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Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

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Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#171

Post by oillio »

Despegar wrote: post #95
gamblor956 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a…

>That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). The reason why everyone has to narrowly define the market to "Apple has monopo…

Apple has control of the iOS App market. It is a pretty large barrier for a customer need to switch platforms to get an app that Apple has denied access.

I am not a lawyer, but that sure smells like the potential for monopolistic control.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#172

Post by cma »

gamblor956 wrote: post #30

Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyer…

The law doesn't have a hypocrisy clause like that.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#173

Post by illumanaughty »

schoolornot wrote: post #156
rydre wrote: post #22

Boycott WWDC everyone. Trillion Dollar companies don't play by the fair rules. Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google Play's 30% cut. Apple has accused Match, Epic, and Spotify of wanting a 'free ride' while taking one themselves.

Or Google should just remove the app. No reason, no comment, nothing. Just remove the app and say too bad.

Ah yes, the Apple approach. I like it.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#174

Post by JimDabell »

gamblor956 wrote: post #70
snowwrestler wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously if Apple owns one platform, and Google owns the other platform, it is not actually the same situation. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. In fact it's arguable that a free marketplace encourages and depends on different companies taking different approaches to meet cu…

Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a…

> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store

I think you're mixing up Apple Pay with in-app purchases. Apple Pay is for real-world purchases. In-app purchases are for digital goods or services. If we're talking about music streaming, we're talking about in-app purchases, not Apple Pay. Apple don't force you to use Apple Pay for anything, in fact they won't let you use Apple Pay in this situation.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#175

Post by thebean11 »

pccole wrote: post #167
gamblor956 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a…

Which Apple does not permit. It's literally Apple's way, plus a 30% cut for doing nothing, or you're not even allowed to play. And that's exactly what antitrust laws were intended to prevent. I wouldn't say Apple or Google do nothing. Their Argument is we provide the infrastructure and developer tools so we're going to take a slice off all your sells to keep this stuff up and running. Even the Amazon App Store takes…

If you aren't using their payment systems you aren't using that specific infrastructure or dev tools though. This isn't about someone wanting Apple's (super nice) payment system for free, it's about Apple forcing them to use it instead of their own solution.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#176

Post by Despegar »

pccole wrote: post #167
gamblor956 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a…

Which Apple does not permit. It's literally Apple's way, plus a 30% cut for doing nothing, or you're not even allowed to play. And that's exactly what antitrust laws were intended to prevent. I wouldn't say Apple or Google do nothing. Their Argument is we provide the infrastructure and developer tools so we're going to take a slice off all your sells to keep this stuff up and running. Even the Amazon App Store takes…

If the antitrust laws were designed to prevent that (they weren't) then there's been a massive failure in enforcement because nothing has changed since Apple launched the App Store in 2008. In reality laws don't require platforms to be "open" or "closed" or dictate how you're supposed to make money. And that kind of regulation would be bad for dynamic markets and competition.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#177

Post by SkyBelow »

gamblor956 wrote: post #30

Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyer…

This doesn't sound right, so let me try to form an example to get at what is the issue I'm seeing.

Let X be "It is okay for me to ban my customers from using discounts."

Let not X be "It is okay for me to use discounts offered by another restaurant."

This doesn't feel like a particularly contradictory situation.

Maybe the issue is that we skipped a few too many steps, because there isn't anything particularly illegal about Apple only letting apps doing certain things (like not bypassing their store) onto their store. The issue is that this is occurring in a larger situation where there are concerns about being a monopoly. I wonder if we build out exactly why what Apple is doing might be wrong (basically the argument they are having to defend against by claiming X is okay) we can see it isn't an issue. But at face value it feels to be taking a very broad view of what constitutes hypocritical behavior to the point it renders the notion useless.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#178

Post by chongli »

kevincox wrote: post #87
hortense wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Music is 30% more expensive when purchased via iOS. If that seems insane, it's because it is.

To be honest this seems perfectly reasonable. I think we should pass on costs to the consumer more often. In North America you can make up to 5% back on purchases by using credit card. This is because the store pays a fee. I don't see why this shouldn't be paid by the consumer. This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use. I think the long term effects would be…

This is effectively overcharging cash customers for the availability of a service that they don't use.

Cash isn't free for stores to handle either. They need to pay employees to count up the cash at closing time, put it in the safe, and periodically distribute cash to registers so they don't run out of change. Additionally, stores typically contract with security companies to pickup and deliver cash to/from the store and the bank.

Maybe the costs from above are not identical to the fees for credit card transactions, but they may be close enough that it's not worth it for a store to charge different prices and incur the overhead from that. Some stores do however offer discounts for using cash. The examples I can think of off the top of my head are family-run Chinese take-out restaurants. These tend to have family members counting and handling cash, so they may have less overhead, or they may be too small to warrant hiring a security company to make cash pickups.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#179

Post by criddell »

cma wrote: post #172
gamblor956 wrote: post #30

Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyer…

The law doesn't have a hypocrisy clause like that.

The court of public opinion does though.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#180

Post by evan_ »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #121
evan_ wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or go to WWDC and just make this the topic of every Q&A

"Apple" is not a single monolithic entity. The engineers who will be working their asses off to create and present WWDC have absolutely nothing to do with the business decisions of the App Store. Do not bully them, and do not waste the time of other participants who will have genuine engineering questions.

The published guidelines are incomplete at best. The real rules seem to be arbitrary and aren't applied consistently. All of this talk about how "business services" get treated differently, enforcement changing in March, none of this is written down or available anywhere. It's a guessing game.

Building an app that follows the published rules and then finding out that the rules that matter are actually wildly different, digging through twitter threads and blog posts to try to figure out what's allowed- frankly those are the wastes of developer time that bother me more.

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