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EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

consilium.europa.eu

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Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#411

Post by buscoquadnary »

tirpen wrote: post #353
sfe22 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am in the camp of apple allowing side-loading, i am not a fan of monopolistic regulations like this. It opens all kind of questions, like 1. What devices have to comply? 2. Who decides what device has to comply? Should playstation open their system too. What about a niche bank transaction signing device that internally uses an android capable hardware. Is this illegal now? 3. What about a car infotainment sys…

Most of these rules apply only to companies above a certain size, both in number of users and revenue. Those get classified as "digital gatekeepers" and they are the companies that have to comply with extra requirements. So no, this will not affect startups and harm innovation, it will just force the monopolistic behemoths to play nice and cease actively harming innovation.

It also starts to bother me quite a bit when we go from treating everyone equal before the law to creating certain requirements based on other factors.

Further it seems more like a moat to keep anyone else from getting as big as these "digital gatekeepers" are as suddenly when you get to a certain size you have an enormous expense.

If these companies really are that large that they have to get special laws for them isnt the solution to dissolve their monopoly and split the company up instead of starting to create separate classes of laws.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#412

Post by justapassenger »

akersten wrote: post #215
fbanon wrote: post #192

What HackerNews thinks will happen: "zomg, I will finally be able to run Arch on my iPhone!" What will actually happen: "honey, something is wrong with my phone, whenever I unlock it, a popup jumps up that says 'Please update the Adobe™ Updater™ to get up to date Adobe™ Software Updates', could you take a look at it?"

Yeah, I'm honestly shocked at how welcomed the concept of "the government is telling developers that they must make their product less secure and streamlined" is here... This will not bring the interoperability utopia many believe, unless you mean 8 different app updaters bogging down your phone because now there's "competition" and the DrainMyBattery Store only charges 15% fees so it's the only place you can get Coo…

Yeah, and that unsecured Linux is destroying the world!

It’s not about making products less secure. That’s what apple makes you wanna think.

It’s about giving customers choice. They can stay in Apple ecosystem (I will for example). Or they can not. Companies like Apple will have to work much harder now, to give both users and developers enough value to justify being locked in.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#413

Post by foepys »

LeanderK wrote: post #361
sfe22 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am in the camp of apple allowing side-loading, i am not a fan of monopolistic regulations like this. It opens all kind of questions, like 1. What devices have to comply? 2. Who decides what device has to comply? Should playstation open their system too. What about a niche bank transaction signing device that internally uses an android capable hardware. Is this illegal now? 3. What about a car infotainment sys…

I very much welcome this legislation (and I use an iPhone). How would you approach this otherwise? The EU probably can't break up Google or Apple (how would this even look like?) and the walled gardens are clearly a market failure, including apples fat margins. You mention details, but regulation can be well made and just continuing the status quo is also bad. All regulations open up questions but it's not the wild w…

Apple can be broken up in multiple ways.

- smartphones

- desktop/laptops

- music and video streaming

- App Store and payments with Apple Pay

- chip design

- physical stores

All of those could stand on their own.

Edit: I'm not saying that the EU can break them up but Apple is not a company with a single field where breaking it up is impossible. I misread the parent a bit.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#414

Post by whywhywhywhy »

I do wish iPhones could use alternate browser engines and bypass the Apple 30% cut, but the fact I'm having to click through one of those stupid cookie dialogs on this page just leaves the bad taste in my mouth of how much the EU regulation screwed up the internet the last time they made a change like this.

Not saying I want tracking cookies everywhere, but they should have just made tracking cookies illegal outright, rather than legal if people agree meaning I have to dismiss thousands of cookie dialogs a year.

Because they were incompetent in writing their legislation, they doomed us to cookie dialogs for the rest of my life.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#415

Post by fariszr »

a4a4a4a4 wrote: post #194

I'm not sure how I feel about this. My gut instinct is that opening these things can lead to a ton of malware and fake app stores, which will lead to a not-insignificant number of people being victimized. I'm also annoyed that the EU produces effectively 0 innovative tech, and subsequently has very suppressed tech salaries, but is so ready to regulate the American companies that make the world go 'round.

> I'm also annoyed that the EU produces effectively 0 innovative tech, and subsequently has very suppressed tech salaries, but is so ready to regulate the American companies that make the world go 'round

Because its almost impossible to compete? These companies have so many resources, its impossible for any local competitor to compete. Amazon can just crash the prices till the competition dies, Google can just not allow YouTube on it, Facebook will exist because of the network it has.

