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Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

ca.finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#111

Post by merek »

popol12 wrote: post #26
intrasight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I hear, users are tired of installing apps. You can make a website and not face any gatekeepers or restrictions.

What if your app needs to send notifications and/or use bluetooth, for instance ?

PWAs offer support for push notifications [1], but apparently they are not as seamless as in native apps, especially on iOS.

If you've never heard of PWAs [2], they allow you to add native mobile app functionality to a mobile website, including the ability to install your website as though it were an app, and ability to cache resources for offline use. I haven't worked on app development for a while, but when I did several years ago, all that was required to turn a mobile website in to a PWA was a service worker file (a JS file to define resource caching rules), and a manifest.json file (essentially metadata used by the home screen icon, including title and icon image).

Apparently PWAs still aren't on par with native apps in terms of capability and UX. Nonetheless I hope PWAs become popular for their simplicity, and for being decoupled from platforms. It's a bit insane to me that native app development usually requires heavy platform specific IDEs (Android Studio, Xcode), both of which have steep learning curves, and after all that development effort, you only have an app that works on 1 platform. Building a basic mobile app shouldn't require anything more than HTML, JS and CSS, and it shouldn't be tied to any specific platform.

1. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

2. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web...

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#112

Post by alxlaz »

fidotron wrote: post #62
alxlaz wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except this has nothing to do with some monopoly on the smartphone market, but with Apple not allowing application developers to enable their users to vote with their wallets on payment methods. From the press release: > Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers…

This is like arguing McDonalds has a monopoly over food sold in McDonalds outlets, when you have a choice to not go into McDonalds.

This is:

1. Not about any monopoly (in fact the word "monopoly" does not appear in the press release at all).

2. Nothing like McDonalds, whose business model is completely different from an app store's.

3. Not about Apple can do to consumers who aren't in the Apple ecosystem but about what it can do to developers who wish to sell their applications and services for Apple devices.

If you really insist on making an analogy that involves McDonalds: that's like arguing that McDonalds should not be allowed to prevent Coca-Cola from telling Coca-Cola customers that they can buy Coca-Cola in places other than McDonalds. Which, yeah, they're not allowed to.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#113

Post by i_have_an_idea »

phtrivier wrote: post #98

> Apple faces a €500 million fine for breaching the regulation’s rules for app stores, while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model, > The procedural fines fall short of the two giant penalties issued by the EU executive under its antitrust laws last year: €1.8 billion to Apple for abusing its dominant position while distributing music streaming apps, and €797 million to Meta f…

> somehow deducted from subsidies

Do you think the EU subsidizes Meta/Apple.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#114

Post by owebmaster »

robinwohlers wrote: post #9
izacus wrote: post #8

The EU Comission press release: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_...

It’s funny to see a “share this page on Facebook” option at the bottom of the press release.

It shouldn't be funny, social media isn't doing the world any favor, they gotta behave

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#115

Post by dns_snek »

zpeti wrote: post #95
tiborsaas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the fine is exactly about giving people a more fair chance to vote with their wallets. This is from the Yahoo article: "The EU competition watchdog said Apple must remove technical and commercial restrictions that prevent app developers from steering users to cheaper deals outside the App Store."

You can buy an android or huawei phone. Just because the ecosystem you like to use doesn't have certain features doesn't make it a monopoly.

Setting aside that this is looking at the wrong side of the market like often happens in these discussions, what do you as a consumer do when Android or Huawei do something else that's a deal breaker for you?

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#116

Post by nuthje »

phtrivier wrote: post #98

> Apple faces a €500 million fine for breaching the regulation’s rules for app stores, while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model, > The procedural fines fall short of the two giant penalties issued by the EU executive under its antitrust laws last year: €1.8 billion to Apple for abusing its dominant position while distributing music streaming apps, and €797 million to Meta f…

> Fines imposed on undertakings found in breach of EU antitrust rules are paid into the general EU budget. This money is not earmarked for particular expenses, but Member States' contributions to the EU budget for the following year are reduced accordingly. The fines therefore help to finance the EU and reduce the burden for taxpayers.

This quote is re: anti-trust, but likely generalizes.

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/index/fines_en#:~:te...

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#117

Post by mapcars »

> while Meta drew a penalty of €200 million for its "pay or consent" advertising model, which requires that European Union users pay to access ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram

Wait, isn't pretty much all web content is like this nowadays? You have to buy youtube premium to avoid ads, how is it different?

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#118

Post by blitzar »

ENGNR wrote: post #6

Would looove to distribute an app without it having to be in the App Store, and not paying the App Store fee (direct download of signed binary). Happy to pay a yearly fee or fee per update to cover code review if it’s crucial. But 30% of revenue for doing bugger all… cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard.

> cmon, they’re squeezing the lemon a bit too hard

They got hooked on the lemon juice. Nobody at Apple making millions a year to write emails and sit in meetings wants to be out on the street for putting up their hand and saying "hey lets just take 10% and have a healthy ecosystem long term, which will let us continue to sell phones to people every year with a profit margin of $500".

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#119

Post by dns_snek »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
whazor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that smaller American companies stand the most to benefit from EU DMA, including startups. Stripe could offer deeper payment integration without the Apple cut. You could start an indie game store. And Garmin can make better sport watches with better integration.

The first beneficiary is likely to be Epic, since this is basically what they were asking for in the Fortnite lawsuit.

Literally every single company that transacts with consumers through digital purchases currently subject to Apple/Google tax is a beneficiary. If you believe in the power of the free market then lower fees for them will mean lower prices for us.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#120

Post by fidotron »

LunaSea wrote: post #97
fidotron wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we want to punish people that choose that option? Europe could easily have had a homegrown alternative to the Play Store on Android. In fact at one time it had several, only the users had no interest at all, and this was before Google went through their phase of locking things down more. The vision for what became the Play Store was born from ex GetJar, and I was told by several Googlers at the time that they were…

> Europe could easily have had a homegrown alternative to the Play Store on Android. In fact at one time it had several, only the users had no interest at all, and this was before Google went through their phase of locking things down more. So why should users not have the option anymore because years ago the existing options were worse than Google's? Should you be forbidden to buy an iPhone because you used until An…

The problem is European users are too cheap, and European regulators too short sighted. It makes them hilariously prone to product dumping, where WhatsApp is "free" of course, except it isn't. They then mass adopt the "free" option and act surprised pikachu when it's not actually free.

What you are advocating is forcing a market option to change what it is, when a critical mass of their customers have chosen it precisely because of what it is.

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