20 years later, Apple and Google bundle not only their browsers, but whole irreplaceable app stores with no legal consequences.
I don't know how the law sees it, but it's simply illogical from the common sense standpoint.
That reductive summary is repeated but isn't accurate.
Microsoft didn't get in trouble for adding its own IE web browser to Windows. (Software companies always add new features and enhancements.)
The key nuance that triggered the government lawsuit was anti-competitive actions such as using obscure/undocumented Windows API functions to cripple Netscape and forcing computer manufacturers to avoid other software when licensing DOS/Windows. All of that is in the long document: https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
This is much more serious that the Microsoft case.
In a more reasonable market, like smartphones or phones in total, Apple just does not have a monopoly. There are alternatives.
By that measure, there is very little competition in the smartphone segment—it is highly concentrated and so the major players (both Apple and Google) should face greater antitrust scrutiny.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman...
From the linked documents:
> If Android competed with iOS on app transactions, the market competition would make Android apps cheaper for users and attract developers to launch their apps first (or even only) on Android. [...] After a meeting involving senior executives of Google and Apple, notes of the meeting were exchanged between the two companies. The notes reflect: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
Epic's lawsuits are alleging that both Apple and Google have engaged in anti-competitive behavior here, albeit sometimes in different ways. Even bolder, they're claiming that Google and Apple engaged cooperative anti-competitive behavior that benefited both companies. What consumer-ready alternatives exist for users outside of Apple and Android? If a developer announces that they're building a smartphone game, and that it won't work on Android or iOS, do you think it's reasonably possible for that developer to make money with that game?
Apple has massive amounts of competitive leverage over the smartphone ecosystem; they control the most profitable app store. And the vast majority of non-iOS phones are running the Google Play Store. In that context, locking down the hardware has much bigger implications than it would in a truly competitive market. I think the question is, do we actually have a competitive smartphone market when it comes to smartphone app stores and OSes?
I do shudder at the day of seeing websites that only work on Chrome for iOS, an app that I will never use.
A monopoly is not needed for anti-competitive behavior to be illegal. All that is needed is significant market power.
Apple has 50% of the smartphone market. Which is around where courts have stated that anti-trust laws start to apply.
50% of a highly concentrated market is not a slam dunk anti-trust case, by any means, but it is within the realm where courts might rule against it, depending on numerous factors.
Have any references where someone was sued for antitrust while having <50% marketshare (of course, using the market determined by the court at the time)? If what you say is true, is the cutoff for antitrust action just "when media outlets report on it long enough to actually be put in sight of regulators/congress"?
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
The cutoff is as follows "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors"
If you want statements from a judge, regarding the 50 percent specifically, you can look up the following court cases and read from the primary source.
"See Hayden Publ'g Co., Inc. v. Cox Broad. Corp., 730 F.2d 64, 69 n.7 (2d Cir. 1984) ("[A] party may have monopoly power in a particular market, even though its market share is less than 50%."); Broadway Delivery Corp. v. UPS, 651 F.2d 122, 129 (2d Cir. 1981) ("[W]hen the evidence presents a fair jury issue of monopoly power, the jury should not be told that it must find monopoly power lacking below a specified share."); Yoder Bros., Inc. v. Cal.-Fla. Plant Corp., 537 F.2d, 1347, 1367 n.19 (5th Cir. 1976) (rejecting "a rigid rule requiring 50% of the market for a monopolization offense without regard to any other factors")."
But yes, typically, if a company has less than 50% of a market, anti-trust law does not apply. But the word "typically" does not mean "always". (And Apple has 54% of the US market)
And whether it applies, would defend on "other factors", as according to the quote I linked, and there is a good argument, IMO, that a duopoly would be a reasonable "other factor".
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/294/
"In 1955, the date of this merger, Brown was the fourth largest manufacturer in the shoe industry, with sales of approximately 26 million pairs of shoes and assets of over $72,000,000 while Kinney had sales of about 8 million pairs of shoes and assets of about $18,000,000."
And even more relevant:
"Another important factor to consider is the trend toward concentration in the industry. It is true, of course, that the statute prohibits a given merger only if the effect of that merger may be substantially to lessen competition. But the very wording of § 7 requires a prognosis of the probable future effect of the merger.
