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The EU PR playbook for writing bad legislation: When harmful for competition: “We’ll say it’s good for user choice”. When harmful to users: “We’ll say it’s go

by quitit 3y ago

The EU PR playbook for writing bad legislation: When harmful for competition: “We’ll say it’s good for user choice”. When harmful to users: “We’ll say it’s good for competition.” The act of writing a law that will result in Google’s Chrome total market dominance will of course fall under “user choice”. Meanwhile music streaming market leader Spotify has announced a price increase of 9% in the UK (and assuredly others soon) and simultaneously demonetised all artists with less than 1000 streams per annum. Naturally the EU has nothing to say about that because it’s one of their own this time.

talldayo 3y ago
> The act of writing a law that will result in Google’s Chrome total market dominance will of course fall under “user choice”. I mean... yeah. Users want stuff. They want emulators, YouTube song downloaders, game streaming and online games, the sorts of things Apple otherwise mediates on the App Store. The web can conditionally provide that to them if their browser has enough features, so these locked-down users then are driven to fringe featuresets. In an ideal world, your phone just installs software like your computer and you don't need to use your browser to enable basic native functionality. Unfortunately, making software "just work" requires developers to pay an annual fee and arm-wrestle with a distributor that doesn't care about them. The web, in all it's mangled madness, becomes a more viable platform than a computer's native runtime. If you owned any other device that worked that way, you'd be rightfully furious. And so, Apple dug their own grave. Their entire business theory revolves around getting developers to create high-quality native experiences, but the incentive to do so is lower on their platforms than anywhere else in the industry. The software people pay for today isn't native Mac apps, it's B2B cloud infrastructure and cross-platform Electron apps. Apple's philosophy has staunchly failed, and the longer they stick to their guns the more dissatisfied users will become. If Apple wants to invest in a future where Chrome doesn't dominate, then they need to ship a competing browser. Keeping a userbase hostage does not qualify as maintaining a competitive market.

by quitit 3y ago

talldayo 3y ago

> The act of writing a law that will result in Google’s Chrome total market dominance will of course fall under “user choice”. I mean... yeah. Users want stuff. They want emulators, YouTube song downloaders, game streaming and online games, the sorts of things Apple otherwise mediates on the App Store. The web can conditionally provide that to them if their browser has enough features, so these locked-down users then are driven to fringe featuresets. In an ideal world, your phone just installs software like your computer and you don't need to use your browser to enable basic native functionality. Unfortunately, making software "just work" requires developers to pay an annual fee and arm-wrestle with a distributor that doesn't care about them. The web, in all it's mangled madness, becomes a more viable platform than a computer's native runtime. If you owned any other device that worked that way, you'd be rightfully furious. And so, Apple dug their own grave. Their entire business theory revolves around getting developers to create high-quality native experiences, but the incentive to do so is lower on their platforms than anywhere else in the industry. The software people pay for today isn't native Mac apps, it's B2B cloud infrastructure and cross-platform Electron apps. Apple's philosophy has staunchly failed, and the longer they stick to their guns the more dissatisfied users will become. If Apple wants to invest in a future where Chrome doesn't dominate, then they need to ship a competing browser. Keeping a userbase hostage does not qualify as maintaining a competitive market.