Comment by leptons

>It’s not alleged in the complaint that Apple cripples Safari in order to incentivize developers to build apps instead. Respectfully, did you read it?

DID YOU READ IT? Below are some of the relevant sections.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline

Rather than respond to competitive threats by offering lower smartphone prices to consumers or better monetization for developers, Apple would meet competitive threats by imposing a series of shapeshifting rules and restrictions in its App Store guidelines and developer agreements that would allow Apple to extract higher fees, thwart innovation, offer a less secure or degraded user experience, and throttle competitive alternatives. It has deployed this playbook across many technologies, products, and services, including super apps, text messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets, among many others.

9. Apple suppresses such innovation through a web of contractual restrictions that it selectively enforces through its control of app distribution and its “app review” process, as well as by denying access to key points of connection between apps and the iPhone’s operating system (called Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”). Apple can enforce these restrictions due to its position as an intermediary between product creators such as developers on the one hand and users on the other.

16. Apple wraps itself in a cloak of privacy, security, and consumer preferences to justify its anticompetitive conduct. Indeed, it spends billions on marketing and branding to promote the self-serving premise that only Apple can safeguard consumers’ privacy and security interests. Apple selectively compromises privacy and security interests when doing so is in Apple’s own financial interest—such as degrading the security of text messages, offering governments and certain companies the chance to access more private and secure versions of app stores, or accepting billions of dollars each year for choosing Google as its default search engine when more private options are available. In the end, Apple deploys privacy and security justifications as an elastic shield that can stretch or contract to serve Apple’s financial and business interests.

43. Developers cannot avoid Apple’s control of app distribution and app creation by making web apps—apps created using standard programming languages for web-based content and available over the internet—as an alternative to native apps. Many iPhone users do not look for or know how to find web apps, causing web apps to constitute only a small fraction of app usage. Apple recognizes that web apps are not a good alternative to native apps for developers. As one Apple executive acknowledged, “[d]evelopers can’t make much money on the web.” Regardless, Apple can still control the functionality of web apps because Apple requires all web browsers on the iPhone to use WebKit, Apple’s browser engine—the key software components that third-party browsers use to display web content.

60. For years, Apple denied its users access to super apps because it viewed them as “fundamentally disruptive” to “existing app distribution and development paradigms” and ultimately Apple’s monopoly power. Apple feared super apps because it recognized that as they become popular, “demand for iPhone is reduced.” So, Apple used its control over app distribution and app creation to effectively prohibit developers from offering super apps instead of competing on the merits.