The existence of a trend toward vertical integration, which the District Court found, is well substantiated by the record. Moreover, the court found a tendency of the acquiring manufacturers to become increasingly important sources of supply for their acquired outlets. The necessary corollary of these trends is the foreclosure of independent manufacturers from markets otherwise open to them. And because these trends are not the product of accident, but are rather the result of deliberate policies of Brown and other leading shoe manufacturers, account must be taken of these facts in order to predict the probable future consequences of this merger. It is against this background of continuing concentration that the present merger must be viewed."
Are smartphones a natural monopoly? And at what levels? Hardware (including plugs and jacks, physical button locations and functions?), software, data federation? Like where do you draw the line?
If smartphones must allow alternatives, then why not gaming consoles? It's a similarily integrated device. Would Microsoft be forced to allow unlicenced 3rd party software on the Xbox?
One may argue that people rarely need a gaming console to pursue job opportunities, for instance. A smartphone, on the other hand, has become practically mandatory in many industries.
But in reality, in the wake of 9/11, USA thought it was more important to have extremely large companies, and it let them grow.
(And MS’ EU fine was related to not giving the API doc, and perhaps using fines as a political weapon).
Clearly, if US applied the anti-monopoly laws, it would shoot its own companies. In my opinion however, no single entity should dominate, govt or enterprise, and we must parcel large ones to keep competition fair, replacements rolling, class mobility high, the american dream possible for new entrants and more importantly, so that governance of our daily life is regularly given to the next generation.
Can you give any evidence of what changed after 9/11 in terms of pro-corporate policy?
Antitrust enforcement has more to do with the party in power than anything else. The Bush Administration wasn't interested in suing businesses, and now the Biden Administration is again.
However, Apple isn't extending its dominance in the smart phone area (Apple has 53% market share of mobile devices, Microsoft had above 90% market share for intel compatible PCs https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f... ) to its licensees for iOS.
Apple not forcing Samsung to bundle Safari on the Samsung branded iPhones to the exclusion of Chrome.
Yes, Apple isn't licensing iOS to others and that's a key difference. Furthermore, Apple has half of the market dominance that Microsoft had in its day.
> and when they're colluding with the "competition".
Unless you have evidence for that, that's just libel.
> 'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman...
With 53% market share, Apple alone contributes over 0.25 to the HHI. 0.25 for the entire market is regarded as highly concentrated.
The 2001 decision was comparing desktop options at a time when they weren't any. Today's mobile users have plenty of options, plenty of brands and OSs to choose from.
Android is Linux under the hood. It just doesn't use any of the cruft that desktop Linux usually has, like Xorg.
- Mac OS X Public Beta (2000)
- SUSE Linux 7.0 (2000)
- Debian 2.2 (2000)
- OpenBSD 2.7 (2000)
- Solaris 8 (2000)
- AmigaOS 3.9 (2000)
- and so on... [0]
Hardly “no alternatives” in my humble opinion.
And in office space, MS-DOS was still a thing for quite some time.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems#...
Firefox worked, as did Flash (hello NewGrounds!), Java (RuneScape), you could do a ton and be nigh invulnerable to all the malware on the internet of the early 2000s.
It's interesting to think that the project has survived for so long, even if nowadays the Libre office variety is more widely used.
It was a choice, but most decided to cave in and only sell PCs.
Here that isn't the case, most shops selling iPhones also have other brands available. Customers aren't forced into buying iPhones.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v....
Even more so when you consider how much larger these companies are set to get yet (Google will double in size again within ~5-7 years). It's the Microsoft case if Microsoft had been allowed to continue to build its power out for another 10-15 years unchecked. In the 1990s a parade of magazines ran stories about how Microsoft wanted to set up a toll road on the Internet, to position itself to take a bite out of all ecommerce. They were of course meant to be scare stories to garner attention as Microsoft wasn't close to accomplishing something like that at that point.
And yet, here we are two decades later, Apple and Google control two big Internet toll roads and are drastically larger and more powerful than Microsoft was in the 1990s. IBM was seven times larger than Microsoft in 1997. Microsoft of the 1990s looks downright quaint by comparison, an emerging big tech company playing at being giant (back then there were still far larger and more powerful corporations); today, Apple and Google - big tech broadly - are the most powerful and largest companies. Caterpillar, GE, 3M, General Dynamics, GM, Ford, Honeywell, etc look like sad jokes standing next to Apple or Google.
