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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 dramatical

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%).
mullingitover 2y ago
> Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition. Yes, but "only when it harms both allocative efficiency and raises the prices of goods above competitive levels or diminishes their quality."[1] [1] https://law.stanford.edu/press/congress-hears-challenges-to-the-consumer-welfare-standard/ https://law.stanford.edu/press/congress-hears-challenges-to-...
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  Killing per-creation billing and demanding a 30% cut that will be passed onto the consumer sounds like a pretty obvious example to me.
  - mullingitover 2y ago
    I'm not going to fall all over myself defending Apple, but it's not as cut and dry as being a price gouge. Apple spent mountains of money on R&D to create wildly popular consumer devices, build and maintain the systems, build and maintain infrastructure, security systems, app distribution systems, and operate payment systems. There's no reason Patreon must use Apple's store. They could run their whole iOS experience out of the web site. iPhone users could use Patreon to their hearts' content, and Apple wouldn't collect a dime. So it's almost as if the services Apple is offering do have value, and people are just arguing about the bill.
    - kmeisthax 2y ago
      I don't have an explanation from Patreon as to why they didn't ship a webapp, but I can at least provide some plausible explanations. The thing is, while iOS is only 27% of the global phone market, that percentage increases when you look at high-value customers. That is, the people with disposable income to spend on fancier phones[0], the people who pay for apps, and the people who would, most critically, donate to an artist's recurring crowdfunding campaign. This isn't even something I made up, it's specifically one of the allegations in the DOJ's lawsuit against Apple. Now, you are a counterparty to this $3tn megacorporation[1] who owns all your customers. Said corporation is altering the deal: you either bill through our royalty-bearing[2] payment processor or we kick you off the platform. You have two options: - Upend large sections of your business model to comply with Apple guidelines, including killing an unusually quirky billing model some fraction of your creators make use of, or, - Leave the platform where all your creators' customers are, hope said creators can get people to follow along through Apple's convenient and extremely discoverable six-step process[3] to install a PWA, and enjoy degraded access to push notifications[4], having to fight Google SEO spam for discoverability, and the ongoing business risk of Apple having complete and total editorial control over how your webapp works on iOS[5]. I'm sure Jack Conte looked at Patreon's numbers, looked at how many subscriptions they get through the app, how many people browse through patreon.com, and realized not being on iOS would screw creators over more. [0] To be clear, high-end Android phones cost more than iPhones now, but iPhone is still a status symbol. [1] Incidentally, this is about half the current budget of the US government. [2] Apple's argument in the Epic lawsuit was that the 30% is a copyright royalty for the use of iOS, which doesn't quite make sense but the judge bought it. [3] Navigate to the website, press the Share button, scroll down to "Add to Home Screen", fill out the form to name your new home screen icon, tap "Add", relog into the PWA again [4] Yes, I know iOS added push notification support. I'll believe it when the Google Fi PWA actually notifies me about text messages on my iPad. [5] Yes, this risk is higher for webapps. Apple can't modify submitted apps after-the-fact (just refuse to host them), but they can modify webpages behind your back by changing Safari. To quote Cory Doctorow: "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it." If users can block ads, Apple can block whatever else they want, 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%).

mullingitover 2y ago

> Antitrust doesn't care about the market share, it cares about actions taken to restrain competition. Yes, but "only when it harms both allocative efficiency and raises the prices of goods above competitive levels or diminishes their quality."[1] [1] https://law.stanford.edu/press/congress-hears-challenges-to-the-consumer-welfare-standard/ https://law.stanford.edu/press/congress-hears-challenges-to-...

kmeisthax 2y ago
Killing per-creation billing and demanding a 30% cut that will be passed onto the consumer sounds like a pretty obvious example to me.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  I'm not going to fall all over myself defending Apple, but it's not as cut and dry as being a price gouge. Apple spent mountains of money on R&D to create wildly popular consumer devices, build and maintain the systems, build and maintain infrastructure, security systems, app distribution systems, and operate payment systems. There's no reason Patreon must use Apple's store. They could run their whole iOS experience out of the web site. iPhone users could use Patreon to their hearts' content, and Apple wouldn't collect a dime. So it's almost as if the services Apple is offering do have value, and people are just arguing about the bill.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    I don't have an explanation from Patreon as to why they didn't ship a webapp, but I can at least provide some plausible explanations. The thing is, while iOS is only 27% of the global phone market, that percentage increases when you look at high-value customers. That is, the people with disposable income to spend on fancier phones[0], the people who pay for apps, and the people who would, most critically, donate to an artist's recurring crowdfunding campaign. This isn't even something I made up, it's specifically one of the allegations in the DOJ's lawsuit against Apple. Now, you are a counterparty to this $3tn megacorporation[1] who owns all your customers. Said corporation is altering the deal: you either bill through our royalty-bearing[2] payment processor or we kick you off the platform. You have two options: - Upend large sections of your business model to comply with Apple guidelines, including killing an unusually quirky billing model some fraction of your creators make use of, or, - Leave the platform where all your creators' customers are, hope said creators can get people to follow along through Apple's convenient and extremely discoverable six-step process[3] to install a PWA, and enjoy degraded access to push notifications[4], having to fight Google SEO spam for discoverability, and the ongoing business risk of Apple having complete and total editorial control over how your webapp works on iOS[5]. I'm sure Jack Conte looked at Patreon's numbers, looked at how many subscriptions they get through the app, how many people browse through patreon.com, and realized not being on iOS would screw creators over more. [0] To be clear, high-end Android phones cost more than iPhones now, but iPhone is still a status symbol. [1] Incidentally, this is about half the current budget of the US government. [2] Apple's argument in the Epic lawsuit was that the 30% is a copyright royalty for the use of iOS, which doesn't quite make sense but the judge bought it. [3] Navigate to the website, press the Share button, scroll down to "Add to Home Screen", fill out the form to name your new home screen icon, tap "Add", relog into the PWA again [4] Yes, I know iOS added push notification support. I'll believe it when the Google Fi PWA actually notifies me about text messages on my iPad. [5] Yes, this risk is higher for webapps. Apple can't modify submitted apps after-the-fact (just refuse to host them), but they can modify webpages behind your back by changing Safari. To quote Cory Doctorow: "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it." If users can block ads, Apple can block whatever else they want, too.