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If this was removed by Google and not the beeper mini team I feel like this move is going to make it so much harder for Apple and Google in any future antitrust

If this was removed by Google and not the beeper mini team I feel like this move is going to make it so much harder for Apple and Google in any future antitrust legislation. Apple was already getting flak in the media for beeper mini, calling in Google to help makes it seem so much worse (even if it was done without a specific verbalized agreement). The obviousness of this makes me wonder if there is something else going on here (or maybe they really are that blatant now?)

yftsui 3y ago
"Apple calling in Google to help" is the image Beeper Mini trying to paint, what if it intentionally did it?
- theferalrobot 3y ago
  Has the beeper team made statements on this? I was just looking around and couldn’t find anything in my initial search at least
- mavhc 3y ago
  Then Google would say something
realusername 3y ago
That's why I like this Beeper mini saga, it breaks the illusion of competition that really doesn't exist between both companies and highlights the enormous power those two companies have.
- Grustaf 3y ago
  How exactly?
  - realusername 3y ago
    Thanks to Beeper mini, nobody can say "yeah technically you could implement iMessage if you wanted to, it's just a proprietary protocol" anymore, Apple has actively blocked the messaging platform as much as they could. Nobody can say that the mobile apps are open markets anymore, the app would have been rejected on the appstore from the start and is now removed from the play store. Effectively the distribution of this app on mobile devices is in practice impossible now. It also highlights the similar review process and lack of differentiating competitive factor between those two stores. They aren't interchangeable like supermarkets are. We knew all of that already but I like that Beeper mini made it obvious enough that the PR lies of both companies cannot work here.
    - Grustaf 3y ago
      Has anyone ever claimed that iMessage is some kind of open network that anyone can build apps for? I think most people presume it's just as closed as the rest of iCloud. I don't know what the legal status of the protocol per se is, but I don't think anyone thought that you would be allowed to utilize Apple's iMessage servers for your own app.
      - realusername 3y ago
        The other closed networks had third-party clients historically, such as MSN or ICQ. It's not enough to say that it's closed, now we know it's both closed and blocked by Apple. Apple could have said that no other clients really even tried before this case and it would have been true. And that will make a difference in the next antitrust lawsuit, that's one less argument Apple can use to defend themselves. I'm sure most developers expected them to behave like this but now there's a factual proof valid even outside of our tech developers little circle, it's not just speculation.
- chongli 3y ago
  The illusion of competition? This whole event has a lot of people talking about antitrust action against Apple for keeping iMessage exclusive to their own hardware, leaving Android devices out of the loop. Why would Google want to help Apple maintain iMessage's competitive edge over their platform? Edit: just to be clear, I don’t buy the argument that Apple is doing anything wrong with keeping iMessage exclusive to their brand. I only wanted to relay that argument here to discuss in this context
  - realusername 3y ago
    Because they don't compete with each other? They are in different markets and they don't really care that a portion of users stick to Apple. I'd say the opposite, having Android with a 90% market share would be a bad thing for Google since it opens easier antitrust lawsuits. The statu quo is more profitable. See the "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company" quote from Google execs which is representative of what's happening in the space.
  - mrcode007 3y ago
    Why would Apple let other companies use their servers and infrastructure ? Have you ever heard of an independent car repair shop being allowed access to the manufacturer’s factory floor ? How about factory floors of all car manufacturers? It makes no sense. How about I go use your home’s toilet when I’m nearby?
    - maven29 3y ago
      While we're at it, let's outlaw web search as well. Clearly, those indexing bots are not paying customers. If a niche enthusiast crowd worth of traffic will absolutely obliterate the underlying infrastructure, allow unchecked flows of spam and undermine the security posture, maybe Apple should just leave it to the telcos who might be marginally more competent.
      - rahkiin 3y ago
        The irony of indexing being Google does not want to be index by others and prohibits scraping in their ToS
echelon 3y ago
The smartphone sector is the biggest antitrust bubble in the world right now. The most important function of modern society is taxed, locked, fully controlled by two of the most profitable companies on the planet. The utility of the smartphone has exceeded these two companies, and it must be opened up for competition, consumer choice, and consumer repairability.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  > The most important function of modern society that is extreme hyperbole making hard to treat your comment seriously.
  - palemoonale 3y ago
    If it would get re-phrased a la "An important function of modern society", would nail it. Unfortunately! I loathe where societies are progressing towards. Imagine having to deal with all this tech BS when you are 70+. Travel is already complicated, dealing with fully automated "customer service" methods and figuring out why app xy stopped working right when you need it as a run-of-the-mill type of person is at lesst a nuisance and at worst a nightmare when preventing you from fulfilling life's chores.
    - matkoniecz 3y ago
      Oh definitely! But of someone things that how app store is administered is more important function in modern society than say food production then it is not looking well though out. (I would prefer catastrophic breakdown or malicious takeover to happen with app store rather than food supply if I would need to choose between these two, and there are still many more important functions of modern society before you get to app stores. If food supply collapses I and my family and my friends will be likely dead within month. If app store collapses there are bad consequences but far from "everyone I love dies from starvation".) (but yes, app store ARE important function of modern society and Beeper Mini seems to illustrate some of ways how current situation is broken)
  - echelon 3y ago
resolutebat 3y ago
This doesn't require bad faith in Google's part, there's any number of levers Apple can pull to pretty much force this: claim DMCA violation, CFAA violation, Play policy violation, etc etc.
- paulmd 3y ago
  It’s an obvious play policy violation. Can’t have apps that are deliberately and obviously intended solely to violate the terms of service of another service, or conduct illegal activity (CFAA unauthorized access). You won’t find Reddit is Fun or any third party Reddit clients there anymore either even though it’s obviously trivially possible to just scrape it and keep trucking. Because that’s against Reddit’s TOS too, and doing so anyway is a CFAA violation. Shockingly, google doesn’t want to be an accessory to your computer crimes. Rightly or wrongly the law is quite broad in this area, you aren’t supposed to be accessing this system, it is an open-and-shut case just as much as illicitly connecting to TymNet. The only fact that matters is that the system operator doesn’t want you there, that is sufficient for this to be a felony, people have been globally extradited over this. Google isn’t going down because you want to use an open-relay that the system operator is actively indicating shouldn’t be open and is trying to lock down. And if the tables were turned and some other third-party built a commercial service on reselling spoofed access to gmail smtp relays or something… google would shut you down themselves too, “gatekeeper” or no (lots of domains struggle to send mail to gmail and outlook). Things have gotten real silly because of the extreme degree of apple-bashing that people entertain. And apple has been very very tolerant, because they know the optics would be horrible. But the law here is clear and the penalties are enormous. This is not different in kind to any other unauthorized-access case.
  - saurik 3y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-... > Judge John Bates ruled on Friday that the plaintiffs' proposed research wouldn't violate the CFAA's criminal provisions at all. Someone violates the CFAA when they bypass an access restriction like a password. But someone who logs into a website with a valid password doesn't become a hacker simply by doing something prohibited by a website's terms of service, the judge concluded. > "Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature," Bates wrote. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/web-scraping-doesnt-violate-anti-hacking-law-appeals-court-rules/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/web-scraping-doe... > Scraping a public website without the approval of the website's owner isn't a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an appeals court ruled on Monday. The ruling comes in a legal battle that pits Microsoft-owned LinkedIn against a small data-analytics company called hiQ Labs. So, uh... cool story, bro, but you seem to have a ridiculously extreme and pretty clearly unintended interpretation of this law. The users of Beeper have valid credentials to this service and are accessing only the things they were intended to be able to access... they merely are doing so with a modified or alternative client, which usually is protected under various laws due to an interest in competition and interoperability.