Google for its part has three monopolies which have amazingly been left entirely alone: search, YouTube, Android. They must have signed one helluva protection deal with the intelligence apparatus back when PRISM was getting set up, they got a ten year get out of jail free card (it's in the interests of the intelligence community to have these giant intel-hoovering companies that sprawl and span the globe).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#2.5...
> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.
I’ve seen people saying in these comments often that you have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right now, what am I missing?
But if you can’t tell the difference, does it really matter?
Firefox on Android supports add-ons, in particular uBlock origin. Firefox on iOS does not. That's a huge difference.
Apple standing against that is important for the open web.
Non-google app stores cannot automatically update aps, side-loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.
IOS forcing you to use safari no matter what, and there is no way to side-load apps, nor any non-apple app stores.
chrome de facto sets web standards, giving them slight edge over other browsers - and they do use chrome specific APIs to cripple other browsers - like YouTube working worse on Firefox due that reason.
And that's even without taking into the consideration all the tracking in form of telemetry on the devices, coupled with their own ads markets.
They can in Android 12.
> side-loading is hidden in menus behind scary warnings.
The warnings are minimal.
-- 1) Open Chrome.
-- 2) Find and Download APK. https://i.imgur.com/ZFZb1uE.png
-- 3) Accept warning and Open APK.
-- 4) Go to settings. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/R8FzTzP.png
-- 5) Toggle Install Unknown Apps for Chrome. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/K0ADO2q.png
-- 6) Click back (This only has to be done once)
-- 7) Click install. https://i.imgur.com/xVSndex.png
-- Done. https://i.imgur.com/fyasTK9.png
Once you do this for the first time, the process reduces down to 4 steps each time after: Open Chrome, Download APK, Open APK, Click Install. Done.
The ZOMG SKERRRY WARNINGS only show up once when you toggle the permission for that app and if you look at the screenshot, it's a reasonable disclaimer.
We have plenty of things to bash on Google here for... the sideloading process, however, is not one of them.
> chrome de facto sets web standards,
Chrome became the most popular browser simply because it is better.
If Mozilla could get their shit together, they could potentially reclaim their number one spot... but Firefox lost that spot multiple times. Not because of subterfuge, but because they continually drop the ball.
Chrome didn't exist in a vacuum and it didn't have the advantage of having a host operating system that had it installed from the start. There's a reason it's the primary engine now. It actually works better.
If that bothers you, use Firefox or De-Googled Chromium. Or if you really hate yourself... Safari.
Mozilla never had #1.
And I don't know what world you live in, but Google has pushed Chrome with the equivalent of billions in advertising. There's simply no way Mozilla can compete with that considering the kind of budget they're on.
If you want a fair estimate, look the time it took for Firefox to slowly grind market share from IE6, despite an abyssal difference between the two browsers.
At its peak it had 90+% of the market share.
Firefox nearly overtook IE until Chrome was released. If Firefox had not been consistently a dumpster fire, I think it could have maintained at least 50/50 with Chrome.
I switched to Chrome not because Google had good advertising but simply because it was _better._ Firefox has always had issues and Mozilla can't seem to make a browser that doesn't shit itself every now and then.
It took 6 years for Chrome to gain 50% market share. In 6 years, firefox had barely taken 25% from IE.
If you're arguing that this difference in success is explained by the technological gap between chrome and firefox being much larger than the technological gap between firefox and IE, you need a reality check.
Otherwise, you need to acknowledge the fact that Chrome had something firefox didn't have, and it was not a technological advantage.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-browser-market-sha...
Chrome took more away from IE initially than it did from Firefox.
And yes, I'm arguing a technical difference. I've used every version of every browser when it was still new, all the way back to Mosaic.
Chrome introduced per-tab instancing which was a HUGE leap ahead of everything else and Firefox took years to catch up to that one feature alone. Firefox was bloated, slow and unstable.
It still is.
Apple on the other hand has a vertical monopoly, they control the whole stack from hardware to software. While their influence on iPhones is absolute, they don't have outsize influence on other phone vendors. Also while popular iPhones don't have a majority of really any phone market.
