[HN Gopher] Google fined EUR100M by Italian antitrust over Googl...
___________________________________________________________________
Google fined EUR100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of
dominance
Author : luke14free
Score : 473 points
Date : 2021-05-13 07:27 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.repubblica.it)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.repubblica.it)
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| evidencebased wrote:
| This is a huge reason why China imposes certain rules on foreign
| corps if they wanted to operate there. The media and politicians
| makes it all about politics, but it is an entirely reasonable way
| to deal with foreign mega corps. Local competitors would not
| survive against something like Google without government
| protection. 100 mil fine every once in a while is just the cost
| of doing business for them. How many similar cases have occurred
| that never went to court?
| gruez wrote:
| >Local competitors would not survive against something like
| Google without government protection
|
| So you want them to be protected. In other words,
| protectionism?
| [deleted]
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Not the parent, but I do, yes.
|
| Every country does protectionism in some form, it's the only
| way to prevent monopolies. Even the United States, where
| politics are led more by the free market than by citizens,
| throws around embargoes and regulation when important parts
| of the economy is threatened.
|
| One recent example is the American attempts at sabotaging the
| new gas line from Russia to the EU. Companies get threatened
| with embargoes, insurances get cancelled, all to maintain the
| European dependence on the US energy market.
|
| Protectionism protects not only the local economy, but also
| protects countries from foreign influence. All the major
| world powers want their own version of important economic and
| digital infrastructure to protect themselves against the
| other powers trying to sway public opinion. Google and
| YouTube are major influences in the world and without an
| effective ban they will continue to do so. People want
| convenience above all else, their own long-term interests be
| damned. Ignoring the threats of a globalised industry
| benefits no country.
| brutal_chaos_ wrote:
| that's like a well off person eating a cheap meal at McDonalds.
|
| Fines are for show (when it comes to corporations). It's high
| time we start making people within companies responsible for the
| actions they take.
|
| The company asked you to do something against the law/etc. Report
| it. Oh, you weren't taught the laws? that's a failure of the
| company not preparing you for the job. All higher ups should be
| personally fined or jailed depending on the act, you should be
| fined or jailed with a reduced sentence (ignorance of the law
| isn't a defense). And you should be able to sue the company for
| damages and lack of training.
|
| These are wild ideas, I know, I'm just hoping for more personal
| responsibility and less hiding behind the company.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Good for Italy -- they have no chance of creating a Google, so
| their best path to tech dollars is a regular cadence of these
| $100m fines (but not so often that Big Tech exits the Italian
| market).
| speedgoose wrote:
| If Google leaves the Italian market, Italy could have a chance
| to create a local Google. Google's scale is huge and they have
| a lot of products, but a subset of these products, such as
| tracking, ads, search, emails, and videos, is achievable for a
| country like Italy in my opinion.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Italy already created a new Google, it went incredibly well:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3557824
| KMag wrote:
| Maybe. I worked at Google on the indexing team from
| 2006-2010. During that time, I vaguely remember some
| announcement of a government-funded search engine project in
| France to beat Google. If I remember correctly, it wasn't the
| first time France tried a government-funded search engine.
|
| I suspect it's more a problem of network effects than it's a
| problem of money. Google just has so much data at this point
| that it's really tough to get marginally enough better search
| results than Google to get a significant number of people to
| switch. Personally, I use DDG for ideological reasons.
|
| I hope competition heats up in the ads and search spaces, but
| I'm not holding my breath, even with significant government
| funding.
|
| In my time at Google, I also remember being slightly
| concerned about Cuil. Cuil was started by some ex-Googlers
| and had some sophisticated machine learning algorithms to
| find images to attach at the top of most search results
| pages. They were well-funded and supposedly had a larger
| corpus than Google. On launch day, Cuil inexplicably attached
| the image of a porn star with an unrelated name to a
| journalist's search for his own name. It also had tons other
| very bizarre choices of images, all inexplicably blamed on
| scaling issues due to unanticipated demand. Also, at the time
| that Yahoo shut down its search infrastructure to outsource
| Bing's search back-end, our internal quality metrics actually
| showed Yahoo ahead of Bing. I'm sure getting all of that
| Yahoo traffic to siphon up more behavioral data helped Bing's
| search results in the long term.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The biggest blocker is talent. Who's going to join the
| French Government's Google at 1/3 the pay with no sushi in
| the cafeteria?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "pay with no sushi in the cafeteria?"
|
| Look you mock french for many things, but food is not one
| of them
| speedgoose wrote:
| There is plenty of extremely talented people who do not
| work for Google or any random unicorn in California. Some
| people prefer to stay where they currently live. And you
| are not going to make many Frenchmen move continent for
| an American cafeteria menu.
| spoonjim wrote:
| There are some extremely talented French people but why
| would they work for the French government instead of
| remotely for... whoever they want? Unless they don't
| speak English.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Working for the government can be more meaningful than
| selling to companies available human brain time for
| example. Also, working remotely is not for everyone or
| possible in every company.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I can understand government work being meaningful if
| you're doing something that can't be done in the private
| sector like setting policy, regulatory compliance,
| working on health or climate change etc, but why would it
| be meaningful to help the French government build a
| shitty Google clone, to the tune of a 2/3 pay cut?
| riffraff wrote:
| I think you're thinking of Quaero[0], as I remember it
| nobody in the ITC industry thought it had a chance.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero
| Animats wrote:
| _In my time at Google, I also remember being slightly
| concerned about Cuil. Cuil was started by some ex-Googlers
| and had some sophisticated machine learning algorithms to
| find images to attach at the top of most search results
| pages. They were well-funded and supposedly had a larger
| corpus than Google._
|
| Not that well funded. They had about $30m of VC money, ran
| through it, and shut down suddenly. They also had a
| terrible crawler, noted for hitting sites over and over at
| high rates for no useful reason.
|
| I talked to their people. I asked them how they planned to
| get to profitability, since they didn't run ads. They
| didn't have an answer to that.
|
| Right now, Neeva, and You are search startups in similar
| positions. Neeva is operating, and you can get on their
| wait list. They have a very intrusive questionnaire you
| have to answer to get in. Rather than tracking what you do
| on line, they just ask you.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > Good for Italy -- they have no chance of creating a Google,
| so their best path to tech dollars is a regular cadence of
| these $100m fines (but not so often that Big Tech exits the
| Italian market).
|
| Are you saying that it's not that Google was wrong here, but
| that the Italian government want to parasitize on Google?
| spoonjim wrote:
| Yes
| johschmitz wrote:
| How I understand it he is saying Google is willing to pay for
| "being wrong" or rather "behaving in certain ways". Now it is
| just kind of a fee and both sides are happy. Maybe not the
| perfect situation for the customers but between the two
| parties and with the current legal framework the deal makes
| sense. Doesn't it? Should we be surprised about any of the
| two parties optimizing their position within the given
| constraints? I think it is quite clear that if another
| outcome is desired the constraints need to be changed.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Yep - on the spectrum of possibilities the ones that
| preserve the status quo are most preferable to Google.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Why is the EU the only one doing anything about monopolies? I'm
| tired of useless US politicians letting these massive
| corporations run our entire country. Break them up already.
| kavalg wrote:
| Because it looks corporations are the government. I really like
| the idea of democracy, but it looks like politics and democracy
| are two very different things. Actually I would love to see
| some usable digital democracy project coming out. I imagine
| things like:
|
| - always having the possibility for a direct voting for e.g. a
| new law/regulation
|
| - a (deep) hierarchy of delegates/representatives on a per
| topic basis
|
| - immediate retraction of trust/support from a representative
|
| - maybe some micro monetary support for representatives
| bgorman wrote:
| Because none of the big tech companies are based in Europe, so
| there is limited political downside to going after them.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| allegedly, Google did not approve Enel X charging station finder
| app Juicepass on the Android Auto store due to security and
| standards concerns. I do not understand why Google did not
| provide a clear exhaustive explanation on the specifics but just
| a generic "We have strong standards for the publishing of apps on
| our Android Auto store". They are not even trying to justify or
| defend themselves because they don't need to - they will pay the
| fine and move on.
| 3v1n0 wrote:
| They also have to provide a SDK
| icpmoles wrote:
| Quick summary: the biggest electricity provider in the country
| (ENEL) made an app (Juicepass) to find and manage their charging
| stations across the country. The Android Auto functionality of
| the app has been rejected by Google for non disclosed "security
| concerns while driving". The antitrust ruled out it was because
| Google wanted to sabotage competitor apps to the charging
| stations finder built-in in the Google Maps app. On top of the
| fine Google will need to provide the SDK to integrate their app
| with Android Auto.
| genericacct wrote:
| The fact that ENEL is owned by the employers of the ruling
| judges is just a coincidence.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the Italian judiciary is incapable of
| acting independently and impartially?
| easytiger wrote:
| Italy is about as broken and corrupt as many African dumps
| saddlerustle wrote:
| The majority of italians rate the independence of courts to
| be poor, which is among the lowest ratings in the EU [1]
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/justice_scor
| eboar...
| carlob wrote:
| Probably due to Berlusconi and Salvini trying to escape
| their legal troubles by calling the judges communists.
| unobtaniumstool wrote:
| Italy also ranks between Grenada and Saudi Arabia in
| terms of corruption.
|
| https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/ita
| riffraff wrote:
| this is because they think the courts are politicized,
| not because the judiciary takes input from the
| government. In fact there has been a constant conflict
| between judges and government for the last 30 years.
| anoncake wrote:
| Doesn't that mean the judiciary is independent, but
| biased?
