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Comment by stalfosknight | Hacker News Reader

> Phone has a market share of almost 70% in Japan, the location of the plaintiff. iPhone also has a market share of over 50% now in the United States, by the way.

Neither one of those market shares are monopolies.

> Historical revisionism. For more than 30 years prior to iOS, general-purpose computing platforms were mostly open with no vendor-controlled store.

If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.

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Of course it's monopolistic. What standard are you comparing to? You don't need to have 100% of the market to exert monopoly control.

Non-monopoly behavior would be users and developers having the choice to offer & install iOS apps outside of Apple's app store, but choosing the app store because the trade-off of fees is considered fair for the trust & platform convenience gained in exchange.

> What standard are you comparing to

A real judge saying that Apple isn’t a monopoly…

https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/resounding-vic...

> the judge cleared the Cupertino-based company of monopolistic malpractices

That does not appear to be anything like affirming that they are not a monopoly. One can be a monopoly without being guilty of anticompetitive monopolistic behavior. Likewise, Epic failing to make their narrow case is not a statement of absolute fact about Apple's market or industry position; it is a statement that Epic's specific argument was not valid or sufficient to confirm their claims.

So whose viewpoint should I believe in whether Apple did anything wrong, a real judge or a random commenter on HN?

Neither? Judges are also just random people chosen to interpret "the law". That doesn't mean their interpretation can accurately determine what is or isn't monopolistic. Judges make historically "wrong" decisions all the time.

So we shouldn’t believe judges because after looking at the law, the case being argued by Epics high price lawyers and multiple appeals, all of the judges got it wrong. But only contact9879 knows the “truth”

No. My point is that case law and judges only operate within precedent and an interpretation of law. That doesn't mean that the conclusions drawn are "truth"-ful. I'd even argue that case law can not determine a "truth". What constitutes monopolistic behaviour is subjective and case law is reflective of that. In fact, decisions are called "judicial opinions". They are a best effort to determine a truth given the tools and environment within which courts operate. That doesn't mean that the verdict is "correct" (whatever that means in the context of deciding monopolies).

1) The court did rule against Apple on the anti-steering provision.

2) The case is on appeal to the Supreme Court.

3) Apple paid out a settlement in another monopolist case: https://smallappdeveloperassistance.com/

I don't particularly care what the current case law says, antitrust has been eroded for four decades to the point of being a joke. We need to overhaul this around the world and tame megacorps everywhere.

The behavior is plainly monopolistic and anticompetitive on its face. That it does not suffer judgement as violating any laws about such conduct is a sad reflection of our government corruption and unwillingness to regulate the corporations that provide most political funding.

“I don’t care what the law or judges say. I know I’m right because Apple paid off a judge and the judge was corrupt”???

Who said any of that? I mean our elected government (US and Canada alike) is evidently unwilling to enact & enforce toothsome antitrust. And that's a source of a huge portion of our bigger problems. Outsized influence by a small number of voices, and a toxic cycle of using the proceeds to buy more deregulation via political donation.

>Of course it's monopolistic. What standard are you comparing to? You don't need to have 100% of the market to exert monopoly control

No, but control of your own platform is not considered a monopoly if you don't have a monopoly on the overall market.

> If you don't like the iOS platform then don't develop for it or buy iOS devices. There is an endless kaleidoscope of Android devices you can choose from.

I didn't say I don't like the iOS platform. I said there's one thing about it that I don't like. Smartphones are very complex devices with countless features, both software and hardware. It's absolutely absurd to say to people, "If you don't like [specific thing] about this hugely complex device, then buy another brand." Moreover, there is no perfect device out there, otherwise I would buy it. Everything is a compromise, with pros and cons. And yes, there are cons. But there are also pros.

One can like the iOS platform and still advocate for general-purpose computing. I don't understand why folks on Hacker News, of all places, defend walled gardens so vehemently.

What you call a "walled garden" someone else would call an openly opinionated, thoughtfully designed, and well managed platform with seamless integration and world-class support.

Again, if that's not your thing you're perfectly free to spend your money elsewhere.

You can be opinionated, thoughtfully designed, and well managed without being a walled garden. Maybe once Apple is a primarily services company, they'll care less about their "walled garden" and let their devices play nice.

I honesty think that would be nice to see Apple loosen up in some ways.

But I really appreciate some of the ways in which they are strict. Developers really need to restrained from their own worst behaviors like slurping up private data, abusive advertising practices, not providing simple one-click cancelation of subscriptions, and so on.

> Again, if that's not your thing you're perfectly free to spend your money elsewhere.

You are in fact not, it's the whole problem. There's two actors colluding in the market, Apple & Google with very similar practices and rules ... and that's it.

Do you have citations to back up your claim of collusion?

The fact that the only change of pricing ever done was due to an anti trust lawsuit and copied straight over to start with? It's basically admission of guilt.

Some people hack on computer systems, some people hack on markets.

Does Google have enough of the search engine market share to be considered a monopoly?

I think it's absurd to say something is a "monopoly" when clearly there are plenty of alternatives.

I'm old enough to remember the pre-Google internet and how the search engine crown passed between Altavista, Hotbot, Lycos, Yahoo! and probably others. Google did not come down from the heavens heralded by angels a fully formed tech hegemony all at once. The free market made it dominant over time because free people continue to freely choose Google. Google is not blessed with some form of immortality or invincibility either. It's dominance will only come to an end if people stop whining about it and try to outdo it instead.

For the record, I don't use Google services or products nor do I ever feel forced to as it is implied whenever someone whines about Google being a "monopoly."

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