Antitrust considerations are different for different monopoly types. Unless a company with a vertical monopoly also had a market monopoly position and used that position to actively influence/harm other companies it's really hard to legally pursue them. You can't fault a company for building their own products and trying to make money from selling them. If a Samsung washing machine has some cool feature when paired with a Samsung dryer, just because Samsung has a monopoly on Samsung appliances doesn't mean they're violating some antitrust laws.
If anything Google is in bigger danger of antitrust suits since they have a more horizontal position in the phone market. While they have token entries in the hardware market they're an OS and service provider. Which is likely why they're supportive is sideloading and alternate app stores, if they behaved like Apple but with a horizontal monopoly the DoJ would be all over them.
Apple isn't exclusively a hardware/OS company. They compete horizontally with digital media services like Amazon (books), Spotify (music), Netflix (video), etc. They use their OS and APIs to squeeze out weak competitors and suck up to stronger competitors. They make more money from apps than hardware.
Keep in mind, it's not just current competitors. It's also the potential competitors that don't even bother to start due to Apple's predatory practices.
You're forgetting how that ended. Remember, the DOJ threw the book at Microsoft. It was an intensely publicized trial, with pretty much all the country hating Microsoft and Bill Gates. Waffling over the word "ask", the infamous "knife the baby" email, the Halloween documents and Embrace-Extend-Extinguish. That all came out as part of the DOJ antitrust suit. It's hard to remember how visceral the hate for this was. During the height of that, The Simpsons decided to portray Bill Gates on the show, not positively [0]. A game developer released a title called "Microshaft Winblows 98" to positive reviews and very good sales [1].
The judge makes their final verdict. Microsoft clearly stepped over the line, there were no easy answers. They were too big a company, the only possible remedy is to break them up. Into at least two companies, but probably more; at the very least, the apps and OS needed to be split up into the "Baby Bills", they were going to be called.
Then George W. Bush comes in, guts the DOJ to a fifth of their size, and basically all but tells them "never do that again, please". The case quickly and silently went to appeal, where it was reduced from "Microsoft needs to be broken up" into a small fine [2]. And after other tragedies in the early 2000s, the nation quickly forgot.
So, no, despite the fanfare, despite the judgement and ruling, the DOJ antitrust case had very limited effect on reality. And the message from above seems to be "try that again, and get your budget demolished even more". That's, uh, why antitrust isn't a thing anymore.
Except, well, it did have one effect. In the midst of everything, Bill Gates was basically forced to resign and go into philanthropy to clear their image, resulting in Ballmer taking over. Some believe that was the true punishment for Microsoft.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_SZRhWr1s [2] https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/bush-administration-a...
They got a massive fine and were and forced to do things like open up the client server protocol used between Windows Domain Controllers and Windows Clients.
They came pretty close to being forced to open up the Office document formats, but the EU backed down from that one.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/office_file_forma...
sounds like a win-win to me.
Apple literally has banned competitors. Google at least allows them, even if they make every effort to keep them out, it's still possible to install them without hacking your phone (which hasn't really been possible on iPhone for years).
I just hate that they're grouped together as if it's equivalent.
Apple and Google aren't. You have a choice between iOS and Android, both vibrant and thriving.
It really is that simple. And it's not just the legal but common sense definition of monopoly too -- do you control the market or not?
Now you might have other criticisms of app stores, but basing them on the Microsoft-monopoly-argument isn't going to be helpful or useful. You're going to need a different legal foundation for that.
But app platforms are not commodities. There is considerable vendor lock-in, by design. It's not like one just takes an iOS app and instantly ports it over to Android when Apple's terms no longer suit; there is considerable sunk cost. Platforms cleave the market into captive audiences that can and are abused.
And what to do if you are little guy who invested everything in one of those two platforms and didn't have the foresight to write your app in a way that it was easily ported? Well, screw you.
So these platforms actually compete with each other to offer "value adds" which are really just like traps for vendor lock-in.
Anti-trust laws are full of flawed and antiquated reasoning that is unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century marketplace. And there is precious little understanding of these technological issues in courts and legislatures.
It was a mess for other reasons too, but it felt at the time like it represented a turning tide against anti-competitive behaviour in software.
* Google and Apple compete against each other, so there is no monopoly.
* Microsoft had no effective competitors.
You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.
[source needed]. The only tariff change Apple ever made was ... due to a real threat of an anti-trust lawsuit. And Google followed straight away.
