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EU To Charge Apple With Anti-Competitive Behaviour This Week (bloomberg.com) 82

Posted by msmash from the time-to-face-the-music dept.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU's competition chief, will late this week publicly issue charges against Apple over concerns that the rules it sets for developers on its App store break EU law, Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing several people with direct knowledge of the announcement. From the report: The case started two years ago after music streaming app Spotify brought a complaint alleging that Apple took a hefty 30 per cent subscription fee in exchange for featuring it on its App Store, but refused to let users know of cheaper ways of accessing it outside the Apple ecosystem. The case is among a number against Apple and is one of the most high profile antitrust cases in Europe against a US tech group. The people warned that the timing could still slip.
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EU To Charge Apple With Anti-Competitive Behaviour This Week More

EU To Charge Apple With Anti-Competitive Behaviour This Week

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  • I can see Sony and Nintendo lobbying hard to make sure the EU never charges Apple.

  • The Apple monopoly is shaping up to become Microsoft on steroids, a near unshakeable monopoly but in a far wider market.

    Internet forcing disparate electronic markets into favouring a single supplier, vertical integration and a lack of viable competition (Google would have to transition out of advertising funding to remain viable, Microsoft gave up mobile and is caught between the requirements of legacy support and hardware model which makes consistent reliability and quality hard ... everyone else is irrele

    • a near unshakeable monopoly but in a far wider market.

      Apple has ~30% [statcounter.com] of the European smartphone market and like 10% [google.com] of the PC market. Hardly a "far wider market" than Windows occupies.

      • Let me just cut to the chase. I say "I said shaping up", you retort with something about "useless speculation", I retort with :

        We shouldn't wait until the computing market has been thoroughly fucked up by Apple choking out all competition.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Apple controls 100% of the market for iPhone apps because its App Store is the only way most people can install them. Payments on iPhone as well.

        That's the issue that the EU is interested in. It's worth asking if this has distorted the rest of the market too, e.g. the 30% cut seems to have become fairly standard, with little competition because in some key markets (e.g. iOS) it's impossible to compete.

        Apple's attitude towards 3rd party repairs needs to be investigated too, as they keep a very tight grip on

    • The Apple monopoly is shaping up to become Microsoft on steroid

      Ironically, Apple is the only thing preventing Chromium's dev team from replacing the W3C as the arbitrator of internet standards. Just want I want, an internet where Google controls everything.

      • WebKit has developers other than Apple, Sony included as well as KDE.

        • You're talking about developers. The only OS that has a sizable number of WebKit users is iOS - because Chromiums aren't allowed. And that means Google cannot tell people to download Chrome or GTFO..

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by _merlin ( 160982 )

            Steam Client/Overlay/etc. is still WebKit (rather than Blink), isn't it? I think WebKit is still persisting in a few places other than Safari.

            • The Steam Client/Overlay isn't used to go to random websites. At least, not as a major use case.

              I'm talking about actual consumers surfing the web.

          • Firefox still exists with its Gecko web engine. And WebKit has a notable presence in the open source software projects (GNOME's web browser is one example) so you are still wrong.

            • In the consumer landscape, GNOME's web browser is not a notable presence. But sure, Internet standards was great in 2000 with Mozilla holding the line against IE.

              Firefox exists, and it's great, but it follows Chromium's lead on a lot of things (e.g. addons).

    • Remind me again what Apple has a monopoly on?

  • Force them to allow other stores and most important, sideloading apps!

    I can already see the rabid apple cult members at Ars crying like little babies over this.

    Never in my life I have seen a group of customers demand less instead of more from their products...

    • It's important it happens in the Microsoft/Google way too, not the slimy MacOS way.

      With a proper sideloading mechanism you can accept specific store/developer signing certificates of your choice, not just lose almost all control over signing requirements (Microsoft did that too for a while).

    • Force them to allow other stores and most important, sideloading apps!

      I can already see the rabid apple cult members at Ars crying like little babies over this.

      Never in my life I have seen a group of customers demand less instead of more from their products...

      So you want Apple to face these charges in order to prove a point to their fanboy customers?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 )

      I didn't buy an iPhone for a general purpose computer. I bought it to be a phone that could also view websites and had a better camera than my flip phone. I have no desire to sideload apps - I have a strong desire for a tightly locked down experience. I have Android tablets and actual PCs if I need to access random things, but I bought an appliance.

      Meanwhile, Apple refusing to let Chrome onto iOS is the only thing keeping Google from going full Microsoft and completely dominating the web. Did you think

      • Re:YES!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Tuesday April 27, 2021 @11:22AM (#61319624)

        I have no desire to sideload apps - I have a strong desire for a tightly locked down experience.

        Nobody would force you to step outside the walled garden. Why does it matter to you whether others have that choice?

        • Given the "do not track" functionality Apple released in iOS 14.5, how long do you think Google or Facebook apps would remain available in the Apple App Store?

