoly.
People complain about it here often, but the EU setting clear rules in the DMA is probably a significantly better way to ensure a level playing field instead of relying on judges and agencies to figure it out. Apple winning the case while Google lost theirs seems increasingly arbitrary.
Walled gardens are not illegal under existing law. You have to change the law before walled gardens become illegal, as the EU did with the DSA.
Nintendo's various platforms, Microsoft's XBox, and Sony's PlayStation have been perfectly legal walled gardens for decades.
However, claiming to introduce an open platform and then using anticompetitive means to retain control of that "open" platform is plainly illegal under existing law, as Google found with Android and Microsoft found with Windows.
First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim". Moreover, what you are suggesting is that it is okay to do something bad if you say it's bad, but not to do something slightly bad if you say it's good. That's absurd. What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".
> First of all, I don't think Google ever made such a "claim".
They explicitly made the claim that Android was open on many occasions.
Remember when a major Android selling point was that Android was "open source" before they started moving all the updated versions of the developer APIs into the Play Store?
https://medium.com/@coopossum/how-open-source-is-android-8d1...
> What Apple is doing with iOS is objectively much worse than what Google is doing with Android, irrespective of any alleged "claims".
It’s objectively not despite what you claim.
Apple never promised you an alternative, you got exactly what you paid for. Google promised you an alternative and while you weren’t looking tried to strangle it in its crib.
You need to look past your fan bias.
Google didn't "promise" anything.
> You need to look past your fan bias.
That's funny, considering that you are arguing that Android is worse than iOS, despite iOS being far more anti-competitive.
Google didn't just claim that Android was open, they claimed that it was open source.
Then they used anticompetitive tactics against companies attempting to take advantage of that supposed openness to retain tight control.
They have been found guilty of doing this many times in many jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's XBox walled garden ecosystem remains perfectly legal.
This is because walled gardens are not illegal. Anticompetitive conduct in open markets is.
If you want walled gardens to be illegal, you have to do what the EU did and change the law.
Do you have reading issues? Because that’s not what I argued at all. I argued you can’t say one thing and then do another and it seems the courts agree.
Do you have reading issues? Because I said Google didn't "promise" anything.
You could have just said “yes, yes I do.”
You like Google, we get it.
US courts haven't really begun dismantling this status quo, but there's quite a few things going on that challenge it:
- DOJ antitrust case going to trial soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_(2024)
- 2021 Epic injunction that Apple defied followed by 2025 Epic injunction that recently forced Apple to allow links to competing payment options: https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/01/apple_epic_lies_possi...
- Open Markets Act from 2020 has some new life: https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/25/bipartisan-open-a...
- App Store Freedom Act from 2025: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3209...
- 2011 class action on excessive fees going to trial next year: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4178894/in-re-apple-iph...
- 2025 class action on excessive fees: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70356851/korean-publish...
- 2025 class action for monopolizing app distribution: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gkvlagedmpb/...
- 2025 class action for doing a shit job of monopolizing app distribution: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70526762/shin-v-apple-i...
Is any of these realistically expected to result in the possibility of installing third-party apps and app stores, similar to Android?
All of them challenge Apple having exclusive app distribution, except the Epic injunction and the class action accusing Apple of doing a shit job.
Apple is what, less than 20% of phone sales? So it's hard to see how that constitutes a monopoly. And if banning 3rd party apps is enough for a lawsuit, then why doesn't that apply to Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo for their game consoles? Why doesn't it apply to Amazon's Fire tablets, or Kindles, or Huawei phones, or Oculus headsets? All of those devices have similar restrictions.
Unless customers are coerced or misled, or returns/refunds are difficult, I don't see the need for government intervention. Apple's software restrictions hurt the iPhone's market share. The same goes for charging high fees for app purchases. Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them. If an informed adult chooses a locked down platform because they prioritize other features, why should the government stop them?
I can see an argument for requiring labeling (similar to warnings on cigarettes), but a total ban seems like overreach.
I did some... Googling.... Anyway, it seems many sites estimate iOS as about 57% of the US market, not 20%.
Example: https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
Since the article is about an Australian court case and comments discussed the US & EU, I was using figures for the whole world, which seems to be 16-18% depending on the source.[1][2] Even if we restrict numbers to the US, 57% is rarely considered monopoly. You'd need significant barriers to entry, and the smartphone market has enough manufacturers that it would be hard to argue that such a barrier exists.
1. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insight/post-insight-re...
2. https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/
> Customers and developers can (and often do) choose other devices for being less restrictive about what software can be run on them
Well no, there's only two operating system with very similar policies and pricing. If there's any competition there, it's not obvious where.
The only pricing change ever made was made as a reaction of an antitrust lawsuit... Just that fact alone should be enough to raise some eyebrows.
Similar policies and pricing? You can get Android phones for much cheaper than iPhones. And many smartphone manufacturers let you run whatever you want on their devices. The largest smartphone manufacturer in the world (Samsung) ships most of their phones with two app stores, and lets customers enable side loading with a few taps.
If you're talking about policies and pricing for developers, then why not apply that argument to app stores owned by Sony, Microsoft, & Nintendo? Those are much more restrictive than anything in the smartphone world. Heck, even Steam takes a 30% cut.
I'm talking from the point of view of app developers.
Sure I'm open to the idea that there's fierce competition on the hardware, on the software though, there's absolutely zero signs of it.
> then why not apply that argument to app stores owned by Sony, Microsoft, & Nintendo?
We do have signs that there's competition in the console world, if you want to make that parallel, when was the last time Google or Apple paid for an app exclusive similarly to game exclusives?
Apple and Google make apps exclusive all the time. They just do it by acquiring the company that developed the app, then integrating the app's functionality into their OS. Examples for iOS include Siri, Dark Sky, Shazam, and Workflow. Google did it with Waze, and failed with Sparrow, Quickoffice, and a bunch of others. Samsung did it with LoopPay (which became Samsung Pay) and Viv (from the developers of Siri), which they turned into Bixby.
I wouldn't consider most of those exclusives but company titles. They also exist on the console world but are a different concept (like Halo for example)
I'm unaware of a single contract where Google or Apple paid some money to a company to keep the exclusivity like what happens on console.
AFAIK it was on the basis that Google pretends to be an open ecosystem, while Apple is pretty upfront about the fact they control everything you do with your device.
> Meanwhile, in iOS you can't even install third party browsers. Let alone third-party app stores. Or any apps outside Apple's App Store.
Apple did malicious compliance and only technically complied with the requirements in a specifically geo-restricted area (the EU) without allowing anyone else to benefit. (Although I think it was later ruled that they didn't actually manage to comply thanks to all the malice.)
Wasn’t the legal difference that Apple never said you could whereas Google did then added roadblocks?
Why would the courts be biased in favor of one multi trillion dollar firm vs some other multi trillion dollar firm?
> “Well son, I think I speak for your mother and I when I say, UH DUHHHHHHH.”
Man, it just doesn’t work outside GIF form, but the point is the same. Anyone with two brain cells could understand how vertical monopolies are still monopolies, and the walled gardens created by Big Tech are just company towns customers pay into and can’t leave without enormous disruption. All of that came through rubber-stamped M&As that depleted the market of competition and, now that ZIRP is over and AI is riding high, depleted the market of well-paying jobs in the process.
Competition is efficient, in that it creates more jobs and more opportunities for money to flow between customers and businesses. When your goal is to have all the money, though, competition is bad and must be destroyed.
At least with tech we can force change through code instead of armed law enforcement like monopolies of old.
They're not monopolies, they're acting anti-competitive. Which is worse. But words have real meanings, and should be used correctly.
Apple has a monopoly on distributing apps to iPhones. That is a true statement, using the real meaning of monopoly, and is being used correctly.
You can disagree with whether or not that statement is a "real issue", in that you can buy a completely different phone and install apps provided by other vendors, but it doesn't take away any truthiness from the initial statement.
From my perspective, though, that monopoly is a real issue. Some 55% of the adult US population own an iPhone. A monopoly in a market made up of the majority of the US populace should be thoroughly examined.
I really don’t get why people are so bent out of shape about iPhones being a closed ecosystem.
But I am a game developer and console app distribution requires laborious requirements to ship anything meaningful, it’s just an ordinary part of playing the game.
Ironically: all our games end up being better* optimised for all platforms because of the requirements and accessibility is not an afterthought. But hell, is it arbitrary sometimes to get a cert pass and it is definitely frustrating.