I can't recall any competition between both companies, they just have their own distinct market.
As I understand it, the law sees detrimental effects on consumers.
They also conveniently had the exact same app store fee for years. Doesn't make much sense if they were actually competing with each other
Wow they are really bad at this then. 200-400k without even requiring a college degree is pretty wild. It’s about what my brother made as a doctor and he had an undergraduate degree, medical school, an internship, a residency program…
Anecdotal, but once you get some years of Big Tech experience under your belt, I do think you become comparatively more valuable to smaller companies.
not sure why doctor wages are brought up, supply and demand determines prices. Google and Apple tried to artificially distort the labor market
I'm not disagreeing with the conclusion -- I agree that they are colluding -- but the logic isn't right.
Economists are poor because there isn't any competitive advantage. Any competently-run business of any significant size should have plenty of people able to apply basic economics. Engineers who don't learn basic econ are at a disadvantage, on the other hand.
At least on Android you can install you own market if you're so inclined. I have yet to find an alternative app store for ios though(might be just me not knowing where to look though).
Edit: Forgot to add that when you're talking about Apple vs G I don't see it as 1 big "smartphone" market. It's 2 different ones. Apple hardware running iOS vs generic hardware running Android.
"Our vision is that we [Apple and Google] work as if we are one company."
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/03/20/704426033/anti...
They effectively have a monopoly over their customers from other customers and can leverage that monopoly to control their vendors.
And Google and Apple secretly working together as "one company" literally defines trust behavior:
'After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."'
From the article: After another meeting between Apple and Google senior executives, notes showed that the execs agreed: "Our vision is that we work as if we are one company."
>> You don't need a monopoly for antitrust, but it sure makes for a stronger case.
The realities of being a primary OS, App Store, or browser vendor today are both more significant, and more well known than in the 90s. They have financial consequences many times greater.
I don't see how you can come to an intelligible concept of monopoly, market power and such with a general, legal-friendly theory of monopoly. The logic needs to be reversed.
NEW UNDERPANTS PLAN:
0. Forget about proving a monopoly exists to strengthen your case that X is acting as a trust.
1. Use evidence that X is acting as a trust, as to make the case that monopoly exists instead.
2. ???
3. Profit.
The problem is that we don't have a step 2. What happens when markets mature into an monopoly dynamic? We need an answer, because some have.
I know because due to that incident we had to follow online formation every god damn month about antitrust. You don't have to have a "monopoly" to trigger antitrust legislation. The mere mention of "deals" or "cooperation" or "understanding" in the same conversation that involves competitor can be enough evidence to cause huge trouble.
Why aren't they getting hit hard by antitrust?
I guess the reason that megacorps can get away with even worse behavior is that the system is corrupt.
There was a report yesterday that showed Apple's lawyers threatening to pull out funding of a minority education school if the state considered any sort of App store laws.
Apple I agree with.
Microsoft got out of that, though. They barely paid a fine. I don't disagree that there are antitrust concerns with all sorts of big company behavior. But this is the world we live in. If you want the government to regulate this stuff for you you need to elect a government willing to do that (or rather, willing to appoint judges willing to do that).
Let's make a point of starting here. There's room for the legalistic standpoint, especially if we're trying to understand legal processes... but this isn't a law forum. It's near impossible to discuss antitrust usefully from a mostly-legalistic perspective. The laws, precedents, legal doctrines and economic doctrines they relate to are extremely patchy, flimsy and often barely exist.
I think a core part of the problem is a weak, badly grounded antitrust framework in the first place. Key definitions like "monopoly" use contradictory conceptual frameworks, from different eras. Generalizing from one instance to another is difficult. A lot of key concepts don't have definitions at all, or really wishy washy ones.
I think the nature of monopolies has a lot to do with this. One possible definition of monopoly is an singular market entity... IE not generalizable, by definition. Are courts supposed to be punishing violations, or structuring markets and doing industrial policy? Are they supposed to be regulating monopolies, preventing them, or declaring their existence so that a different set of regulations kick in? Is monopoly a normal occurrence in market maturity, or market failure?
At some point, Peter Thiel gave away the game when he said that "monopoly is the goal." If you read microeconomics basics, but conceptualize it as software companies instead of a auto manufacturing... you tend to think of monopoly, rather than commoditization as the equilibrium point that's never quite reached. Successful tech companies don't try to make money by competing in a level field with lots of competitors. That's for appstore app developers, salesforce plugin consultants, spotify artists and such.
