Comment by reissbaker
7 months ago
Unfortunately the real answer is:
* Only operating system vendors can ship web browsers. (But not Google.)
The USG in general seems to love giving Apple more monopoly power. This will effectively constrain browser development to just Apple and Microsoft, since as you note, the DOJ is also trying to regulate Firefox out of existence; and Apple has huge incentives to simply pause browser feature development (and has been dragging its feet on Safari for years).
Incredibly, this will also hamstring Android even further, since its parent company can't even make a web browser for it anymore! Only Apple, the Biden administration's favorite company, can do that kind of thing.
Seriously, first Apple's App Store is declared not a monopoly while the Play Store is, despite Android allowing alternative stores while iOS doesn't. Now Google is forbidden from developing web browsers while Apple is free to continue monopolizing browser engines on iOS and holding back the web from competing with native apps?
> Seriously, first Apple's App Store is declared not a monopoly while the Play Store is, despite Android allowing alternative stores while iOS doesn't.
1)Because Apple didn't conspire with (potential) competitors to Google Play - both cellular providers and device manufacturers - bribing them with payments and revenue sharing agreements on condition they not pre-load their own app stores, thus maintaining a monopoly that caused injury to Epic. Motorola is a competitor to Google Play. F-droid and whatever other alternative app stores are out there, are not. https://mashable.com/article/google-epic-antitrust-play-stor...
Nobody, and I mean nobody, considers "you can install non-play-store apps if you go deep into menus, click past scary warnings, and the app developer will not get access to a huge swath of APIs and toolkits" to be "competition" to Google Play.
2)The matter in Epic v. Google was about Epic's app being removed after they added in-app payments - forced to use Google for in-app payments because of the monopoly Google was actively maintaining - not "Google won't let us run an alternative app store."
3)Apple was not a defendant in Epic v Google. That was a separate case. In Epic v Apple, Epic lost on all but one of their claims - Apple was found to have violated California's Unfair Competition Law in barring app developers from "steering" users to purchase content in places other than in-app (and thus through Apple's payment processing and their 30% cut etc.)
Maybe the next time you can't figure out why something is the way it is, your reaction should be "I should try to learn about why this is, see what experts in this incredibly complicated field have to say on the matter, or at least google it and read major tech industry news coverage" instead of forming an incredibly strong opinion rooted in complete and total ignorance of the matter at hand.
> Apple didn't conspire with (potential) competitors
Of course not, instead Apple forbade competition by fiat! The fact that antitrust law rewarded this behavior is perverse. The whole point of antitrust law is to promote competition, after all.
> you can't figure out why
Your assumption of ignorance is incorrect. I know exactly why. Nothing in your post is news to me and none of it contradicts what I said in the slightest. It's all completely irrelevant to my point. Apple dodged being ruled a monopoly by forbidding a market to exist at all, while Google was ruled a monopoly because they allowed a market to exist. (Note that whether or how they exploited the monopoly is irrelevant to the question of whether a monopoly exists).
Also, frankly, your tone violates the HN guidelines. Do better.