Apple is using their dominant (monopoly) position in mobile devices to shut down competitors in another industry (advertising) in order to drive growth in their own advertising platform, got it.
Except that Apple not only hasn't done that, but has created ad network APIs and processes to support "competitors".
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...
And, sure, it can be viewed as a privacy feature, and that's great. So what happens next year when Apple rolls out their own user-targetted ad system based on the same tracking data they disallowed to competitors?
It's a slippery slope for sure. Apple deserves the benefit of the doubt, but I don't see how anyone would look at this as good news.
All they have to do is offer a buying platform where you can track conversion on Apple devices and software better. In other words, they don't have to offer more user-level accuracy to the end buyer, they simply need to measure campaigns more accurately on iOS (a bit of a simplification but not much).
That alone will make their DSP a dominant player in the industry.
No trillion dollar corporation deserves the benefit of the doubt, including Apple.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/09/apple-a...
[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3646190/apple-is-sneak...
"Ask Apps not to Track" was about an advertiser you did not have a relationship with, building profiles across multiple organizations to profile you without any consent. So a policy was created where apps did have to prompt, and to make it a business requirement to work with Apple. If you track without explicit OS-gathered user consent, you can be kicked from the store. AFAIK, even if you do so via means like IP address correlation.
But the feature wasn't "privacy", it was "ask apps not to track". It is very clearly specified about whether you want multiple organizations to correlate you. It is not meant to be a policy to limit e.g. what the Meta learns about you while you are interacting within Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Clearly the iOS marketing of the past few years has led people to believe that Apple is opposed to advertising technologies that rely on persistently-stored and correlated user behavior, because that persistent store can be plausibly (and terribly) misused.
And remember that the misuse itself hasn't really happened anywhere. People like to complain about Facebook and Google's (also Amazon's, and TikTok is in this conversation now too) accumulation of this data, but so far the actual abuses haven't happened. Tech companies have been, on the whole, actually pretty good stewards of this stuff. But people hate that they have it anyway, and mistrust them.
And now Apple's going to do the same thing.
1. Apple - examples include Apple Arcade, AppleCare+, Fitness+
I was so shocked when I saw an ad in Settings I took a screenshot. It's dated December 8th, 2020. Prosecution of Apple for abuse should have started at least that long ago.
I think integration with a specific product is ok with branding and a link to their website. Like you'd have FitBit, Nike+, or whatever under a fitness tab in settings.
But it sounds closer to the banner ads on the bottom of the screen like a lot of free android apps do.
How do they display the ads?
It's not "ads" per se, but when you are eligible for a promotion such as free Apple TV+, Music, etc - there's an option all the way at the top that appears. You can open them and press "decline" and that particular promotion goes away.
Not great (especially considering the services are shit), but very tame compared to the advertising you usually see.
Market power is defined by pricing power (empirical absence of substitution effect), not share of some descriptive market (where you could always get any result you wanted just by changing the way you divide market descriptions.)
> 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. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages. In addition, that leading position must be sustainable over time: if competitive forces or the entry of new firms could discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.
> Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation, or business acumen is legal; however, the same result achieved by exclusionary or predatory acts may raise antitrust concerns.
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
>Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area. Some courts have required much higher percentages.
which seems to lend real credence to the argument that Apple would (most likely) not be understood as a monopoly in the courts. Sure it could happen, but lots of unlikely things can happen that still say won't happen because of how humans communicate.
The issue isn't marketshare, the issue is defining the market within which marketshare is looked at. If you don't use some consistent objective defenition of market boundaries, you can pick or choose any result you want by how you describe the market applicable to any given case.
While it isn’t perfect, “the space within which consumer substitution in response to changes like pricing occurs from the given good or service” is a rough description of what market boundary determination in US antitrust/competition law aims at.
It's also, for obvious reasons, often the most contentious issue in antitrust cases, with a whole lot of market data thrown up by every interested party aimed at proving what the right market boundary is. If you just assume the boundary is some popular market description without interrogating whether consumer substitution for the given product really occurs across that whole descriptive market space (and, on the other side, only within that space), you are really just skipping over the most important question in antitrust.
It exactly is, if you further define “market” empirically by consumer behavior demonstrating products actually compete with each other rather than analytically based on some abstract comparison of features that make you think they should.
One of the other arguments here is that when it comes to games I can get a Nintendo, or an Xbox, or a PS5, or a PC that I can run Windows/Linux games on.
When it comes to phones we pretty much have a duopoly which means both groups can find it easy to manipulate the market to higher prices without indirect (illegal) signalling.
Luckily it looks like the EU is telling Apple to suck it and they'll have to open up app stores on their phones.
There is also a big difference between a company saying "I am only going to make this for the Apple app store" and saying "You can only have the Apple app store".
