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Apple isn’t considering that they are the baddies? I suggest strong regulation of the complete BigIT and two chairs for public observers at minimum. In additio
by ho_schi 3y ago
Apple isn’t considering that they are the baddies?
I suggest strong regulation of the complete BigIT and two chairs for public observers at minimum. In addition they are not allowed to enter any new market.
Why?
Because it worked well with AT&T. Results:
* UNIX
* C
* Open-Source
* Public Documentation
Sounds good? Until the Reagan administration appeared, allowed them to split up (Baby Bells), the UNIX-Wars followed, law-suits against BSD and broad incompatibility. And despite this horrible changes we still got:
* POSIX
* GNU (immediate reaction by FSF - they recognized the situation)
* Linux (which caused itself Git)
* BSD (TCP/IP)
Our information technology builds upon the regulation of AT&T. That was lucky, yes. But you need to prepare luck.
The politicians instead opted for Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon with near to no regulation at all. Despite we learned that software immediately tends to monopolize due to Vendor Lock-in and mass-effect.
What are my benefits of a low billion fine ten years after on of this companies hurt us again? None.
Splitting up?
See again Vendor Lock-in and mass-effect.
- eppp 3y agoIronically AT&T is bigger now than it was when it was broken apart.
- gorjusborg 3y agoAnd AT&T is now just a drop in the ocean of gigantic businesses.
- kortilla 3y agoSize wasn’t the issue, it was being a monopoly. AT&T today has big and small competitors in every space. They used to own the phone in your house.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIn wireless internet, ATT competes with Verizon and T-Mobile. But for fiber internet to the home, ATT is still a monopoly for its customers since there are never 2 fiber ISPs.
- light_hue_1 3y ago> there are never 2 fiber ISPs. There are often zero!
- oogali 3y agoThe AT&T you see today is a completely different company. For all intents and purposes, it is SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications). In 1996, Bell Labs, Western Electric, and AT&T Technologies were spun out to create Lucent. Lucent merged with Alcatel to form Alcatel-Lucent in 2006. Alcatel-Lucent was purchased by Nokia in 2016. AT&T Wireless was purchased by Cingular in 2004 (joint venture between BellSouth and SBC). The original AT&T was purchased by SBC in 2005. The new AT&T (SBC) bought BellSouth in 2006.
- fngjdflmdflg 3y agoWhat regulations are you referring to wrt AT&T? Are you saying that UNIX and C were a result of regulations? If so do you have a source?
- callalex 3y agoAnti-trust regulation enforcement against Bell Corporation.
- johannes1234321 3y agoThe very short is, that AT&T between 1974 and 1982, due to the telephony monopoly rulings, wasn't allowed to sell software. Thus they gave their research results to universities, like Berkely.
- nindalf 3y agoHow different is that from tech giants using their monopoly profits to develop software that they give away for free? You say AT&T gave away some software to universities. Similarly Google gives away Go (among many other projects) as FOSS for anyone to use. If Google didn't have to worry about money, they might not develop these things to give away for free.
- meowtimemania 3y agoWhat technologies are we expecting to be open sourced from those companies?
- AnarchismIsCool 3y agoIOS would be cool... IMessage? Basically everything? That would be a strict improvement for humanity over the current state of affairs.
- adventured 3y ago> Basically everything? Anything large and successful in the US economy should be forced into the public domain. /s When do we break up ASML and Taiwan Semiconductor and force them to give all of their technology to the US with no compensation? They're large, successful, de facto monopolies. All of their IP should be forced into the public domain across the board. The US needs to start hitting ASML with massive fines. 1/4 of their earnings perpetually should be a good start. We should also very clearly be allowed to utilize all trademarks for any purpose and at any time, since we're obliterating intellectual property. I should be free to use the BMW and Mercedes names for anything I like, including in the auto sector to compete with them. They should not be allowed to have a monopoly over those brands, it restricts competition.
- restalis 3y agoWell, the U.S. did intervened (through the Dutch government) in the ASML business, hurting their sales already, with no (disclosed) compensation.
- hgomersall 3y agoAll IP is a deal with society. If it's not serving society, the rules should be changed. In trademarks, the benefit is very clear - consumers do no do well from an entity passing off their product as someone else's.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- verticalscaler 3y agoI like this story. Nay, I love this story. But it is a just-so story. None of the regulators had a clue it would go this way, it is a lot of magical historical accidents, and there is no reason to think interference guarantees positive outcomes. For example, HN seems to bristle at the subject of AI regulation as a game incumbents play that hews towards regulatory capture. Apple is clearly in the wrong here but how to best untangle things is not trivial.
- asddubs 3y agoin this case the market is already captured anyway, though. Even microsoft couldn't pierce it.
- CharlesW 3y agoThe market was considered captured when Apple and Google entered the market in 2007-2008, too. The reality is that nothing prevents a new entrant from gaining marketshare, especially considering that the vast majority of apps people use every day are associated with services not created by Apple. I wouldn't want to, but I could move to Android tomorrow with relatively little friction.
- realusername 3y ago> The reality is that nothing prevents a new entrant from gaining marketshare Nothing except banking apps, messaging apps and government apps... You either support the only semi open standard of apps being Android or your phone cannot succeed outside of some developer tool.
- verticalscaler 3y agoExactly. But if we suddenly transition to a "recompile to webassembly and ship it as web app" world I assure you $99 ($0 profit) phones will suffice for 90%+ of users. It will take a very long time but that will be the inevitable result.
- 3y ago
- paganel 3y agoSplitting up needs to happen for big and monopolistic US companies, no ifs, no buts. That is if they still want to keep a technological edge in the next 10-15 years. I personally don’t think that the forced split-up will happen, the direct interests involved are too big for that to have any chance of success, but it’s the only way forward for the US as a whole (when it comes to IT).
