Comment by hbn
2 years ago
If Apple's iPhone "monopoly" is illegal then sue Google for continuing to make Android worse. That's why I switched to iPhone and have no desire to switch back.
Apple's crime here is they made a good product and continued to iterate on it, while Google has churned for years, reinventing and rebranding every app, service, and product multiple times a year and only making them worse so POs can get promotions.
> That's why I switched to iPhone and have no desire to switch back.
Yes, Apple has exactly one competitor in the phone space and their offerings are lower quality so you get an iPhone.
So... they have a dominant market position... and they abuse it.
Google was already found by a jury to have a monopoly on Android app distribution. And if Google has one, Apple's monopoly on iOS app distribution is clearly stronger and more harmful in the US given their larger market share and complete prohibition of alternatives.
Google's crime was not having a charismatic leader who could store all the mens rea solely in his own head and then conveniently die before legal scrutiny started over their App Store racket.
All of Google's monopolistic intent was conveniently detailed out in loads of e-mails. They were caught failing to retain these e-mails, which in a civil suit where the 5th Amendment does not apply, means the judge gets to just assume the worst (make an "adverse inference").
To make matters worse, Google promised openness and then tried to privately walk it back. Legally, this is admitting that the "Android app distribution market" already exists and is the appropriate market definition for a monopoly claim. It's harder to argue that an "iOS app distribution market" should exist when Apple is using power words like "intellectual property" - aka "we have a right to supracompetitive profits."
My personal opinion is that the DOJ probably will succeed where Epic failed, however, because of one other critical thing: standing. Epic did reveal market harms that are almost certainly cognizable under US law, but none of those harms were things Epic was allowed to sue over.
I mean, you're not wrong, but the lawsuit isn't about the quality of the end product. It's about the economic leverage Apple has over other businesses by virtue of owning the chokepoints - i.e. the OS software and the signing keys it trusts.
I personally would love to switch to iPhone if Apple wasn't so much of a control freak about the software you run on it.