back to article Spotlight on Apple, Google app stores: What happened to Tile, Spotify, Match – and that proposed law in Arizona

Apple and Google were blasted by app developers this week during a US Senate hearing over the tech giant's software stores. Here we summarize that meeting – and take a closer look at why a proposed law in Arizona to tackle the duo's behavior failed to pass. On Wednesday, senior officials from Apple and Google certainly looked …

  1. Chris G

    unfairly lock out competitors and extort smaller businesses.

    While the Senates concern over the unfair treatment of competitors and small businesses is laudable, it would be nice to hear some words regarding the unfair lock in and treatment of the end users, those who ultimately pay for everything and provide the votes that put the senators there in the first place.

    Maybe it's time for normal people to get together, discuss their problems and needs and perhaps vote for one of their members to represent them.......... Oh wait!

  2. Gene Cash Silver badge

    Patchwork laws?

    > How will it work for businesses that operate across state lines?

    Who gives a shit? Massachusetts' right-to-repair laws have helped people all across the country by forcing car manufacturers to give up such info as diagnostic codes. Do I even have to mention California's environmental laws?

    Arizona has been paid off, and they're trying to conceal it.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: Patchwork laws?

      Massachusetts has leverage with the major metropolis of Boston and access to an egghead nexus in MIT. As for California, as the largest state and one of the most populous, they sell A LOT of cars.

      What kind of pull would Arizona have that would keep companies from going Sod You and just keep out?

      1. Crys

        Re: Patchwork laws?

        "As for California, as the largest state and one of the most populous"

        CA is the third largest state in the US and The most populated.

    2. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Patchwork laws?

      I agree - who cares - these Goliaths already run across many more than just state lines - they deal with different regulations across the world.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Patchwork laws?

        This! And not only that. Both Google and Apple know where you are to within a few metres, when you make the purchase. At worst, within a few hundred metres. They can easily apply whatever local laws relate to your location. Even if GPS is switched off. Of course, that would mean admitting that they do actually track you at all times, even when you've changed any and all settings you can find to "don't track me"

        1. Charles 9

          Re: Patchwork laws?

          Unfortunately, due to the way cell phones work, NOT tracking you is literally impossible without your phone being a brick.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Patchwork laws?

            > Unfortunately, due to the way cell phones work, NOT tracking you is literally impossible without your phone being a brick.

            Not true. "Tracking" requires retaining a series of measurements recorded over time. For the cell network to work, the cell-tower/s to which you are currently connected need to be known. They do not need to keep a log of your device's past connections, beyond maybe a few seconds for handovers. Ergo, tracking is not necessary for your phone to work.

            Besides which, even if phones *did* require user tracking to function, it's would be only at the cell-network level, and the likes of Google and Apple would not "need" to have access to that tracking information.

            Tracking isn't a simple yes/no question. It matters WHO collects the data, and what they do with it.

            1. DS999 Silver badge

              Re: Patchwork laws?

              Knowing which cell phone tower you are connected to is sufficient to know which state you are in. If you want to be really picky, you could treat being connected to cell phone towers a few miles across a state's border as being potentially "within that state" and tell the user they have to move further away from e.g. Arizona's borders to make the purchase.

              Anyway "do not track" implies storing the information, it doesn't mean "turn off GPS so the phone will never know where you are even for something as simple as a yes/no on approving an app store purchase".

  3. Dinanziame Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    Third-party app store

    I find it curious the big difference between iOS and Android isn't mentioned: it's easy to bypass the Play store and get apps from a third-party app store, or directly from the developer. Are users so inert that it's impossible to be successful without paying the tax?

    The makers of Fortnite announced a couple of years back that they would be only available on a third-party app store (or rather, that they wouldn't pay the subscription tax, so they got booted out from the big stores). I'm sure there are ongoing lawsuits about it, but in the meantime I assume Fortnite is still successful?

    1. Ozan

      Re: Third-party app store

      That depends on size. Epic and Fortnite are huge so they can pull that off. If I wanted to put forward a game, I can't pull that off. All the companies that fight with Apple and Goole, Epic is probably only one that can pull of their own market place.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Third-party app store

      "Are users so inert that it's impossible to be successful without paying the tax?"

      Yes. (I'm assuming you meant to type "inept" and autocorrect whacked you)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Third-party app store

        Actually "inert" make more sense, after all Apple and Google are the center of the universe and they have you locked down.

        Humans are funny. Some are looking for water on Mars, most are just looking for water. Earth deserved better.

    3. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

      Re: Third-party app store

      Yes, the vast majority of users would be unable (or unwilling*) to do it. It may be hard for some of us to understand, but in these forums we're a self selected bunch that probably barely reaches a rounding error in user numbers for Google.