What the EU is doing is what is needed to happen long ago. These companies are not currently successful because they offer the best experience or the best innovativtion, they are successful because they crush anyone else.

For example WhatsApp has many many better alternatives, which have better features and better privacy, but it still the #1 because of the monopoly it has on communication.

What the EU did here is smart, they didn't outright ban WhatsApp, or funded a direct competitor. They forced them to play fair, to stop the monopolistic behavior and force them to compete on features, rather than succeeding only because my familly is on WhatsApp.

The same thing applies to Apple, which forces to everyone to use its crappy, intentionally handicapped browser engine.

And also forcing everyone to use its payment services while taking percentage of the profits and not even allowing you to increase the prices to cover their percentage!, this is absolutely outreagous and finally something is being done about it.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#416

Post by antonymy »

JohnGB wrote: post #266
plandis wrote: post #251

One would think that if there is truly a Europe wide market for such an unlocked device a competitor should be able to challenge Apple and Google dominance. Europe could even subsidize it. But instead, it’s more engineering by bureaucrats. Why is Europe so afraid of competing in the open market?

That's an ironic take given that these rules are there to take away monopoly power and have an actual open market.

Apple is not even close to a monopoly, especially in Europe, where they have less than a third of the mobile market. That said, the rest of the market is divided up between several different Android phone companies, so Apple is in fact the largest single mobile vendor in the EU (Samsung is neck and neck with them though, and may have overtaken them since I last checked).

So from a regulatory standpoint, Apple is the problem child even if it isn't a monopoly. The EU sees a third of its phone-using population as being "captured" by a uncompetitive foreign corporation that is far more restrictive and locked down than any of its competitors. Apple has also tenaciously resisted any attempts to open its platform by citing user security as a reason for its draconian level of control over the iPhone platform, so it became necessary for the EU to resort to powerful big-guns legislation to act. Well the big guns are here, and I don't think Apple's "user security" defense is going to be aegis enough against them.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#417

Post by M2Ys4U »

piker wrote: post #219
josephg wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how your walled garden is threatened by giving Melbourne Trams the ability to use the NFC chip in my phone to pay for rides. Or threatened by Amazon having the ability to add an in-app purchase button to their iPhone app which uses my saved Amazon payment options. I’m sure apple will fight this tooth and nail, but it’s my phone. I paid for it. I want to be able to do what I want with my device.

Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things. It will necessarily degrade certain experiences away from those that Apple would provide without the regulation.

>Because it requires the devotion of Apple's resources to supporting non-Apple things.

Oh no, one of the richest companies on the planet might have to spend a tiny bit more on making things better for everyone.

The absolute horror!

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#418

Post by izacus »

judge2020 wrote: post #325
SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm interested in seeing what the long term security consequences are. Negligible; most large-format computing devices already allow you to do all of these things.

And it tends to be a bad experience for anyone who doesn’t naturally gravitate towards HN when they eventually get malware or unwanted browser adware extensions.

And the world will continue turning just like it had for the last 50 years of us having general purpose computers without an American at Apple telling us what we're allowed to do with our products.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#419

Post by hef19898 »

closewith wrote: post #186
hef19898 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, a iPad running Linux would be something I'd look at. It is a surprise so, that the EU is actually moving, at scale, in that direction. Maybe privacy, processed food and some other things next!

What? The EU has enacted GDPR, 178/2002/EC (food safety), 44/1999/EC (consumer protection), any number of consumer protection Regulations and Directives.

GDPR is good, just needs reinforcement. The way things like the nutrition score are done is just bad so.

Re: EU Digital Markets Act, aimed at Google, Apple, Amazon, approved

#420

Post by [deleted] »

akersten wrote: post #215
fbanon wrote: post #192

What HackerNews thinks will happen: "zomg, I will finally be able to run Arch on my iPhone!" What will actually happen: "honey, something is wrong with my phone, whenever I unlock it, a popup jumps up that says 'Please update the Adobe™ Updater™ to get up to date Adobe™ Software Updates', could you take a look at it?"

Yeah, I'm honestly shocked at how welcomed the concept of "the government is telling developers that they must make their product less secure and streamlined" is here... This will not bring the interoperability utopia many believe, unless you mean 8 different app updaters bogging down your phone because now there's "competition" and the DrainMyBattery Store only charges 15% fees so it's the only place you can get Coo…

[deleted]
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