Apple vs the Law

(formularsumo.co.uk)

378 points tempodox | 1 comments | 11 Jul 25 06:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.214s | source

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quitit ◴[11 Jul 25 14:44 UTC] No.44532710[source]▶

I'm interested to see what this will all be in ~20 years time.

Policies with protectionist side effects (even if they're not marketed as such) have historically led to local businesses being less capable and less competitive over time. Whereby there is no need to compete or innovate as the business is insulated from genuine competition.

My assumption is that the EU believes this will lead to local businesses having the breathing space to grow to a critical mass where they could compete more robustly.

Looking back to historical examples we saw that businesses that benefitted from artificial protections were less competitive than ones that did not receive a benefit. We also saw that favoured businesses tended to be trapped inside the market where they receive those protections, i.e. they were optimised for those conditions. We see this more contemporarily with protected Russian and Chinese firms.

I am also curious if state-sponsored competitors will engineer a way around being labelled a gatekeeper. Such as by having a range of products with shared intellectual property spread across a number of legally discrete entities, effectively using a distributed form of anti-competitive practices.

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paulluuk ◴[11 Jul 25 14:50 UTC] No.44532790[source]▶

>>44532710 #

I don't understand what you feel is "protectionist" about this? I would say that the US pressuring the EU on behalf of big corporations is arguably "protectionist", but I don't think that's what you mean.

But even if policies make companies less "capable" and less "competitive": that completely ignores what effect they have on society. I bet that a company that was given a free pass to use slavery would be very capable and very competitive -- but is that what we want for our society?

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1. quitit ◴[12 Jul 25 00:49 UTC] No.44538309[source]▶

>>44532790 #

The only "feel" is pretending that these rules don't have a protectionist outcome. It's -widely- observed by economists, and even the EU's own statements include language that infers protection of local industry.

The EU rules also require a fair deal of transparency about these matters, so sticking one's fingers in their ears is not an option. Here for example you can view Spotify's very active schedule with the EU parliament:

https://www.lobbyfacts.eu/datacard/spotify?rid=365747616583-... (which includes various click-throughs to the official EU publishings.) That's an outsized representation for a business of their revenue and service model. It's on par with significantly larger businesses such as pharmaceutical companies and banks.

In matters concerning the app store, the EU met with Spotify not less than 65 times, prior to fining Apple for app store practices. In that same window of time Spotify has increased their prices when competitors did not, all while introducing no features (not even those which were promised), while all major competitors introduced a steady stream of innovation and near-unanimously froze prices.

With this you are directly observing the aforementioned symptoms of protected businesses: prices go up and the product doesn't improve. Meanwhile competitors not receiving those benefits are offering a more competitive product.

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