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

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

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 930 posts

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

#361

Post by Closi »

caramelcustard wrote: post #328
cycomanic wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it. That they somehow convinced apple users that it's somehow in their interest just shows how good their marketing is.

"They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it."...on the platforms that they have developed, invested in and are maintaining, which also don't hold a market majority around the world. "...they somehow convinced apple users..."...by making a product that fits Apple users' needs in a market that always had lots of competition, meaning that those who for whatever rea…

You don’t have to be the market majority for your actions to be anti-competitive.

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

#362

Post by enragedcacti »

Retric wrote: post #329
cycomanic wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop pretending that Apple has the users best interest in mind? They just want to be the gatekeeper for lucrative applications/functions so they can charge for it. That they somehow convinced apple users that it's somehow in their interest just shows how good their marketing is.

Apple makes peanuts from the App Store relative to phone sales. After they upped the cut for developers to between 70% and 85% and CC companies still get their cut, add customer service and app reviews and it simply isn’t that profitable. What they benefit from is selling 1,000$ phones at a 30+% profit margin, because for the average consumer they simply work better. Which actually aligns incentives between customers…

Apple's App store revenue is very substantial and likely has very low overall costs and microscopic per-unit costs relative to a hardware business like iPhone or Mac. Apple paid out $45 billion to developers in 2020 with $64 billion gross, which means they had as high as $19 billion in revenue from the app store commission alone.[1]

Unfortunately Apple doesn't break out profit per category but we know that their net income for 2020 was $58 billion [2]. As far as I'm aware we don't know operating costs for the App store, but I think its fair to say that the portion of the ~$19 billion that is profit is far from being "peanuts".

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/08/apples-app-store-had-gross-s...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/net-inc...

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

#363

Post by shaky-carrousel »

layer8 wrote: post #311
superb-owl wrote: post #5

This is huge. Forcing Apple to allow app side-loading, third-party payments, etc is going to wrest away control of the iOS ecosystem (and eat pretty heavily into their revenues [1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/apple-implies-it-generated-r... I hope some of these regulations spill over into the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Apple will likely do as little as possible as late as possible, and try to stall as much as possible. It will be interesting to see how it will play out.

It will play as usual, with huge fines.

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

#364

Post by scottyah »

caramelcustard wrote: post #203
ParksNet wrote: post #111

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…

Pretty sure 30% commission is not an Apple-exclusive thing. Google Play, consoles and Steam have the same rate.

It originates from publishers. When Amazon was pressuring all the publishers to sell cheaper e-book versions for their Kindle, they were aggressively cutting prices to win consumers from competition. They'd then use their classic "70% of your purchases come through us, so lower your prices for Amazon or we will cut you from our store" to get more profits. The publishers obviously hated this, and especially seeing the brand damage of their brand new flagship type books on sale since it made them seem like they were in the bargain bin for not selling well. Since Amazon was a reseller, they could do whatever they wanted with the pricing.

Apple came in as a "savior" for the publishers and said that the publishers can set their own prices and take as much profit as they wanted... just as long as Apple got 30%. This 30% originally came from the music publishing industry (where they did set the price themselves, remember $0.99 songs?), went through books and now has been legacy'd onto apps. If nothing changes here it'll probably exist for metaverse stuff if they go there.

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

#365

Post by vivegi »

I love this just for these three rules:

> Allow users to install apps from third-party app stores and sideload directly from the internet.

> Allow developers to offer third-party payment systems in apps and promote offers outside the gatekeeper's platforms.

> Ensure that all apps are uninstallable and give users the ability to unsubscribe from core platform services under similar conditions to subscription.

and restriction on this behavior:

> Require app developers to use certain services or frameworks, including browser engines, payment systems, and identity providers, to be listed in app stores.

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

#366

Post by caramelcustard »

zackmorris wrote: post #334

Maybe fines like this could fund UBI? Society could vote on a number of measures designed to create a sustainable economy. For example, instead of carbon tax credits, we could just set a ceiling on carbon emissions and let companies pay the fine, then send direct payments to everyone. Or set a living wage of $20/hr and make companies directly responsible for paying the shortfall that the government makes up in welfar…

That implies that UBI is agreed upon all around the world, which it isn't.

"...we could just set a ceiling on carbon emissions..." that already exists and those ceilings aren't honoured by manufacturing-heavy regions around the world, as there is no way to enforce any sort of responsibility. Also consider that most tech companies are moving to carbon neutrality.

"...set a living wage of $20/hr ..."...where exactly? Worldwide? NA only? Any consideration for inflation? Perhaps you got an expalanation for those who are working skilled jobs and are currently earning 20 USD per hour on why someone who works a less skilled job should suddenly earn the same amount? Worlds history says that trying to equalize everyones skills leads to skilled workers looking for greener pastures.

"...make companies directly responsible for paying the shortfall that the government makes up in welfare payments."...so making companies responsible for governments decisions in giving away money to recipients that might not even be related to the industries the companies are operating in?

"...create a national debt tax, where any cost overruns would fall on the companies who lobbied most." that's...not how that works.

"...to immediately put cash in people's pockets and incentivize automation instead of the daily grind." kinda amusing how it goes right after "...starve the beast of multinational corporations so that they can't overtake world governments." considering that many of those boogeyman corporations are the ones working on automation and...employing highly skilled researchers, engineers and blue collar workers.

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

#367

Post by criddell »

dijit wrote: post #274
criddell wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a PS5 cost that much? Has there ever been a console where, over the life of the console, the hardware was sold for a loss?

> Has there ever been a console where, over the life of the console, the hardware was sold for a loss? All of them. Speaking about PS5 specifically: there's quite a few advancements in there that you're not thinking about, the kraken decompressor that can run at native NVME speed in hardware and load assets directly into video memory has no PC equivalent. Though PC vendors are trying to do NVME GPUMem these days, it…

>> Has there ever been a console where, over the life of the console, the hardware was sold for a loss?

> All of them.

Are you serious? The Wii has sold more than 100 million units over the past ten years and you think it's been a net loss for Nintendo?

PS5-to-PC comparisons are hard to do in a meaningful way. It's like saying a Toyota Camry is sold at a loss because if you build one part-by-part it's going to cost $100,000+ rather than the $30k a dealer sells them for.

If you take those PC specs and contact a manufacturer with a plan to order 20 million units, they are going to come in at quite a bit under $1600.

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

#368

Post by Nasrudith »

vorpalhex wrote: post #290
rootusrootus wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it compare to a regular bricks & mortar retail store? Shelf fees, etc? Edit: downvoted for asking a question? Thanks HN.

How much warehouse space does it take to sell 3,000,000 copies of fortnite? How much shrink did they have?

The shrinkage is called chargeback and processing fees.

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

#369

Post by blablablub »

A lot of talk about the Apple tax of 30%. But who is actually paying the vat of the purchase price? The developer or apple? If it is Apple, then with VAT rates of ~20% in the EU, a 30% cut all of a sudden does not sound so unreasonable.

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

#370

Post by layer8 »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #363
layer8 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple will likely do as little as possible as late as possible, and try to stall as much as possible. It will be interesting to see how it will play out.

It will play as usual, with huge fines.

Not sure Apple is willing to give up 20% of their total revenue (which is the maximum penalty after repeat offense).
Post reply on HN