      * Unwilling, as in they'd be scared off by the "world will end in a sea of malware" warnings they'd have to click through to enable it.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As Usual The Argument Is About Money.........

    ....specifically the up-front money from app-related sales. And in the mean time, end users are (mostly unknowingly) channelling PII through the servers of Large Corporations.......

    ...........and said Large Corporations are making even more money on the back end-by packaging/selling and or leveraging the PII on the back end.

    By focusing on the up-front money, and ignoring the back-end money, how can anyone argue that privacy is being protected?

    Well....."privacy" is a smokescreen..............it's only "partial privacy"...........which is no privacy at all!!

    Quote: "The paranoid is a person who knows a little of what is going on" William Burroughs

  5. Pseu Donyme

    Monopoly -> Regulation

    App stores are natural monopolies (or close enough) so they really ought to be run as regulated utilities. That competition turns to monopoly (or close enough for practical purposes) in the general case is due to a version of the network effect: the nature of the beast is that app developers and users attract each other which tends to result in one store becoming more and more dominant over time akin to the emergence of the de-facto monopoly of Windows. Also, developers and users having to deal with more than one app store per platform is wasteful; not the same but similar to 'traditional' natural monopolies where the waste would come from the unnecessary duplication of a physical network (e.g. an electrical one).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "App stores are natural monopolies"

      No, they are not natural at all. They are fully artificial monopolies. There's really nothing hindering to create more app stores but the companies themselves not allowing it.

      Windows was never a monopoly because nothing hindered people to install a different operating system, as the success of Linux in the server space shows. Moreover MS never asked developers to pay to deploy on Windows - you can also develop applications without buying any of the MS tools - which is impossible under iOS, for example, where you're forced to buy an Apple subscription and an Apple PC.

      Becoming dominant is not forbidden per se - using that dominance to block competitors is unlawful - and that's what Apple and Google did and do.

      "having to deal with more than one app store per platform is wasteful;"

      Really? Let's have only one store for each type of good?

      1. Charles 9

        Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

        Would you rather have two sewage networks in your neighborhood? That's what he meant by utilities being a natural monopoly.

        As for alternative app stores, Apple forbids it via first-party device control, and Google won't bite it's own hand without force, plus the aforesaid network effects

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

          @"Would you rather have two sewage networks in your neighborhood?" actually had I not chosen to live on a hill then yes. Those that believed the BS that building houses on flood plains was okay, would agree with me when flooding started being a reas issue in the UK

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Would you rather have two sewage networks in your neighborhood?"

          You mean app stores are like sewage? Because they stink or because you need to dig roads to install them? Even comms networks aren't natural monopolies because is economically feasible to deploy more than one.

          There's nothing making app stores natural monopolies.

          1. Charles 9

            Re: "Would you rather have two sewage networks in your neighborhood?"

            Two words: Network Effects. People will gravitate to the path of least resistance, and the one with all the connections gets all the press, which gets all the people, which gets all the press, ad nauseum. That's just how we are unless you know how to evolve a better human.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

              Re: "Would you rather have two sewage networks in your neighborhood?"

              The difference though is that it's almost if not actually impossible (eg in Apples case) to set up a competing app store. The network effect is being enforced. Remember when nearly all your free/shareware/PD software was downloaded from TuCows? Most people don't remember them now, or have never heard of them. The network effect took most users along to TuCows but they eventually faded as others came along.

              Likewise, the previously ubiquitous and now almost forgotten various social networks.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Tucows?

                I have heard of them but never went out of my way to use them, I got my shareware downloads off the world of university FTP sites for years and when Trondheim NTU created FTPsearch I went where ever it directed for my downloads.

          2. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

            Re: "Would you rather have two sewage networks in your neighborhood?"

            Even comms networks aren't natural monopolies because is economically feasible to deploy more than one.

            Actually, that's not the case. It's rarely economically feasible to deploy two competing networks, especially if one of them has a head start.

            There are of course exceptions. It's viable to deploy a wireless (i.e. mobile phone) network alongside a wired network - they do different jobs. The only reason there are multiple mobile infrastructure networks is that in the early days they had some rules imposed on them.

            But taking (e.g.) the market for wired internet access, it's rarely viable to install a second network to compete with an incumbent - as history has shown.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

        @"Windows was never a monopoly because nothing hindered people to install a different operating system"

        hmm, you could install a different OS like say Caldera with win3 but then you would get bogus error messages from windows purely for not using MSDOS. Just one example of MS being not a white knight where it comes to fair business practices. If you want a fair comparision then you would have to compare vendors who actually make their own hardware and where where MS only owned the software that ran on the IBM designed PC.

