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> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."

> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." ... > This unredacted graf shows that telcos get up to 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores on the smartphones they sell and service. Insane reading.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ctvo 5y ago
The new FTC chair, Lina Khan, read this like Birdman, rubbing her hands.
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  Is she more ethical than Ajit Paid?
  - nl 5y ago
    Yes
    - chris_wot 5y ago
      That would not be hard.
  - finebalance 5y ago
    Death row inmates are more ethical than that man.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    Did you think that said FCC?
- sam1r 5y ago
  Shout to bird man!
- paganel 5y ago
  I don't think she has that much power just yet, my only hope is that the powers that be behind US's industrial military's complex got scared into (re-)action by China's recent moves against the likes of Jack Ma and Tencent, they might just think that the Chinese are right and employing that much human capital into what's essential add- and attention-seeking business is not a good military defence strategy long-term. With those powers behind her she can do some harm, otherwise I'm afraid she'll be just a sitting duck in front of FANG's lobbyists.
Andrex 5y ago
I can see the justification for this in Android's early life. Every Android phone having its own app store would have been a disaster for everyone: users, developers, Google, and even telcos in the long run. Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Has it become "a disaster" on PCs or Macs?
  - xxpor 5y ago
    No, but that's not the disaster we'd have. We'd have what feature phones were like where you'd only be able to use the carriers store.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    On PCs, we had something before app stores. We just called it software distribution.
dalbasal 5y ago
>> 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite. Better to just take your share of monopoly profits than work hard competing, unless you expect to win their place. This stuff is the norm. Maybe we should switch to being surprised (delighted?) when these guys compete at all. ^https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-could-cost-google-15-billion-by-buying-duckduckgo-analyst-says/?sh=793e10171920 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...
- edouard-harris 5y ago
  > Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1] > Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits. This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely surprising if it was unprofitable on an operating basis. [2] The reality is that search is so huge that it's worth competing in, even if the incumbent has 30X your market share. [1] https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321 [2] https://backlinko.com/bing-users https://backlinko.com/bing-users
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    >>business' has naturally high margins $8bn in revenue might not mean profitable. Google certainly spend a lot more than this on search and advertising, and well... software scales. In any case, whether they make $1bn in profit, losses or something in between... This is <1% of market profits. Apple is making $8bn-$12bn, all profit, just on defaults.
    - arcturus17 5y ago
      GP is saying naturally high margins because it is a pure software play with close-to-zero marginal distribution cost and massive scale. We don’t know if Bing’s profitable but GP is merely saying that with the circumstances above it is an interesting market for Microsoft to pursue.
MichaelZuo 5y ago
I think this is huge news if the practice is still en vogue? And also defeats the point of Epic’s separate app store right? The major carriers could simply demand the same cut from Epic if it ever gets any traction.
- ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  > And also defeats the point of Epic’s separate app store right? This is why Epic is suing them, to have a judge prohibit Google from illegally anticompetitive behavior.
jimbob45 5y ago
That’s it, right? That’s the game? There’s no way the DoJ doesn’t have a slam-dunk case with that one quote.
- noptd 5y ago
  With additional details and evidence, I'd hope so. I'm not sure how this could be seen as anything other than collusion and anti-competitive behavior.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  Possibly, but when Janet Reno "had the goods" on Microsoft, she suddenly settled. Mind you, that was a lengthy case with the explicit purpose of splitting up Microsoft. Then, when it was all but cinched, she suddenly reversed and settled for just about ... no concessions. All Microsoft had to do was share APIs. Even the judge in the case said that Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." [1] This new situation may be a slam-dunk, but no dunking may actually happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Appeal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    > Even the judge This was Judge Jackson, who had his decision overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Also "the appeals court judges accused him of unethical conduct." A lot of grandiose things were said by people during these trials, many looking to enrich their careers.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      Yes, but none of the findings of fact were overturned. The judge had been interviewed, which was the issue, not that the facts were in dispute. In the settlement, Microsoft also allowed PC manufacturers to adopt non-Microsoft software.
heavyset_go 5y ago
>> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." They're literally a cartel.
- echelon 5y ago
  It's time to split the Famgopolies. Apple and Google shouldn't be in so many different businesses, killing everything in their wake. Why the hell does Apple have a film studio? Why does Google have a game studio and cloud? If they keep going, they'll be the MGM and Whole Foods too. (Oh, wait!) Famgopolies also shouldn't be allowed to dictate their payments stacks, software distribution systems, app approval processes, browsers, or monitoring. Especially not if they're going after every single possible market, snuffing out all of the oxygen in the ecosystem. If a famgopoly does over 100 things, it shouldn't be allowed to keep growing like the blob. I really don't want my startup to be a gazelle at the savannah, waiting for the lions to bite at the jugular because they like my idea and market. If I put so much on the line to innovate, only to have these titans duplicate and crush me, what's the point? I never thought I'd ever cheer for patent suits given all of the trolls, but I was genuinely happy that Sonos won over Google recently. We need more of that. Edit: incoming famgopoly downvote brigade.
  - TheRealNGenius 5y ago
    You don't get it, what you describe is not necessarily a monopoly.
    - echelon 5y ago
      You don't need to be a monopoly to be a cartel or take part in anticompetitive behavior that would draw the ire of Congress or the DOJ. I think we've seen sufficient evidence in this to call for having both Google and Apple split up. Famgopoly is just a play on words to describe these never before seen emergent phenomena. You're right - they're not monopolies. They're something new the world has never seen before. Famgopolies.
oldgradstudent 5y ago
Enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act. > 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 declared to be illegal. > Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. A few years in federal prison for the CEOs of Apple and Google might change the situation.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Has anyone ever actually gone to prison under the Sherman Act?
  - oldgradstudent 5y ago
    Rarely. > Jail sentences have also traditionally been lenient. For example, from 1890 to 1970, only nineteen individuals actually went to jail for pure antitrust violations for a total of 28 months. Thus, during the first 80 years of the Sherman Act, the average jail sentence was approximately 1.5 months. https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020&context=luclj https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020...
- silexia 5y ago
  As a CEO, I would love to see the enforcement of these laws. Increasing competition will greatly help our free market. People have lost faith in capitalism because of crony capitalism.
127 5y ago
What's going on in America and why is there no actual antitrust enforcement action?
- wilde 5y ago
  The Consumer Welfare Standard. You have to show that the cartel actually caused an increase in prices for end consumers. This is hard. Here’s an FTC commissioner explaining the history of it and why we should probably change it. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1455663/welfare_standard_speech_-_cmr-wilson.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ctvo 5y ago

