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While I think it's the right outcome, the reasoning from the EC is horrifying. The real problem is that iPadOS was never a separate platform in the first place,
by jsnell 2y ago
While I think it's the right outcome, the reasoning from the EC is horrifying. The real problem is that iPadOS was never a separate platform in the first place, and should have been grouped with iOS. The EC could just have ruled on that.
Instead they seemed to have accepted Apple's fiction about these being separate platforms, and then to get the outcome they wanted they just ignored the own inclusion thresholds. Look, the EC set these thresholds. They had years to review those thresholds. And the moment they produce an outcome the EC didn't want, they just go "lol, the threshold was never 45M users, it's actually about being 'close to 45M users'". Will everyone now be judged on the basis of being pretty close to the threshold, or was that a one off for Apple? What even counts as "close"? Are we talking 40M? 30M? 20M?
What a clownshow.
- Hamuko 2y ago>"An undertaking shall be designated as a gatekeeper if [...] it enjoys an entrenched and durable position, in its operations, or it is foreseeable that it will enjoy such a position in the near future." iPadOS being close to the threshold with forecasted growth seems to very much fall in line with the DMA.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- labcomputer 2y agoSo, again, why isn't Spotify a gatekeeper at this point? This ruling shows that the quantitative thresholds are pure fiction (which was the old justification for leaving them out). Spotify has clearly an entrenched and durable position (the government of England formally declared them a monopoly)... and they are using their market power to strong-arm others: Look at all the Spotify-only or Spotify-first streaming playback devices (Teslas, for starters). They pay massively lower rates to artists than other streamers (like Apple Music) for another example. As for consumer harm, I seem to hear nothing but complaints from friends about Spotify's latest AI-generated playlists and poor user interface... those again speak to entrenched and durable market power. It really makes me question whether Europe has such low rates of corruption as everyone says.
- shuckles 2y agoThink about all the formerly-free-now-paywalled talk show podcasts users are missing out on because Spotify can't offer in app subscriptions without paying their primary technology provider a fee for developing all the hardware and software users use to consume their service.
- jamesbelchamber 2y ago> the government of England formally declared them a monopoly Do you have a source for this? So far as I know this isn't true, and some (admittedly quick) searching doesn't reveal anything.
- extraduder_ire 2y agoSpotify is a music streaming service, not a digital app marketplace. If it is running afoul of an EU law, I don't think it would be the DMA. I think you're describing a different kind of antitrust.
- talldayo 2y agoBecause Spotify is not abusing their position as a platform holder to create unfair terms for their competitors. > As for consumer harm, I seem to hear nothing but complaints from friends about Spotify's latest AI-generated playlists and poor user interface... That's not market harm, that's a bad product. If you're particularly upset from Spotify's behavior, there are no shortage of competing alternative services you can entirely replace it with.
- cookiengineer 2y agoImagine every linux distribution under the sun not classifying as GNU/linux because they changed the about section in their GTK dialogs. This is basically what Apple did to avoid compliance requirements. The whole toolchain, the core libraries, even the compiler suites, are identical. iPadOS and tvOS have less than 10 ifdefs in the Safari codebase last time I checked.