Consoles are a monopoly too and I hope governments go after them next.
Then I'd like you to give me an example of any company which is not a monopoly, with that same logic.
Google does not have a monopoly on distributing apps on Android phones.
Microsoft does not have a monopoly on distributing software on Windows.
Hell, Apple itself does not have a monopoly on distributing software on MacOS.
Really, you could say the same about, AFAICT, every single major operating system that has ever existed, other than iOS.
> Google does not have a monopoly on distributing apps on Android phones.
> Microsoft does not have a monopoly on distributing software on Windows.
It's a different degree but both control who can effectively distribute software on their platforms to some extend. Google does at lot to make outside the app store a miserable experience and Microsoft has a nice protection racket where if you don't play by their rules and pay the fees your software might just get deleted from your customers systems.
And they're getting sued for that in various places, but at least you (the user) have the option to click through the scare screen, wait 10 seconds to click through the second scare screen, and still do it. On Apple stuff you just can't.
Sure, the example is any company that doesn't run a market, and any company where its marketplace is fungible with another marketplace. AirBnB may have four times the market cap of Vrbo, but their addressable market, both vendor and consumer, is the same set of people.
The monopoly that Apple controls is not Apple's goods, it's the control of the sale of goods of other vendors to consumers who have no comparable choice but to transact via Apple. The consumers are the people who would have to spend $1,000 to switch to a different market, and then have to re-purchase every good they'd purchased from the previous market.
It's not like Walmart, where the consumer can walk across the road to Target and buy the exact same thing at a similar price. Imagine if every time you wanted to switch which big-box store you shopped at they charged you a $500 entry fee and you had to re-buy all of your household electronics.
I would also, in a general sense, suggest that in the only obvious direct competitor market, Google does not exert monopoly power, because you can install F-Droid as an alternate marketplace. They are anti-competitive in other ways, though, to your earlier point.
> consumers who have no comparable choice but to transact via Apple
A comparable choice would be to use a telephone from another maker. And they come for much less than $1000.
> Imagine if every time you wanted to switch which big-box store you shopped at they charged you a $500 entry fee and you had to re-buy all of your household electronics.
I'm imagining it, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Apple or Google or their conduct. When I buy a new car, any old accessories I have purchased for the old car will obviously not fit.
> AirBnB may have four times the market cap of Vrbo, but their addressable market, both vendor and consumer, is the same set of people.
Same for Apple. Vendors are free to develop for several platforms and users are free to have cell phones of different marks.
In this particular subject of search engines, Apple and Google have acted in an anticompetitive way with the bribe payments. That doesn't have much to do with monopolies.
It looks like the judgement should be published here within 48 hours: https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fc...
Per: https://www.comcourts.gov.au/file/Federal/P/NSD1236/2020/act...
This is unlikely for this particular case - lots of confidentiality claims etc. It's possible that the judgment will never be published.
The transcript of the oral summary should appear at that URL.
The full judgement with redactions could be requested under https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-tra... it's just not automatically and immediately created
It warms my heart to think about how much Thiel must hate to read this.
Well there are still quite some og tech monopolies left, but it does seem like the tide is starting to turn.
> In a judgment that spanned 2000 pages, Australian Federal Court Justice Jonathan Beach, ruled that Apple had a substantial degree of market power. The Judge said both Apple and Google had breached Section 46 of Australia’s Competition Act. The companies had abused their market power to stifle the competition. But, it wasn't all in favor of Epic Games. Beach rejected the claim that Apple and Google had breached consumer law, he also said that the companies had not engaged in unconscionable conduct.
2000 pages! I can see why the case took something like 5 years.
It sounds like a mixed ruling so Epic didn't get everything they wanted here, but if they're able to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS in Australia that's a pretty big win by itself.
While courts take years and write multiple volumes to justify any kind of measure at all, the corporations move fast and keep changing the way they extract value from society.
I'm not sure the system will ever catch up this way.
Plus, if a regular citizen without deep pockets breaks the law, somehow it never takes years and thousands of pages to convict them. I can easily believe it's not about the complexities of the case, but the depth of the pockets.
If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
> If it really was "just a complex situation", you would expect equal percentages of simple and complicated cases for regular joes and huge corporations, no?