The new FTC chair, Lina Khan, read this like Birdman, rubbing her hands.

tentacleuno 5y ago
Is she more ethical than Ajit Paid?
- nl 5y ago
  Yes
  - chris_wot 5y ago
    That would not be hard.
- finebalance 5y ago
  Death row inmates are more ethical than that man.
- shadilay 5y ago
  Did you think that said FCC?
sam1r 5y ago
Shout to bird man!
paganel 5y ago
I don't think she has that much power just yet, my only hope is that the powers that be behind US's industrial military's complex got scared into (re-)action by China's recent moves against the likes of Jack Ma and Tencent, they might just think that the Chinese are right and employing that much human capital into what's essential add- and attention-seeking business is not a good military defence strategy long-term. With those powers behind her she can do some harm, otherwise I'm afraid she'll be just a sitting duck in front of FANG's lobbyists.

Andrex 5y ago

I can see the justification for this in Android's early life. Every Android phone having its own app store would have been a disaster for everyone: users, developers, Google, and even telcos in the long run. Hard to believe, but Google Play (nee Android Market) was pretty damn shabby until about 2013 or so.

mdoms 5y ago
Has it become "a disaster" on PCs or Macs?
- xxpor 5y ago
  No, but that's not the disaster we'd have. We'd have what feature phones were like where you'd only be able to use the carriers store.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  On PCs, we had something before app stores. We just called it software distribution.

dalbasal 5y ago

>> 25% of Google's app sales to keep them from developing rival app stores Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. Despite Adwords' incredible profitability, Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits... Their Revenues @ were far lower than proportional to their market share, and costs are the opposite. Better to just take your share of monopoly profits than work hard competing, unless you expect to win their place. This stuff is the norm. Maybe we should switch to being surprised (delighted?) when these guys compete at all. ^https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-could-cost-google-15-billion-by-buying-duckduckgo-analyst-says/?sh=793e10171920 https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

edouard-harris 5y ago
> Google also pays Apple 7 billion annually^ to be its default SE. It's actually between $8-12 billion now. [1] > Yahoo & MSFT's experience as 2nd place in that market was working very hard and earning $0 profits. This is an exaggeration though. MSFT made nearly $8 billion in revenue last year from search (mostly Bing), and the business has naturally high margins so it would be extremely surprising if it was unprofitable on an operating basis. [2] The reality is that search is so huge that it's worth competing in, even if the incumbent has 30X your market share. [1] https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321 https://twitter.com/jowens510/status/1428416856038072321 [2] https://backlinko.com/bing-users https://backlinko.com/bing-users
- dalbasal 5y ago
  >>business' has naturally high margins $8bn in revenue might not mean profitable. Google certainly spend a lot more than this on search and advertising, and well... software scales. In any case, whether they make $1bn in profit, losses or something in between... This is <1% of market profits. Apple is making $8bn-$12bn, all profit, just on defaults.
  - arcturus17 5y ago
    GP is saying naturally high margins because it is a pure software play with close-to-zero marginal distribution cost and massive scale. We don’t know if Bing’s profitable but GP is merely saying that with the circumstances above it is an interesting market for Microsoft to pursue.