        As to Apple who actually did design and maintain their own hardware and software/OS designs, prior to the move to unix, they like MS also pushed the idea that it was to the user's benefit that code was "known good" and then abused their user's faith in them

        Top Tip: Don't attempt to use MS as beacon of good, they have shown over time that they were rarely a good example for consumer friendly business practices

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Caldera_v_Microsoft

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "MS being not a white knight where it comes to fair business practices"

          Right. And it underwent antitrust investigations and had to change business practices. It was right, albeit MS never went so far to forbid installing 3rd party software and forcing to use its own development tools.

          MS is not and was not a beacon of good, but I'm appalled Google and Apple are regarded "nice companies" when they employ anti-competition practices that are far worst than anything MS has ever attempted.

          You are right, they should have not used dirty tactics to block DR-DOS - they should have just said Win 3.x could run only on an MS-approved OS, and DR-DOS wasn't one of them because it didn't fit MS policies - exactly what Apple does. Or they could have paid 30% of DR-DOS revenues to MS, of course.

          Can you guess what would have happened then if MS had said that?

          Still, you could get rid of MS software altogether. Try to install another OS on your Apple phone...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "MS being not a white knight where it comes to fair business practices"

            I never said Apple were a beacon of good either, merely that they used to be and atleast did all the work themselves as to MS forbidding anything they never needed to as they were seen as the standard that everything else had to apply to on the PC.

            If you actually want my actual opinion of this issue rather than just your factually incorrect post then I am against all the unreasonable restriction on consumers that US law allows drm, dmca patents etc. They take your money and they still want to dictate what you can do with what you bought so as to be able to sell you the same thing again when your already bought it once, just like windows.

            All that being said no one is forced to buy apple products nor sell in their walled garden, so clearly anyone who agreed to help screwing their customers is just as guilty as apple themselves. So when they bitch about how much apple is charging them for the privilage to screewing apple's customers my heart does not exactly bleed for their plight.

            As to installing another OS on an Apple phone, I have never bought one hence not jail broken one either but I would imagine it is just as hard to get around secure boot, or have to mod an Xbox for kodi.

            From my perspective it is corporate culture and their control over US law that is the real demon behind the throne and pointing the finger at just one US company's consumer abuses is missing the point that in the US all this is both legal and supported by the state.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: "MS being not a white knight where it comes to fair business practices"

              "All that being said no one is forced to buy apple products nor sell in their walled garden, so clearly anyone who agreed to help screwing their customers is just as guilty as apple themselves. "

              Actually, no.

              The article is about developers and the tax on them. The fact is that the developers have to work where their customers are - or they dont sell shit. The customers for mobile apps are on either Apple or Google phones. There is not really any choice.

              I assume you have a mobile phone - and by your post, its a google - unless you are living with a Nokia from the '90s

              'pointing the finger at just one US company's consumer abuses is missing the point that in the US all this is both legal and supported by the state.'

              Again, no - you need to read the bill - here - https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/1R/proposed/H.2005COBB.pdf

              The hearing certainly did hear from 2 that form a monopoly - but the bill being discussed was for wider app marketplaces (including Facebook, probably).

              True, it didnt cover wider market places (like farmers markets, for example) but generally State laws dont - the general principles laws are driven by Congress (when driven at all)...

      3. Peter D

        Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

        Quite. The app stores should have a fee structure similar in size to a payment processor such as Visa and MasterCard.

        1. gnasher729 Silver badge

          Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

          "Quite. The app stores should have a fee structure similar in size to a payment processor such as Visa and MasterCard."

          But they are not payment processors. For example, Apple pays the complete cost of hosting free apps. Apple provides services to all apps. When you get notifications while the app is not running, that's because Apple is sending them to your phone through the phone network. And lots of other things.

          1. Peter D

            Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

            "But they are not payment processors. For example, Apple pays the complete cost of hosting free apps. Apple provides services to all apps. When you get notifications while the app is not running, that's because Apple is sending them to your phone through the phone network. And lots of other things"

            Apple has total control over what can be run on its phones. It uses that total control over its walled garden to maintain a monopoly on service delivery and its high fees are based on the fact it has rigged the game to have no competition. The idea that it should be given a pass because it provides marginal services on a platform designed so that no one can compete in providing those services is ridiculous.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

          The app store is not a payment processor though. They handle (in most regions) the VAT/Sales tax as the sale is with them, not with the developer, this is a massive reduction in burden on smaller developers. Visa / Mastercard don't do any of that.

      4. DevOpsTimothyC

        Re: "App stores are natural monopolies"

        "Windows was never a monopoly because nothing hindered people to install a different operating system"

        Microsoft have been convicted of attempting exactly that. There have been many occasions where they have strong armed hardware manufacturers to include windows with every laptop / desktop purchase.

