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Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

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Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#501
post #411

This is going in the wrong direction. Government shouldn't be imposing regulations on monopolistic app stores when competition can naturally break the monopolies and bring them in line with developer and consumer needs. Let there be multiple app stores, charging developers competitive fees and implementing competitive security and convenience features. Don't let the platform favor any particular app store, or raise b…

> See how long 30% fees and hostile policies last And then see how the ecosystem degrades to the lowest common denominator and we re-enter the Windows 95 era. Race to build malware apps, virus and malware checker apps to prevent the malware etc.

At this point, I'll take malware over monopoly. There's a lot at stake here.

That said, I think it's unlikely to get as bad as W95.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#502

The Mac App Store gives a hint at what would happen if there was any choice. The amount of software actually available for the Mac is far, far greater than what’s listed in the store. Furthermore, while some quality and notable apps are still in the Mac App Store, many well-known apps are not there. The number of lousy apps is also extremely high every time I go to search or just look at the front page, to the point…

Sound reasonable, and I see additional payment systems as improvement mostly. But I have concerns about additional stores, not about entropy and all the multistore problem from a UX perspective, but as a privacy threat. I like the current Apple politics "we are a hardware company, not another user data selling platform," and they do great things in that way. But what happens, if Facebook move their apps to their stor…

In the Tim Cook era they are now (or are now transitioning into) a services company. Steve would have murdered anyone who proposed putting a 90 day Apple TV+ upsell in Settings on a new phone. Out the airlock. Instantly.

They’re moving to selling subscriptions and data is critical to that.

Strict rules would actually give them a huge edge over their other services competitors on platform and if they could couch it in anti-trust, that would be quite a coup.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m guessing though that the South Korean market is be significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day. I think that's right. The next step would be for a large enough market to have a similar law, and then they'll just have that as their policy globally. That probably means EU or US.

> That probably means EU or US. Or the UK, which has a larger economy than South Korea. Although going after big tech is not, as far as I know, on the radar of the UK government.

> Or the UK, which has a larger economy than South Korea

Wait for the Brexit dust to settle and IndyRef2 to happen.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've expressed anti-competitive behavior from the beginning, but it's advanced over time. It's the confluence of factors that makes it particularly bad in Apple's case. You can't chance the software (OS) on the device. You can't run iOS on a different set of hardware. You can't run any store but the App Store on iOS. You can't deliver software to customers without using the App Store (or jumping through hoops for…

> They've expressed anti-competitive behavior from the beginning, but it's advanced over time. But is anticompetitive behavior in itself illegal? If so, why is it only being investigated now, 10+ years later?

> But is anticompetitive behavior in itself illegal?

Yes. See https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices

> If so, why is it only being investigated now, 10+ years later?

By it's nature and the nature of our system it's often hard to prove or hard to actually prosecute, as those that engage in it are often large and powerful.

We have laws regarding monopolies not because they're "monopolies", but because it's a specific subset of anticompetitive behavior that was seen that the legislative body wanted to make it easier to prosecute, and easier to prevent before it actually happens (which is why the government rejects some mergers as bad for consumers).

That we didn't prosecute this before likely has many causes. From the token appearance of competition between iOS and Android to an unwillingness of politicians to go after companies that are seen favorably in the public eye and/or that have lots of money and contribute a lot of funds to reelection campaigns. Until a sizable chunk of the public is behind them, few politicians have the desire to be the first to call for reform that would be a major impact to some of the largest companies in the world, for multiple obvious reasons ranging from funded competitors to worried stockholders to how many people that company employs and if it will affect that.

