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Apple and Google investigated by UK competition body

104 points by ColinWright 5y ago

comfyinnernet 5y ago
This will go nowhere and everyone involved will be working for Apple and Google in a few years' time.
- ccity88 5y ago
  This is what they said about GDPR, and yet here we are. The UK may not have the heavyweight political importance that the EU has, but it's a key market; we can only hope things change because as they stand it's only going to get worse and worse.
- oxfordmale 5y ago
  A more cynical version. This will go nowhere after the Conservative party in the UK receives a number of large political donations from business leaders who do not work for Apple and Google, but do play golf with them. The UK wants to show it has teeth post Brexit, but will find out shortly it can't tackle FAANG without broad political support from other countries.
  - nr2x 5y ago
    Agree with point about the torries, but UK remains a lucrative market on its own. They aren’t as powerful outside the block as within it, but no global company wants to leave the UK market.
    - oxfordmale 5y ago
      The question is if there remains a loop-hole, for example operating from Ireland.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        Google lobbying for devo max our outright independence for Scotland just for market access...
  - ksec 5y ago
    >but will find out shortly it can't tackle FAANG without broad political support from other countries. EU? Even Japan is opening a case on it. Where iPhone has nearly 70% market shares it is ridiculous.
agust 5y ago
Very interesting to see that this concerns app stores as well as web browsers. Web browsers had not been mentioned in most declarations regarding anti-competitive investigations about Apple so far. This is very important because Apple is preventing competition in web browsers engines, forcing competitor browsers (like Chrome and Firefox) to use the engine under Safari (WebKit), which they fully control. By doing so they deprive other browsers of most of their value, and prevent the development of web applications capable of competing with native applications, because they do not implement crucial features in WebKit, like push notification.
- detritus 5y ago
  It might seem stupid and petty, but this was my single biggest gripe with the year I spent on an iPhone which led to my going back to Android after that phone (like all the others in my life) expired. The web browser is my single-most used piece of software, and I'd really like to choose which one I use, thanks (Firefox, in case you're wondering). That and not simply being able to drag and drop mp3s to listen to.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > That and not simply being able to drag and drop mp3s to listen to. Doesn't Apple Music support this? I have many MP3s I've dragged and dropped into Apple Music and then played them on my phone.
    - detritus 5y ago
      Perhaps, i more meant just plugging into a computer and dragging over files using the OS's file manager.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        These days that seems more hassle than doing it over the cloud though - I'd have to go and dig out some kind of physical cable!
- 5y ago
imNotTheProb 5y ago
Apple is actually doing evil monopolistic tactics. At least you can compile your own Android or Chrome. I do this.
coldcode 5y ago
I've always wondered that in a theoretical pure market economy where success ultimately leads to domination of one or more competitors, and failure for everyone else, will always result in a more restrictive market economy afterwards. Apple succeeded (and almost died first, I know, I was there at the time) in integrating hardware and software and Google succeeded in building a better search engine and dominating ads, plus buying Android, yet today there are basically no alternatives to iPhones and Android phones, and search is still majorally dominated by Google. Economically speaking, the market economy allowed them to become dominant in their categories. If you throttle competition to avoid mono/duopolies, do you throttle success for everyone? If you clamp down after successful domination, does that really increase competition? Is there a balance somewhere, or is this basically always going to happen?
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > Is there a balance somewhere, or is this basically always going to happen? I do not see any other possible result in a market for products with near zero marginal costs and high barriers to entry.
  - ece 5y ago
    If the only barrier to entry was money, that would be understandable, but facing artificial roadblocks like those Tile faced seems pretty avoidable with better anti-trust regulation. I also don't think making software or making a platform is "near zero marginal cost." Sure someone can hack something together with off the shelf components in a short time, but building a sustainable product or service isn't easy and takes a lot of resources. Copycat products or making the nth widget might be things which are low marginal cost, but then those who don't innovate die off.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      The zero marginal cost is for copies of the same software. Whereas physical goods have to continuously deal with suppliers, commodities costs, quality of said suppliers and commodities, efficiencies in manufacturing, etc., there is comparatively near zero of that with software. Once it is made, selling it to 1, 10, or 100 buyers makes no difference which lets you drive the price down in case any competitor should try to come around. As an example, Microsoft bundling Teams with its other software at nearly no cost to Microsoft versus Slack. In a physical product business, a seller does not have as much freedom to bundle in extras at no cost to prevent competitors.

104 points by ColinWright 5y ago

comfyinnernet 5y ago

This will go nowhere and everyone involved will be working for Apple and Google in a few years' time.

ccity88 5y ago
This is what they said about GDPR, and yet here we are. The UK may not have the heavyweight political importance that the EU has, but it's a key market; we can only hope things change because as they stand it's only going to get worse and worse.
oxfordmale 5y ago
A more cynical version. This will go nowhere after the Conservative party in the UK receives a number of large political donations from business leaders who do not work for Apple and Google, but do play golf with them. The UK wants to show it has teeth post Brexit, but will find out shortly it can't tackle FAANG without broad political support from other countries.
- nr2x 5y ago
  Agree with point about the torries, but UK remains a lucrative market on its own. They aren’t as powerful outside the block as within it, but no global company wants to leave the UK market.
  - oxfordmale 5y ago
    The question is if there remains a loop-hole, for example operating from Ireland.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Google lobbying for devo max our outright independence for Scotland just for market access...
- ksec 5y ago
  >but will find out shortly it can't tackle FAANG without broad political support from other countries. EU? Even Japan is opening a case on it. Where iPhone has nearly 70% market shares it is ridiculous.

agust 5y ago

Very interesting to see that this concerns app stores as well as web browsers. Web browsers had not been mentioned in most declarations regarding anti-competitive investigations about Apple so far. This is very important because Apple is preventing competition in web browsers engines, forcing competitor browsers (like Chrome and Firefox) to use the engine under Safari (WebKit), which they fully control. By doing so they deprive other browsers of most of their value, and prevent the development of web applications capable of competing with native applications, because they do not implement crucial features in WebKit, like push notification.

detritus 5y ago
It might seem stupid and petty, but this was my single biggest gripe with the year I spent on an iPhone which led to my going back to Android after that phone (like all the others in my life) expired. The web browser is my single-most used piece of software, and I'd really like to choose which one I use, thanks (Firefox, in case you're wondering). That and not simply being able to drag and drop mp3s to listen to.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > That and not simply being able to drag and drop mp3s to listen to. Doesn't Apple Music support this? I have many MP3s I've dragged and dropped into Apple Music and then played them on my phone.
  - detritus 5y ago
    Perhaps, i more meant just plugging into a computer and dragging over files using the OS's file manager.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      These days that seems more hassle than doing it over the cloud though - I'd have to go and dig out some kind of physical cable!
5y ago

imNotTheProb 5y ago

Apple is actually doing evil monopolistic tactics. At least you can compile your own Android or Chrome. I do this.

coldcode 5y ago

I've always wondered that in a theoretical pure market economy where success ultimately leads to domination of one or more competitors, and failure for everyone else, will always result in a more restrictive market economy afterwards. Apple succeeded (and almost died first, I know, I was there at the time) in integrating hardware and software and Google succeeded in building a better search engine and dominating ads, plus buying Android, yet today there are basically no alternatives to iPhones and Android phones, and search is still majorally dominated by Google. Economically speaking, the market economy allowed them to become dominant in their categories. If you throttle competition to avoid mono/duopolies, do you throttle success for everyone? If you clamp down after successful domination, does that really increase competition? Is there a balance somewhere, or is this basically always going to happen?

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> Is there a balance somewhere, or is this basically always going to happen? I do not see any other possible result in a market for products with near zero marginal costs and high barriers to entry.
- ece 5y ago
  If the only barrier to entry was money, that would be understandable, but facing artificial roadblocks like those Tile faced seems pretty avoidable with better anti-trust regulation. I also don't think making software or making a platform is "near zero marginal cost." Sure someone can hack something together with off the shelf components in a short time, but building a sustainable product or service isn't easy and takes a lot of resources. Copycat products or making the nth widget might be things which are low marginal cost, but then those who don't innovate die off.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The zero marginal cost is for copies of the same software. Whereas physical goods have to continuously deal with suppliers, commodities costs, quality of said suppliers and commodities, efficiencies in manufacturing, etc., there is comparatively near zero of that with software. Once it is made, selling it to 1, 10, or 100 buyers makes no difference which lets you drive the price down in case any competitor should try to come around. As an example, Microsoft bundling Teams with its other software at nearly no cost to Microsoft versus Slack. In a physical product business, a seller does not have as much freedom to bundle in extras at no cost to prevent competitors.