          "Then just don't use Google/Facebook apps." Well, yeah, but that'd be a loss of current functionality that would understandably frustrate current iOS users. People who want to sideload had the choice to buy an Android device.

          • The requirement for user clicking through an opt-in to allow access to the identifier for advertising is part of the sandbox, not the store.

            Apps from a different store would have more opportunity to try to avoid sandbox limitations without getting banned, but sandbox leaks are worth big money and won't be wasted on being able to sell advertising for a short time.

          • "Android device" You mean the devices with ARM CPUs featuring years-old ARMv8 instruction sets?

          • Yeah, because every app developer on Android has abandoned the Play Store to get out of paying Google 30% of their revenue.

            Oh, wait... that didn't happen... because app vendors get value out of being on the official store.

        • Nobody would force you to step outside the walled garden

          Bullshit

          I can watch YouTube on Safari on iPhone now. Do you think Google will still let that happen or do you think they'll force me to sideload Chrome? (Keep in mind that GMail/Apps/YouTube are the primary way they drive people to Chrome). Even if I resist and start making up a user-agent, most other people won't and they'll still cement domination over web standards that MSFT could only dream of.

          And that's just one example. Bottom line, I like Ap

          • Apple might be forced to support some HTML features it wouldn't otherwise support, but there's no magical HTML feature which would let them identify phones beyond the sandbox/cookie environment.

          • I can watch YouTube on Safari on iPhone now. Do you think Google will still let that happen or do you think they'll force me to sideload Chrome?

            You can "sideload" Chrome on desktop machines right now and Google has made attempt to stop non-Chrome browsers from accessing YouTube. What makes you think they would suddenly start doing so on iOS?

            • That should be "Google has made no attempt to stop non-Chrome browsers from accessing YouTube"

            • Google has made attempt to stop non-Chrome browsers from accessing YouTube.

              Of course they have. They haven't stopped FireFox because they want to be dominant in a duopoly and they haven't stopped Safari because they want iPhone access. But look at the shit they pulled on Edge and other upstarts. Because, yes, they most certainly stop non-Chromium browsers - just not all non-Chromium browsers.

            • MS changed to the Chrome engine in edge because Youtube kept making changes that broken hardware support for videos (on edge)... basically they ended up making MS use the chrome engine.

              Google is there to make profit... controlling an entire market is one solution for them...

          • Nobody would force you to step outside the walled garden

            Bullshit

            I can watch YouTube on Safari on iPhone now. Do you think Google will still let that happen or do you think they'll force me to sideload Chrome?

            Like all those other platforms where Google does not allow YouTube to work in non-Chrome browsers?

            • Like all those other platforms where Google does not allow YouTube to work in non-Chrome browsers?

              You mean like Amazon's Silk Browser (I think they negotiated an armistice there)? Or MS's non-Chromium based Edge?

              • Like all those other platforms where Google does not allow YouTube to work in non-Chrome browsers?

                You mean like Amazon's Silk Browser (I think they negotiated an armistice there)?

                So not an issue

                Or MS's non-Chromium based Edge?

                Now I'm really confused.

                You prefer to use the version of Edge that is no longer supported by Microsoft and must be "side-loaded"--for lack of a better term--and because of issues with this unsupported software and YouTube, you are afraid of what might happen if Apple allows users to also side-load software in iOS?

                • "The negotiated an armistice" means solved to you?

                  You're confusing cause and effect. Google's aggressive pushing people away from Edge is why they switched to Chromium.

                  • "The negotiated an armistice" means solved to you?

                    You're confusing cause and effect. Google's aggressive pushing people away from Edge is why they switched to Chromium.

                    Nobody was using Edge because it wasn't a browser people wanted to use. If they had a more compelling product to start with, this might not have been the case.

      • I didn't buy an iPhone for a general purpose computer. I bought it to be a phone that could also view websites and had a better camera than my flip phone. I have no desire to sideload apps - I have a strong desire for a tightly locked down experience. I have Android tablets and actual PCs if I need to access random things, but I bought an appliance.

        Meanwhile, Apple refusing to let Chrome onto iOS is the only thing keeping Google from going full Microsoft and completely dominating the web. Did you think AMP was a naked powergrab before?

        If you don't like it, don't buy one. See, that previous statement was a joke, because you already don't own one, and for some reason think you should tell other people what to do.

        Actually, I have way too much Apple gear for my own good. As a matter of fact, the only two devices I dont have are a personal iphone and Apple Watch.

        But I do have a bunch of Macs and on my third iPad Pro.

        But you are exactly the type of person that I described on my post.

        Nobody is forcing you to sideload anything if you dont want to and if they do it like is done on Android, you need to click thru 6 warnings to get this enable.

        Open your eyes and stop being such a loyal cult member or better yet, you are nob

        • Nobody is forcing you to sideload anything if you dont want to

          Until Google insists that YouTube/GMail/etc. cannot work in Safari and you need to d/l chrome, leading to a huge percentage of people doing that and them dominating the internet. In another year Chromium browsers are the only ones that work on most sites (and is only available via sideloading.)