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It would be good to see objective metrics, like how much
| conviction depends on wealth, etc
| matsemann wrote:
| Just like all judges and prosecutors are employed by the
| people?
| carlob wrote:
| ENEL has been privatized a long time ago and the Italian
| government has just a plurality stake.
| permo-w wrote:
| just a plurality?
|
| wouldn't a plurality make them the controlling shareholder?
| kosievdmerwe wrote:
| Plurality means largest stake, but that stake is less
| than 50%.
|
| So it means that they have a lot of say, but they can be
| overridden if every other shareholder disagrees.
| artiszt wrote:
| assuming this to be true and of factual, in praxi [thus
| procedural], significance in this case, then of course Google
| hasn't done any wrong ?
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| A true penalty would have been to limit Google Play to 5%
| commissions for any purchasers or developers in Italy.
| Pxtl wrote:
| "ruled" or "ruled out"? Because those have opposing meanings.
| bsdubernerd wrote:
| And a quick reminder to everybody else that walled gardens
| don't actually help the consumer. They only arbitrarily
| restrict choice, they don't actually improve security (if any,
| that's provided by the sandboxing, not by the store "review").
|
| If this company (ENEL) wasn't a huge state-wide electric
| company (inheriting their power and ties from the previous
| state-owned monopoly) how many chances do you think they had to
| fight?
|
| As a small fish you're just dumped.
| permo-w wrote:
| I agree that the downsides outweigh the positives, but they
| do provide security to a certain extent.
|
| For example, you can give your grandma an iPad or a
| chromebook, and there's very little chance of her
| accidentally installing x nasty malware.
|
| Give her a proper laptop, and at any one time she's about 6
| clicks from something dodgy, especially if she's on social
| media.
| egocentric wrote:
| That's because of system-level protections like the
| sandbox, not App Review or the App Store.
| permo-w wrote:
| yes but if you allow alternative app stores, then what?
| it's either regulated by apple, which defeats the point,
| or it's a security risk.
|
| I'm against walled gardens, I just disagree that there's
| no security upside to it
| Barrin92 wrote:
| put a system setting in place that lets you lock down the
| device if necessary with a password so grandma can use it
| safely?
|
| As OP points out you do not need an app store monopoly,
| you just need adjustable device settings.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| As an Apple consumer, having a "walled garden" is great for
| UX, IMO. I don't have to deal with a ton of shitty wallet
| apps, everything is in one App Store, etc.
|
| I find this much preferable to the situation on Android.
| zepto wrote:
| > And a quick reminder to everybody else that walled gardens
| don't actually help the consumer.
|
| This is not supported by the article at all.
|
| > They only arbitrarily restrict choice,
|
| This statement is total bullshit. Even if a few scams get
| through, and even if Google has abused its store, it's not
| only _arbitrary_.
|
| > they don't actually improve security (if any, that's
| provided by the sandboxing, not by the store "review").
|
| No, Sandboxing cannot stop large classes of well known social
| engineering scams.
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-
| ove...
|
| Here is data proving that walled gardens do in fact protect
| consumers greatly.
|
| You don't have to like them, and of course there are
| downsides, but let's not pretend there are no benefits.
| oblio wrote:
| Walled gardens are just security theater. The App Store
| revenue was $72bn in 2020, yet the review time for an app is
| a few hours. App reviewers barely have any qualifications,
| they're just "call center operators" running off a script.
| antipaul wrote:
| Details on app review process, including picture of
| reviewer workstation, surfaced in the Epic game trial:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/07/app-store-35-percent-
| of...
| spoonjim wrote:
| I've watched the App Store reviewers try out apps (not in
| person, from logging) and they do seem to do a pretty
| thorough job of exercising the functionality.
| danuker wrote:
| How do you know those were not automated systems?
| spoonjim wrote:
| Could have been, but then we got rejected for something
| which would have been hard to detect automatically.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| That makes me wonder how easy it is to just hide certain
| features during the review process.
| bugfix wrote:
| It is actually pretty easy. As long as you don't use any
| private APIs, you can completely change the behavior of
| your app after the review by changing server side
| settings.
| zepto wrote:
| Yes, but if they catch you, you'll get kicked out of the
| store altogether.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Why? We do it all the times, we ship most of our app
| behind feature switches and enable them in the future for
| subsets of users
| _jal wrote:
| It is partly an intent issue. If you are attempting to
| pull one over on Apple by hiding app behavior during
| review, well, they are not going to be happy about that.
|
| Other folks are also noting that, because humans are
| sometimes bad at evaluating each others' intent, it is
| probably a good idea to attempt to make one's intent
| clear if going this route, lest you annoy the gatekeeper.
| zepto wrote:
| It depends whether the disabled features break the rules
| of the App Store, or are fraudulent. Presumably you
| aren't doing that.
| bassdropvroom wrote:
| Right, but you don't know that they're not rejecting it
| because of your features being disabled. You only now
| that they didn't reject it.
| collaborative wrote:
| It's extremely easy, but it also is extremely easy to get
| permanently banned if they find out you "switched on" a
| hidden feature once the app got into production. A
| permanent ban can be very damaging, so one needs to make
| sure to be completely legit when it comes to app store
| submission reviews and app store ratings
| tyingq wrote:
| I wonder how this works with webviews. Do they expect you
| to resubmit the same binary if a page displayed in a
| webview changes?
| Hamuko wrote:
| Isn't that how Fortnite did Project Liberty?
| amacneil wrote:
| Can confirm. We got the Coinbase iOS app banned for doing
| this back in the day, when Apple did not allow bitcoin
| apps (IIRC showing the price was ok, transacting was
| not). Even after they relaxed their bitcoin restrictions
| (and calls to the head of app store), they still made us
| wait out the 12 month ban before reinstating the app.
|
| https://www.coindesk.com/coinbase-bitcoin-app-apple-app-
| stor...
|
| https://venturebeat.com/2014/12/14/bitcoin-wallet-
| coinbase-n...
| asddubs wrote:
| I wonder how they confirm this happened. Do they store a
| video of the review and cross reference on suspicion?
| kelnos wrote:
| Given that Apple has no oversight at all here, they can
| do whatever they want. If an app makes it through review,
| but has forbidden functionality, Apple will just assume
| that the developer hid that functionality for the review
| process, and ban them. Doesn't matter if the approval was
| due to a mistake on the reviewer's part. Apple won't
| care.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > Apple did not allow bitcoin apps
|
| This is what is wrong with walled gardens, laws should be
| made by lawmakers, not Apple.
| buran77 wrote:
| Who said anything about laws? Apple's rules are no
| different from HN's rules. And for that matter, your
| house rules. They're arbitrary decisions to the liking of
| the respective party. They just have to not be against
| the law themselves. If they are problematic the solution
| isn't to generically "ban rules" (saying it out loud
| already hints at the "value" of this proposition) but to
| change the law to prohibit certain rules.
| reader_mode wrote:
| This is a super naive analogy - HN doesn't serve close to
| 50% of the US market, nor is it a platform through which
| billions of dollars transact. If it did very different
| rules apply, rightfully so, scale matters, market
| position matters - from Apple profit margins it's obvious
| they are abusing monopolistic position.
| bassdropvroom wrote:
| VW should hire this person!
| oblio wrote:
| https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen
| simias wrote:
| If we judge by the result these app store seem to do fairly
| well security-wise, no?
|
| Compared to Windows as a case study of what happens when
| you let users install anything they want from untrusted
| sources, it seems that the app stores do fairly well at
| culling obvious malware. At least that's what I experienced
| comparing the number of time I had to cleanup a friend or
| family member's computer filled with malware and browser
| toolbars vs. iphones and androids.
| zimbatm wrote:
| A large part of the stability can be attributed to
| sandboxing. This is what prevents apps from gaining
| unprivileged access and destabilizing the system. This is
| the time where relatives will call you.
|
| What you don't see, is all the apps that steal the user's
| data.
|
| Curation obviously helps but it's difficult to measure to
| what extent.
| sneak wrote:
| It has to be both to work; the sandbox would fail in a
| day if there were no review/revocation system.
| nickflood wrote:
| Web browsers don't have widely known glaring security
| holes in them even though their vendors don't approve the
| content that's viewed through them.
|
| On the other hand, you can't be completely sure that
| sandboxes on mobile devices don't have actively exploited
| security issues as there are many ways to bypass app
| review from discovering the true functionality of an app.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Web browsers don 't have widely known glaring security
| holes in them even though their vendors don't approve the
| content that's viewed through them._
|
| Anything widely known gets fixed quickly. There are
| plenty of holes in browser sandboxing. The number
| approximately doubles as soon as you look at anything
| !Chrome, too.
