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Apple vs the Law

(formularsumo.co.uk)
377 points tempodox | 3 comments | 11 Jul 25 06:49 UTC | HN request time: 1.371s | source
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simonask ◴[11 Jul 25 08:22 UTC] No.44529604[source]▶
As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple's market cap. There is no chance that national laws and entities would be sufficient to protect my consumer rights from corporations this size.

The EU is fundamentally a centre-right, liberalist, pro-business coalition, but what that means is that it is pro-competition. What's really impressive is that it seems to mostly refrain from devolving into protectionist policies, giving no preferential treatment to European businesses against international (intercontinental?) competitors, despite strong populist tendencies in certain member states.

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1. tobias3 ◴[11 Jul 25 11:21 UTC] No.44530885[source]▶
I'd argue that it doesn't go far enough at this point. There are imaginable scenarios now where the US uses AWS/Microsoft like China currently uses rare earth exports or even further and AWS/Microsoft + Android/iOS are critical infrastructure. Having some "sovereign cloud" etc. won't help since this needs continuous monitoring and improvements from the mothership.

Merely doing monopoly regulation won't help. We have to actually destroy the monopolies.

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2. lowwave ◴[12 Jul 25 11:51 UTC] No.44541405[source]▶
Good luck with that. Even when Standard Oil has being broken up, it just resulted in a bunch of smaller but more profitable companies. Following the breakup of Standard Oil, the government created the Oil Division of the US Fuel Administration and the Federal Oil Conservation Board, effectively making the oil industry a government-protected monopoly.

With the JEDI contracts ect that is basically what is happening to Google, MS and AWS.

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3. tobias3 ◴[12 Jul 25 12:53 UTC] No.44541722[source]▶
I very much doubt that the US would allow EU institution to break up the US tech companies as they see fit. So this is not a viable approach (even if it would work).

The approach would be to gradually limit EU market access till there are other alternatives. This has worked for e.g. China.

The German defense force uses Google cloud instances for their "sovereign cloud". I very much doubt that if there were a German Hyper-scaler that it would have similar market access to contracts such as JEDI. Having a buy European requirement there is pretty much a no-brainer IMO.