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Court rejects $1.2B EU antitrust fine against Intel

102 points by fvv 5y ago

actuator 5y ago
I can't understand the whole merits of this case but for some reason it seems like regulators have been overzealous on some issues while ignoring other more worthy causes. The FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on. They don't own a paltform as such. An upcomer like Tiktok can upstage them and create its own space out of nowhere in a couple of years. While look at Apple. They have more than 50% share of mobile devices in US and their devices are actual platforms. They own it from bare silicon to device to OS to apps to services to accessories. Their own products get first class support while others can't integrate as well. Their web browser has no real competition on mobile, so mobile web for more than 50% of users is at their mercy. They get unfair advantage for their music streaming services etc. The list is quite long.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Even worse, only Apple's browser is allowed to have extensions on the iPhone. Every other browser is programmatically blocked from doing so. If that's not abusing your position in one market to crowd out competition in another, I don't know what is.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Different times. Different concerns.
    - nervlord 5y ago
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Yeah, I still don't understand how Microsoft lost the suit back in the day just for including IE as a default web browser in windows, whereas apple can ban all web browsers but their own and it's fine.
  - kaesar14 5y ago
    What do you mean? I use Chrome on my iPhone just fine?
    - dontblink 5y ago
      You are using Safari (actually webkit) with a Chrome UI.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Other web browsers are essentially just reskinning WebKit, which they have to use. So other browsers are allowed but everyone needs to use Apple's engine.
      - infogulch 5y ago
        Actually this was an option back in the IE days too. Just nobody did it because it was stupid.
        emteycz 5y ago
        Maxthon browser used to use IE engine. It was done because Firefox engine was hard to separate from the browser (still the case today) and WebKit wasn't ready for use at least until 2005 (when it was open sourced).
      - criddell 5y ago
        And this is probably the only thing holding back Chrome's (or rather Chromium's) overwhelming dominance of the web.
    - celsoazevedo 5y ago
      https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/350671/does-safari-and-google-chrome-for-macos-use-the-same-rendering-engine https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/350671/does-safari...
  - VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  It's realpolitik. By the numbers Apple is worse, but Facebook has more influence over the political discourse, so they get more government pressure. The point of the pressure isn't to make them do something good (e.g. federate, or divest Instagram and WhatsApp and stop buying competitors), even though it could be. The real point is to demonstrate the ability to penalize them. Then if they do what the government wants, i.e. censor the people the government wants censored, their problems will go away. A slap on the wrist instead of a breakup.
  - snek_case 5y ago
    I also get the impression that the public perception of the brand matters a lot. The public image of Facebook has been repeatedly tarnished in the last 5-7 years. The general public sentiment seems to be best summer up by "fuck Facebook". Apple on the other hand is generally well-liked. Even though, like you said, they engage in a lot of anti-competitive practices. By all accounts, Apple is a key player in making computing platforms more locked down and tightly controlled, fighting against the right to repair, using weird proprietary screws everywhere. Things that should make everyone on Hacker News frown... But no, Apple products are expensive status symbols, the Prada of computing, and Steve Jobs was the messiah of the modern computer age, even though he routinely threw fits and treated everyone like shit. Apple can do no wrong.
    - localhost 5y ago
      Be careful not to mix up what this echo chamber (and the rest of tech social media) feels about FB vs. what the "general public" feels about FB.
      - in3d 5y ago
        “Americans say, 76% to 11%, that Facebook makes society worse, not better, according to the survey.” https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/business/cnn-poll-facebook/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/business/cnn-poll-facebook/in...
        5y ago
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  It's just politics. US messes up European corporations such as Alstom and EU messes up FB, AAPL et tal. Everything wrapped up under some political correct flags (human rights, environment, there are plenty to insert here.)
- echelon 5y ago
  Apple and Google are far and away the biggest monopolies of our time, yet the amount of scrutiny they receive is thin. Both of these companies illegally collude and have even been caught doing it. Apple owns 50%+ of modern American consumer computing. They tax all of it. You can't repair your stuff and have to buy into an expensive ecosystem. You can't run a non-Apple browser or your own software. The 1984 dream of trusted computing that we bought hook, line, and sinker and are now paying the protection racket price for. As much as I hate ads, their tight control and singular policy changes have repeatedly caused multi-billion dollar ripples in the industry. Facebook is having to build a new market. That's a sign of a monopoly. Google controls the web. They control search. The browser. Slowly the web is turning into Google hosted AMP, sites bearing adsense, and sites that only run in Chrome. Both of them sell movies and music and are morphing into studios. They're both trying to get into payments and dominate fintech. This is too broad to compete with. Both of them need a hard regulatory shaking.
  - actuator 5y ago
