7 ms·

The dissonant threshold is dominance not monopoly. But specifically willfully and intentionally conspiring to use that dominance to manipulate pricing, exclude

• xethos 3y ago
  You're right, in that Microsoft used their dominance in one market (operating systems) to gain an advantage in another market (web browsers) Apple or Google would have to be doing something similar, like using their dominance in one market (operating systems) to gain an advantage in a seperate market - for example, music streaming services (Apple Music, Youtube Premium) or web browsers (Chrome, as pushed heavily by the world's most prominent OS, Android) To be clear: Android is not the entire reason Chrome is ubiquitous. My arugument is that Android is, pretty clearly IMO, a competitive advantage when pushing a web browser.
  • leereeves 3y ago
    Apple is not only pushing their web browser, they're mandating it. Safari is the only browser allowed on iOS. How is that not anticompetitive?
    • cnlwsu 3y ago
      I’m viewing this from chrome on iOS. What are you talking about
      • gkbrk 3y ago
        Nope, you're viewing it from a Webkit wrapper made by Google that shares same name. Chrome is a web browser using the Blink engine, and it doesn't run on iOS devices.
        • Spivak 3y ago
          This argument doesn't hold up to any scrutiny if you try to apply it to any other kind of portable software. Spotify is a music player that uses the Electron framework and it doesn't run on iOS. Outlook is a email client that uses the WinUI engine and it doesn't run on iOS. Netflix is an applet that runs on the Microsoft Silverlight engine, and that doesn't run on iOS. There is something that feels wrong about Apple's restrictions for browsers but different platform necessitating different, often fundamentally different, implementations isn't quite it.
          • gkbrk 3y ago
            Spotify's distinguishing feature is not "using Electron". Same for all of the other apps you mentioned. Chrome's distinguishing feature is "not being Safari or Firefox". It has this distinguishing feature on all other platforms like Linux, Mac, Android and Windows. Only on one platform is this feature missing, and that is why it is emphasized so much.
            • Spivak 3y ago
              Well even on iOS Chrome is a different app from Safari and Firefox. Mozilla has two different browsers — even on iOS where all browsers are "the same" Mozilla sees enough differences to have two separate ones. You're just restating the premise. I think Outlook could make a case for just being a wrapper for Apple Mail. Valve could make the case that Steam's distinguishing feature is lacking on iOS. Again, there is some signal here but I've never heard anyone be able to really explain it.
              • st3fan 3y ago
    • xethos 3y ago
      I can see your point, but prefer to stick to rock-solid, unimpeachible arguments (Apple Music for iOS, Google Chrome/Play Store for Android). I shy away from Safari/iOS because Apple is using iOS' dominance (in operating systems) to gain an advantage in web browsers - but that browser is only available for iOS and MacOS. They've steered very clear of using iOS' dominance to push for browser dominance in every other operating system not owned by them. Going so far as to not even release a client leaves them with a relatively safe defence of only pushing for deep system integration with their own products, as opposed to market dominance in web browsers (as they're likely to be accused of).
      • leereeves 3y ago
        Do you think Microsoft would have been safe if they had never released IE for Macs?
        • xethos 3y ago
          I certainly think they would have been safer. Bear in mind though, at the time, Windows had 97% of the desktop market [0]. This wasn't a corporation with ~50% of the market (like Android in the US) trying to muscle in, this was a company with their hooks so deep in personal computers that any product they pushed became a de-facto standard that everyone was expected to at least have access to, if not use. Hell, the most dominant companies on the planet today, including the literal trillion dollar ones, do not have that kind of market penetration. Google search, the closest I can think of, is still <92% [1]. And it's not that I think holding 92% of a market is good. Nor do I think Apple should get away with only allowing re-skins instead of real browser engines. But percentages are room to quibble, and re-skins can be spun as integration or security. Whenever Apple's gilded cage comes up, there's backlash, whataboutism, and apologists - so as we start to force interop, openness, and more pro-consumer behavior, I stick to the unimpeachable arguments. Even if it's just till we break the inertia and get the ball rolling. I think you're right, and you make an excellent point. But first I want to convince even the Apple die-hards that this level of control is fucked up, because then we can all agree that something has to change. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/12/13/microsofts-market-share-drops-from-97-to-20-in-just-over-a-decade/?sh=5c094eec51cf https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/12/13/microsof... [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
    • paulmd 3y ago
      “my os distro ships with SELinux on by default and I can’t break out of the sandbox!” ok, so, if you don’t like the sysadmin’s choices then use a different system? Seems like an obviously self-inflicted pain.
