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I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of
by somenameforme 1y ago
I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!"
For somebody that makes the median income, of about $50k, this is a fine of $273 for years of largescale systematic abusive behavior, done for profit.
- throwaway-0001 1y agoYeah it’s good. Probably should be both days of revenue and days of profit to account for low profit margin companies. Or % of market cap would also be good.
- haute_cuisine 1y agoStill cheaper than giving up the monopoly position.
- johnfn 1y agoThat's not really a meaningful comparison, either. If you assume every engineer makes ~300K at Apple, perhaps a more meaningful comparison is "Apple loses ~7K engineers for 1 year", which seems a bit more than a slap on the wrist as you are suggesting.
- kybernetyk 1y agoDon't worry. They can replace those lost engineers with AI ;)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bravetraveler 1y agoAssuming it's like every other large business, that's an optimization.
- wiz21c 1y agoexcept that the money doesn't go only to the engineers.
- captn3m0 1y agoOr 26 CEOs for 1 year. (Tim Cook earned ~$75M for 2024).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- csomar 1y agoI think profit is more appropriate. Still only comes at 4 days.
- scarab92 1y agoIs that the profit for the App Store specifically, in the UK specifically? If not, you’re comparing apples to oranges.
- antonvs 1y agoLimiting it to App Store profit doesn’t make sense. The App Store is not an independent corporation (although it’d be great if some regulator forced it to be!) Apple makes the decisions about its behavior.
- isodev 1y agoWhy the UK specifically? The App Store monopoly is driven by its world-wide presence, I think it should be global revenue, and a fine to match.
- scarab92 1y agoBecause the fine amount is specific to the harm done by one product line, in one market. Whereas Apple’s profit figure reflects their total profit across all products and all markets combined. It’s meaningless comparing these, because it’s not an equal basis of comparison.
- hvb2 1y agoWhy? You probably know just how long these cases take, so it is not like all other countries are now going to do the same. If that's the case then using their total profit seems the only proper measure. What it says is that these companies lose these cases but it's so infrequent that they can just price it in. It's a cost of doing business. If we were to fine Tim Cook 1000$ for doing something that paid him 1M would that have the 'effect' of keeping him from doing that again?
- manquer 1y ago2 days of global revenue is not a good baseline for breaking a single country. Comparing against their UK revenue is probably a better metric ?
- amelius 1y agoWhy? If a shoplifter steals from one shop, the judge will not take into consideration all the shops they didn't steal from.
- AlchemistCamp 1y agoCharging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading. Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit from it.
- amelius 1y agoLook I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy ever is. But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.
- 1y ago
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago> I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!" I feel like fines aren't even an appropriate remedy for this. They're both inherently arbitrary and not something that actually fixes it. And that combination gives governments a perverse incentive, because they get $2B to put in their own pockets while leaving the monopolist to continue monopolizing so they can come back and extract more later instead of actually solving it. What they should be doing is breaking up companies that do this sort of thing.
- pacifika 1y agoImagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple
- londons_explore 1y agoI'd love it if a government would decide that the hardware side of the company needs to split from the software side. Suddenly we could buy macos to run in a VM. Or we could buy iPhones running android.
- amelius 1y agoBut that would be like a sudden outbreak of common sense.
- ben_w 1y agoWe'd have to pay for iOS upgrades. Which, given my feelings about iOS 26, might be a good thing. I mean, if their revenue depends on the OS actually being good rather than inevitable…
- pacifika 1y agoOr split Apple UK off. And then fine them.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago> Imagine the response if the uk tried to break up apple This right here is why they need to be broken up. Are we supposed to have a company more powerful than a country?
- basisword 1y agoAnything framed in terms of revenue is pointless. Profit is what we need.
- jules 1y agoFor another comparison: this is about 4 years worth of UK App Store net revenue.
- rib3ye 1y agoHey it’s at least 8 days of actual profit, ok? /s
- EasyMark 1y agoTrue but doesn't it set a precedent for multiple more 2 billion dollar law suits until they fix the problem?