    > As much as I hate ads, their tight control and singular policy change has made multi-billion dollar ripples in the industry. That's a sign of a monopoly. Yeah, it might be good for the user but a company making a change that shakes the industry like this is worrying. Worse bit is, it helps them as well as they have an ads product which might do well when others can't do better personalised advertising. > Both of them sell movies and music and are morphing into studios. They're both trying to get into payments and dominate fintech. This is too broad to compete with. Agreed. There is no way other companies can meaningfully compete with them. Look at Apple and Airpods. The revenue just Airpod makes for Appple is multiples of revenue of Sennheiser and Bose combined.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  > The FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on. They don't own a paltform as such. An upcomer like Tiktok can upstage them and create its own space out of nowhere in a couple of years. Because Facebook is big and robust enough to take a few on the chin in order to make it look like "something is being done", which ultimately protects the industry from actual oversight and regulation.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on We got popular interest in antitrust. Unfortunately, that's drawn Spitzer types in both the U.S. and EU. Khan and Vestager have a penchant for bringing inchoate cases with headline potential. (The "FTC’s inability to offer [a federal court] any indication of the metric(s) or method(s) it used to calculate Facebook’s market share" being Exhibit A for their breathtaking incompetence [1].) Hopefully this combination of sustained popular interest and transatlantic executive incompetence spurs legislatures into redrawing 20th century antitrust rules. [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224921/gov.uscourts.dcd.224921.73.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224...
  - actuator 5y ago
    I have lost hope on lawmakers doing anything meaningful here which can actually prevent the market domination misuse happening right now. I don't know if it is incompetence or lobbying.
- amelius 5y ago
  The problem is that technical people who clearly see these issues suffer from echo-chamber paralysis. They complain to each other from behind their keyboards, but never take action.
  - criddell 5y ago
    I'm a somewhat technical person and I don't think it's all that clear. Apple isn't perfect, but their customers are mostly happy with their tech.
- teawrecks 5y ago
  Amazon AWS shifts in its seat
- ouid 5y ago
  The problem here is that your definition of the product is far too coarse. You can only really talk about competition for products which are truly equivalent. For an extreme example of why too coarse a definition of the product might yield a bad understanding of monopolies. Say that there was a food company and a water company. You might argue that both of these companies are competing in the space of "products that you need to live", but I clearly need both things, so sales do not form a zero sum game between the two companies. So why is facebook a monopoly? For the simple reason that having access to your friends on facebook and having access to your friends on tiktok is not a zero sum game. There is a limited amount of tradeoff between the two, but it is expected for consumers to want both, creating intrinsic opportunities for the two companies to cooperate, instead of compete. The problem is that competition is measured more or less as how anti-correlated demand for two products is, or approximately, How much less price sensitive my demand for the "sum" of the products is than for just one of them. If this is your measure, then you see that facebook and Tiktok don't compete all that much. One easy way to fix some of these problems is by requiring something like XMPP. Peering between IM providers would make these things a lot more fungible. Google abandoned XMPP, hwich was very popular, for their inferior chat application, for a reason, and the only reason that I own any Apple products is because of iMessage.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    I'm not sure you made the case for why facebook is a monopoly. They don't hold a monopoly on friends list online. Everywhere I go from instagram, tiktok, snapchat, xbox, etc. They many of a monopoly on your friends attention but communication can exist outside of these networks. Why require XMPP, if XMPP is a superior product people will find it and use it. You may need food and water but you don't need a certain brand of tuna because everyone else is using it. It sounds like facebook purchased a new big screen tv invited everyone over for free. All of your friends went over tonight and you want to shutdown the party so everyone will go somewhere else you approve of.
    - ouid 5y ago
      It sounds like you didn't understand the argument.
- huitzitziltzin 5y ago
  I teach antitrust and competition to undergrads and grad students. None of what you have described in this paragraph is an antitrust violation, not by a mile: "While look at Apple. They have more than 50% share of mobile devices in US and their devices are actual platforms. They own it from bare silicon to device to OS to apps to services to accessories. Their own products get first class support while others can't integrate as well. Their web browser has no real competition on mobile, so mobile web for more than 50% of users is at their mercy." To the extent that the following sentence relates to the fees they set on their app store, it might allege an antitrust violation: "They get unfair advantage for their music streaming services etc." But the optimal regulation of platforms is very much an unsettled area of thinking. The reason regulators have not focused on the behavior of Apple which you complain about is really simple: none of it is an antitrust violation.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    The case against Apple starts with recognizing that vertical markets aren't all the same. The market for phones isn't the same as the market for apps. In particular, there are two separate app markets. A phone customer can choose Android or iOS. An app developer can't choose which store to use to distribute their apps. They have to use the one their customer uses. If they have customers on both, they have to use both, and have no choice. The analogy would be two huge landlords that together own all the real estate in a city and also own the only two shipping companies in the city. A "real estate customer" has a choice in where to live. An online retailer doesn't get to choose where their customers live. The two shipping companies each only ship to the customers who live in that company's apartments. The online retailer, who is the customer of the shipping company, has no choice in what shipping company to use. If their own customer lives in one company's apartments, they must use that shipping company. It's a shipping monopoly. There is a significant identifiable set of destinations for which no other provider of shipping services exists, and none can exist because the same company prohibits anyone else from delivering to them. Either that's an antitrust violation or we need new antitrust laws. > But the optimal regulation of platforms is very much an unsettled area of thinking. Isn't this the thing that gets settled in court by prosecuting a case against them?