        There were also quite a few elements of TPM / Secure boot when it was being proposed which was Microsoft (or signed by Microsoft) only

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "Microsoft have been convicted of attempting exactly that"

          Ehm, no. They attempted to force to pay a license for every PC PC - still, not every manufactured did it, and assembled PC fully escaped it. And it was brought to court in 1994 for that, and had to stop. But it never hindered you to install another OS, nor MS ever controlled what you run on your PC.

          We're now in 2021, twenty-seven years later, and other companies are still using similar tactics to extract forced money from manufacturers. Why Apple should get money from in-app purchases? Why there are people who believes this is right, now?

          And we see how that TPM stuff is hindering Linux, of course.

  6. Grunchy Silver badge

    Same as McShakes

    The lid was blown off a similar scheme between McDonalds Corp and Taylor refrigeration to exercise monopoly power over franchisees to lock them into faulty buggy ice cream machines and frequent and expensive servicing fees.

    https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4

    Not to mention John Deere holding farmer’s tractors hostage with software locks and warrantee threats, etc.

    https://youtu.be/EPYy_g8NzmI

    “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

    1. DevOpsTimothyC

      Re: Same as McShakes

      John Deere is a little more complex because some of it touches on environmental / emissions legislation, but agreed they are abusing that position

  7. naive

    Fighting Big Tech is like fighting illegal drugs

    It may seem a bit off, there are a few striking similarities between those businesses.

    Both incur multi trillion dollar revenues each year.

    Both have extensive influence over politicians and users.

    Both offer products which are harmful and wanted by large amounts of users at the same time.

    Both offer products whose undesirable characteristics are ignored by most of its users.

    Both industries produce things which are harmful to society.

    Both require extensive changes in laws and law-enforcement procedures to fight and suppress them effectively.

    Both pay off politicians and officials by either bribes, campaign contributions, favorable media coverage or search results.

    A difference is that BIG Tech does not engage in criminal retaliation against people who stand up against them, so more people feel free to initiate actions to resolve the issues their presence creates. However this is offset by the power over the media they have, enabling them to tarnish whom ever they want.

    The Great Chinese Firewall is perhaps a blessing, if US Big Tech had obtained a serious foothold in China, the world would be completely enslaved by them.

    Given the largely unsuccessful struggle against proliferation of illegal drugs use in the last 50 years, there seems little hope if significant steps can be made against them.

  8. FlamingDeath Silver badge

    Companies...

    Are just a collection of people, usually departmentalised

    The higher up the pecking order, the more concentrated the decision making and sociopathic tendencies

    I recommend people go watch ‘The Corporation’ documentary.

  9. FlamingDeath Silver badge

    I call it the...

    CrAPP Store

    So much effing junk, is anyone else underwhelmed by the sheer turd available on these platforms?

    Must be something to do with their shitty walled gardens

  10. iron Silver badge

    Spotify complaining about payments, oh the irony.

    Perhaps these companies would prefer the old bricks & mortar retail model where the shop takes at least 50% of the purchase price and the larger stores expect every delivery to come with some freebies or you don't get good placement?

  11. xyz Silver badge

    Just a thought...

    Why don't those nice people at MS, who have an app store (with a few dusty shelves), start selling android and ios apps for developers. I'm sure they would only charge say 10% instead of the usual 30% arse tear of the competition.

  12. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Well, he's right about that

    “We did not copy Tile’s product. We did not copy Tile’s application.”

    Indeed. Instead they used APIs that they refused to give Tile access too. The issue isn't whether Apple copied Tile; it's whether Apple abused its power to provide an (allegedly) superior product.

    1. mevets

      The second mouse gets the cheese.

      I think these ' we are not copiers ' outbursts are the funniest thing about the ascendant Apple. Pretty much all of Apple's success has been based on copying, but not cloning, others inventions. Whether the ipod was a copy of the early mp3 players or earlier walkman is inconsequential; the ipod was in a league of its own and never looked back. The other popular gadgets were little different, but the Newton was a cutting edge invention.

      Converting technology into shiny products has long been Apple's core, if you mind the pun. it is a rare talent, but apparently a source of shame that their inventions haven't shown the same promise.

  13. Joe Gurman

    "Apple and Google can mine app users for data, and keep it to themselves."

    Sounds like one of those sentences in Chomsky's original textbook that's an example of something that's grammatically correct but syntactically (and logically) impossible. When did Google ever keep anything to themselves, except by combining it with cross-site trackers and other, third-party sources of information, in order to sell some version of the data on to third-party advertisers?

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