From Wikipedia's entry on Standard Oil [0]: > Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, t

From Wikipedia's entry on Standard Oil [0]: > Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration; the company was an innovator in the development of the business trust. Horizontal then vertical integration is exactly what Epic is doing, by first getting onto a bunch of platforms and app stores, then creating their own app stores and auxiliary purchasable items. Apple has always been vertically integrating, when have they horizontally integrated? AFAIK they've always been a platform into which other companies, like Microsoft with their original Office suite, have horizontally integrated. > The Standard Oil trust streamlined production and logistics, lowered costs, and undercut competitors. The group of companies coming together to form this advocacy group is a trust. Apple is not. From Wikipedia's entry on US v AT&T [1]: > [AT&T was] using monopoly profits from its Western Electric subsidiary to subsidize the costs of its network Companies selling apps on the app store are not subsidiaries of Apple, they are customers of Apple. A company reinvesting profits into itself is not anticompetitive. Maybe you had a different idea of why AT&T relates to Apple, but I don't see it. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T