| nickflood wrote:
| Yeah, but by that same logic there may be unknown holes
| in app review and app sandbox as well. And since Apple
| aren't big on publicising their missteps (while Chrome is
| developed in the open), we may never really know how
| secure the app store model really is.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Yeah, but by that same logic there may be unknown
| holes in app review and app sandbox as well._
|
| To exploit those you need to get past app review in the
| first place, though, and the type of code that can do
| stuff like this for the most part sticks out like a sore
| thumb when subjected to static analysis.
|
| Most of Apple's checks around this stuff are automated, I
| understand, and are applied to every submission
| instantly.
| philistine wrote:
| I'd argue only the revocation is needed. macOS is moving
| towards that model: every app requires notarization,
| Apple provides it without asking questions, but reserves
| the right to revoke the running privileges of any app.
| This makes so much more sense.
| sneak wrote:
| There are certain apps (like Wireguard) that Apple will
| not notarize for non-App Store distribution.
|
| Basically, for certain classes of apps, macOS is now
| already taking the iOS "App Store or gtfo" model.
| zepto wrote:
| How does it make sense to allow scams to do their damage
| _before_ shutting them down?
| zepto wrote:
| > A large part of the stability can be attributed to
| sandboxing. This is what prevents apps from gaining
| unprivileged access and destabilizing the system. This is
| the time where relatives will call you.
|
| True
|
| > What you don't see, is all the apps that steal the
| user's data.
|
| Exactly this. Apple now has policies against
| fingerprinting etc. which can't be prevented by
| sandboxing.
|
| > Curation obviously helps but it's difficult to measure
| to what extent.
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-
| ove...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| There is a lot of phone malware, showing random ad
| notifications, collecting gps data, sending it to
| whoknowswhere, some even sending premium sms messages,
| etc. There are less drive-by installs, but more
| intentional installs (eg. flashlight app with a gajillion
| permissions).
| user-the-name wrote:
| It is a lot more than "theatre". The first line of defence
| is the sandboxing built into the OS. The second line is a
| lot of automated analysis of the binaries that are
| uploaded. The human review is the third line, but that is
| much less about security.
| dalbasal wrote:
| ..and the last line of defense is removing a bad app to
| prevent further harm.
|
| Drivers licenses aren't only about competence. Sure,
| there's a test. But, there's also the ability to revoke a
| license.
| Siira wrote:
| So please explain why the licenses need to cost a
| fortune? Simple Bayesian thinking will tell you what the
| real motive is, and what is being used as the coverup
| motive.
| dalbasal wrote:
| There is no "real" motive, only history. One thing led to
| another. Now we are here.
| Siira wrote:
| Your theory has zero predictive powers, unlike mine.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) Apple has invested heavily in automated review methods
| over the years.
|
| b) I don't know what qualifications you think an app
| reviewer needs. They are not looking through the code but
| simply playing with the app on a range of devices.
|
| c) It is only a few hours for updates. Initial app
| submissions often take days/weeks and are very thorough.
| codesternews wrote:
| I agree with you, But you know there are different rules
| for each app.
|
| Small developers don't get same access as big developers
| and their apps get klled for smallest reason just by
| having some obscure policy or change in policy.
|
| Developers don't have same access as Apple google eg:
| Screen Time
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes. Because I really want third party developers to be
| able to track my app usage and disable other apps...
| Karunamon wrote:
| Hi, rescuetime user here. Yes, I want apps to be able to
| track my usage if I ask for it.
| benrbray wrote:
| > They are not looking through the code but simply
| playing with the app on a range of devices.
|
| Hence, security theater.
| simion314 wrote:
| > a) Apple has invested heavily in automated review
| methods over the years.
|
| There was a news here where malware was found on the
| Apple iOS store, and Apple changed their mind in the last
| moment and refused to inform the victims.
|
| The reality show you (if you want to see) that
|
| - malware happens (you can't make automatic analysis code
| to detect all possible issues )
|
| - Apple users will mostly have a wrong image of the Store
| security due to Apple not informing victims when bad
| things happen and a big PR budget to paint a fiction.
|
| The reviewers are there mostly to make sure you do not
| put a link to your website and buypass the Apple payments
| and make sure that the app does not crash and use the
| approved UX. I really hope you are not that navie to
| think they are opening the app in a debugger and checking
| for weird code.
| wwtrv wrote:
| You need register with a real name and credit card and
| pay 100$ to be able to publish anything on the app store.
| Irregardless of how effective the review process is even
| if you manage to sneak any app with malware past it Apple
| will still be able to remotely remove it from every
| user's device and ban your account. This alone make the
| Appstore inherently safer than any system which would
| allow side loading.
|
| As for code, they run relatively extensive automatic
| tests to detect whether private (banned/undocumented)
| APIs are used, I don't know how effective they are at
| catching malware, though.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| Regardless
| simion314 wrote:
| >You need register with a real name and credit card and
| pay 100$ to be able to publish anything on the app store.
|
| This was done on Windows too, you were not forced but any
| business would sign their application, otherwise they
| user would get a scary warning that the developer is not
| know.
|
| >As for code, they run relatively extensive automatic
| tests to detect whether private (banned/undocumented)
| APIs are used, I don't know how effective they are at
| catching malware, though.
|
| The sandbox should solve this, unless the Store bans APIs
| only for some or worse there are hidden APIs that should
| not be used and the sandbox is to dumb to notice you are
| using them , then this would be security by obscurity.
|
| This topic is different then most of the other topics
| about side loading apps, in this case the giant refused
| to allow an application on the store, or allow access to
| an API without a good enough reason. This reveals again
| that rules are not fair and is very hard to get justice
| for the users.
|
| I would suggest a law to force the giants to give always
| an exact reason of why an action aganst someone happened,
| I have personal experience where an account of mine was
| banned and I have no way to appeal and I have no idea
| what was wrong. The giants are shitting on us all, as
| long as the numbers of the victims are low enough some
| flashy ads would solve their PR problems. We need
| something to make it fair for the users, make it easy to
| get our justice.
| g_p wrote:
| In the EU there is a (little known) law that does as you
| suggest -
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
|
| This regulation specifically looks at platform-to-
| business relationships, and requires actual disclosure of
| reasons, notice periods, etc.
|
| What we need to see are cases using this law (as it's
| pretty clear from article 4 what business' rights are),
| so it becomes too costly to trample over businesses in an
| unaccountable way. Once the cost of human intervention
| and support is lower than that of their legal bills and
| penalties, human support and intervention will return.
| Platforms are getting away without humans in the loop as
| a result of the lack of cost impact to them of a mistake.
| Once it hits their bottom line and gets their counsel in
| a pickle, it will start to change rapidly to preserve
| their bank balance.
| simion314 wrote:
| I am from EU, I will try and google more, my issue is
| with PlayStation and I could not find with my searches
| any way to appeal or get clarifications on what happened.
| I am not sure if sending an email on a generic contact
| email address with a link to the law will work.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Meanwhile this is what Salesforce does for their
| AppExchange applicants:
|
| https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-
| us.packagingG....
|
| [Edit] I should add that an annual listing is $150 and
| the initial security review is $2550, so no free cheese
| either.
| swiley wrote:
| Your definition of "thorough" and mine are very
| different. I highly doubt they could do a meaningful
| review without the complete source code for the app. It's
| not unusual that apps change their behavior after the
| review and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that
| the developer didn't write.
|
| The whole thing is a scam.
| zepto wrote:
| > It's not unusual that apps change their behavior after
| the review
|
| Which leads to the account being banned.
|
| > and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that the
| developer didn't write.
|
| Which are detected through analysis if they are common
| spyware.
|
| >The whole thing is a scam.
|
| Clearly not.
| swiley wrote:
| >> It's not unusual that apps change their behavior after
| the review
|
| >Which leads to the account being banned.
|
| Only if it gets noticed.
|
| >> and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that the
| developer didn't write.
|
| >Which are detected through analysis if they are common
| spyware.
|
| Facebook got away with it for many years.
|
| >>The whole thing is a scam.
|
| >Clearly not.
|
| If it weren't then they would let people choose to use
| the App Store. It only exists to protect Apple's services
| from competition.
| zepto wrote:
| > Only if it gets noticed.
|
| True, but they are getting better at noticing.
|
| >> and this sometimes comes from binary dylibs that the
| developer didn't write. >Which are detected through
| analysis if they are common spyware.
|
| > Facebook got away with it for many years.
|
| You know about that because _they were stopped_. And
| since then Apple has tightened the rules and stepped up
| detection.
|
| >>The whole thing is a scam. >Clearly not. > If it
| weren't then they would let people choose to use the App
| Store.
|
| No, because that would enable social engineering attacks
| once again.
|
| > It only exists to protect Apple's services from
| competition.
|
| This is straight up bullshit. You keep saying it, but
| it's false at face value.
|
| Millions of scams have been stopped.
|
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-
| ove...