    • turquoisevar 3y ago
      I see this point, and others similar to it brought up often, and I think it stems from misunderstanding what antitrust regulation is trying to solve. By the way, I say this respectfully, not as a dig towards you. From a US antitrust perspective, almost all commerce has anticompetitive characteristics. Think about it: very few businesses will act in a manner beneficial to their competitors. Most will actively act against the interest of their competitors, but almost all will not go out of their way to facilitate their competitors (passive anticompetitive behavior, if you will). Straightforward concepts to understand what I’m trying to say here are things such as Pizza Place A not selling stuff made by Pizza Place B. Closer to home, another example would be a device manufacturer, like a smart thermostat, not allowing their competitors to create software and apps that replace their software. Behavior like this can be found all across commerce, from small businesses and startups to big corporations. So the legislators (to a lesser degree) and the courts, understanding that laws need to be applied equally regardless of who the parties are, recognized that if they’d purely penalized anticompetitive behavior in a general sense, it would severely impact commerce in general. Even prevent competition to a degree by preventing new market entrants from making their products work exclusively for their own benefit. Analogous to this is the idea of penalizing all monopolies. The issue with that would be that so-called “organic monopolies,” sometimes also called “innocent monopolies” (i.e., companies that gained a dominant market share by merely being successful), would be punished for their success alone. Instead of banning all anti-competitive behavior, and analogous to this, banning all monopolies, they came up with the idea that only those that leverage their market dominance to protect or increase their market dominance should be penalized. There are a bunch of nuances to be had, but in a nutshell, this means that imposing something onerous is okay while you don’t have dominant market power, but doing it while you have dominance would be a no-go. Subsequently, this also means retroactively penalizing particular behavior initiated before gaining market dominance is generally not done because it indirectly punishes success. Circling back to the example of Safari (or WebKit, to be exact), when Apple imposed this rule, it had an insignificant market share and little leverage. Because they maintained this rule from the beginning, this would not be deemed an antitrust issue. Had Apple not imposed this from the start, but instead, had they started imposing this after they gained market dominance, then it could be an antitrust issue because now you’re leveraging your market dominance against parties who may not be able to withstand this pressure due to a variety of reasons such as being dependent on the ecosystem. Apple is very conscious of this, which is why it generally starts with a very restrictive set of conditions, and sometimes, along the way, it loosens the reigns because doing the opposite way is not an option for them from an antitrust perspective. Two clear examples of this come to mind. First is the App Store, and it's often derided commission. Apple started with a simple 30% commission fee. Later, they provided a 15 percent point discount on recurring subscriptions after the first year, followed by the same discount for streaming services in the Apple Video Partner Program, followed later by the same discount for developers in the Small Business Program. Had they done this the other way around, say they started with 15%, learned after gaining market dominance that the 15% wasn’t sustainable, and then tried to increase it to 30%, they would be opening themselves up to antitrust penalties. Related to this are their guidelines that prescribe what kind of apps are needed to implement IAPs. It started with all apps that provide products and services that weren’t consumed outside the app (i.e., physical). Then they added the so-called “Reader exception,” later, they exempted free apps that are a companion to specific online tools such as email and cloud storage. Now that they allow game streaming services, they need to offer IAPs for services sold outside the app, at least for now, because they can always loosen the requirements but never tighten them. The other example is their relationship with carriers. When Apple launched the first iPhone, and they were insignificant on the mobile phone market, they were only willing to partner with carriers that accepted their prohibition of installing bloatware on the iPhone. A couple of years later, when they had gained a significant market share, Apple decided to implement Hotspot functionality, FaceTime, and FaceTime audio. It stands to reason that Apple wanted all carriers to support this functionality on their terms (i.e., without impediments for users), but taking the same stand on this as they took on bloatware, something that would’ve been way easier now that iPhones were a hot commodity, could be seen as levering their market position. The result is that carriers could do as they wanted with these functions by carrier profiles. In the beginning, a lot of carriers would turn off the hotspot functionality on some plans and would disable FaceTime use on the cellular network; later on, the carriers relaxed with FaceTime usage on their network, but many now put a data cap of sorts on hotspot usage. Clearly, Apple felt it might lead to antitrust issues if they told carriers to fully support these functions or not expect to be supplied any iPhones for them to sell.