- dataflow 5y ago
  > The FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on. I have no idea what this measures, but Googling "Facebook markert share" shows lots of results over 50%: https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats > An upcomer like Tiktok can upstage them and create its own space out of nowhere in a couple of years. Is it a requirement of a monopoly that no competitor could possibly come and grab part of the market? Like as soon as one manages to do that, there's no longer a monopoly, despite the relative market shares? Also, I'm not sure I'd see them as direct competitors per se - in some spaces yes, but not in every space. TikTok is great for people who want to post videos, but not everyone is into posting videos. (Not sure why YouTube is listed on that page either, for the same reason.)
  - rndphs 5y ago
    I think if TikTok started as an American company and didn't have access to the FB-free Chinese market then it would have been crushed by Facebook in the American market before it could grow.
    - jensensbutton 5y ago
      Tiktok does not have access to the FB-free Chinese market.
      - rndphs 5y ago
        Yes it does. TikTok is known as Douyin in China. The company that owns TikTok is headquartered in Beijing, and Douyin was operating in China for years before TikTok was released in the west.
        jensensbutton 5y ago
        I'm aware of Douyin. However, TikTok and Douyin are different apps with different users. The product named TikTok did not establish itself in China first.
  - 5y ago
kergonath 5y ago
Simply disgusting, and difficult to understand. How is a market leader bribing OEMs not to use a competitor's product not the definition of anticompetitive behaviour and abuse of a dominant position?
- belval 5y ago
  I think it's because the case hinged on the outcome, not on the practice itself. The suit alleged that Intel had "killed" AMD with this practice and brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. The issue is, Intel is getting their asses handed to them right now by AMD so the argument seems pretty hollow in 2022. I am not saying this is good or bad, but that's the intuition behind the reversal I think. EDIT: Please don't shoot the messenger, I am just offering a conjecture, I am not even European or American.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > I think it's because the case hinged on the outcome, not on the practice itself. Yeah it sounds like it. My understanding from the summaries is that the commission failed to quantify the damage with enough accuracy and certainty. It sucks.
  - avanderveen 5y ago
    To me it feels like the original fine may have influenced by that. It would have discouraged Intel from offering these rebates to OEMs, giving AMD a chance to slowly get back into laptops. At the time Intel's mobile CPUs were far superior, but the same could not be said for their integrated GPUs, but IIRC the rebates required that OEMs go full Intel (CPU, GPU, chipset, and WiFi).
    - tarlinian 5y ago
      This doesn't particularly make sense. You can't even use non Intel chipsets with Intel CPUs and integrated GPUs are inherently tied to the CPU. (In the case of the discrete GPU segment, Intel didn't even have an offering.) The only place where alternatives are even technically possible are in WiFi where there is no impact on AMD.
dustinmoris 5y ago
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  If you like, you can appeal your $50 fine as well and drag it out for years. It just doesn’t make financial sense to do so. That’s why these cases take years to play out: the courts are slow, and every appeal and motion just adds time. In the case of David v Goliath trials (where it’s you against a multi-billion dollar company) have lawyers that take advantage of that in the hopes of getting you to give up…
  - Zenst 5y ago
    >If you like, you can appeal your $50 fine as well and drag it out for years Though isn't there the issue of increasing fine costs and thinking parking tickets in which they carrot and stick it with a small discount if paid early and heavy penalties that stack up when it is delayed. Not sure if appeals freeze that process, though certainly the risk of incurring the financial costs of the other side in judgement; Can and does put many of and peer-pressures them into just paying the smaller fine as the time and effort, along with stress of taking and challenging alone, can and does take a toll.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - DannyBee 5y ago
    At some point you'd usually have to put a bond.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      California used to require you to, even for traffic tickets. Want to appeal your $600-$1000 ticket? Better have that on hand for the bond. But if you choose to just pay it, they thankfully had payment plans! Just not on the bond...
yorwba 5y ago
The court's decision in case someone wants to read it: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-01/cp220016en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...
- Beltalowda 5y ago
  And the full court ruling (previous link is the press release): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62009TJ0286%2801%29&qid=1643220358108 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
giuliomagnifico 5y ago
Well after 12 years. At least it ended.
- granzymes 5y ago
  It hasn't ended yet! There's still one more possible trip to the Court of Justice.
mcfedr 5y ago
Something is really broken in the court system that this can take so long
Zenst 5y ago
12 years and a lot changes. Reminds me of the Microsoft case about IE and by the time that came to pass, Google had changed that entire landscape. Which if there is a jury (not sure upon the process here so not sure if there is a jury per-say), then the mindset will be ever so slightly tainted in personal perspective. [EDIT] reference to the Microsoft case https://www.cnet.com/news/eu-resolves-microsoft-ie-antitrust-case/ https://www.cnet.com/news/eu-resolves-microsoft-ie-antitrust...

