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I feel like the entire world has forgotten what a monopoly is. Apparently both Apple and Google are monopolies despite being competitors of one another. Program
by c3534l 6y ago
I feel like the entire world has forgotten what a monopoly is. Apparently both Apple and Google are monopolies despite being competitors of one another. Programmers clearly talk about developing apps for one platform or another and sometimes give up on developing for one because the approval process was annoying or arbitrary. Consumers have a choice in the phones they buy and whether to even use a phone app for that service to begin with. Maybe this isn't a healthy ecosystem, but it seems we've completely lost the thread on what a monopoly is.
- bombcar 6y agoMonopoly is anything that does something that I don’t like. People bitch about Android vs iPhone and ignore the actual local monopolies present in the phone network itself.
- eruleman 6y agoYou're right. It's a duopoly, a cartel. A system controlled by two players who move in coordination with one another. techcrunch.com/2021/03/16/google-play-drops-commissions-to-15-from-30-following-apples-move-last-year
- erhk 6y agoGood thing that they all cross into each other's primary fields so that there's never a monopoly. Google makes phones. Windows is a search company.
- threeseed 6y agoApple has a search engine. Apple sells advertising. Apple has a maps app. So does Yahoo, Naver, Yandex, Baidu etc. It's all very far from a cartel.
- BoorishBears 6y agoSure chose a bad example... that's Google being forced to drop fees by their competitor. Those are commissions the stores take not what the developers take. Sure sounds like competition.
- Guthur 6y agoAnd yet again wrong. Google and Apple have exhibited very little cartel like behaviour at all. If they had there would have been a clear anti trust case by now. The problem is that everyone seems to have collectively forgot that it's not monopolies in and of themselves that we have to protected against but rather anti trust behaviour. You could potentially argue that app stores do exhibit anti trust behaviour but in that case one should do so and not throw around words clearly aimed at invoking an emotional response.
- threeseed 6y agoYou need to be careful as words matter. Apple and Google are not a cartel by any definition and they do not in anyway coordinate with each other. Either of these are criminal. Google reducing their margins to better compete with Apple is no different to how every market works.
- wdn 6y agoApple and Google’s action is no more than a cartel than Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in the late 90s and early 2000s. They just don’t compete against each other.
- RunawayGalaxy 6y agoOR maybe that's just how markets work
- cj 6y ago> I feel like the entire world has forgotten what a monopoly is [...] we've completely lost the thread on what a monopoly is. Perhaps what “a monopoly is” deserves to be redefined from time to time. I agree with you, legally and based purely on prior case law precedence, maybe it doesn’t count as a monopoly as currently defined by law. But the legal system is designed to be fluid, to adapt to an evolving society. There are no absolutes in any legal system and everything is up for debate, which is the beauty of the system.
- Someone1234 6y agoApple has a monopoly for apps stores on iOS devices. > A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. Commodity: Apps sales on iOS. Only supplier: Apple. Apple use their monopolistic market position to enforce a 30% levy on third parties. It has nothing at all to do with Google, since Google cannot compete with Apple to provide app stores on iOS. Even bringing Google up is an attempt to shift the conversation from the app store situation on iOS to something off-topic and irrelevant (handset market share). That's not what we're discussing. Let's go through the markers of a monopoly: - Profit maximizer: Maximizes profits. Yes. - Price maker: Decides the price of the good or product to be sold, but does so by determining the quantity in order to demand the price desired by the firm. Yes. - Single seller: In a monopoly, there is one seller of the good, who produces all the output. Therefore, the whole market is being served by a single company, and for practical purposes, the company is the same as the industry. Yes, Apple is the exclusive provider. - Price discrimination: A monopolist can change the price or quantity of the product. Yes. So the Appe Store on iOS checks all the markers of a monopoly. But people want to pretend the monopoly designation can only apply to traditional market segments without justification.
- hellisothers 6y agoThis argument falls apart when you consider anybody is the sole provider of anything. I’m the sole provider of my approval, therefore I’m a monopoly? So then you have to decide at what scale this argument makes sense and nobody is going to agree on that.
- threeseed 6y agoiOS App Stores is not an industry though any more than Tesla car operating systems or Ikea screws are. They are intrinsic parts of the objects and have never existed independently of them.
- Someone1234 6y agoSee United States v. Microsoft Corp. That was a landmark decision that essentially says that things like the App Store are in fact eligible to be declared monopolies for the purposes of anti-trust.
- ksec 6y ago>Apparently both Apple and Google are monopolies despite being competitors of one another. It is called Duopoly. >but it seems we've completely lost the thread on what a monopoly is. monopoly | məˈnɒp(ə)li | • a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service: