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I think many people here will be supportive of the proposed "Open App Markets Act" [1]. I found the bill to be fairly comprehensive, here are the excerpts I fou

I think many people here will be supportive of the proposed "Open App Markets Act" [1]. I found the bill to be fairly comprehensive, here are the excerpts I found most interesting: > COVERED COMPANY.—The term ‘‘Covered Company’’ means any person that owns or controls an App Store for which users in the United States exceed 50,000,000. > SEC. 3. PROTECTING A COMPETITIVE APP MARKET. (a) EXCLUSIVITY AND TYING. A Covered Company shall not: > (1) require developers to use an In-App Payment System owned or controlled by the Covered Company or any of its business partners as a condition of being distributed on an App Store or accessible on an operating system > (2) require as a term of distribution on an App Store that pricing terms or conditions of sale be equal to or more favorable on its App Store than the terms or conditions under another App Store > (3) take punitive action or otherwise impose less favorable terms and conditions against a developer for using or offering different pricing terms or conditions of sale through another In-App Payment System or on another App Store. > (b) INTERFERENCE WITH LEGITIMATE BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS. A Covered Company shall not impose restrictions on communications of developers with the users of the App through an App or direct outreach to a user concerning legitimate business offers, such as pricing terms and product or service offerings. > (d) INTEROPERABILITY. A Covered Company that controls the operating system or operating system configuration on which its App Store operates shall allow and provide the readily accessible means for users of that operating system to: > (1) choose third-party Apps or App Stores as defaults for categories appropriate to the App or App Store > (2) install third-party Apps or App Stores through means other than its App Store > (3) hide or delete Apps or App Stores provided or preinstalled by the App Store owner or any of its business partners. > (e) SELF-PREFERENCING IN SEARCH. (1) A Covered Company shall not provide unequal treatment of Apps in an App Store through unreasonably preferencing or ranking the Apps of the Covered Company or any of its business partners over those of other Apps. Unreasonably preferencing - (A) includes applying ranking schemes or algorithms that prioritize Apps based on a criterion of ownership interest by the Covered Company or its business partners; and (B) does not include clearly disclosed advertising. > (f) OPEN APP DEVELOPMENT. Access to operating system interfaces, development information, and hardware and software features shall be provided to developers on a timely basis and on terms that are equivalent or functionally-equivalent to the terms for access by similar Apps or functions provided by the Covered Company or to its business partners. [1] https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%20Open%20App%20Markets%20Act%20-%20Bill%20Text.pdf https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%...

skunkworker 5y ago
If I'm reading this right, Apple would be forced to make private APIs public. That could be interesting and also a nightmare, especially if some developers use some private apis in dark patterns (eg take the 2/4/6 minute reminders iMessage gives you, now make that every minute or so). They also beta test APIs in a version and then the following version release a public type of it. I'm not a fan of services utilizing alternative payment methods for subscriptions as using the App Store Subscriptions page is the easiest I've ever used. Now if you were forced to use the apple subscriptions page API but your own payment provider, that could make more sense. I'm curious if this applies to Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo though.
- rahkiin 5y ago
  This sounds like it covers gaming consoles as well as they have app stores. Or are they going to claim they have game stores instead of app stores?
- shagie 5y ago
  There's that 50,000,000 number in there... which have to be US customers. There have only been 9.37M Nintendo switch sold in the US. Playstation 5 has only 10M worldwide sales. Only 6.5M total Xbox X/S sales. So, none of the game consoles or devices would be covered under this. Rather convenient for those companies.
  - redxdev 5y ago
    There's a question of whether newer generations of consoles count as having different app stores, which would change those numbers. Does having a different store platform make it count separately? Does having a new generation of device count separately? Or is it any user of any store platform owned by a single company? For example, the Xbox One and Xbox Series X use the same store but they're different generations of Xbox. Do you count those users together or not? If those aren't counted together, what about mid-generation refreshes like the Xbox One S or Xbox One X? If generations are counted separately, what about iPhone generations? Or the fact that Android isn't even based around generations since there are multiple manufacturers? And there's the question of what counts as a user for the purpose of this bill - would anyone who has ever bought into the ecosystem count? Or would it be something like monthly active users? The intention here is obviously to go after Apple/Google, but the wording of the user count just seems way too open as to make it unclear if markets outside of the mobile space are affected. Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft and Xbox. I have feelings about how this would affect Xbox (which would obviously be biased), but even without getting to them it's unclear whether this bill would even be relevant.

skunkworker 5y ago

If I'm reading this right, Apple would be forced to make private APIs public. That could be interesting and also a nightmare, especially if some developers use some private apis in dark patterns (eg take the 2/4/6 minute reminders iMessage gives you, now make that every minute or so). They also beta test APIs in a version and then the following version release a public type of it. I'm not a fan of services utilizing alternative payment methods for subscriptions as using the App Store Subscriptions page is the easiest I've ever used. Now if you were forced to use the apple subscriptions page API but your own payment provider, that could make more sense. I'm curious if this applies to Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo though.

rahkiin 5y ago
This sounds like it covers gaming consoles as well as they have app stores. Or are they going to claim they have game stores instead of app stores?
shagie 5y ago
There's that 50,000,000 number in there... which have to be US customers. There have only been 9.37M Nintendo switch sold in the US. Playstation 5 has only 10M worldwide sales. Only 6.5M total Xbox X/S sales. So, none of the game consoles or devices would be covered under this. Rather convenient for those companies.
- redxdev 5y ago
  There's a question of whether newer generations of consoles count as having different app stores, which would change those numbers. Does having a different store platform make it count separately? Does having a new generation of device count separately? Or is it any user of any store platform owned by a single company? For example, the Xbox One and Xbox Series X use the same store but they're different generations of Xbox. Do you count those users together or not? If those aren't counted together, what about mid-generation refreshes like the Xbox One S or Xbox One X? If generations are counted separately, what about iPhone generations? Or the fact that Android isn't even based around generations since there are multiple manufacturers? And there's the question of what counts as a user for the purpose of this bill - would anyone who has ever bought into the ecosystem count? Or would it be something like monthly active users? The intention here is obviously to go after Apple/Google, but the wording of the user count just seems way too open as to make it unclear if markets outside of the mobile space are affected. Full disclosure, I work for Microsoft and Xbox. I have feelings about how this would affect Xbox (which would obviously be biased), but even without getting to them it's unclear whether this bill would even be relevant.