102 points by fvv 5y ago

I can't understand the whole merits of this case but for some reason it seems like regulators have been overzealous on some issues while ignoring other more worthy causes. The FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on. They don't own a paltform as such. An upcomer like Tiktok can upstage them and create its own space out of nowhere in a couple of years. While look at Apple. They have more than 50% share of mobile devices in US and their devices are actual platforms. They own it from bare silicon to device to OS to apps to services to accessories. Their own products get first class support while others can't integrate as well. Their web browser has no real competition on mobile, so mobile web for more than 50% of users is at their mercy. They get unfair advantage for their music streaming services etc. The list is quite long.

jimbob45 5y ago
Even worse, only Apple's browser is allowed to have extensions on the iPhone. Every other browser is programmatically blocked from doing so. If that's not abusing your position in one market to crowd out competition in another, I don't know what is.
- ghaff 5y ago
  Different times. Different concerns.
  - nervlord 5y ago
dahfizz 5y ago
Yeah, I still don't understand how Microsoft lost the suit back in the day just for including IE as a default web browser in windows, whereas apple can ban all web browsers but their own and it's fine.
- kaesar14 5y ago
  What do you mean? I use Chrome on my iPhone just fine?
  - dontblink 5y ago
    You are using Safari (actually webkit) with a Chrome UI.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Other web browsers are essentially just reskinning WebKit, which they have to use. So other browsers are allowed but everyone needs to use Apple's engine.
    - infogulch 5y ago
      Actually this was an option back in the IE days too. Just nobody did it because it was stupid.
      - emteycz 5y ago
        Maxthon browser used to use IE engine. It was done because Firefox engine was hard to separate from the browser (still the case today) and WebKit wasn't ready for use at least until 2005 (when it was open sourced).
    - criddell 5y ago
      And this is probably the only thing holding back Chrome's (or rather Chromium's) overwhelming dominance of the web.
  - celsoazevedo 5y ago
    https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/350671/does-safari-and-google-chrome-for-macos-use-the-same-rendering-engine https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/350671/does-safari...
- VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
It's realpolitik. By the numbers Apple is worse, but Facebook has more influence over the political discourse, so they get more government pressure. The point of the pressure isn't to make them do something good (e.g. federate, or divest Instagram and WhatsApp and stop buying competitors), even though it could be. The real point is to demonstrate the ability to penalize them. Then if they do what the government wants, i.e. censor the people the government wants censored, their problems will go away. A slap on the wrist instead of a breakup.
- snek_case 5y ago
  I also get the impression that the public perception of the brand matters a lot. The public image of Facebook has been repeatedly tarnished in the last 5-7 years. The general public sentiment seems to be best summer up by "fuck Facebook". Apple on the other hand is generally well-liked. Even though, like you said, they engage in a lot of anti-competitive practices. By all accounts, Apple is a key player in making computing platforms more locked down and tightly controlled, fighting against the right to repair, using weird proprietary screws everywhere. Things that should make everyone on Hacker News frown... But no, Apple products are expensive status symbols, the Prada of computing, and Steve Jobs was the messiah of the modern computer age, even though he routinely threw fits and treated everyone like shit. Apple can do no wrong.
  - localhost 5y ago
    Be careful not to mix up what this echo chamber (and the rest of tech social media) feels about FB vs. what the "general public" feels about FB.
    - in3d 5y ago
      “Americans say, 76% to 11%, that Facebook makes society worse, not better, according to the survey.” https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/business/cnn-poll-facebook/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/10/business/cnn-poll-facebook/in...
      - 5y ago
markus_zhang 5y ago
It's just politics. US messes up European corporations such as Alstom and EU messes up FB, AAPL et tal. Everything wrapped up under some political correct flags (human rights, environment, there are plenty to insert here.)
echelon 5y ago