    • st3fan 3y ago
      It is also difficult to prove because a web browser, yes even Safari, is an open platform by design and it can can run 99% of the web successfully just like other browser. Yes that is true even for Safari. People like to call Safari the “new IE” but in reality today’s web works equally well in all major browsers including Safari. (Wait for someone to comment that that feature XYZ does not work on Safari and therefor it sucks - yes but that is the nature of the web and browsers. Every Single Browser out there has something missing or added. That has not prevented anyone from building great websites that work in all of them. )
    • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      I run chrome on iOS. Yes, it’s using the safari renderer, it at least I have access to my google password stash.
  • fnordpiglet 3y ago
    I think a key consideration is they created the entire platform inclusive of the market structure day zero. The law doesn’t protect against market dominance in one or more markets and they’re not leveraging one market against another - they created the markets and distribution channels. It’s like claiming Amazon Kindle not hosting Nook bookstores is anticompetitive or Krogers not letting Whole Foods sell in their store or Peleton for not opening their bike to other fitness products. They built the platform and the distribution channels, are they obligated to host everything in any channel? While side loading is a feature of general purpose operating systems not all operating systems offer it, and it’s only really coming to be an issue here because of the ubiquity of their product. But the lack of side loading isn’t new, and has never been offered. To that extent it’s more along the lines of market dominance alone, not using dominance to distort adjacent markets or willful anticompetitive behavior. I suspect Apple and Google will not be forced to open their products in the US as it’s not clear their strategy runs afoul traditional interpretations of law.
    • xethos 3y ago
      > they’re not leveraging one market against another I'm sorry, is your point that "Music streaming service" is not a market? Apple allows signups via every way one could access the application - mobile, web, and desktop. Tidal then has a choice: they can have the same advantage as Apple (a smooth flow with signup prompts available everywhere), or they can have the same pricing model as Apple (by not paying the 30% App Store cut). Tidal cannot have both. How is this not Apple using their market dominance in app distribution (either due to OS dominance or Apple's exclusive app distribution channel, take your pick) to gain an advantage in the Music Streaming marketplace?
• scarface_74 3y ago
  This is also not true. Netscape destroyed Netscape. For anyone around at the time, they know that Netscape was a heaping pile of shit on every single platform it ran on. In comp.sys.*.advocacy groups back in the day, it was a point of nerd pride how well your platform could handle a Netscape crash. Microsoft got into trouble because they forced OEMs to pay for Windows licenses for all of their computers sold whether or not they had Windows installed and they didn’t allow OEMs to install Netscape. There is absolutely nothing wrong with entering new markets using the resources you have from your existing markets. Should Netflix never have entered the streaming business? And it wasn’t Chrome, Firefox started chipping away at IEs dominance before Chrome.
  • mdale 3y ago
    Hmm ... and Internet Explorer was a high water mark of software excellence ?
    • scarface_74 3y ago
      Yes - IE was much less crash prone and the Mac version used a different engine and was much more standards compliant at the time than Netscape
      • fnordpiglet 3y ago
        At the time IE was horrific and basically didn’t exist. Microsoft reallocated the entire focus of the company R&D towards development of the next version of IE - a colossal investment of resources that outstripped all of Netscape’s revenues for all of its history just on developing a free browser to put it out of business. So, yes, sure. It was incredibly better. But it was anticompetitive to develop it in that way. With the same resources, could Netscape have done it? Would Microsoft have done it if there was any commercial considerations? Netscape made a product that ran on over 20 operating systems and promised a future where the operating system was a detail for how to launch a web browser. Microsoft saw this as an existential threat and crushed Netscape under a mount of money that was spent to ensure the only meaningful browser was a feature of their operating system. After their Pyrrhic victory, IE decayed with very little investment. As you would expect in something that was developed only to destroy.