MichaelZuo 5y ago

I think this is huge news if the practice is still en vogue? And also defeats the point of Epic’s separate app store right? The major carriers could simply demand the same cut from Epic if it ever gets any traction.

ocdtrekkie 5y ago
> And also defeats the point of Epic’s separate app store right? This is why Epic is suing them, to have a judge prohibit Google from illegally anticompetitive behavior.

jimbob45 5y ago

That’s it, right? That’s the game? There’s no way the DoJ doesn’t have a slam-dunk case with that one quote.

noptd 5y ago
With additional details and evidence, I'd hope so. I'm not sure how this could be seen as anything other than collusion and anti-competitive behavior.
IncRnd 5y ago
Possibly, but when Janet Reno "had the goods" on Microsoft, she suddenly settled. Mind you, that was a lengthy case with the explicit purpose of splitting up Microsoft. Then, when it was all but cinched, she suddenly reversed and settled for just about ... no concessions. All Microsoft had to do was share APIs. Even the judge in the case said that Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." [1] This new situation may be a slam-dunk, but no dunking may actually happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Appeal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  > Even the judge This was Judge Jackson, who had his decision overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Also "the appeals court judges accused him of unethical conduct." A lot of grandiose things were said by people during these trials, many looking to enrich their careers.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    Yes, but none of the findings of fact were overturned. The judge had been interviewed, which was the issue, not that the facts were in dispute. In the settlement, Microsoft also allowed PC manufacturers to adopt non-Microsoft software.

heavyset_go 5y ago

>> After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company." They're literally a cartel.

echelon 5y ago
It's time to split the Famgopolies. Apple and Google shouldn't be in so many different businesses, killing everything in their wake. Why the hell does Apple have a film studio? Why does Google have a game studio and cloud? If they keep going, they'll be the MGM and Whole Foods too. (Oh, wait!) Famgopolies also shouldn't be allowed to dictate their payments stacks, software distribution systems, app approval processes, browsers, or monitoring. Especially not if they're going after every single possible market, snuffing out all of the oxygen in the ecosystem. If a famgopoly does over 100 things, it shouldn't be allowed to keep growing like the blob. I really don't want my startup to be a gazelle at the savannah, waiting for the lions to bite at the jugular because they like my idea and market. If I put so much on the line to innovate, only to have these titans duplicate and crush me, what's the point? I never thought I'd ever cheer for patent suits given all of the trolls, but I was genuinely happy that Sonos won over Google recently. We need more of that. Edit: incoming famgopoly downvote brigade.
- TheRealNGenius 5y ago
  You don't get it, what you describe is not necessarily a monopoly.
  - echelon 5y ago
    You don't need to be a monopoly to be a cartel or take part in anticompetitive behavior that would draw the ire of Congress or the DOJ. I think we've seen sufficient evidence in this to call for having both Google and Apple split up. Famgopoly is just a play on words to describe these never before seen emergent phenomena. You're right - they're not monopolies. They're something new the world has never seen before. Famgopolies.

oldgradstudent 5y ago

Enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act. > 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 declared to be illegal. > Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court. A few years in federal prison for the CEOs of Apple and Google might change the situation.

elliekelly 5y ago
Has anyone ever actually gone to prison under the Sherman Act?
- oldgradstudent 5y ago
  Rarely. > Jail sentences have also traditionally been lenient. For example, from 1890 to 1970, only nineteen individuals actually went to jail for pure antitrust violations for a total of 28 months. Thus, during the first 80 years of the Sherman Act, the average jail sentence was approximately 1.5 months. https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020&context=luclj https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020...
silexia 5y ago
As a CEO, I would love to see the enforcement of these laws. Increasing competition will greatly help our free market. People have lost faith in capitalism because of crony capitalism.

127 5y ago

What's going on in America and why is there no actual antitrust enforcement action?

wilde 5y ago
The Consumer Welfare Standard. You have to show that the cartel actually caused an increase in prices for end consumers. This is hard. Here’s an FTC commissioner explaining the history of it and why we should probably change it. https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1455663/welfare_standard_speech_-_cmr-wilson.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...