Apple and Google are far and away the biggest monopolies of our time, yet the amount of scrutiny they receive is thin. Both of these companies illegally collude and have even been caught doing it. Apple owns 50%+ of modern American consumer computing. They tax all of it. You can't repair your stuff and have to buy into an expensive ecosystem. You can't run a non-Apple browser or your own software. The 1984 dream of trusted computing that we bought hook, line, and sinker and are now paying the protection racket price for. As much as I hate ads, their tight control and singular policy changes have repeatedly caused multi-billion dollar ripples in the industry. Facebook is having to build a new market. That's a sign of a monopoly. Google controls the web. They control search. The browser. Slowly the web is turning into Google hosted AMP, sites bearing adsense, and sites that only run in Chrome. Both of them sell movies and music and are morphing into studios. They're both trying to get into payments and dominate fintech. This is too broad to compete with. Both of them need a hard regulatory shaking.
- actuator 5y ago
  > As much as I hate ads, their tight control and singular policy change has made multi-billion dollar ripples in the industry. That's a sign of a monopoly. Yeah, it might be good for the user but a company making a change that shakes the industry like this is worrying. Worse bit is, it helps them as well as they have an ads product which might do well when others can't do better personalised advertising. > Both of them sell movies and music and are morphing into studios. They're both trying to get into payments and dominate fintech. This is too broad to compete with. Agreed. There is no way other companies can meaningfully compete with them. Look at Apple and Airpods. The revenue just Airpod makes for Appple is multiples of revenue of Sennheiser and Bose combined.
nerdponx 5y ago
> The FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on. They don't own a paltform as such. An upcomer like Tiktok can upstage them and create its own space out of nowhere in a couple of years. Because Facebook is big and robust enough to take a few on the chin in order to make it look like "something is being done", which ultimately protects the industry from actual oversight and regulation.
JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on We got popular interest in antitrust. Unfortunately, that's drawn Spitzer types in both the U.S. and EU. Khan and Vestager have a penchant for bringing inchoate cases with headline potential. (The "FTC’s inability to offer [a federal court] any indication of the metric(s) or method(s) it used to calculate Facebook’s market share" being Exhibit A for their breathtaking incompetence [1].) Hopefully this combination of sustained popular interest and transatlantic executive incompetence spurs legislatures into redrawing 20th century antitrust rules. [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224921/gov.uscourts.dcd.224921.73.0.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.224...
- actuator 5y ago
  I have lost hope on lawmakers doing anything meaningful here which can actually prevent the market domination misuse happening right now. I don't know if it is incompetence or lobbying.
amelius 5y ago
The problem is that technical people who clearly see these issues suffer from echo-chamber paralysis. They complain to each other from behind their keyboards, but never take action.
- criddell 5y ago
  I'm a somewhat technical person and I don't think it's all that clear. Apple isn't perfect, but their customers are mostly happy with their tech.
teawrecks 5y ago
Amazon AWS shifts in its seat
ouid 5y ago
The problem here is that your definition of the product is far too coarse. You can only really talk about competition for products which are truly equivalent. For an extreme example of why too coarse a definition of the product might yield a bad understanding of monopolies. Say that there was a food company and a water company. You might argue that both of these companies are competing in the space of "products that you need to live", but I clearly need both things, so sales do not form a zero sum game between the two companies. So why is facebook a monopoly? For the simple reason that having access to your friends on facebook and having access to your friends on tiktok is not a zero sum game. There is a limited amount of tradeoff between the two, but it is expected for consumers to want both, creating intrinsic opportunities for the two companies to cooperate, instead of compete. The problem is that competition is measured more or less as how anti-correlated demand for two products is, or approximately, How much less price sensitive my demand for the "sum" of the products is than for just one of them. If this is your measure, then you see that facebook and Tiktok don't compete all that much. One easy way to fix some of these problems is by requiring something like XMPP. Peering between IM providers would make these things a lot more fungible. Google abandoned XMPP, hwich was very popular, for their inferior chat application, for a reason, and the only reason that I own any Apple products is because of iMessage.