Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

consilium.europa.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 1001 posts

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

#141

Post by ben_w »

igorkraw wrote: post #131
shadowgovt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe. It certainly puts a huge incentive on Apple to figure out technical solutions to problems like "How do we get other browser engines on this thing without compromising a hundred OS assumptions, battery performance, or user security," but it's also possible Apple decides that's a no-go and it'll cost more than 25% of annual revenu…

Last I checked the EU was still the largest single market block in the world. Maybe that changed since then, but I don't think Apple will simply cede that to a competitor - especially since it would go heavily against their "we care about users" narrative.

I think that depends what you mean by "biggest", as the US is richer and both India and China have more people. I think Apple sales in China and the EU are about equal, and that US are significantly higher, but my info may be out of date and was merely a summary in any case.

But I would agree, they're not likely to just give up on the market. Even ignoring the likelihood of similar laws everywhere else, it's too big and too tempting.

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

#142

Post by shkkmo »

hrgiger wrote: post #117
baobob wrote: post #74

Does anyone know if the definition of "gatekeeper" extends to infrastructure services like AWS or Cloudflare? > A small number of large undertakings providing core platform services have emerged with considerable economic power that could qualify them to be designated as gatekeepers pursuant to this Regulation. Typically, they feature an ability to connect many business users with many end users through their service…

It gives me feeling also kindle covered

Does it also cover gaming consoles?

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

#143

Post by losvedir »

I'm sort of surprised at the positive tone here. Sure, it's nice for non-technical people to enumerate a lot of nice to haves, but just asserting something doesn't make it true or possible.

As one example, making "core messaging functionality interoperable". How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption? I suppose we'd need some sort of open system and protocol for all the tricky key sharing stuff? That would be nice but doesn't seem feasible in 6 months. And how do you know what they're using on the other end? If someone is using an app that doesn't support encryption, and they try to send a message to, say, you on WhatsApp, where you have e2e enabled by default, what happens?

Another one is they can't "limit payment possibilities to their own method". Presumably this means like iPay and Google Pay. Isn't there, again, some hardware security issues in play with that? I don't understand those systems well enough to know for sure, but I thought they were locked down and proprietary in part to protect your financial data.

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

#144

Post by igorkraw »

hunglee2 wrote: post #121

all pretty sound, aside from 'interoperability on instant messenger', which would be incompatible with privacy / security obligations from the providers. Wonder how hard US govt will bat for the US tech, leverage is there vs the EU post Putin invasion of Ukraine

BS, XMPP federation has been around for decades now. Google messenger used to speak it before the removed it , maybe Facebook as well.

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

#145

Post by bloppe »

dane-pgp wrote: post #133
MichaelCollins wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The apparent desire for paternalism unnerves me. Any time people are free to choose who they associate with, they run the risk of coming across bad actors who would scam them or worse. In most domains of life, we have special protections for the senile elderly and children but everybody else is given freedom and subsequently expected to develop and exercise a sense of good judgement, because freedom is more important…

I absolutely agree with you, but here's a hypothesis worth considering: What if we're building a society that is so complicated that it just isn't feasible for individuals to make informed decisions about important matters any more? Societies have long accepted that things like medical treatments have to be prescribed by an expert, and some societies have even decided that healthy people can be forced to have medical…

I won't argue with the hypothesis at large (even though I hope it's unfounded), but as it applies to this particular situation, you're ignoring a crucial factor: the gargantuan incentive for monopolists to convince you that their monopolies actually protect you. It's incredible how successful Apple has been in convincing their users that freedom is bad, and I'm absolutely positive it's not because Apple is genuinely concerned about society; they're concerned about their multi-billion-dollar revenue streams.

If we reach a point as a society that we decide we have too much freedom, we should absolutely never let it be regulated by corps with such a perverse incentive.

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

#146

Post by Nextgrid »

fsflover wrote: post #123
Nextgrid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My worry is that it will just not be enforced, just like the GDPR. The GDPR wasn’t watered down but in the end it just wasn’t enforced (at least not enough) against the biggest offenders it was meant to regulate.

https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

I see your username pretty regularly, have you not seen my (many) rebuttals to this link?

TLDR: the enforcement is nowhere near enough.

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

#147

Post by aaomidi »

losvedir wrote: post #143

I'm sort of surprised at the positive tone here. Sure, it's nice for non-technical people to enumerate a lot of nice to haves, but just asserting something doesn't make it true or possible. As one example, making "core messaging functionality interoperable". How exactly does that work with end-to-end encryption? I suppose we'd need some sort of open system and protocol for all the tricky key sharing stuff? That would…

If the app doesn’t support encryption, then they don’t see the message.

Client side lock downs aren’t security. They’re security theater.

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

#148

Post by iasay »

capableweb wrote: post #110
yoavm wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, an iPhone that complies with these demands is actually the first iPhone I'd ever consider paying for. I wonder if this might actually increase adoption.

If "Install any software" becomes real and I can start writing software on Linux for iPhone, without requiring me to have a Mac, I'll become an instant iPhone fanboy as the hardware is second to none. It's the software that is stopping the phone from becoming the best one around.

I think that's completely unrealistic. It's not going to happen even if they open the platform up.

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

#149

Post by shadowgovt »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #112
shadowgovt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe. It certainly puts a huge incentive on Apple to figure out technical solutions to problems like "How do we get other browser engines on this thing without compromising a hundred OS assumptions, battery performance, or user security," but it's also possible Apple decides that's a no-go and it'll cost more than 25% of annual revenu…

> Possibly. The other possibility is it will make it impossible to buy an iPhone in Europe. I doubt Apple will be willing to forego sales in the world's third largest economy, tbh.

It's not about absolute value; it's about relative value. if not making the change costs them the whole market (about 25% of their revenue) and making the change adds 30% to engineering overhead or adds 30% costs due to secondary effects (such as market-share loss to Android because Apple's performance moat suffers), it might not be worth it.

To be clear: I think this is the right kind of hardball for EU to play. The stakes are high, but most outcomes are a net win for the EU. It seems like strategically good law.

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

#150

Post by blibble »

Gareth321 wrote: post #20
rvschuilenburg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This almost sounds too good to be true. What are the odds of this being watered down, or being delayed into eternity?

IMHO, extremely low. The DMA has passed final debate and review, so it's not changing now. The last step is basically a formality. The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations. The level of abstraction is just too large. Apple, Google, Amazon, et al., can wage a PR campaign, but it's highly unlikely to succeed.

> The beauty of the EU is that corporate financial influence is far less pervasive than even in the governments of member nations.

the tradeoff is now there's only one entity to bribe instead of 27

there's almost 50,000 registered EU lobbyists

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/...

Post reply on HN