Obviously not. Regular joes almost always have relatively simple situations relative to multinational corporations, otherwise they wouldn't be regular joes.
Can you explain the obviousness? Other than a lot of money being involved, what makes it "obvious" that the way corporations break the rules is more complex than the way natural persons break the rules?
What makes it obvious or inherent that a corporation breaks the law at some edge case of the law that requires a lot of time and detail and multiple lawyers to figure out, and not so for a random guy? I think you are confusing money with complexity.
I don't see how a person modifying their car in their garage is a more complex way of breaking the law than WV making cars so they cheat emissions tests. This is not about the complexity of engineering, or the complexity of logistics. Those things do not matter. What matters is whether the law was broken or not, and what the just penalty is. It is not at all obvious to me the way VW did it is more complex. You just claim it without any supporting evidence or argument.
The more irrational the law, the more words must be said about it.
Same for religious philosophies.
If length of ones writing is a measure of irrationality, everyone who's ever written a thesis must be absolutely unhinged.
They might be the first to agree with you.
Not really? The court likes having as much salient evidence as it can get.
Good. Maybe if everywhere else makes them do things right, they'll just give up and not region-lock the good stuff. Apple.
Probably not. Large corps are willing to bear the costs of maintaining a lot of control over customers just to keep them from being exposed to a competitor. If they ever open it up, it'll be due to laws, not change of heart on Apple's part.
This is a consequence of publicly listed companies.
They can't just go and eliminate a giant revenue stream because it would be morally right to do so. They need a court or a law to force them to do it, otherwise the board will be removed from their position for people who will maintain that revenue stream.
They actually can. Fiduciary responsibility does not mean you can only do the most profitable thing and nothing else. You just need leaders willing to do it and a board to agree. Boards and officers are given wide latitude to do what's right, and shareholder suits have a really high bar to pass to prove officers or the board were really wrong.
The idea that public corps MUST do everything possible to make a penny is a myth perpetuated by the people who run those large corps and WANT to be evil because it's the most profitable path for them.
Not just that, the demand for growth and improving quarter over quarter results require they continue to expand those revenue streams. Enshittification is a result of inertia.
The benefits out weight the costs, or at least the people in charge perceive it that way.
Region locking isn’t going to stop anything. The cat is already out of the bag.
They don’t need to provide that service, but now it is evident that they are deliberately restricting their users choice to have that feature - and so they will need to permit a feature equivalent service from other vendors.
That is how it will play out. These walled gardens are being knocked down. They will just kick and scream as much as they can while it happens, harassing their users in the process. I just hope the fines get to their maximum as soon as possible - at least then we will be compensated for their childish behaviour.
Amazon already handles purchases on iOS and Android via their own payments infrastructure for physical good. Apple and Google carve out a weird exception for "digital" goods so you can't, for example, buy Kindle books directly on an app. You get directed to a website.
There is absolutely no reason sufficiently large companies can't handle their own payment infrastructure. You should be able to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu or Disney+ without paying the Apple Tax.
A 30% cut is somewhat defensible for small companies that have no payments infrastructure or simply don't want to manage that. There are all sorts of compliance issues. There's something to be said for a seamless user experience.
But 30% for a large company becomes a huge incentive for large companies to attack you in the courts (as Epic did or prodding Attorneys-General to file suit) or by lobbying governments.
I've consistently said that courts and/or governments will end up dismantling the app store monopolies because of the payment monopoly and it'll be far, far better for Apple and Google in the long term if that happens on their terms, not the terms set by courts and governments.
Qualify certain providers to handle their own payments and take 0-5% to pay for things like malware scanning, distribution, etc and you've addressed the strongest monopoly argument (ie payments) and reduced the financial incentive for competitors to attack you.
Attacking you could even risk your qualified payments partner status and you could lose that privileged position. It's such an easy win.
And what will the punishment be? When the penalty for such practices is just that you have to stop, there's no reason for anyone to not do them as much as they can get away with. The penalties must be so ruinous that companies dare not engage in such behavior in the first place.
What that ruling means in practice? 30% fee will be reduced?
Most likely nothing
ah yes australia court finds that every 60 seconds, a minute passes! How amazing! /satire of course
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And then they wonder why they get tarrifs…