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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

#201

Post by cortesoft »

nahtnam wrote: post #182
SkyBelow wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think its more "It is legal for me to ban coupons at my store" and then suing another company for not letting you use coupons at their store. I'm not 100% sure though

Has Apple sued Google for this, though? I haven’t heard of any lawsuits over this between the companies.

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

#202

Post by deong »

dustinmoris wrote: post #151
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 absurd. If I run a shop and I require an ID check at the entrance then it doesn’t mean that I am not allowed to shop myself in stores which don’t require ID checks.

That's not the right analogy. It means you're not allowed to sue someone else for requiring an ID check in order to let you shop there.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if this defense was particularly robust anyway. It seems you'd just have to argue that there's some slight difference in the situations and that's why I'm doing something that guy shouldn't do. But either way, you're not taking away the correct message from his example.

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

#203

Post by goopthink »

SkyBelow wrote: post #177
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…

Sounds like the issue is, "I created a set of rules and ban users who try to bypass them, but I recognize how bogus/harmful to a business those rules are because I do my utmost best to bypass those exact same rules when I'm in the position of a user on someone else's platform."

The contradiction is in trying to support the rules with one hand while resorting to the same bypassing tactics they decry when they're in the position of a business on someone else's platform.

edit: typo.

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

#204

Post by markstos »

oillio wrote: post #181
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…

> plus a 30% cut for doing nothing It's not nothing. Maybe not worth 30% but it is worth something. They run the store, buy the servers and pay for the bandwidth. Pay the engineers to develop and manage the infrastructure. Run the app certification process. Maintain the security of the platform. etc. If they can't charge their 30% cut, they will need a different business plan. Possibly charging app developers directl…

Apple would not need a different business plan.

Apple currently has $192.8 billion cash on hand. If Apple took a smaller cut, they would simply have a few less billion dollars in the bank. Many, many individual developers and small business would have a little more money in their bank accounts. The small businesses are more likely to be actively put this money back into the economy then the idle billions in Apple's bank accounts.

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

#205

Post by bduerst »

cwhiz wrote: post #197
zachruss92 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, my stance here is that Google is pretty reasonable with their guidelines compared to Apple. My biggest issue in the iOS vs Android debate is that apple is behaving monopolistically and Google isn't. Using the respective app stores give publishers an inherent audience to distribute/sell content through. I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple/Google to try to profit off of the audience they've built. W…

Apple is a minority player in every single market in the world, including the US. You can't have monopolistic behavior without a monopoly. You can't be a monopoly if you are not the market leader. People want this to be a legal issue but it's just a market issue. If people don't like these policies they shouldn't buy Apple products or release apps on Apple devices.

>You can't have monopolistic behavior without a monopoly

This is wrong. Monopolistic behavior is anti-competitive behavior that doesn't require having a market monopoly.

Think of it as a pattern of behavior that moves you towards having a monopoly.

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

#206

Post by Zenbit_UX »

cwhiz wrote: post #197
zachruss92 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, my stance here is that Google is pretty reasonable with their guidelines compared to Apple. My biggest issue in the iOS vs Android debate is that apple is behaving monopolistically and Google isn't. Using the respective app stores give publishers an inherent audience to distribute/sell content through. I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple/Google to try to profit off of the audience they've built. W…

Apple is a minority player in every single market in the world, including the US. You can't have monopolistic behavior without a monopoly. You can't be a monopoly if you are not the market leader. People want this to be a legal issue but it's just a market issue. If people don't like these policies they shouldn't buy Apple products or release apps on Apple devices.

Hey everybody, this guy says that's apple's actually the underdog and not a monopoly after all, case closed.

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

#207

Post by owenwil »

mmcclure wrote: post #54

It's very relevant to note that Google Play's terms around in-app billing[1] are far more liberal than Apple's. > Developers offering products within a game downloaded on Google Play or providing access to game content must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment. Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of…

Also note that Google allows third-party payment gateways via the Google Play API – Netflix, as an example, dodges the cut with a custom implementation of Stripe! It's a lot more work to implement, but developers actually have the option.

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

#208

Post by NineStarPoint »

jonny_eh wrote: post #91
crazygringo wrote: post #53

Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument. Google sets its own policies for its own app store. If Google approved this, all it means is Google approved it. Apple similarly sets its own policies for its own app store. It's totally free to set totally different policies, and disapprove of things that Google approves. I still think Apple's policies have huge problems, but this particular example is apples a…

> Honestly this seems like an irrelevant counterargument. Hypocrisy is a very powerful argument, especially in court.

It only become Hypocrisy if Apple starts to argue google isn't allowed to require them to use google payment/isn't allowed to boot them from the play store for trying to circumvent rules. Without any action from google, it's impossible to say whether Apple is being hypocritical or not here.

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

#209

Post by kyriee »

archildress wrote: post #35

Given the strong emotions around the topic, I've been a bit afraid to ask this question - is what Apple does really that different than traditional retail? In FMCG there are difficult hurdles to jump over to get on the store shelves. The stores don't have an obligation to put anyone's product on the shelf. They can also module what the cut of the revenue is. I'm not sure I have an opinion on what Apple is doing, but…

There are multiple things retail does. Discovery and sales is one of it, but no one does what Apple wants to do with IAP.

Imagine that you buy a DVD player at Best Buy. That's cool. Best Buy decides the markup, where it puts it, how much it puts in promoting it, etc. That's also cool. You are OK with giving the with 30 % of your DVD player sales. After all, shelf space, promotion, etc. isn't free.

Now, imagine Best Buy hears that you sell DVDs by mail. People are already buying your DVDs and you are shipping it to their door, so you don't feel that it's worth your time and effort to "sell" them through Best Buy.

Best Buy is not happy with this. They say that for ANY DVD for the DVD player in their store, NEED to offered in their store AND you need to pay the same fee for which you get placement, promotion, etc.

You don't want to sell your "Mail in DVDs" in Best Buys, you don't want or need them promoting your DVD, they will never touch, manage, offer support, etc. for these "Mail in DVDs", but you HAVE to sell them in Best Buy because if you don't, then they will just stop selling your DVD player.

In short, they are in the business of selling DVD players, but want a cut of all "Mail in DVDs" because your customers bought the DVD player through them.

This is what Apple wants to do for any app that offers digital content / experiences that might not want to use their services. How is that OK?

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

#210

Post by Despegar »

yyyk wrote: post #194
Despegar wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you look at Spotify's allegations[0], than things did change in 2015 when Apple launched Apple Music, creating a conflict of interest for Apple. Anyhow, anti-trust moves slow. The trust cases against IBM took more than a decade, and the case against Microsoft also took a few years. [0] https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

"Conflict of interest" isn't illegal. Apple has been competing with app developers on their platform from the first days of the App Store. If Spotify is somehow trying to suggest that Apple should be barred from doing so, that's not going to be possible under antitrust laws.
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