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Comment by parasubvert | Hacker News Reader

The anti-trust is a bit of an odd one. A few possibilities - do Google and Apple wind up controlling the online ad market? Or - does the ad market shrink because Apple exploits it less? (Killing an industry isn’t anti-competitive per se)

Another angle is that captive audiences will be steered to other Google or Apple products. But debatably this only becomes anti-trust worthy when Google and Apple will start to buy more businesses in non-core areas eg. To compete with Amazon as the everything store.

Microsoft is definitely doing this with gaming, buying up many huge game properties.

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>Killing an industry isn’t anti-competitive per se

Using your dominance in one market (computers/phones) to muscle into another (ads) is about as anti-competitive as you can get.

Also if those ads are exclusively limited to the original market? People can easily choose to shop outside of that market and be exposed to exactly 0 of those ‘anti-competitive’ ads, only to the competing ads.

It’s not, though. Consumers don’t buy ads. Apple wouldn’t have a monopoly, or be harming consumers.

Otherwise Facebook using its social media site to take over ads from Google would be anti competitive. Or Google taking over with AdSense by using its search engine. Or TV/cable stations taking over from newspapers or radio.

None of this is anti-competitive. They’re different markets that change as the underlying communication medium changes.

And it’s not like ads are somehow killed by Apple. It’s the surveillance based customized ads that have been made less common as customers can deny their use (or approve them!). Ads existed for a century without that level of surveillance.

apple is in a better position to defend against our (laughably weak) anti-trust enforcement, because the platform is closed, so they'd argue that the ad network is an intertwined part of that one market (mobile computing). google, being an advertising (and surveillance) company first and foremost, has a weaker position wrt the any of their flanking businesses, especially mobile computing, since it's hard to argue that mobile computing is an essential component of the ads business.

i'd vote for anyone who promises (and has a realistic plan) to fund the anti-trust division with 100× their current funding (the IRS too) to crack down on all these distortions in our markets. i have little hope of seeing such a political candidate however.

There is precedent with broadcast affiliates and satellite/cable TV companies who have significant control over Radio or TV ads on some channels.

I also don’t see how giving consumers choice on ad surveillance could be seen as anti-competitive. Where is the consumer harm? Where’s the monopoly?

Heck, even ad networks dying weren’t considered anti competitive when AdSense took the industry over when Google exploited its search engine, or when Facebook took on AdSense by parlaying their social media power. Again, you have to prove harm or attempt to create monopoly.

i'm not sure what you mean by "choice on ad surveillance", but my point was about anti-trust, not simply anti-competitiveness or monopoly. anti-trust is using market power in one segment to distort another one unfairly.

the precedent you point out is what helps apple claim they're not a trust, because the two components, ads and content, go together in one business model. with google, being paid to place ads is the business model, and competing in the various channels for those ads are potential anti-trust encroachments because they're different markets.

as is usual in these cases, the harm is an inflated market price above the non-distortionary baseline.

My point was that all Apple has done is let end users disable third party tracking cookies on apps. They gave users choice on whether they wish to be surveilled. That’s it.

The only potential market this capability hurts is the market for ads based on surveillance on Apple devices. Would these be seen as an illegal/unfair practice? I find it highly unlikely to be seen as such by any western government.

Even if Apple is found to be anti-competitive, it could still be decided that their behavior is in consumer interest, right? For example if their ad service is actually privacy respecting somehow.

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