yftsui 3y ago

"Apple calling in Google to help" is the image Beeper Mini trying to paint, what if it intentionally did it?

theferalrobot 3y ago
Has the beeper team made statements on this? I was just looking around and couldn’t find anything in my initial search at least
mavhc 3y ago
Then Google would say something

realusername 3y ago

That's why I like this Beeper mini saga, it breaks the illusion of competition that really doesn't exist between both companies and highlights the enormous power those two companies have.

Grustaf 3y ago
How exactly?
- realusername 3y ago
  Thanks to Beeper mini, nobody can say "yeah technically you could implement iMessage if you wanted to, it's just a proprietary protocol" anymore, Apple has actively blocked the messaging platform as much as they could. Nobody can say that the mobile apps are open markets anymore, the app would have been rejected on the appstore from the start and is now removed from the play store. Effectively the distribution of this app on mobile devices is in practice impossible now. It also highlights the similar review process and lack of differentiating competitive factor between those two stores. They aren't interchangeable like supermarkets are. We knew all of that already but I like that Beeper mini made it obvious enough that the PR lies of both companies cannot work here.
  - Grustaf 3y ago
    Has anyone ever claimed that iMessage is some kind of open network that anyone can build apps for? I think most people presume it's just as closed as the rest of iCloud. I don't know what the legal status of the protocol per se is, but I don't think anyone thought that you would be allowed to utilize Apple's iMessage servers for your own app.
    - realusername 3y ago
      The other closed networks had third-party clients historically, such as MSN or ICQ. It's not enough to say that it's closed, now we know it's both closed and blocked by Apple. Apple could have said that no other clients really even tried before this case and it would have been true. And that will make a difference in the next antitrust lawsuit, that's one less argument Apple can use to defend themselves. I'm sure most developers expected them to behave like this but now there's a factual proof valid even outside of our tech developers little circle, it's not just speculation.
chongli 3y ago
The illusion of competition? This whole event has a lot of people talking about antitrust action against Apple for keeping iMessage exclusive to their own hardware, leaving Android devices out of the loop. Why would Google want to help Apple maintain iMessage's competitive edge over their platform? Edit: just to be clear, I don’t buy the argument that Apple is doing anything wrong with keeping iMessage exclusive to their brand. I only wanted to relay that argument here to discuss in this context
- realusername 3y ago
  Because they don't compete with each other? They are in different markets and they don't really care that a portion of users stick to Apple. I'd say the opposite, having Android with a 90% market share would be a bad thing for Google since it opens easier antitrust lawsuits. The statu quo is more profitable. See the "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company" quote from Google execs which is representative of what's happening in the space.
- mrcode007 3y ago
  Why would Apple let other companies use their servers and infrastructure ? Have you ever heard of an independent car repair shop being allowed access to the manufacturer’s factory floor ? How about factory floors of all car manufacturers? It makes no sense. How about I go use your home’s toilet when I’m nearby?
  - maven29 3y ago
    While we're at it, let's outlaw web search as well. Clearly, those indexing bots are not paying customers. If a niche enthusiast crowd worth of traffic will absolutely obliterate the underlying infrastructure, allow unchecked flows of spam and undermine the security posture, maybe Apple should just leave it to the telcos who might be marginally more competent.
    - rahkiin 3y ago
      The irony of indexing being Google does not want to be index by others and prohibits scraping in their ToS