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  I'm not sure you made the case for why facebook is a monopoly. They don't hold a monopoly on friends list online. Everywhere I go from instagram, tiktok, snapchat, xbox, etc. They many of a monopoly on your friends attention but communication can exist outside of these networks. Why require XMPP, if XMPP is a superior product people will find it and use it. You may need food and water but you don't need a certain brand of tuna because everyone else is using it. It sounds like facebook purchased a new big screen tv invited everyone over for free. All of your friends went over tonight and you want to shutdown the party so everyone will go somewhere else you approve of.
  - ouid 5y ago
    It sounds like you didn't understand the argument.
huitzitziltzin 5y ago
I teach antitrust and competition to undergrads and grad students. None of what you have described in this paragraph is an antitrust violation, not by a mile: "While look at Apple. They have more than 50% share of mobile devices in US and their devices are actual platforms. They own it from bare silicon to device to OS to apps to services to accessories. Their own products get first class support while others can't integrate as well. Their web browser has no real competition on mobile, so mobile web for more than 50% of users is at their mercy." To the extent that the following sentence relates to the fees they set on their app store, it might allege an antitrust violation: "They get unfair advantage for their music streaming services etc." But the optimal regulation of platforms is very much an unsettled area of thinking. The reason regulators have not focused on the behavior of Apple which you complain about is really simple: none of it is an antitrust violation.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  The case against Apple starts with recognizing that vertical markets aren't all the same. The market for phones isn't the same as the market for apps. In particular, there are two separate app markets. A phone customer can choose Android or iOS. An app developer can't choose which store to use to distribute their apps. They have to use the one their customer uses. If they have customers on both, they have to use both, and have no choice. The analogy would be two huge landlords that together own all the real estate in a city and also own the only two shipping companies in the city. A "real estate customer" has a choice in where to live. An online retailer doesn't get to choose where their customers live. The two shipping companies each only ship to the customers who live in that company's apartments. The online retailer, who is the customer of the shipping company, has no choice in what shipping company to use. If their own customer lives in one company's apartments, they must use that shipping company. It's a shipping monopoly. There is a significant identifiable set of destinations for which no other provider of shipping services exists, and none can exist because the same company prohibits anyone else from delivering to them. Either that's an antitrust violation or we need new antitrust laws. > But the optimal regulation of platforms is very much an unsettled area of thinking. Isn't this the thing that gets settled in court by prosecuting a case against them?
dataflow 5y ago
> The FB case in US seems a bit stupid as what exactly do they have a monopoly on. I have no idea what this measures, but Googling "Facebook markert share" shows lots of results over 50%: https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats > An upcomer like Tiktok can upstage them and create its own space out of nowhere in a couple of years. Is it a requirement of a monopoly that no competitor could possibly come and grab part of the market? Like as soon as one manages to do that, there's no longer a monopoly, despite the relative market shares? Also, I'm not sure I'd see them as direct competitors per se - in some spaces yes, but not in every space. TikTok is great for people who want to post videos, but not everyone is into posting videos. (Not sure why YouTube is listed on that page either, for the same reason.)
- rndphs 5y ago
  I think if TikTok started as an American company and didn't have access to the FB-free Chinese market then it would have been crushed by Facebook in the American market before it could grow.
  - jensensbutton 5y ago
    Tiktok does not have access to the FB-free Chinese market.
    - rndphs 5y ago
      Yes it does. TikTok is known as Douyin in China. The company that owns TikTok is headquartered in Beijing, and Douyin was operating in China for years before TikTok was released in the west.
      - jensensbutton 5y ago
        I'm aware of Douyin. However, TikTok and Douyin are different apps with different users. The product named TikTok did not establish itself in China first.
- 5y ago

