Germany's competition watchdog to investigate whether Apple's ecosystem damages other businesses

Germany's competition watchdog, the Bundeskartellamt, today said it has opened a preliminary investigation into Apple's grip on the market and its walled garden ecosystem. The Bundeskartellamt said it seeks to determine whether Apple is "of paramount significance" across the various markets it caters for with its services …

[Red Ted]

Multiple complaints from other firms

"One, from the advertising industry..."

Oh what colour irony?!

[Another User]

Re: Multiple complaints from other firms

Well, it is serious. The complainants are the guys with access to lobbyists. The outcome is open and may neither be beneficial for consumers nor for progress.

The first thing I would abolish is geo-fencing but that is unlikely to happen.

[Pascal Monett]

The temperature seems to be rising for Apple

Another investigation into its Store. By the Germans, no less. They tend very much to not appreciate bullshit. They are also sticklers for the law. Apple would do well to not be found guilty of intentional wall-raising.

I wonder if the Bundeskartellamt is going to find that Apple has systematically killed any app that reproduces functionality of its own apps, not to mention when Apple sees a useful app, steals its functionality then bans it because it reproduces "existing" functionality.

This is going to be interesting, aka probably painful for Apple.

[Social Ambulator]

Re: The temperature seems to be rising for Apple

Bullshit? You wouldn’t be thinking of Wirecard by any chance? That caused billions of Euros of real damage. They would have done better to focus on real problems instead of investigating whether those dreamt up by Advertising lowlife actually exist.

[gandalfcn]

Re: The temperature seems to be rising for Apple

Irs trendy to bash Apple but doing so reduces the resources available to hit the likes of Google et al. But it keeps the gullible marks happy.

[arthoss]

Re: The temperature seems to be rising for Apple

it's election year in Germany so obv the anything to distract from the real issues.

[gandalfcn]

Re: The temperature seems to be rising for Apple

Interesting that when Google proposes the Apple model as acceptable for Google people seems to agree. Amazing.

[Social Ambulator]

Penis Envy

The German Government’s expertise in information technology consists of prosecuting Financial Times journalists who expose their National Technology Champions as frauds. (Wirecard in case you didn’t know.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Microsoft Windows damage other businesses ?

Such as forced upgrades and reboots, drivers failing to work when they did before, and a plethora of other issues.

[MrDamage]

You can't always blame MS for driver issues though. Too many OEMs think they're clever by using undocumented APIs for performance boosts. These undocumented APIs get shut down by Microsoft during a patch, but MS gets the blame instead of the dodgy OEM.

Case in point: Killer Networking. Each Windows update has a 50% chance of breaking the drivers. However, if you delete the Killer branded drivers, and install the generic Atheros drivers, Windows updates have about a 10% chance of breaking the driver.

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks more damaging its own one. Anyway MS already underwent antitrust scrutiny and had to change behaviour - today the biggest problem IS NOT Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

My comment was a tongue in cheek one.

But then, i do see a lot of complaints about Windows 10 and the problems it causes, regularly.

I don't use Windows 10, i moved across to Linux, due to the telemetry issues, and that Microsoft back ported telemetry to Windows 7 ans 8. Very dodgy behaviour.