| swiley wrote:
| Noticing malware after it's installed based on a hash
| isn't any better than eg windows defender. The App Store
| doesn't help with that at all.
|
| >You know about that because they were stopped. And since
| then Apple has tightened the rules and stepped up
| detection.
|
| Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years
| before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with
| other libraries still.
|
| >No, because that would enable social engineering attacks
| once again.
|
| People still get tricked into installing CA certs which
| is just as effective since everything has to be done in a
| browser due to the App Store restrictions. So no this
| hasn't prevented social engineering attacks, it's only
| changed them and it's come at an extreme cost.
| zepto wrote:
| > Noticing malware after it's installed based on a hash
| isn't any better than eg windows defender. The App Store
| doesn't help with that at all.
|
| False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer
| account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts,
| unlike windows defender.
|
| > Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years
| before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with
| other libraries still.
|
| That doesn't change anything.
|
| >No, because that would enable social engineering attacks
| once again.
|
| > People still get tricked into installing CA certs which
| is just as effective since everything has to be done in a
| browser due to the App Store restrictions.
|
| > So no this hasn't prevented social engineering attacks,
|
| A false statement. Many kinds of social engineering
| attacks _have definitely been prevented_.
|
| > it's only changed them
|
| Here you admit that significant classes of attack _have
| been prevented_.
|
| Your argument is that because not all attacks have been
| prevented, there is no value in preventing attacks.
|
| This is an obvious fallacy.
| swiley wrote:
| I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree
| that was worth the cost (completely forfeiting ownership
| of personal computers by anyone that wants to participate
| in group chats with iphone users.)
|
| >Here you admit that significant classes of attack have
| been prevented.
|
| I don't think people care whether they lost things on
| their phone because of malware or because of a fake CA
| cert, the attack works pretty much the same way and has
| the same result.
|
| >False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer
| account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts,
| unlike windows defender.
|
| You don't need a dev account to distribute malware in
| dylibs.
|
| >> Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years
| before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with
| other libraries still.
|
| >That doesn't change anything.
|
| It means the App Store doesn't stop malware before it's
| able to exfiltrate data from large numbers of users for
| long periods of time. That's the justification for it.
| zepto wrote:
| > I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a
| degree that was worth the cost
|
| Ok, but that's not what you said before,
|
| > (completely forfeiting ownership of personal computers
| by anyone that wants to participate in group chats with
| iphone users.)
|
| This is false. There are many group chat programs, that
| people use cross platform and they are more popular than
| iMessage.
|
| Nobody if 'forfeiting ownership' of anything anyway -
| that's just an ideological tautology.
|
| If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and
| install apps without review, then you can use a Mac.
|
| So literally no part of your statement is true.
|
| >Here you admit that significant classes of attack have
| been prevented.
|
| > I don't think people care whether they lost things on
| their phone because of malware or because of a fake CA
| cert, the attack works pretty much the same way and has
| the same result.
|
| They may not know or care about the technical details but
| they do care about the risk level, so this is a moot
| point.
|
| >False. Once a scam has been detected, the developer
| account can be disabled, which adds cost to new attempts,
| unlike windows defender.
|
| > You don't need a dev account to distribute malware in
| dylibs.
|
| No, but you do to distribute it to App Store users.
|
| >> Nope, lots of people knew it was happening for years
| before Apple actually stopped it and it happens with
| other libraries still. >That doesn't change anything.
|
| > It means the App Store doesn't stop malware before it's
| able to exfiltrate data from large numbers of users for
| long periods of time. That's the justification for it.
|
| False. It just means that some apps slip through the
| protections. It doesn't say a thing about the ones which
| are stopped.
|
| This is a repeat of the earlier fallacy: "if the
| protection doesn't stop all attacks then we don't need
| the protection", which is obviously not true.
| swiley wrote:
| >> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a
| degree that was worth the cost
|
| >Ok, but that's not what you said before,
|
| It's not worth the cost IE a scam, literally what I wrote
| in my first post.
|
| >If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage,
| and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac.
|
| Ah yes let me just go ahead and fold up the macbook so I
| can put it in my pocket. If you want to be included in a
| group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an
| iPhone. Apple knows this and that's why there's no web
| interface for iMessage.
|
| >No, but you do to distribute it to App Store users.
|
| Someone does, but it does not need to be the dylib
| author.
|
| > just means that some apps slip through the protections.
|
| This wasn't some, it was happening (and likely still is)
| on a massive scale and affected most popular apps.
|
| >This is a repeat of your earlier fallacy: "if the
| protection doesn't stop all attacks then we don't need
| the protection", which is obviously not true.
|
| Forcing the "protection" on everyone, despite the extreme
| cost, is wrong. Especially since the "protection" does
| very little to stop this kind of attack in practice. Not
| a fallacy, it's not worth the cost IE a scam.
| zepto wrote:
| > If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users
| that use iMessage you must own an iPhone.
|
| This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be
| included in a group of Android users who use Facebook
| messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to
| be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you
| must own a Windows machine.
|
| All three are true, but presumably you can see they have
| absolutely nothing to do with app review.
|
| There is no extreme cost.
|
| You say the protection does very little - but that
| ignores the numbers:
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-
| ove...
| swiley wrote:
| >This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be
| included in a group of Android users who use Facebook
| messenger, you must own an Android device.
|
| Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or
| even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat
| app which demands you use only their hardware.
|
| > If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who
| use signal, you must own a Windows machine.
|
| No you don't need a windows machine for this, just
| something that can run signal.
|
| >All three are true, but presumably you can see they have
| absolutely nothing to do with app review.
|
| They do because anyone participating in a real time
| iMessage group is forced to put up with whatever software
| policy Apple dictates on their phone.
|
| >There is no extreme cost.
|
| The cost is that you have to hand your ssh keys over to
| closed source apps to use ssh, you can't use decent chat
| applications because the app author has to have a full-
| time ops team (distinct from the team managing the chat
| server even though they already have the resources)
| managing the F**ing notification server because those are
| Apple's policies. You can't run most desktop apps because
| of licensing restrictions. There's almost no community
| maintained software so almost everything on the phone
| either costs a ton or harvests every last bit of data it
| can find (which is typically beyond what Apple supposedly
| allows) and anything remotely useful is unprofitable to
| maintain.
|
| Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is
| absolute shit.
| zepto wrote:
| >>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially
| fraudulent transactions in 2020
|
| > They never justify or source this, they literally just
| pulled it out of their ass.
|
| They pulled it out of their data.
|
| > Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or
| even a Pinephone.
|
| Exactly - as I said, there is no shortage of cross
| platform apps you can use to do group chat.
|
| > Apple is running the only popular chat app which
| demands you use only their hardware.
|
| So what? There are many options. Nobody has to use it.
|
| > Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software
| is absolute shit.
|
| Not for most consumers.
|
| If you are someone who insists on inspecting the source
| code of SSH apps, I applaud you.
|
| You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do
| this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.
|
| That's why they buy a consumer product _which doesn't
| require them to_.
| swiley wrote:
| I meant to mention this in my other reply but can't now
| because of noprocrast.
|
| >You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do
| this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.
|
| "Experts" inspecting the source code for apps allowed for
| some bare minimum security checks. Companies buy out
| smaller software projects and add spyware to them fairly
| often (on the iPhone this usually happens via dylibs
| rather than the App publisher purposefully doing it.) and
| Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this
| without an adequate replacement. The effect is much worse
| overall security.
| zepto wrote:
| > Companies buy out smaller software projects and add
| spyware to them fairly often (on the iPhone this usually
| happens via dylibs rather than the App publisher
| purposefully doing it.)
|
| Yes.
|
| and Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this
| without an adequate replacement.
|
| No - these can be scanned for during app review.
|
| > The effect is much worse overall security.
|
| No, consumer software outside the App Store is rarely
| examined by experts who have access to the source code.
|
| This certainty is not a general practice.
| swiley wrote:
| I would be willing to bet money that there is more
| malware on the App Store than in the official Debian
| Repos.
| zepto wrote:
| So what? There is more malware in the App Store than on
| floppy disks for the Atari ST too.
|
| The Debian repos are not a software store.
| swiley wrote:
| If you hand auth secrets to random apps on the App Store
| they will get stolen, this happens all the time. Having
| some contractor spend a few hours poking at the GUI
| doesn't mean consumers aren't required to be responsible.
| zepto wrote:
| > If you hand auth secrets to random apps on the App
| Store they will get stolen,
|
| I agree. This is why Apple is offering 'login with
| Apple'. It's safer than entering credentials.
|
| > this happens all the time.
|
| No it doesn't. There are a few rare cases, but many more
| are stopped by review.
|
| > Having some contractor spend a few hours poking at the
| GUI doesn't mean consumers aren't required to be
| responsible.
|
| No, but almost nobody is dealing with SSH keys, and those
| who are _should know how to deal with them_.
|
| These are consumer devices - if you need a device you can
| inspect the source for, these are not for you, but
| clearly almost nobody can do that.
| swiley wrote:
| >if you need a device you can inspect the source for,
| these are not for you, but clearly almost nobody can do
| that.