You use Firefox on your desktop and you're upset at Apple because you need to use Firefox on your mobile in order for tabs etc to sync.
Are you also upset at Apple for needing to use Lightroom on your desktop and mobile for photos to sync ?
Would you actually want a computer to ship with nothing?
Also your other talking point about no “real adblockers” is at least a year out of date. Safari has supported standard extensions for over a year not just JSON based content blocking rules.
Had OEMs not be forced to pay for Windows licences for all computers shipped regardless of whether it actually included Windows or not perhaps they wouldn't have shipped Windows so damn much?
1. Microsoft was held accountable and forced to stop making OEMs pay Windows licenses for computers that didn’t ship with Windows.
As an aside, there is no “Windows tax”. OEMs make more than enough by bundling third party crapware it more than pays for Windows. But third party OSs - especially Linux was never going to be big on the desktop without third party commercial support. The only Unix[1] operating system that has ever gained any traction on the desktop is MacOS and Apple makes sure they bend over backwards to keep Microsoft and Adobe happy.
I sold IBM Aptivas briefly in the 90s that came with OS/2 at Radio Shack. They were not going to overtake the world.
2. As far as “bundling” in 2022, would you suggest any platform come without a browser? Macs, Windows, ChromeOS computers, iOS and Android all come with browsers. What would the consumer experience be like if all platforms just came with an empty desktop and they had to download everything?
[1] yes MacOS is real certified Unix.
And had it shipped on OEM machines that might have attracted more third party devs too. And they could have sold crapware if they wanted as well. It's impossible to say for certain that MS's policies had no impact on the desktop computer space.
As for 2, well that depends how hard is it to get a browser? Can I just open a store or repo and grab one or do I have to sneakernet it on there? I don't think it has to be a bad experience to have a barebones system if done right.
Vertical market apps are going to target the computer with the largest market share. You’re going to be hard pressed to tell your local dentist office they need to run Linux to run the equivalent of their VB based software.
Most people already complain when their first launch experience requires them to update their OS - mostly consoles. I can’t imagine telling my mom, to download a browser, email client, dialer, messaging app, calendar, contacts software, notes app, etc.
The app store being closed and not allowing 3rd party stores would be considered anti-competitive. They have a 100% monopoly on the ios application market.
I don't think they're doing much anti-competitive in the phone hardware space though.
This idea that Apple has a monopoly is ridiculous.
We just had a real judge say that definition is completely false in the Epic vs Apple case.
Apple, please listen. These platform dreams of controlling supply, demand and the underlying tech platform are dangerous. Likely to fail or if you succeed it will run anti-trust problems. But your biggest risk is distraction. The shiny new kids on block wagging the core business to the detriment of customers and shareholders.
> A relevant product market comprises all those products and/or services which are regarded as interchangeable or substitutable by the consumer by reason of the products’ characteristics, their prices and their intended use.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
Are we able to substitute browser engine or app store in iOS? If not, then its app store itself can make of a single relevant market. This is so obvious to the level that even Apple knows they cannot avoid, so they're trying to make an argument that app store and browser engine are technically inseparable system service, not an interchangable product. (I strongly suspect that this is one of the reasons why we cannot get standard 4~6 weeks browser updates for Safari, decoupled from OS updates) EU doesn't seem to be very happy with that argument so they passed the Digital Market Act in response. And US is preparing a bipartisan bill similar to DMA as well.
Yeah, I know the actual process for defining market is much more complicated but this is the basic idea. Antitrust investigation is a largely economical, data driven process and you cannot simply say "Even in their best market, the U.S., iPhone holds just a smidge over 50%". I won't assert they're in a monopolistic position, but many regulators (especially in EU) believe in that.
Apple doesn't need to scrub the internet for information to show you ads in the App Store - they have your authenticated account where you have bought other apps. Similarly, Google doesn't need to build a clandestine profile for you if they have your Youtube and search history going back to when you created your gmail account.
Google and Apple typically have little desire to share any of that information with third parties (in either direction). Without a need to implement third-party tracking, features like Hide My Email don't really affect them. However, thats not a privileged position in the operating system (Google doesn't really have such a position on iOS). Thats just a strong relationship with the person involved - something both companies have been establishing for decades.
Both companies are also heavily invested in future tech where ad decisions being based on local data rather than sharing that data to make a decision on a server, and in conversions being tracked by an anonymized process.
But this means that you are baking a certain amount of business logic into the browser. So, in addition to advertising providers needing to do substantial work to leverage these new features, they also might have a mismatch between what their product does today and the proposed browser schemes.
In addition to making this a remarkably complex technical problem, it is also why Google's attempts to block third party cookies has been held up by regulators for years.
If people are opting out of that tracking, then maybe those businesses were built on customer ignorance to begin with.