          • You are persisting in dwelling on a hypothetical fear.

            • It's not hypothetical. We've been there before. Or have you already forgotten the days of: "Site best viewed in Internet Explorer", "ActiveX required", and Silverlight/.net? Granted, we managed to dig ourselves out of that quagmire the last time; but only after many dark and painful years. So wouldn't it be better not to fall back into the hole again in the first place?

              • IE6 being full of security holes and the over-saturation of it was what forced it out of dominance. Not to mention the lack of support of web standards considered modern at that time.

              • I still remember the tons of sites that were 100% Flash, and the only HTML they had was to bootstrap into that. Thankfully, HTML5 got rid of that, as opposed to having to have a browser that you had to shovel Flash into in order to get work done.

                Apple isn't perfect, but better them and Google than just one private company dictating what you can and can't use to browse the Web with. This is why non-mainstream web browsers like Konqueror and Lynx still are somewhat viable.

            • Yes, hypothetical. I don't remember "best viewed in Internet Explorer." I don't remember "best viewed in Google Chrome" popping up when MS Edge was first released. I don't remember that shit still popping up from time to time.

              • You really don't remember some websites saying best viewed? It was in the 90s when Netscape was still a thing.

                • Of course I remember. It's not just from the 90's In 202X I remember Google Docs/GMail/YouTube telling me "Best in Chrome". It was, apparently not coming across, sarcastic in response to someone who said the threat of Google being more aggressive in those tactics was hypothetical.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sloppy ( 14984 )

        It sounds like you know what you want. Isn't it a good idea for you to have the power to attain it, rather than completely trusting in luck/circumstance?

        Putting your hand on the PC-to-appliance range dial, seems to me to be a really good way for your phone to be set exactly where you want it. Isn't leaving this decision to the owner/user, the best of all possible worlds? That way, nobody loses.

        Not that I disagree with "If you don't like it, don't buy one" at all. That's always top-notch advice. But it's als

        • Isn't it a good idea for you to have the power to attain it,

          I don't have the power to stand up to Google. Apple does. Not allowing Chrome-based browsers on the iPhone is the only thing that will keep Google from 100% owning the web experience.

  • not sure why Appple doesn't just offer two tiers of pricing
    -- everything that most (small) developers want packaged up in exchange for 30% of your gross, vs
    -- a la carte - where everything has a price that reflects actual cost + profit, such as:
    space in the apple store vs advertise on your own web site
    users get software/updates in the apple store vs apple sells you the notarization service and gives you the signed bundle and you host it yourself
    app reviews (such as they are) are part of the bundled pri

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Just allow competing stores. The developers can choose which store(s) they want to sell their goods through, and the users get to choose what store(s) they want to shop at. The only one who loses anything is Apple, which now has to compete. Boo hoo.

      • If Apple were required to open up the consumer would quickly have to deal with getting apps from the Google app store, the Facebook app store, the Microsoft app store, the Epic Games app store, etc. All of them with different privacy policies, different accounts, and different payment methods to manage. The "Do Not Track" functionality released yesterday in iOS 14.5, a major win for consumer privacy, would completely lose its teeth.

        That all sounds a lot like the consumer losing out.

        • Yeah, like on Android, where there's support for multiple stores already, I have to download the Facebook Store before I can download the Facebook app.

          Except of course I don't because that's not at all how this shit works.

          • Isn't that the whole thesis of this comment thread? That if Spotify could list in a separate app store, without Apple's restrictions, they would? Given the fuss they've kicked up over the whole "Do Not Track" functionality, how long would you expect Facebook to keep their apps in the Apple App Store given an alternative?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by bws111 ( 1216812 )

              They would keep their apps in the Apple Store if it made business sense for them to do it. If the App Store is going to enforce policies that make it so Facebook can't make money, then FB could SELL a version of the app in the App Store. They could charge for the lost revenue (plus the Apple tax, of course). If another app store doesn't have those restrictions, they could offer a FREE version through that store. Both the developer and consumer would have a choice (yes, I know you think Apple customers a

              • (yes, I know you think Apple customers are too dumb to make a choice).

                Are we sure they can? Make a choice that is.

        • How is more choice a loss? You don't even have to take advantage of the "other" choices to get benefits at the official store. Just by allowing competing app stores creates competition which will benefit the consumers, aka you the iphone owner.

          I like my android phone and have only ever downloaded apps through the google play store but it is nice to know if I wanted to, I could go try out different stores.

  • Even with sideloading allowed in Android, The natural monopoly / dominance of default Google Play store makes them able to ban people's Google account (or "App Store" and Apple account in iOS case) with no restriction. With such arbitrary ban power, app developers and phone users suffer under their tyranny because one can lose all their purchases and/or their developed product / market in a whim.

    We have laws and regulations to prevent telecom carriers taking phone number hostage. We need similar laws and

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