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EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

cnbc.com

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Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#431

Post by jquery »

ericmay wrote: post #350
ericwooley wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's Play Store or w/e it is on Android is the fox in the hen house. Google is one of the offenders that Apple is making disclose data collection practices! I don't think they situation is exactly comparable and it's different enough that the prior precedent may not be applicable. You don't think that it's a a good comparison to compare the only other large scale play store which implements the exact behavior I…

> You don't think that it's a a good comparison to compare the only other large scale play store which implements the exact behavior I'm talking about? Well, I didn't it wasn't good, just that I wasn't sure it's comparable. Google is a software company, and has tons of apps (Youtube, Gmail, Maps, etc.) that are big-time heavy hitters that exist on both their App Store and the Apple one. And given that they own the Pl…

Just wanted to ditto everything you’ve said. I don’t think people realize how good we have it with Apple and how easily things could’ve gone in a completely different direction. Yes it’s a benevolent dictatorship, but right now it’s still benevolent. I get a lot of value out of the fact app makers have their oh-so-clever hands tied.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#432

Post by nolok »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #427
nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

Abstractly AWS sort of _do_ charge you a % of your revenue. For the resources you consume from AWS for $C, those resources should be generating a revenue for you of $R, if $R This assumes that as your needs increase, your profit increases and so does your AWS bill. Granular, PAYG billing is really just a tax on what you _should_ be converting to profit in some sense. At least, it's an interesting way to look at capit…

By your metric anything you pay is a % of your revenue, I think you understand what I meant in the context I meant it.

Imagine a scenario where you realize you can double your prices without changing anything else nor losing customer, therefore only changing your revenue by doubling it. Your AWS bill doesn't change. Your Apple store bill doubles. This is factually a tax on revenue.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#433

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pembrook wrote: post #425
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you don't want a platform monopoly operating a payment service isn't that they (currently) have a monopoly on payment services. It's that they would leverage the platform monopoly into one, and then there would be less competition in payment services. Prohibiting vertical integration prevents that sort of leveraging without having to micromanage every multinational conglomerate. The platform company should…

> Prohibiting vertical integration prevents that sort of leveraging without having to micromanage every multinational conglomerate. How is policing all forms of vertical integration in the corporate world not micromanagement of all businesses?

It's macromanagement. It's a big clear fault line that regulators can see from outer space, instead of trying to evaluate whether Apple App Store charging Spotify a given percentage is anti-competitive based on a detailed analysis of their cost structure and having to argue about the allocation of fixed costs between business units.

It also has the advantage of creating a de facto limit on entity size so we don't end up with corporations more powerful than elected governments.

And it's not a prohibition on vertical integration whatsoever, only on vertical integration for companies with market power in any market.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#434

Post by yummies »

nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

The most ridiculous example of this is Tesla's offering of in-app Autopilot upgrades. At $10k, imagine what Apple's cut is, for absolutely no value added.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#435

Post by AlexandrB »

nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

I recently had a change of heart on this issue when the prevalence of fraudulent apps on the App Store was documented[1]. It's hard to argue that Apple is providing significant benefit to either consumers or developers for their 30% cut when they seem incapable of reigning in obvious fraud.

In addition, I think Apple pushing subscriptions as a solution for long term app funding (instead of upgrade pricing or other options) has resulted in apps as simple as text editors or todo apps needlessly becoming subscription services. Apple didn't invent SaaS, but they sure did popularize it for consumer-facing apps.

Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2021/02/11/app-store-scam-apps-how-to-sp...

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#436

Post by simondotau »

gcthomas wrote: post #283
harywilke wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company should have the power to tell another company that they must split up into separate entities.

Apple has built itself up into a vertical monopoly, which used to be illegal. There is no good reason to allow anti-competitive behaviours. They shouldn't be allowed to host the platform and compete with applications at the same time.

And yet vertical integration is a big part of why Apple products are so loved. By denying the option of vertical integration, you’re forcing the totality of products we use to be incrementally a little bit more crap.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#437

Post by LatteLazy »

nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

The issue here is that Spotify can easily pay 10k for being listed despite making billions. Meanwhile anyone making freeware, open source or small apps and just trying to get started is fucked.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#438

Post by AlexandrB »

yummies wrote: post #434
nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

The most ridiculous example of this is Tesla's offering of in-app Autopilot upgrades. At $10k, imagine what Apple's cut is, for absolutely no value added.

It's interesting that this seems more shocking even though it's not much different than Apple collecting 30% on one thousand $10 purchases.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#439

Post by manuelabeledo »

This is very good news.

Sadly, there is already quite some backlash, mostly coming from Apple aficionados. And I say "sadly" because it is always sad to see how people would try to defend companies and brands, against their own interests.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#440

Post by fouric »

FredPret wrote: post #290
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"millions of users like me, like the closed garden." Alcapone was popular, but he was still a criminal and a murderer

If you think about it really carefully, Apple vetting apps before I get to see them is not... exactly... the same thing as being a murdering gangster

It's pretty clear that the parent was not stating that those were the same thing, but instead that popularity does not mean correctness (either in the technical sense or the moral sense).
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