echelon 3y ago

The smartphone sector is the biggest antitrust bubble in the world right now. The most important function of modern society is taxed, locked, fully controlled by two of the most profitable companies on the planet. The utility of the smartphone has exceeded these two companies, and it must be opened up for competition, consumer choice, and consumer repairability.

matkoniecz 3y ago
> The most important function of modern society that is extreme hyperbole making hard to treat your comment seriously.
- palemoonale 3y ago
  If it would get re-phrased a la "An important function of modern society", would nail it. Unfortunately! I loathe where societies are progressing towards. Imagine having to deal with all this tech BS when you are 70+. Travel is already complicated, dealing with fully automated "customer service" methods and figuring out why app xy stopped working right when you need it as a run-of-the-mill type of person is at lesst a nuisance and at worst a nightmare when preventing you from fulfilling life's chores.
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    Oh definitely! But of someone things that how app store is administered is more important function in modern society than say food production then it is not looking well though out. (I would prefer catastrophic breakdown or malicious takeover to happen with app store rather than food supply if I would need to choose between these two, and there are still many more important functions of modern society before you get to app stores. If food supply collapses I and my family and my friends will be likely dead within month. If app store collapses there are bad consequences but far from "everyone I love dies from starvation".) (but yes, app store ARE important function of modern society and Beeper Mini seems to illustrate some of ways how current situation is broken)
- echelon 3y ago

resolutebat 3y ago

This doesn't require bad faith in Google's part, there's any number of levers Apple can pull to pretty much force this: claim DMCA violation, CFAA violation, Play policy violation, etc etc.

paulmd 3y ago
It’s an obvious play policy violation. Can’t have apps that are deliberately and obviously intended solely to violate the terms of service of another service, or conduct illegal activity (CFAA unauthorized access). You won’t find Reddit is Fun or any third party Reddit clients there anymore either even though it’s obviously trivially possible to just scrape it and keep trucking. Because that’s against Reddit’s TOS too, and doing so anyway is a CFAA violation. Shockingly, google doesn’t want to be an accessory to your computer crimes. Rightly or wrongly the law is quite broad in this area, you aren’t supposed to be accessing this system, it is an open-and-shut case just as much as illicitly connecting to TymNet. The only fact that matters is that the system operator doesn’t want you there, that is sufficient for this to be a felony, people have been globally extradited over this. Google isn’t going down because you want to use an open-relay that the system operator is actively indicating shouldn’t be open and is trying to lock down. And if the tables were turned and some other third-party built a commercial service on reselling spoofed access to gmail smtp relays or something… google would shut you down themselves too, “gatekeeper” or no (lots of domains struggle to send mail to gmail and outlook). Things have gotten real silly because of the extreme degree of apple-bashing that people entertain. And apple has been very very tolerant, because they know the optics would be horrible. But the law here is clear and the penalties are enormous. This is not different in kind to any other unauthorized-access case.
- saurik 3y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-a-sites-terms-of-service-isnt-criminal-hacking/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-... > Judge John Bates ruled on Friday that the plaintiffs' proposed research wouldn't violate the CFAA's criminal provisions at all. Someone violates the CFAA when they bypass an access restriction like a password. But someone who logs into a website with a valid password doesn't become a hacker simply by doing something prohibited by a website's terms of service, the judge concluded. > "Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature," Bates wrote. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/web-scraping-doesnt-violate-anti-hacking-law-appeals-court-rules/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/web-scraping-doe... > Scraping a public website without the approval of the website's owner isn't a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an appeals court ruled on Monday. The ruling comes in a legal battle that pits Microsoft-owned LinkedIn against a small data-analytics company called hiQ Labs. So, uh... cool story, bro, but you seem to have a ridiculously extreme and pretty clearly unintended interpretation of this law. The users of Beeper have valid credentials to this service and are accessing only the things they were intended to be able to access... they merely are doing so with a modified or alternative client, which usually is protected under various laws due to an interest in competition and interoperability.