|
| Again: IPHONE USERS TEND TO LEAVE PEOPLE WHO DO THIS OUT
| OF GROUP CHATS BECAUSE OF HOW APPLE ABUSES THE PLATFORM.
| swiley wrote:
| Those numbers came from Apple, lets pull them apart:
|
| >App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially
| fraudulent transactions in 2020
|
| They never justify or source this, they literally just
| pulled it out of their ass.
|
| >Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented
| features
|
| A lot of those are probably development tools that users
| legitimately wanted.
|
| >Other rejected apps
|
| Good job they blocked some stupid obvious scams. The web
| is full of these so the users careless enough to fall for
| them will still get scammed. I don't see how that
| justifies the ridiculous situation they've created.
|
| >credit card numbers are never shared with merchant.
|
| The whole point behind credit cards is that you don't
| care if someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone
| would be using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at
| eachother. So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks
| money but that does little to help the end user.
| zepto wrote:
| > They never justify or source this, they literally just
| pulled it out of their ass.
|
| You do realize they have the data, right?
|
| >Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented
| features A lot of those are probably development tools
| that users legitimately wanted.
|
| You never justify or source this, you literally just ...
| ... I think you know how this goes.
|
| >Other rejected apps > Good job they blocked some stupid
| obvious scams. The web is full of these so the users
| careless enough to fall for them will still get scammed.
|
| No, people trust the App Store more than they trust the
| web. That's the whole point.
|
| > I don't see how that justifies the ridiculous situation
| they've created.
|
| The situation where consumers are happy to pay for
| software because someone is weeding out scams?
|
| >credit card numbers are never shared with merchant. The
| whole point behind credit cards is that you don't care if
| someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone would be
| using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at eachother.
| So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks money but
| that does little to help the end user.
|
| I guess you've never had a card stolen or been the victim
| of fraud. Eventually you can get your money back in most
| cases, but it can take a long time and be a huge hassle.
|
| Again you argue against beneficial protections for no
| apparent reason.
| Aulig wrote:
| c is not correct. I publish lots of apps for clients and
| I regularly get new apps published in less than 3 hours.
| Apples official stats are: 90% of apps get reviewed in
| less than 48h and 50% in less than 24.
| MikeUt wrote:
| All that "heavy investment", and they don't catch even
| the most obvious scams:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26888190
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26069660
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26504158
| Karunamon wrote:
| This may be a hot take, but I have a problem with the way
| that first article equates "extremely overpriced" with
| "scam".
|
| A scam is when you've been deceived or defrauded.
|
| If you consent to pay $10 a week for an app that doesn't
| provide what it claims to, that's one thing, and that
| should be actionable. But if it does what it claims to,
| not liking the price does not equate to being a scam.
| emn13 wrote:
| Except that you don't really get to pick to pay the price
| or not because of their monopoly position.
|
| At best you get to take your marbles and refuse to play
| entirely; which isn't exactly a reasonable long term
| strategy.
|
| There should be competition between app stores.
| Karunamon wrote:
| This subthread is about purchasing subscriptions to apps.
| There are multiple apps serving the same niche, so I'm
| not sure what your point is here.
| kolinko wrote:
| And yet, over it's 13 years of history there were only
| single instances of viruses/malware.
|
| Compare that to Google Play
| grawprog wrote:
| https://www.techradar.com/news/apple-app-store-is-
| apparently...
|
| https://threatpost.com/click-fraud-malware-apple-app-
| store/1...
|
| https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-apps-infected-
| malware
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/07/emails-reveal-128-million-
| ios...
|
| https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Malware_for_iOS
| kolinko wrote:
| Did you read the links you provided?
|
| The last article explicitly mentions that most of the
| malware needs iPhone to be jailbroken or the app to be
| installed outside of the App Store, which kind of proves
| my point.
|
| The research by Panda Security also showed that the ratio
| of malware on Android compared to iPhone is 50 to 1.
|
| https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/mobile-
| security...
| WanderPanda wrote:
| It's not all black and white. Walled gardens can have upsides
| for the consumer. Ruling that out discredits your argument
| dalbasal wrote:
| IMO, walled gardens are besides the point. Whatever the
| working definition of walled garden, we can find some
| consumer or situation for whom it arguably makes sense.
|
| The real problem isn't the wall, it's the gate. Adwords,
| Android, FB, Twitter, Spotify, Steam... those are all about
| controlling the gate. At that point, others do the work and
| the gatekeeper makes the profit.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| When Apple's App store first came out consumers were sour
| about a decade of "crapp(s)" on Microsoft Windows.
|
| That is, you pretty much expected to download software and
| have it trash your machine on a regular basis.
|
| Things are better today, half of that is people realizing
| that it has to get better ("national security" today, but
| it's much bigger than national in scope) and the other half
| is people realizing it is possible to get better, and Apple's
| App store is one reason for that.
|
| ---
|
| Improvements in HW and SW are what helped Microsoft, not the
| Microsoft store -- since Win 8 I think I've had a Windows
| machine where it was really possible to download third-party
| apps from the Microsoft store about 10% of machine*years.
| Part of that is that it was disabled on corporate laptops
| I've used, the other part is that the metadata database for
| the Microsoft store gets corrupted on a regular basis.
|
| I've contacted Microsofties about that and what they tell me
| is that I should delete my account on my computer and then
| reinstall the account and spend or two work days
| reconfigurings all of the "normal" Windows apps that I used
| on an everyday basis (Firefox, Jetbrains, Creative Cloud,
| Python, ...) I tell them "there's a procedure to rebuild the
| metadata database because I've see the database get rebuilt
| when the six month OS updates happen" and they act as if they
| didn't hear anything.
|
| For that matter Microsoft seems to be a counter-example to
| "the power of monopoly".
|
| For instance there are several third-party gaming "app"
| stores for Windows such as Steam. One thing they all have in
| common is that they work.
|
| When Win 8 came out DropBox and a number of imitators had
| apps that worked for Windows. There was one DropBox imitator
| that didn't work, and that was Microsoft's OneDrive. Office
| was jiggered to push you to save files to OneDrive, but if
| you were saving files to OneDrive you could frequently NOT BE
| ABLE TO SAVE FILES AT ALL!
|
| To add insult to injury, this would also trigger harassment
| from Word the next time I open it about the files it didn't
| let me save. It's like this
|
| https://tonyortega.org/2021/04/12/scientology-answers-
| danny-...
|
| I guess it proves that running an "app store" without brand
| awareness doesn't lead to industry dominance.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It can't be that simple because there is working ChargePoint
| integration with Android Auto. If they were just blocking 3rd
| party apps that wouldn't exist.
| [deleted]
| PaulHoule wrote:
| What are the rules for Android Auto?
|
| Distracted driving is a big problem, but my experience is that
| people have superstitious ideas about what is safe and what is
| dangerous in areas like that.
|
| You can certainly do experiments, and the conclusion you seem
| to reach is that you're in a lot safer with a car that has
| physical buttons for the audio, heat, etc. (Had "luxury"
| carmakers been on the ball five years or so they would have
| kicked the infotainment systems to the curb and would be giving
| customers a premium experience today -- how many $1000 does
| Android Auto knock off the resale value of your car?)
| darksaints wrote:
| Totally. I'm maybe a week or two away from buying a Model 3,
| but the thing I keep coming back to is the whole "everything
| is controlled by a touchscreen" crap. Even when physical
| controls are not designed perfectly, you can still get used
| to them to the point where they are muscle memory and no
| longer a distraction. No matter how awesome they are, touch
| screens will never not be a distraction.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| The really sad thing about this case is that there is _no way_
| that Google made anything like $100M from the charging station
| finder in Google Maps in Italy. That functionality reeks to me
| of something made by a small group of Googlers because they
| legitimately care about promoting electric cars and making life
| easier for their owners, not because Google particularly cares
| if they dominate the electric vehicle charging station finding
| market. Now that the functionality has cost them $100M and
| however much effort it takes to make a regulator-approved SDK
| for Android Auto, I'm worried that the lawyers at the company
| will just shut down that feature and others like it, which
| would be a net loss for users.
| ysavir wrote:
| So it's okay for companies like google to abuse their market
| position so long as we think they're doing it for the greater
| good?
| seaman1921 wrote:
| exactly, this is not the reinforcement you want to give the
| big tech - putting fines for the actually useful stuff using
| crappy antitrust arguments? Come on.
|
| This will just encourage them to kill all the genuinely
| useful stuff they do because honestly their legal teams can't
| spend hours vetting all of these small features and apps
| which provide immense value to certain subsets of users. And
| for what ? The shitty JuicePass app with under 2.5 rating.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| edit, s/reinforcement/punishment
| klmadfejno wrote:
| That's only sad if all they did was make a product and not
| share it with others. They also rejected a competitor access
| to their monopoly on the service. It's supposed to sting.
| Otherwise they would just do this shit all the time.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Not sure why nobody else is asking this, but what is the
| evidence? Did an investigation reveal that this actually was
| the reason for the App Store rejection?
| snambi wrote:
| companies like google needed to be spilt up and made as smaller
| entities. These companies are a threat to humanity.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I'm on Google's side here.
|
| I want Android Auto to know what type of plug I have and Google
| Maps to just show me all compatible chargers. And possibly
| handle payments. Like what Tesla has been doing for years [0].
|
| Now there's some government developed app to duplicate that
| functionality but only for their special snowflake network and
| only in their jurisdiction. Just crossed the border from France
| to Italy? Install this app (is it in international app stores
| as well? Do I have to switch my phone to that country?). Ohh
| now it has it's own map but no navigation so I'm switching back
| and forth between that and Google Maps.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/hA_B7qPyUDA?t=1145
| dan-robertson wrote:
| > The antitrust ruled out it was because Google wanted to
| sabotage competitor apps to the charging stations finder built-
| in in the Google Maps app
|
| Should this say "...ruled it was because..."? I can't figure
| out the reason for the fine otherwise.
| simonh wrote:
| Just to explain for non-native anglophones, I think what they
| meant was "gave out a rule", but in idiomatic English "ruled
| something out" means it has been eliminated as a possibility.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Yep, and to explain further; The first instance of "ruling"
| in a judicial sense probably derives from rule (i.e
| dictat/maxim).
|
| To "rule out" is to use a _ruler_ to cross a line through
| something in a written list of items, thereby eliminating
| it from consideration.
| wccrawford wrote:
| But also in colloquial English, "rule out" means
| "eliminate by logic". Like, "use the rules to take it out
| of possibility".
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I don't think this is an accurate definition or
| etymology. The phrase can mean "formally remove" or just
| "eliminate". I think it always alludes to using a stick
| of wood to draw a line rather than a regulation or law.
| wccrawford wrote:
| My etymology might be completely wrong. No argument
| there.
|
| But as for the meaning, that's what it's _always_ meant
| when I 've heard it said. So it definitely means that, at
| least colloquially.
| elbelcho wrote:
| _The contested behaviour can influence the development of
| e-mobility in a crucial phase ... with possible negative spill-
| over effects on the growth of electric vehicles_
|
| Yes, but something tells me Google doesn't give a damn.
| truth_seeker wrote:
| How far fine will help ? who will get benefitted ? how many
| people really understand ANTITRUST in its entire scope ?
|
| IMHO, The market dominance of features provided by big tech
| companies like google and many other companies which provides
| something as a service must be consciously evaluated whenever
| product (and its new releases with new features) hits the market.
|
| Big tech companies like google have too much monopoly. Each
| country deserve their own local vendors who are responsible for
| creation and operation of platform. Restricting the scope of some
| technology platform as service especially to a particular nation
| or even states can help build local jobs, also keeping the
| sentiments for that region.
|
| On international level if someone wants to succeed they must be
| allowed but should be given limited access in each country/state
| by the government from very start, so that they don't overpower
| the local market.
| nradov wrote:
| Liechtenstein and Seychelles deserve their own local vendors?
| Seriously?
| idkwhoiam wrote:
| What a steaming pile of digested waste material. Have they ever
| thought about fixing their app? There are plenty of Android Auto
| apps on the store.
| hulitu wrote:
| It's half true, there are plenty of android auto apps on the
| store. The majority of them are music playing apps. Navigation
| apps are not allowed by google. I have 2 cars with android auto
| and android auto is useless for me because i cannot mirror the
| phone screen.
| threeseed wrote:
| According to this TomTom, MapFactor and other navigations
| apps work:
|
| https://9to5google.com/2020/08/11/android-auto-navigation-
| ap...
| rightbyte wrote:
| Wait what? Only Google Maps is allowed? That is absurd.
| gman83 wrote:
| Apparently that used to be true but is no longer. OsmAnd
| (OpenStreetMap navigation app) is releasing their Android
| Auto app later this year:
| https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/3391
| namdnay wrote:
| Waze is definitely allowed (but then again, that's Google
| too :) )
| gpas wrote:
| > Navigation apps are not allowed by google.
|
| They removed that restriction last April[1], now devs can
| publish nav, parking, charger apps etc. Sygic[2] as an
| example.
|
| [1] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2021/04/start-
| your...
|
| [2] https://www.sygic.com/android-auto
| ylere wrote:
| The antitrust investigation in this case was launched in
| May 2019 though.
| thefz wrote:
| The existence of other Android Auto apps mean nothing. Enel is
| quite a large company and I am sure it has a lot of people
| working on its mobile applications. Besides, they are enforcing
| European law.
| baridbelmedar wrote:
| Just because they are big in one particular sector doesn't
| mean that the app they built didn't have problems (security
| in this case). This is very likely just a way to squeeze some
| money from a foreign company.
| hulitu wrote:
| Security was never a concern for google. There is a lot of
| malware in Google play. But the interference with their
| monopoly is a concern for them.
| holoduke wrote:
| A good thing. My business unfortunately rely on the Playstore.
| Every update we submit I have nightmares about a rejected update
| or somekind of violation. I am active since the start of the
| store. On average once every 2 years we have a very serious issue
| with an app being suspended for a a reason we do not understand.
| I am lucky to have some ties to people inside Google, otherwise I
| would probably have lost (no joke) millions.
| fsflover wrote:
| Publish your app in F-Droid.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| They should fine Google Play for something that's wrong with it
| -- like adding icons for "Google Play Music" and "Google Play
| Books" just to distract you, waste your time, weaken your mind,
| and either get you click on an ad.
|
| Somehow I have the hardest time finding (i) the real Google Play
| (app store) and (ii) the search form for apps (Google doesn't
| want you to search for an app and install it, they'd like to hit
| your brain with an electromagnetic pulse when you visit the app
| store and stare at mindless ads with your tongue hanging out the
| site of your mouth for hours. That is, the strength of the
| "platform" doesn't matter, just the perception of investors that
| Google products are still stuffed with ads, the king is on the
| throne, and such...)
| dalbasal wrote:
| The way antitrust is working in recent years is kind of
| ridiculous. Google in Europe is becoming a rich case study in
| antitrust meh.
|
| You find that adwords engages in a blatant "monopolistic abuse"
| in some specific sense. In the Adwords EU case for example,
| Google was both monopsonising (google search) and monopolising
| search advertising. But, the actual violations are specific, like
| exclusivity requirements and other technical infractions buried
| in their take-it-or-leave-it contracts with "partners.^"
|
| Google get a fine. They deny culpability. They pay a fine and
| move on. Whether it's 100m or 2bn doesn't really matter. Google
| are demonstrably willing to pay far more (eg acquisition, browser
| kickbacks, etc.) to maintain a monopolistic position. Besides
| minor tweaks, there's no reason for them to change.
|
| What's the point? Antitrust can't be useful as a violation-fine
| paradigm. These cases/fines don't affect the monopoly or free the
| market in any useful sense.
|
| IMO, we need some way to declare a company "Big" and apply
| special rules to them. If those rules are onerous, that might
| create some organic pressure to split and/or help smaller
| incumbents compete.
|
| There is no point to antitrust if its totally reactive, handing
| out fines for moving violations. The point of antitrust is trust-
| busting, to affect market structure. The point if to have a
| competitive market.
|
| All the 1990s stuff is playing out. Just like the MSFT case, we
| see that operating systems, browsers (now app stores) are
| monopoly prone and that it's a big deal. On the other side, the
| 90s "portal" concept is fully realized now. In the digital
| economy, controlling the windows of consumption is everything.
| None of the costs, all of the profit... literally all in a lot of
| cases.
|
| ^Newspapers didn't have the advantage search partners had in
| their monopoly claim, because Google doesn't have agreements with
| them. No contract, no abusive clauses. The take it or leave it
| offer is " _give us your content for free, or go away._ "
| Formally, Google isn't even doing business with them.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > IMO, we need some way to declare a company "Big" and apply
| special rules to them. If those rules are onerous, that might
| create some organic pressure to split and/or help smaller
| incumbents compete.
|
| What do we win here? To me it seems that letting big companies
| get as big as they can allows them to use economies of scale to
| provide quality services cheaply to all of us. Search is a
| prime example here, only Google seems to be able to do it as
| well as they do. Many others have tried and failed.
|
| Isn't the benefit of cheap/free services far outweighed by
| whatever arbitrary "abuses" that are alleged to have been
| perpetrated? Shouldn't our attitude be primarily of bewildered
| amazement at the status quo instead of attempting to
| micromanage how Google uses the massive, amazingly positive
| platform it built?
| asddubs wrote:
| >What do we win here?
|
| a more balanced power dynamic
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Between who? And at the expense of cheap, readily
| available, quality services?
| asddubs wrote:
| between regular people and companies. I don't think it
| has to come at the expense of those things, a company
| doesn't have to be the size and scope of google to be
| efficient.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Companies are made up of regular people, there is no
| clear distinction between the two. Efficiency is a
| spectrum, the more efficient a company, the more the
| poorest of us benefit from cheaper services. Capping
| efficiency punishes everyone.