kergonath 5y ago

Simply disgusting, and difficult to understand. How is a market leader bribing OEMs not to use a competitor's product not the definition of anticompetitive behaviour and abuse of a dominant position?

belval 5y ago
I think it's because the case hinged on the outcome, not on the practice itself. The suit alleged that Intel had "killed" AMD with this practice and brought them to the brink of bankruptcy. The issue is, Intel is getting their asses handed to them right now by AMD so the argument seems pretty hollow in 2022. I am not saying this is good or bad, but that's the intuition behind the reversal I think. EDIT: Please don't shoot the messenger, I am just offering a conjecture, I am not even European or American.
- kergonath 5y ago
  > I think it's because the case hinged on the outcome, not on the practice itself. Yeah it sounds like it. My understanding from the summaries is that the commission failed to quantify the damage with enough accuracy and certainty. It sucks.
- avanderveen 5y ago
  To me it feels like the original fine may have influenced by that. It would have discouraged Intel from offering these rebates to OEMs, giving AMD a chance to slowly get back into laptops. At the time Intel's mobile CPUs were far superior, but the same could not be said for their integrated GPUs, but IIRC the rebates required that OEMs go full Intel (CPU, GPU, chipset, and WiFi).
  - tarlinian 5y ago
    This doesn't particularly make sense. You can't even use non Intel chipsets with Intel CPUs and integrated GPUs are inherently tied to the CPU. (In the case of the discrete GPU segment, Intel didn't even have an offering.) The only place where alternatives are even technically possible are in WiFi where there is no impact on AMD.

dustinmoris 5y ago

colejohnson66 5y ago
If you like, you can appeal your $50 fine as well and drag it out for years. It just doesn’t make financial sense to do so. That’s why these cases take years to play out: the courts are slow, and every appeal and motion just adds time. In the case of David v Goliath trials (where it’s you against a multi-billion dollar company) have lawyers that take advantage of that in the hopes of getting you to give up…
- Zenst 5y ago
  >If you like, you can appeal your $50 fine as well and drag it out for years Though isn't there the issue of increasing fine costs and thinking parking tickets in which they carrot and stick it with a small discount if paid early and heavy penalties that stack up when it is delayed. Not sure if appeals freeze that process, though certainly the risk of incurring the financial costs of the other side in judgement; Can and does put many of and peer-pressures them into just paying the smaller fine as the time and effort, along with stress of taking and challenging alone, can and does take a toll.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- DannyBee 5y ago
  At some point you'd usually have to put a bond.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    California used to require you to, even for traffic tickets. Want to appeal your $600-$1000 ticket? Better have that on hand for the bond. But if you choose to just pay it, they thankfully had payment plans! Just not on the bond...

yorwba 5y ago

The court's decision in case someone wants to read it: https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2022-01/cp220016en.pdf https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/202...

Beltalowda 5y ago
And the full court ruling (previous link is the press release): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62009TJ0286%2801%29&qid=1643220358108 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

giuliomagnifico 5y ago

Well after 12 years. At least it ended.

granzymes 5y ago
It hasn't ended yet! There's still one more possible trip to the Court of Justice.

mcfedr 5y ago

Something is really broken in the court system that this can take so long

Zenst 5y ago

12 years and a lot changes. Reminds me of the Microsoft case about IE and by the time that came to pass, Google had changed that entire landscape. Which if there is a jury (not sure upon the process here so not sure if there is a jury per-say), then the mindset will be ever so slightly tainted in personal perspective. [EDIT] reference to the Microsoft case https://www.cnet.com/news/eu-resolves-microsoft-ie-antitrust-case/ https://www.cnet.com/news/eu-resolves-microsoft-ie-antitrust...