4 ms·

I'm going to guess that the antitrust lawsuits don't stick because iOS has a 27% global marketshare, and because Apple has a very well-paid legal department. T

by dangus 2y ago

I'm going to guess that the antitrust lawsuits don't stick because iOS has a 27% global marketshare, and because Apple has a very well-paid legal department. The difference between iOS and a game console in terms of antitrust law is "not a whole lot." The EU has been able to get further with restricting Apple's policies because their laws and courts work a lot differently than the US courts. The EU is all about preserving an equal single market economy in every aspect of their economy. The US will let corproations do whatever they want until they are 1990s Microsoft-level dominant.

heavyset_go 2y ago
Global marketshare is irrelevant, Apple has over 60% of the mobile OS market in the US and are responsible for 70% of all mobile app sales in the US.
NekkoDroid 2y ago
> The US will let corproations do whatever they want until they are 1990s Microsoft-level dominant. *The US will let corporations do whatever they want while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges There is a lot of corruption in the US. So yes, at times, they will allow that too. But in this case, the commenter was correct. We can't be going into courts of law making poop up. Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" is almost on the level of being insulting to the justices. Judges and attorneys are not being corrupt bribe-takers when they laugh us out of court for making that argument. They are just following the law. There's not corruption involved. People seem loathe to accept the fact that it's time to go the other route, where you just change the laws. Apple is not now, and realistically, probably never will be, a monopoly. Antitrust and monopoly laws do not address what Apple is, and it's time to either make laws that do address what Apple is, or just be honest and say we don't, as a legal system, have any issue with what Apple is. But this political theater where you make an issue of what Apple is, and then try to address it in court knowing that it won't work is getting really old. We need some leaders who will actually write some new laws and put them up for a vote.
  - NekkoDroid 2y ago
    > Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" Usually courts don't care about their global market share but their local market share, which IIRC in the US for mobile was somewhere in the 60%. Whether that is enought to make a monopoly claim is debatable, but I assume it is enough to argue abuse of dominant market position. Regarding your laws paragraph, I do agree that "free market" doesn't really work at the level that the US currently is. There are a lot of problems I have with how the market in the US is regulated (or rather lack thereof), but I don't live there but in the EU, which I honestly am glad of.
  - bix6 2y ago
    How is that insulting to the judge? If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market and exercise monopoly-like control. Especially considering all the colluding occurring.
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      * If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market* Not if your competitor, android, controls 70% of the market. That's what I meant about being insulting. In court, when we're making these kinds of claims, we shouldn't talk about what could be, we must talk about what is.
      - mcguire 2y ago
        70% worldwide. 30-40% in the US. And "Android" is a bunch of companies, not one.
        dangus 2y ago
        Google Play Store is one company.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - 2y ago
- intended 2y ago
  gifts to judges aren't applicable to tech yet, at least not as far as I know.
- tivert 2y ago
  > *The US will let corporations do whatever they want while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges. Cite please? IIRC, the present day antitrust precedents were set in the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Rise_of_the_Chicago_School_(1970s%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ri....
kmeisthax 2y ago
Google's legal department is also very well-paid, but they've lost both the Epic lawsuit and the DOJ lawsuit. In some markets (e.g. search) they have dramatically more market share, but 27% of phones is still high enough to have some market power. Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition. Government-granted monopolies (e.g. copyright law) have partial antitrust carve-outs: I can't sue Disney for owning the copyright over their own films[0] even though that's extremely anti-competitive. Apple was savvy and couched their defense around their ownership of iOS: i.e. "you can't tell us how we sell our OS". Google could not avail themselves of that argument in the Epic case because they had explicitly open-sourced Android. But that's not the biggest problem. The Google lawsuit is unique in that not only did a lot of Google's own internal e-mails basically spell out exactly what crimes they were committing, but they also got caught spoliating evidence[1] by aggressively pushing relevant persons in the company to turn off chat history and recording functionality that was legally required to be enabled. In contrast, most of the decision making at Apple was "whatever Jobs thought was best" and people just did what he said. You can't subpoena a corpse. And while there were internal tech emails discovered in the Apple case, none of them were as damning as the Google ones, at least by the standards of a legal system that considers monopolies to be OK as long as you can pretend to be a starving artist. As for games consoles, the argument[2] is that consoles are special-purpose devices while iPhones are computers. I personally disagree with this, consoles have "apps" now just like phones and they have the exact same positioning that allows them to gain supra-competitive profits like Apple does. [0] More peripheral claims, such as having a monopoly over theatrical distribution, can and have give rise to an antitrust lawsuit. You have to prove that the market power they are using is above and beyond the market power the government intended them to use. [1] "spoliate" as in, illegally destroy evidence relevant to ongoing litigation. [2] Provided by Epic, oddly enough. I know they argued it to try and narrow down Apple's market definition, but I also suspect that was to avoid console manufacturers asserting some kind of universal default[3] / reverse class solidarity move and pulling Fortnite off PSN/Xbox/eShop until Epic drops the Apple lawsuit. [3] Universal default is a clause added to loans that says that defaulting on any other loan defaults on this loan, too.
- Iulioh 2y ago
  >27% of phones is still high enough to have some market power. 27% Worldwide And that's a single company vs 70% of all the Android device makers. In the US thats 60% for apple, it is basically a monopoly when your closest competitor is at 24%. And, to add, 87% of teens in the US has an iphone. 80 fucking 7 % To add again: the 70/30 worldwide market share is perfectly rappresented in europe (67% and 32%).

by dangus 2y ago

heavyset_go 2y ago

Global marketshare is irrelevant, Apple has over 60% of the mobile OS market in the US and are responsible for 70% of all mobile app sales in the US.