| asddubs wrote:
| armies are also made up of regular people, that doesn't
| mean they're incapable of doing harm on a scale beyond
| the individual. you're also falsely equating size and
| efficiency
| thegrimmest wrote:
| And once these regular people decide in numbers that they
| are tired, miss their wives, and want to go home; it goes
| disastrously for the commanders who have planned
| otherwise. For a particularly famous example see
| Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.
|
| I'm not equating size and efficiency. I'm saying a
| combination of the two represents the optimal outcome for
| everyone. In a permissive economy, large, inefficient
| companies are vulnerable to competition, and tend towards
| failure.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Isn't the benefit of cheap/free services far outweighed by
| whatever arbitrary "abuses" that are alleged to have been
| perpetrated?
|
| No, because pluralism and a robust and diverse ecosystem is
| more important than cheap shit. Handing effectively entire
| control over what is visible on the internet to one company
| is anti-democratic madness. You're basically pulling a "but
| Mussolini made the trains run on time"
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm not, I'm suggesting that an inclusive, permissive
| economy is the best way to fight scarcity. Scarcity, though
| you may not recall, was a big deal. Its opposite is "cheap
| shit" which is exactly what I'm advocating for as top
| priority. In this case, cheap (free) access to high quality
| internet services for everyone with an unfiltered
| connection.
|
| Less permissive economic systems continue to fail
| spectacularly. No one is "handing" any control of anything,
| control is precariously maintained by staying ahead of
| competition.
|
| Comparing Google to a dictator is ridiculous - who is
| Google murdering by deprioritizing someone's service on its
| platform?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Google doesn't really have a choice. Their monetization model
| rests on providing increasingly complicated dashboards to lure
| advertisers into believing their money is well spent. As long
| as they haven't found an alternative model they will just
| blindly pay up and redo
| fouric wrote:
| > Whether it's 100m or 2bn doesn't really matter.
|
| ...yet, it will absolutely matter if it's $20B - Google's 2020
| operating income was $41B.
|
| You're making the claim that since Google wasn't fined enough,
| fines don't work - which is absurd.
|
| Try making the fines a reasonably large percentage of gross
| revenue from the previous year - say, 10%. 10% of Google's 2020
| gross revenue ($182B) is $18B, which is almost half of their
| operating income. _That_ will have an effect.
| dalbasal wrote:
| ...maybe in theory.
|
| Fines are, largely calibrated one way or another. It's not
| marked to gross revenue... but it is usually marked to the
| infraction. In the EU-Adwords case, the $2bn fine was
| relative to the size of adwords search partners' EU market
| share. In this Italian case (I assume) the fine is scaled to
| the size of the monopolised sector... Italian apps or
| whatnot.
|
| This is why I called it a "violation-fine paradigm." Courts
| can't arbitrarily fine companies "enough to make it hurt." It
| has to relate to laws, specific infractions. Laws have to be
| general. Etc.
|
| _My_ point is that the infraction itself is not the problem.
| It 's a sign of the problem, a symptom... the problem is
| monopoly. There's no version of adwords partner agreement
| (including the post-fine version) that isn't still a problem,
| even if it doesn't contain abuse of power clauses. The
| problem is that the only meaningful market for search ads is
| Google's. Similar issue for Amazon marketplace. There's no
| version of Amazon marketplace policies where amazon retail
| competes on a level playing field... they own the field.
|
| You fine a company for _doing_ something wrong. Google do
| things wrong, from time to time... but the main problem is
| what Google _is_ , not what they do. That's derivative.
| qubex wrote:
| The problem with this is that you can easily bankrupt a
| company by codifying exceedingly onerous terms.
|
| Google (to take your example) happens to be able to (barely)
| afford 10% of their revenue taken from their income. Another
| company with a different cost structure (perhaps in another
| sector) might not be able to afford that. The upshot is that
| providing a codified "one size fits all" punishment could be
| disastrous (if you consider preserving companies to be
| desirable: for the sake of this argument I do, but entirely
| legitimately you might not).
|
| In the case of Italy (I'm Italian) and it's awkward, glacial
| justice system, that's a very dangerous assumption to make.
| This place is already hostile enough towards businesses.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The fix isn't the fines, it's the requirement to stop given
| behaviors. Google won't care about the fine it just got, sure,
| but it also can't block competing apps in this way again, at
| least in this jurisdiction.
|
| It's a small victory, but it's also a hole in the armor. One of
| many, as various antitrust cases handle various abuses.
| Unfortunately, progress is slow but we're making it.
| supermatt wrote:
| Ive long held that corps should be limited to a single trade
| category (as per trademarks). I think that change would solve a
| lot of the complexities that megacorps introduce to the
| application of legislature.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I don't agree, but I think it's an example of rules that
| could be applied selectively to megacorps. Banning
| supermarkets from selling hot coffee, so to speak, is a
| problem.
|
| It's also a problem on the megacorp scale. If Google wasn't
| allowed to do gmail, android and such, would we have been
| better off? That said, if we're only talking about a handful
| of megacorps, there's no need to be abstract or simple with
| rules. There are lots of ways to keep them in a lane.
|
| Android, Youtube & adwords are great candidates for IPO. Why
| not force a float? This immediately fixes most of the issues
| so far demonstrated in court. It compensates AlphaGoog at
| market rates, preserves an incentive to innovate...
|
| Before that though... ban mergers! Reverse merges. The whole
| foods acquisition is a worrying one. The "multiple"
| discrepancies between amazon and regular retail is so high
| that there's an arbitrage-like force pushing towards these
| acquisitions. Tesla & other auto manufacturers are a similar
| scenario.
|
| Consider this... Acquiring the entire publicly traded retail
| sector would dilute Amazon's shares by circa 25%-50%, most of
| that going to Walmart and Costco. They could buy the
| fashion/apparel industry with petty cash. They could acquire
| UPS. That would make other online retailers compete with
| amazon like Google competes with its search partners... same
| logic as amazon marketplace, but more.
| Lutzb wrote:
| The fix is not fines. Threat to split the company.
| maxwell wrote:
| Splitting up companies increases the value of the "babies",
| and doesn't prevent reforming, as with AT&T and Standard Oil.
|
| What about revoking corporate charters and nationalizing?
|
| I'm against capital punishment (due to the possibility of
| wrongful convictions), but if corporations want to be people,
| let's start executing them.
|
| Shut 'em down, Uncle Sam takes the assets.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Force the company to issue more shares and give them to the
| government.
| oblio wrote:
| > IMO, we need some way to declare a company "Big" and apply
| special rules to them. If those rules are onerous, that might
| create some organic pressure to split and/or help smaller
| incumbents compete.
|
| Past a point, they should be regulated like an utility.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Doesn't that effectively mean that these companies will
| become further entrenched and nearly impossible to dislodge
| from their market positions? A prime example is Google Fibre,
| who tried to dislodge existing cable/internet companies, and
| failed primarily because of regulatory entrenchment.
|
| Why not allow the market to be more inclusive? This will help
| create exactly the competitive pressure that we all benefit
| from.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Their goal isn't a more inclusive or competitive market
| clearly, it is regulatory entrenchment.
| kavalg wrote:
| And we need an effective regulator. For example, I am baffled
| by the level of oligopoly allowed in the EU cellular/telecom
| industry. It is quite obvious that prices are synchronized
| between providers if you watch their dynamics over time. They
| are currently killing prepaid cards as well.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| There are now countless eSIM offers (mostly for data) that
| are way cheaper than the previous prepaid options, so I'm
| not convinced of this.
|
| (I'm sure the roaming fee limits played a big part in this,
| because it effectively allows any mobile operator to resell
| data at the wholesale rate, or even below it because data
| is usually sold in packages that are rarely used up in
| full.)
| dalbasal wrote:
| IDK if it's "past a point," but in some cases maybe.
|
| I'm torn on that though. EG, what would it actually mean if
| FB or twitter became "regulated like utilities?"
| Interoperability? Portability? IMO, these are pretty finicky
| problems for a regulator. I think it would likely look like
| the mandated personal data dumps we have today. Some clunky
| feature that few use, and don't change the structure of the
| market. Useful transparency, but not really game changing.
|
| Regulated equal access? Court-like proceeding to confirm
| bans? I'm not feeling it. I suspect it will entrench
| monopolies further.
|
| A Telecom or EnergyCo is fundamentally different from a FB or
| Google. Regulators needed to make sure everyone had access,
| because it's always more profitable to just exclude certain
| people/areas. Prices are an issue because infrastructure
| monopoly. Also because government/regulators typically fund a
| lot of the capex.
|
| There is almost no cost, marginal or fixed, associated with
| instant messages, shares, likes, links, etc. If Facebook and
| Twitter folded tomorrow, we would still have plenty of all of
| these because they are not scarce. Maybe there's a case for
| cloud computing as a utility, but even here I'm hesitant.
|
| Enough with analogies to 19th century monopolies. Platform
| monopolies should be regulated as platform monopolies, not
| utilities. New thinking.
|
| In any case, google is the perfect target for actual trust
| _busting_. Separate search from adwords and android. Ban
| default buying. Ban mergers.