Edit: Also, there's not usually a rush to investigate small or medium size businesses, or markets that are so new that it's plausible that competitors haven't shown up yet. That's the other half of the "Android and iOS aren't really competing" point. Initially it looked like competitors were around, but it wasn't always obvious that certain things just weren't on the take as competition until it became impossible to ignore. That everyone charged 30% and then all of a sudden there was massive change just as legislation was being considered is a dead giveaway, but also not something those companies could afford to not try in appeasement.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#506

Is there a better source and the text of the law ? Payment systems are a proxy for the fee since there isn't an explicit publishing fee. It would be quite straightforward for both Apple and Google to charge a publishing fee, which may end up close to the current rent. The larger issue is that there aren't alternative app stores. Apple doesn't allow them at all, and Google severely restricts them at the technical and…

According to the FSF, the distribution of a binary computer program which substantially relies upon GPL libraries is considered a derivative work and would require you to abide by the terms of the GPL license. Similarly, an iOS app which substantially relies upon (and must be compiled with) Apple's libraries in order to work is subject to whatever the terms Apple includes in their software license. Of course Apple is…

I can see the argument by analogy to GPL, but I don't think this is about software licensing in practice.

It's about control. Apple control how and which apps get to users, and use this control to impose terms, license or otherwise, that maximize their revenue and other goals.

Perhaps you are right that Apple could reengineer the business model to charge software licensing fees rather than payment service fees. They could also make the 30% a publishing fee. There are probably other options too. You can do a lot when you have the power that they have.

That said, practicalities matter. If you want to take a cut of a large number of apps' revenue... the place to do it is point-of-sale. Take your cut before app devs get theirs. If payments go to app developers via some other payment system, Apple now needs to chase down a revenue linked licensing fees from 2m apps... that's messy and impractical. They don't know how much they are owed, for one thing.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#507
post #209

Good. I've been saying this awhile, most notably when Apple (of course followed by Google) introduced a discount on commission for smaller developers. This is completely backwards. I know why they did it. They wanted some positive PR that didn't cost them anything. Thing is, it's the larger publishers who are going to lobby regulators and challenge things in court. It's those same publishers who already have their ow…

No. This would entrench their monopolies even further. It should be legally required that any device that is marketed as a general-purpose computer, whether pocketable or not, and is shipped in a locked state, is fully unlockable by the end user. Without a single network packet sent to manufacturer's servers. That's the only way we as a society could fix this dire situation. In other words, if I buy a phone from Appl…

So then they don’t market it is a general purpose computer? How would you solve for that?

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#508

It’s not usual for news on my country to be on top of HN. Very unexpected. I’m guessing though that the South Korean market is be significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day. I guess this is, in some kind, a victory against the huge companies. But… personally I do find sad that this would be detrimental to South Korean app UX. Stripe isn’t a thing here…

> home-grown web-based payment systems have… like super shitty UX They now have a reason to make it better, since they can now actually compete with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

They already do that on the Web.. I'd be surprised if, when available (eg. an iOS visitor using Safari on a Shopify site), people chose manually entering their payment info more than Apple Pay.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#509

It’s not usual for news on my country to be on top of HN. Very unexpected. I’m guessing though that the South Korean market is be significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day. I guess this is, in some kind, a victory against the huge companies. But… personally I do find sad that this would be detrimental to South Korean app UX. Stripe isn’t a thing here…

"significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day." I always found this line of argument disingenious and disturbing. Disingenious because it doesn't happen historically, so it sounds like a tired threat Disturbing - are we saying we would rather kneecap our democratic institutions, right or wrong, than live without iPhones? We'd die to defend our lands and…

> are we saying we would rather kneecap our democratic institutions, right or wrong, than live without iPhones?

No, it's just that this is the choice these companies have. They can completely stop doing business in a country (or countries) if they don't want to obey the relevant laws/court rulings of that country. The only thing SK could do then is sanction Apple products so it becomes illegal to import them (reminder that a sizable portion of SK's economy is directly attributed to Samsung/LG).

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#510

The Mac App Store gives a hint at what would happen if there was any choice. The amount of software actually available for the Mac is far, far greater than what’s listed in the store. Furthermore, while some quality and notable apps are still in the Mac App Store, many well-known apps are not there. The number of lousy apps is also extremely high every time I go to search or just look at the front page, to the point…

Their store is basically unusable for me because it’s an app. I can’t save links to anything or open multiple tabs to compare products. It’s fine if I already know what I want but in terms of search, I think being able to run Google queries would be better.

At the very least Apple should improve the store to make it Amazon level in feature set. But it feels like they abandoned it.

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