- gwright 3y agoAny particular reason you are picking on US companies? or big companies? Most, if not all, monopolies are sustained by government via laws, regulations, and so on. So let's get specific, which monopolies do you think should be forced to split up and we can test that theory and see if we can identify what government actions sustain the monopoly.
- tmccrary55 3y agoThe three big app stores are based on the west coast US.
- toyg 3y agoApple, Google, and... ? If you include Steam, we need to include XBox, Nintendo, and Playstation too; I would expect they're not too different in size. But yes, the status quo needs shaking up unless we really want to live in digital neofeudalism.
- Aloisius 3y agoMicrosoft? They have a billion users. Or maybe Amazon which has a decent sized Android app store.
- toyg 3y agoDo people really download anything from the MS store...? I got Python from there once and it's been nothing but annoyances. I guess I'm technically one of that billion users, but I'll never download anything from there ever again.
- permo-w 3y ago[flagged]
- thinkerswell 3y ago[dead]
- crotchfire 3y ago> allowed them to split up (Baby Bells) That's some pretty baldfaced revisionism you've got going on there. They were ordered to do this by a court: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=12093892347857939076&q=U.S.+v.+AT%26T+1982&hl=en&as_sdt=6,39#p227 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=120938923478579...
- adventured 3y agoIt's particularly egregious given AT&T fought an infamously protracted legal battle against the United States Government to try to avoid being forced to be broken up (entirely against their will). They exhausted a lot of money and time trying to avoid the scenario the op is claiming they were trying to intentionally execute.
- ricardobeat 3y agoI thought it was pretty obvious that they weren’t taking AT&T’s side in that comment.
- TeaBrain 3y agoThe comments you are responding to aren't referencing AT&T as egregious, but the misrepresentation of AT&T's intentions, given that AT&T desired the polar opposite of what the court ordered them to do, which was to split up. The above commenter was trying to portray AT&T as getting their way by splitting up, as if that was their devious intention all along.
- satellite2 3y agoI have a hard time parsing the position of the comment in question. As if allowed was just an unfortunate choice of word.
- crotchfire 3y agoThe sentence before allowed had a bunch of stuff about Ronald Reagan and I wanted to avoid the political aspect. In any event, the whole thing went down and was determined long before Reagan took office. The case was filed under the Ford administration and prosecuted mainly by the Carter administration. By the time Reagan took office the case had been in progress for nearly a decade, and he had been president for barely a year when the final decision was handed down. OP just has so much confused about this chapter of history.
- harkinian 3y agoI don't think the smartphone market is that consequential either way. It's a mature and played out end-user product already, not comparable to the early AT&T. If Apple could somehow be forced to properly support third-party app stores then so what. Forcing full PWA support would be much better, but still. I don't think it'd usher in some tech boom or meaningfully help consumers. Personally, I don't fw apps anyway so whatever. Even if the govt wants to force iPhones to be like shitty Android then that's alright, I'll keep my old iPhone then deal with it when needed.
- factormeta 3y ago>Forcing full PWA support would be much better, but still. Yup. Allow index db persistence, and push notification for PWA + WASAM support in mobile safari should do it.
- harkinian 3y agoProbably just a more visible "install" button would eliminate the need for half of native apps. I've tried doing a PWA before, and despite iPhones having all the right capabilities for it (they even support push now), users were totally confused installing a PWA in the first place. Beyond that, in theory, very few things need to be native apps if OS-makers really wanted to embrace PWAs. WASM and all that, and equally importantly, access to more native APIs.
- saurik 3y agoI think people could have said the same thing about the phone network, because it wasn't obvious what they were missing: everyone already had a phone, after all, and they worked just fine; I guess we could open it up so more people could make phones but do you really think that is going to change the world? Turns out it did, and it shouldn't be lost that Apple is a beneficiary of this... imagine if they, at best, had to pay AT&T a 30% "core technology fee" on their sales of iPhones because the iPhone was using the phone network or, at worst, were simply never allowed to make a phone at all. Apple controlling what is viable to release and then making it 30% more expensive is absolutely having massive effects on the market and is slowing down innovation, whether you see it or not (and even if it somehow in a crazy turn of events actually didn't, we should still want our price break from real competition).
- gigatexal 3y agoI dunno. Do you really fault Apple for wanting to hold onto their vice grip of the AppStore that gives them license to print money at ridiculous margins? I mean, their better angels would have them be so confident in the value of their own store that they'd allow other stores to compete on the merits but honestly ... if we were Tim Cook or in charge of Apple I think we'd all fight tooth-and-nail to keep this cash cow.
- robocat 3y ago> license to print money They don't split out their profitability for the App store. Last time I tried to calculate it it was less than you might assume. Anyone have a good article/analysis of what % of Apple's profit comes from the App store tax? Ideally also with foremarket versus aftermarket?
- capitainenemo 3y agohttps://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-sales-around-64-billion-in-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-s... "There are some exceptions to Apple's 30% cut of digital sales, and Apple's figures are rough, which means that Apple's App Store total sales is likely even higher. Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm, estimates that the App Store did $72.3 billion in sales 2020." So... 72 billion in 2020.. probably even more now.
- kennywinker 3y ago$72.3B in sales, but given they get less than 30% of that, their cut is less than 21.7B. Put that in perspective of their total revenue of 294B that year the app store represents only ~7% of their total revenue. And I suspect the app store is actually a fairly costly business to run - a lot of effort goes into the decor of the walls around garden. I'm thinking app review, even content serving. Not arguing that it's not a profit center - but in perspective, I suspect apple's reasons for defending it are not primarily the direct financial benefits of it - it's probably mostly about the indirect benefits.
- dang 3y ago(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39679103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39679103)