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EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

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Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, sounds like Apple needs to do a better job improving Safari. If developers and consumers choose Chrome, it's up to competitors to find a way to disrupt their lead, not engage in monopolistic practices to stop a monopoly.

There’s nothing to improve. Developers want push notifications on a web browser for mobile? That’s not an improvement. Firefox is a better browser than chrome but you can’t move people away from chrome. So regardless of what you think. Adding other browsers to iOS will only have a negative long term effect.

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#162

In case someone here knows but how is it even possible that EU can fine companies based on the whole world "turnover" (which I might incorrectly presume meaning profits) when their power is restricted to the EU space. Re: this: > The DMA says that gatekeepers who ignore the rules will face fines of up to 10 percent of the company's total worldwide annual turnover, or 20 percent in the event of repeated infringements,…

To add to Noe2097's comment, entities ignoring international bounderies is not something special.

For instance US citizens are required to disclose and pay tax on their global income, even if they are official resident of another country. Makes no sense, but the US is free to decide its own rules.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#163

I generally believe Apple, Google and others should be able to profit from creating some of the most useful, innovative and technically challenging products in human history (remember multi touch was not an affordable thing before Apple). But, 15 years (since original iPhone) is about enough to reward the innovation. Beyond that point, it is the role of government to open up platforms to enable the next generation of…

The problem with these big companies is that they tend to produce useful stuff for the average consumer only. But if they were broken up into smaller companies that created stuff that other businesses can use to build more products, I think we would have a more modular economy with far more choice than the current duopoly offers.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#164
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ones do you find ridiculous? They frankly diverge from the current status quo but to me they all go in the right direction.

i foresee a fiasco in general, but a few stand out: > Share data and metrics with developers and competitors, including marketing and advertising performance data. with competitors? :)) > Allow developers to integrate their apps and digital services directly with those belonging to a gatekeeper. This includes making messaging, voice-calling, and video-calling services interoperable with third-party services upon requ…

Asking for data sharing without specifying exactly which data is included and exactly which data is exempt is ridiculous. The standard for laws need to be far higher. Which metrics? Which data? If the lawmakers mean all data they are going to discover very quickly a lot of that data is subject to privacy standards. You can't for example share the data you use to train a personal assistant without sharing queries people have made of that assistant.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's greed (in maintaining the egregious 30% commission for so long) is going to undermine their entire ecosystem. If Apple moved voluntarily to 10% or 15% for all, there never would have been the industry pressure for this sort of regulation. The EU would have been better to just mandate a maximum % commission for all digital marketplaces above a certain level of revenue. This new solution will get poked full of…

> Apple simply chose to pay a $5.5 million fine every week for months in the Netherlands instead of obey orders from the Authority for Consumers and Markets How to piss off the EU political system in one simple step. This ruling is no surprise after such behaviour from Apple. They made their own bed.

Yep.

"So you think our fines are too puny to make you comply?"

"There fixed that for you."

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#166
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If iPhones had different app stores with 15% fees, then consumers would decide. I think the real issue here is consumers are gona get hyper confused and it wont be a better experience for anyone. Every single app creator out there will now want their own "app store" and it's going to be a mess. 30% fee initially to capture that market was what our company factored in and grew exponentially with. A 15% fee is nothing…

> Every single app creator out there will now want their own "app store" and it's going to be a mess. This is such an oft-repeated argument, yet overlooks that Android already allows sideloading and alternative app stores. If everyone-creating-their-own-app-store hasn't happened on Android, why would iOS be different?

Full devils advocate here, but the argument I've always heard is that the play store is a lot less arbitrary and restrictive than the App Store, so there's less reason to want to go outside of it.

Apple locks out so many useful kinds of software that there actually may be enough momentum for real alternate app stores to proliferate.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#167
post #62
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No more forced crappy webkit browser engine in iOS. you know this just means more chrome right? > Messanger interop is also nice, when done right: basically would need a shared standard like the web that is done by a messaging consortium like the W3. we went thru this before. didn’t work then, won’t work now.

This actually opens a race to be the best mobile browser, which might well see new entrants. As people increasingly use their mobiles as primary devices, they are more likely to move to a new browser on mobile platforms and then adapt their desktops to that choice, rather than the other way around as they did in the past. Current mobile browsers have historical baggage that a new entrant would not need to carry.

In theory. Practically, creating browser & its underlying engine is an arduous task. Later, it is inevitable that Google will use dark patterns like shadow dom to optimize their website like YouTube etc. And, website owner will force you to use chromium based browser, because of course "This browser works best with Google Chrome".

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might kill off consoles entirely tbh

It won't - without root piracy will still be extremely hard.

I think the biggest change we would likely see is that classic-game-rereleases would evaporate, as it would become trivially easy to install emulators.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never underestimate the creative genius of Apple. They will come up with new solutions to keep their walled garden. "Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet" I bet this is going to be a horrible user experience. "Are you really sure?", "Apple takes no responsibility not warranty" whatsoever. What sound usually easy on paper...

They backed out from these tricks in the Netherland standoff. As you guessed, it started with horrible wording, and has now became something way saner (albeit they kept their fees requirements)

Denying warranty claims for that reason would already be illegal under existing laws in most developed countries.

Re: EU approves legislation to regulate Apple, Google, Meta, and other tech firms

#170

I really hope Sony and Nintendo are classified as gatekeepers as well because this > Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet. would be huge for Playstation and Switch owners.

So far everyone complaining about app lockouts have been laser-focused on phones, because they're general-purpose and thus easier to legally justify sideloading on. Nobody wants to talk about game consoles - to open them up would almost certainly require revisiting DMCA 1201[0] and removing the prohibition on circumvention tools. The US Copyright Office wouldn't entertain extending the current "mobile devices"[1] jailbreaking exception to consoles, and Epic Games had to do all sorts of mental gymnastics to explain why Apple was a monopolist but Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony weren't.

[0] Or your local equivalent.

And yes, you do have a local equivalent, unless you are living in Iran, Afghanistan, or North Korea.

[1] Phones and tablet computers.

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