Comment by ChocolateGod
10 hours ago
> I think the European Commission is threading the needle, trying to find a path to uphold the DMA/DSA while not provoking another tariff war.
The EC is also under a lot of internal pressure from member states to calm down on the regulation, as it's considered one reason why Europe is such a bad place to do a tech startup right now.
Those laws literally only apply to companies a size close to Apple. Don't make this about startups.
B-but that's unfair! All my startups ideas are bait and switch, and walled garden, as the end game!
The DMA only applies to companies with a market cap >75bn EUR, or turnover in the EU >7.5bn EUR/annum. Like, your startup will be _fine_.
> your startup will be _fine_
Your start-up also won't get acquired by anyone "with a market cap >75bn EUR, or turnover in the EU >7.5bn EUR/annum." That may be fine with some folks. But it's an obvious downside if you're a start-up or backer thereof.
Are you claiming that big companies can only exist in an environment where they are allowed to be really anti-competitive?
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> The EC is also under a lot of internal pressure from member states to calm down on the regulation, as it's considered one reason why Europe is such a bad place to do a tech startup right now.
Turns out then using private data for ads (Google) and acting like a middleman (Apple) are apparently lucrative and worth money?
(This isn't a critique to you OP or your comment, but rather a commentary on the 21st century.)
And amazingly they never considered Spotify a gatekeeper. I wonder what makes Spotify different? It couldn’t be because they are a European company?
It was too small at the time the law came into force. It's actually just about big enough now (market cap 110bn). That said, it's not at all clear that it's a gatekeeper in the sense that, say, Apple or Google are; it's mostly just one reseller of many of other peoples' stuff, and most Spotify users aren't forced to use it. It's just hard to see how it poses the same sort of competition problem.
(You could maybe make a _vague_ argument based on podcast exclusives, but it seems like pushing it a bit.)
The really puzzling one to me is TikTok, which is included but feels like it barely meets the criteria.
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You wonder what makes Spotify different from the iOS AppStore?