NekkoDroid 2y ago

> The US will let corproations do whatever they want until they are 1990s Microsoft-level dominant. *The US will let corporations do whatever they want while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges.

bilbo0s 2y ago
while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges There is a lot of corruption in the US. So yes, at times, they will allow that too. But in this case, the commenter was correct. We can't be going into courts of law making poop up. Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" is almost on the level of being insulting to the justices. Judges and attorneys are not being corrupt bribe-takers when they laugh us out of court for making that argument. They are just following the law. There's not corruption involved. People seem loathe to accept the fact that it's time to go the other route, where you just change the laws. Apple is not now, and realistically, probably never will be, a monopoly. Antitrust and monopoly laws do not address what Apple is, and it's time to either make laws that do address what Apple is, or just be honest and say we don't, as a legal system, have any issue with what Apple is. But this political theater where you make an issue of what Apple is, and then try to address it in court knowing that it won't work is getting really old. We need some leaders who will actually write some new laws and put them up for a vote.
- NekkoDroid 2y ago
  > Going into a court of law and saying that a company with 27% market share in phones and 13% market share in PCs is a "monopoly" Usually courts don't care about their global market share but their local market share, which IIRC in the US for mobile was somewhere in the 60%. Whether that is enought to make a monopoly claim is debatable, but I assume it is enough to argue abuse of dominant market position. Regarding your laws paragraph, I do agree that "free market" doesn't really work at the level that the US currently is. There are a lot of problems I have with how the market in the US is regulated (or rather lack thereof), but I don't live there but in the EU, which I honestly am glad of.
- bix6 2y ago
  How is that insulting to the judge? If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market and exercise monopoly-like control. Especially considering all the colluding occurring.
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    * If you have 27% you could be the single biggest player in a given market* Not if your competitor, android, controls 70% of the market. That's what I meant about being insulting. In court, when we're making these kinds of claims, we shouldn't talk about what could be, we must talk about what is.
    - mcguire 2y ago
      70% worldwide. 30-40% in the US. And "Android" is a bunch of companies, not one.
      - dangus 2y ago
        Google Play Store is one company.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- 2y ago
intended 2y ago
gifts to judges aren't applicable to tech yet, at least not as far as I know.
tivert 2y ago
> *The US will let corporations do whatever they want while they are giving "gifts" and "gratuities" to the relevant judges. Cite please? IIRC, the present day antitrust precedents were set in the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Rise_of_the_Chicago_School_(1970s%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ri....

kmeisthax 2y ago

Google's legal department is also very well-paid, but they've lost both the Epic lawsuit and the DOJ lawsuit. In some markets (e.g. search) they have dramatically more market share, but 27% of phones is still high enough to have some market power. Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition. Government-granted monopolies (e.g. copyright law) have partial antitrust carve-outs: I can't sue Disney for owning the copyright over their own films[0] even though that's extremely anti-competitive. Apple was savvy and couched their defense around their ownership of iOS: i.e. "you can't tell us how we sell our OS". Google could not avail themselves of that argument in the Epic case because they had explicitly open-sourced Android. But that's not the biggest problem. The Google lawsuit is unique in that not only did a lot of Google's own internal e-mails basically spell out exactly what crimes they were committing, but they also got caught spoliating evidence[1] by aggressively pushing relevant persons in the company to turn off chat history and recording functionality that was legally required to be enabled. In contrast, most of the decision making at Apple was "whatever Jobs thought was best" and people just did what he said. You can't subpoena a corpse. And while there were internal tech emails discovered in the Apple case, none of them were as damning as the Google ones, at least by the standards of a legal system that considers monopolies to be OK as long as you can pretend to be a starving artist. As for games consoles, the argument[2] is that consoles are special-purpose devices while iPhones are computers. I personally disagree with this, consoles have "apps" now just like phones and they have the exact same positioning that allows them to gain supra-competitive profits like Apple does. [0] More peripheral claims, such as having a monopoly over theatrical distribution, can and have give rise to an antitrust lawsuit. You have to prove that the market power they are using is above and beyond the market power the government intended them to use. [1] "spoliate" as in, illegally destroy evidence relevant to ongoing litigation. [2] Provided by Epic, oddly enough. I know they argued it to try and narrow down Apple's market definition, but I also suspect that was to avoid console manufacturers asserting some kind of universal default[3] / reverse class solidarity move and pulling Fortnite off PSN/Xbox/eShop until Epic drops the Apple lawsuit. [3] Universal default is a clause added to loans that says that defaulting on any other loan defaults on this loan, too.

Iulioh 2y ago
>27% of phones is still high enough to have some market power. 27% Worldwide And that's a single company vs 70% of all the Android device makers. In the US thats 60% for apple, it is basically a monopoly when your closest competitor is at 24%. And, to add, 87% of teens in the US has an iphone. 80 fucking 7 % To add again: the 70/30 worldwide market share is perfectly rappresented in europe (67% and 32%).