What Microsoft did in the 90s was pale by comparison—they just bundled some extra software.
Microsoft threatened to cancel the Windows license of several PC manufacturers including HP for making Netscape Navigator their default web browser instead of Internet Explorer. This would essentially put those companies out of business, so they had to comply.
Not to mention, for corporate and home users, Netscape Navigator was commercial product that customers had to purchase while Microsoft bundled IE with Windows for free. This was back in the day when most people didn’t have broadband and stores sold shrink-wrapped boxes of software containing floppy disks or CDs.
I’ve written this many times here on HN: a monopoly isn’t illegal; what is illegal is using your monopoly in one market (PC operating systems) to disadvantage competitors in another market—web browsers.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly in either PCs or smartphones; there are plenty of alternatives to iOS and macOS. There are lots of examples of platforms where the platform owner decides what can run on that platform, starting with game consoles.
There are other requirements on effective monopolies. But the US executive branch has decided not to bother enforcing most of them. Used to be, using monopoly power to drive other companies out of business or out of a market was an abuse of that power. Now all the USDoJ will enforce is charging excessive prices.
Reiterating, being a monopoly in the US is not illegal, but it having chosen to have a monopoly makes you subject to extra fairness laws. These laws should be enforced as written, but no recent administration has been willing to step up, and Americans are the poorer for it.
If Google forced alternative browser engines off the play store, the EU would jump all over them.
Apple gets to break all the rules Microsoft and Google get dinged for, because they are vertically integrated. It feels like a bug in the law that corporations are incentivized to take everything in house. Somehow being a bigger, more powerful company makes you less vulnerable to anti-trust laws.
No, everyone who’s a registered developer knew they couldn’t use a different browser engine. That’s been the policy from day 1.
It would be different if Apple allowed 3rd party rendering engines and then forced them off, but that’s not the case.
Among other things, 3rd party engines would be incompatible with Apple’s Lockdown feature. Because browsers are required to use WebKit on iOS, they automatically work with lockdown mode; it would be much more difficult if every browser on iOS had it’s own rendering and JavaScript engine:
On a more technical level, a number of web technologies are turned off,
including just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compilation (where code is run
and compiled at the same time.) In addition, configuration profiles
(for work or school for example) can't be installed.
You are right about Microsoft, and what you're describing is also exactly what Google is doing (threatening to cancel Play Store licensing, while Play Store is the dominant licensable app store).
Google is already sued for that, but the sailant point to me is that it took so much time, and it's far from a clear cut case.
We are way past the point where Apple, Google and Amazon abused their position in provable ways, but they got left alone for so long by the regulators it's disgusting.
PS: the definition of a monopoly comes down to the definition of the market. If we were playing games, Microsoft wasn't a monopoy when looking a computing platforms in general, for instance, it was "only" on the PC home market. Apple has a monopoly under many framings, now it comes down to wether a judge agrees or just kicks away Apple opponents.
Apple has a monopoly under many framings, now it comes down to wether a judge agrees or just kicks away Apple opponents.
How so? Google has 80-90% of the search engine market and Microsoft had 95% of the desktop operating system market and used that disadvantage competitors in the nascent browser market.
The bottom line with Microsoft was: should Microsoft be allowed to use its monopoly position in operating systems to essentially force customers to take your web browser, whether they wanted it or not? It certainly wasn’t okay for Microsoft to use the threat of canceling HP’s ability to be a Windows’s OEM (and therefore destroying their PC business) if they made Netscape Navigator their default browser.
People forget how dominant Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were back in the MS-DOS days; Microsoft used Windows to make Word and Excel the dominant word processor and spreadsheet.
Apple’s worldwide market share is barely 30%; it’s closer to 50% in the U.S. It’s also not illegal to disallow 3rd party developers to “break” your platform, especially when they entered into a legal agreement with you to not break your platform.
There’s nothing illegal about controlling a successful platform and deciding who and what can be present on that platform. Game consoles have long operated the same way but that seems to be okay.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly position in either phones or computers; if a potential customer doesn’t like how Apple operates, they are free to buy something else. That wasn’t the case with Microsoft back in the day and it’s pretty much not the case today with web search, since it’s realistically not an option for a business to not be available on Google search or to ignore its advertising platform that reaches billions of users.
A lot of percentage are thrown around in your reply, but all of these are relative to a specific market you define. Wether it’s the relevant market definition is up for grabs.
You should have a look at the Apple vs Epic fillings, where Epic came with a pretty different perspective on which definition should be taken into account. They of course lost as the US judge sided with Apple’s definition (while Korea came with a different verdict…), but that’s at least an indication of how important that definition is. “30% of device share” or “80% of in-app purchases” are completely different perspectives.
> if a potential customer doesn’t like how Apple operates, they are free to buy something else
Customers are mostly irrelevant. To get back to your Microsoft example, no developper was stopped from developping for linux, nor were customers stopped from buying barebone machines, or Apple, or beOS, or mainframes. The issue was Microsoft making backroom deals with the vendors to make Windows alternatives pricier and non competitive. This makes it worst for customers as a result, but that’s the result, not the core issue (I’m referring here to the EU rulings). Definition of a anti-trust issue should be about how a player distorts the market by pressuring other business, not wether the customer has theoretical choices or not.
>I’ve written this many times here on HN: a monopoly isn’t illegal; what is illegal is using your monopoly in one market (PC operating systems) to disadvantage competitors in another market—web browsers.
Ah yes, the free market will come up with a solution to this.
Microsoft threatened to cancel the Windows license of several PC manufacturers including HP for making Netscape Navigator their default web browser instead of Internet Explorer. This would essentially put those companies out of business, so they had to comply.
Not to mention, for corporate and home users, Netscape Navigator was commercial product that customers had to purchase while Microsoft bundled IE with Windows for free. This was back in the day when most people didn’t have broadband and stores sold shrink-wrapped boxes of software containing floppy disks or CDs.
I’ve written this many times here on HN: a monopoly isn’t illegal; what is illegal is using your monopoly in one market (PC operating systems) to disadvantage competitors in another market—web browsers.
Apple doesn’t have a monopoly in either PCs or smartphones; there are plenty of alternatives to iOS and macOS. There are lots of examples of platforms where the platform owner decides what can run on that platform, starting with game consoles.