The whole premise of the tech miracle is that monopolies are the bull case. How else to expect/justify/realize tech company valuations.
Imagine pitching an investor like Thiel on your idea to spend a billion dollars making youtube content for ad revenue? That's all wrong. Your bull case is that you'll temporarily profitable, if successful. Even if you're very profitable, its temporary. There are zillions of youtubers and squillions who could be. They'll copy you, or maybe your content will just get stale over time. A youtube policy change could wipe you out. In the turbulence of youtube's free market for online videos, profits don't last at scale. To get Thiel's attention, you need to go for your own monopoly.
"Commoditize your compliments" has long been a tech motto. Well... what's the corrolorary? Monopolize your market segment.
Commoditize PCs. Monopolize the OS.
Commoditize smartphones. Monopolize the OS.
Monopolize consoles, Commoditize games. Platform/Content. Market/Vending. Users/Advertising. Data/Advertising.
By platform, I mean an ecosystem a private entity creates which they monetize through content created/uploaded/deployed by external parties.
AWS and others fall under this definition too. The truth is, cloud computing should be a low margin industry in the long run. Yes, software has close to 0 marginal cost of production, but the same is true of your competitors. Basic economic principle implies that in a competitive market, the price to customers should be close to the cost of production.
In the old days, the economy was largely physical goods based, so it was very easy to simply buy a competing product if you don't like the one you have now. That by and large didn't entail becoming entrenched in a whole ecosystem.
Laws need to be updated to tackle the inherent monopolistic elements of platforms, social and so on. China is taking this path, so it will be interesting to see how that develops.
It's important to recognize too, that leveraging a monopolistic position to produce excess profit is effectively a direct transfer of wealth from the littler guys to the bigger guys.
e.g. Apple taking a 30% cut on the app store directly takes from app creators, who may raise prices 30%, which ultimately hits customers.
The free market ethos, IIRC, suggests that all industries should be low margin in the long run, no? Innovators and shuch are supposed to be compensated with high margins, but not perpetual high margins. The whole idea is that 25%> margin do not exist in perpetuity.
The same should be true in software, regardless of how cheap it is to produce an additional unit. Of course, because it's cheap for anybody else to produce that additional unit too.
The reason we see such high margins in software is a combination of "first mover advantage", pseudo-monopolistic like elements to the business, and the fact that industry is so new, VC money does not tend to go towards creating direct competitors as there is ample opportunity elsewhere.
In the short run, first movers and innovators will be able to generate high margins of course. And sometimes business X really does produce a better product than the rest, as some would say Apple does. But given that software is cheap to maintain once built, you would expect many viable and roughly equivalent competitors to be built in the long run.
At the end of the day, legislation should be written to foster "competitive capitalism", as that produces the best result for the public at large.
For example, it should be as easy to switch between SaaS providers as the flick of a button. Apple should have to allow competing app stores and not give preferential treatment to their own... And so on.
If you think about the App store example in isolation, the fee they charge is a direct transfer of wealth from app creators and app buyers to Apple. Would they be able to charge 30% if there were competing app stores? Maybe, but I doubt it over the long run. Certainly at least they wouldn't be able to charge Epic that amount, as Fortnite is big enough to entice people through side channels for loading the app.
Looking at it as choice of Apple or Android is not an appropriate level of granularity for anti-trust IMO.
We must recognize that markets created within a platform also must be competitive, not just the gateway into that ecosystem. Cost of switching becomes high, which leads to de facto Monopoly power by the platform owner.
In these cases, generally, the law acts when other parties push it. Mainly big actors. The app stores are generally build by those major actors. May be regulations will happen in several years.
Also, there's nothing antitrust about bundling web DLLs in an OS, or using the web shell for applications. That's what a Chromebook did.
What MSFT did was abuse its monopoly position to take advantage of other companies and customers.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...
Regulatory capture.
Edit: Not sure why accusation of corruption is downvoted? It's a very difficult crime to prove and requires resources to pursue, so there is no appetite to prosecute. Big companies and civil service know that. If these companies pay off developers, they would have no reason to pay anyone else in their way and that would unlikely result in any consequences.