Comment by cubefox
1 year ago
Google has to sell Chrome, a completely optional browser, and stop supporting Firefox, the best Chrome alternative, while Apple is allowed to completely lock down iOS without allowing installing alternatives to Safari, or any third party app stores. Not to mention that Apple for years exploited its dominant market position in the US by resisting messaging RCS Android compatibility, and pressuring teens into either buying into the Apple or ecosystem or risk being socially ostracized from incompatible group chats. It seems to be more that a double standard.
Google is just incompetent at PR and legal. That is how Epic won against Google and lost against Apple, even though Android is far far more open than iOS.
Incompetency is a blessing for users.
The iOS app store monopoly is unreal. Epic's case should have been a slam dunk, they got removed from the app store by offering a discount if people went through their processor instead of Apple's, proving harm to the consumer by simply expecting less than 30% for simply processing a payment.
People complain about whataboutism, but the Apple versus almost any other 'monopoly' is insane. You can switch browsers within the next 30s, you can't install an app from a third party vendor ever on iOS. [1]
[1] Yes I know you can pay $100 a year, and then compile your own/open source apps weekly and move them to your device. No this is not a reasonable solution.
https://setapp.com/for-ios-developers
(Note that SetApp already enables subscribers to use iOS apps.)
Instant, universal, and immaculately-fair is the real impossible standard. Your line of thought has long been in the arsenal in defense of inaction
let's permit the firefighters to leave the firehouse even though they can't tend to all the fires simultaneously
Perhaps Apple is next?
You're ignoring the antitrust cases against Apple which may seek similar remedies.
Epic lost their's, while ironically winning the Google one... Where you were always able to install a third party app store, they just didn't let you do it through the official store.
The difference is pretty obvious, no? Google search and Chrome are genuine monopolies: they complete dominate their respective markets. Chrome decides which JS APIs and which other HTML extensions are available in all browsers. If Chrome implements it, all others follow or it is IE6-style "this only works in Chrome" for everyone. Notice that every browser's UI has followed Chrome. Every browser offers identical webextensions. Etc.
For Google search, the quality has gone down enormously and yet it has lost approximately 0 market share. It is still utterly dominant. This was used to push people to Chrome, and still is. It was used to dominate the web ads market. And so on: market power used to increase market power in other markets. Classic anticompetitive behaviour.
Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly in any market. Even in the US, where their position is strongest relative to Android, it still isnt even close to a monopoly.
iOS isn't a monopoly so there is nothing wrong with it being locked down. It doesn't pressure "teens" into anything. Teenagers will pick up on anything they can to create peer pressure themselves. They would just say "lol nice loser android phone" when they saw the phone in person anyway lol.