|
| The old challenge was (eg) trust busting steel without
| harming the actual production of steel. Today's problem has
| little to do with production. It does have a lot to do with
| share prices. Is there really an appetite for turning
| Alphabet from a $1.5trn company into a $150bn company?
| ripdog wrote:
| Generally good comment, but if search is separated from
| ads, how does it make money? I'm totally on board with
| splitting up Google, but losing Google search (or search
| becoming notably worse) would not be worth it for me. The
| competition is just so bad, and always has been.
| elcomet wrote:
| Google Search could still show ads.
|
| They would just be Google ads customers, like any other
| website, and they would get paid for displaying ads.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Google will continue to make money as it does now,
| through adwords as a "search partner." This is also how
| other SEs make money. The biggest antitrust case Google
| has lost so far has related directly to this.
|
| Would they make _less_ money? Yes, probably. It 's hard
| to say how much, but it would still likely be enough to
| run Google.
|
| I think it's easier to understand the paradigm with
| Twitter or FB, since they're simpler. Facebook currently
| makes about $100bn pa from ads. Circa 2015, they were
| operating profitably on about $10bn ad revenue. Twitter
| has had a similar (more modest) trajectory. They spend a
| lot of money running FB & Twitter, because they can, but
| there's no reason to think FB or Google Search on far
| less revenue than they bring in currently.
|
| There are versions of what I'm suggesting that likely
| affect revenue moderately, and versions that could hit
| harder. IMO, in either case, I don't believe there is any
| meaningful consumer harm or ill effects outside of FB's
| shareholders or perhaps employees.
|
| This isn't true of all monopolies/sectors. It's true of
| FB, Google, maybe twitter.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > it would still _likely_ be enough to run Google.
| [emphasis mine]
|
| Is this arbitrary guess really worth risking the whole
| farm?
| salawat wrote:
| Part of why searching is as painful as it is is because
| it has been deemed acceptable to pollute the search
| space. SEO should be neither encouraged or allowed. It is
| nothing less than adversarial corruption of a shared
| index.
|
| Boolean searching works. Go back to a library catalog
| sometime and be amazed at how quickly you can get
| relevant results when every Tom, Dick, and Methuseleh
| aren't shoveling extra irrelevant _feces_ into the index.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Says someone who never used Altavista...
| dalbasal wrote:
| It isn't deemed acceptable, encouraged or allowed. It
| occurs, like spam.
| nradov wrote:
| There is no practical way to disallow SEO. Search results
| have to be ranked somehow in order to be usable for most
| people. And site owners will always figure out tricks to
| game the ranking algorithms.
| zo1 wrote:
| It's not SEO that's the problem. SEO is a symptom of the
| perverse incentives.
|
| So Google has created incentives (via ad embedding in
| user-sites) for entities to generate content and compete
| with each-other for who can show the most ads. This in
| turn "pollutes the index" as the other poster phrased it,
| which makes it more and more difficult to find actual
| real (unique?) content, which then Google turns around
| and supposedly "helps" us with.
|
| Let's be honest. Despite it's surface-level gigantic
| scale, the internet is actually very tiny when it comes
| to real genuine content. My wild estimate is that 99% of
| it is spam. Even in the case of user-generated content,
| for every genuine blog where someone shares their
| thoughts and unique insights or content, there are a
| thousand blogs which are just there to get ad-views by
| generating any content that might get someone to look
| there. I can't even find the former type of blog/site
| anymore. The only place I still encounter those on
| occasion is when it's linked to from HN. And the ones I
| do encounter that way, I find that even when I try to, I
| can't find it via any sort of generic search (i.e. not
| cheating by using the site name / author / unique
| phrases).
|
| Splitting Google up won't fix this.
| dntrkv wrote:
| How is searching painful? It's gotten better with almost
| every year.
|
| I only see this sentiment here on HN, along with many
| other shitty takes about how pure the internet used to
| be. Are you talking about that era when opening the wrong
| search result would bombard your screen with millions of
| popups and install 20 toolbars on your machine?
|
| Please tell me when this magical time of no spam in
| search results existed? 1995?
| mianos wrote:
| You do a search, it says millions of results, the first
| pages all have results without the quoted terms in the
| page at all. They don't show "we don't have any good
| results" if they can display a bunch of ads on a bunch of
| pages with useless results.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| > Court-like proceedings to confirm bans
|
| The EU's initial proposed version of the "Digital Services
| Act", requires that when a service takes down information
| that they think is "illegal" or incompatible with the terms
| of service, They are required to provide the "facts and
| circumstances" used to arrive at that decision, as well as
| reference to the specific term of service they think is
| violated, and why they feel the information violates that.
|
| Furthermore, they must provide an appeals mechanism for
| both information takedowns and any account suspensions/bans
| associated with them (and besides things like non-payment,
| I'd bet the majority of account suspensions/bans on online
| services are due to some posted content the company finds
| objectionable).
|
| Lastly, if the internal appeals process fails to satisfy
| the user, the user initiate a what is basically an
| electronic binding arbitration process with a certified "
| out-of-court dispute settlement body" of the user's
| choosing, with this body having the power to overturn the
| companies decision.
|
| That last part sound an awful lot like "Court-like
| proceedings to confirm bans".
|
| I suspect the final law may not be as pro-consumer in these
| areas as the initial draft is (many big companies will not
| be happy about this part of the law and will try to kill it
| off).
|
| If it does survive it would be much better then all too
| common: "We are banning you because we think you broke an
| unspecified part of the terms of service. We won't be more
| specific because we don't have to be, and are scared that
| people trying to break the rules could learn how they got
| caught. We won't even tell you that this was a fully
| automated process with no humans involved, that gets things
| wrong x% of the time. There is no appeal, unless you can
| get Twitter or the news media sufficiently riled up against
| us."
| [deleted]
| bagacrap wrote:
| because our utilities work so well and don't function at all
| like monopolies
| dalbasal wrote:
| Utilities aren't regulated to function like "non-
| monopolies," generally. They're regulated because (ATT, at
| least) they were seen as inevitable "natural" monopolies.
|
| There really isn't one "theory of monopolies" that is
| useful in all times and places. Social Media is not Telecom
| or electricity. Amazon is not a railroad.
|
| Trustbusting is an anti-monopoly strategy, and it doesn't
| really work in spaces where monopoly is unavoidable.
| oblio wrote:
| Utilities are super heavily regulated. I'm not sure for the
| US, but for example frequently they can't enter new
| markets, so they can't leverage their monopoly to crush
| competition in other markets.
|
| And regarding working well, aren't a lot of people in favor
| of municipal broadband (an utility) vs Verizon & co.
| (oligopoly, not even a full blown monopoly)?
| jjaammee wrote:
| California PGE which provides electricity and gas to big
| portion of public is a moving train wreck. It's corrupted
| and dangerous. Pipeline explosion, electricity
| transmission line caused fire burn a whole town happened
| with worrying frequency. Heavy regulations don't prevent
| big bonus to executives and degrading infrastructure.
| ncphil wrote:
| Making an electric or gas company a government entity
| would at least provide a chance to prosecute its corrupt
| operators for official misconduct and criminal fraud (see
| the slow moving train wreck called CalPERS, some
| executive frog-marching would fix that quickly).
| JI00912 wrote:
| > IMO, we need some way to declare a company "Big" and apply
| special rules to them.
|
| Careful though. A monopoly may abuse its position, which is
| bad, but a big company may be big because they are good and
| people use them, which is good.
| kyrra wrote:
| This is actually the difference between the US and the EU
| when it comes to monopoly lawsuits. The US has to prove that
| the behavior of a monopoly was harmful to
| customers/consumers. The EU has no burden of proof and can
| just take market size as a way to go after them.
|
| The general problem I see here is how you slice the market to
| say a given company has a monopoly. It sometimes feels like
| those going after large companies try to slice the market in
| such as way to say they are monopolies, when other slice it
| in another way to show that it's not. Which slicing is
| "correct" is really hard, especially when markets shift
| relatively quickly.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Antitrust law is weird, so I can't comment on this
| definitively. That said, in the EU-Adwords case, the focus
| was on "abuses," primarily in the contract with search
| partners. Adwords is their buyer, rather than seller.
| Technically, Google is the monopoly, adwords is the
| monopsony.
|
| In any case, prosecutors needed to prove harm/abuse
| affected search partners, and the fine was presumably based
| around that.
|
| There _is_ a problem defining the market sometimes, but
| that wasn 't a problem here. It's a "crack for economists"
| type of problem, with a lot more theory than needed for
| practical purposes.
|
| The problem is/was that these courts aren't a tool that can
| do the job. Courts can keep monopolies from doing certain
| things, with varying degrees of effectiveness. They can't
| prevent a monopoly from being a monopoly.
| anoncake wrote:
| Monopolies are inherently harmful to the customer. A
| monopoly implies lack of competition. If lack of
| competition is not harmful to the customer, then
| competition is not beneficial. If competition is not
| beneficial in a given market, there is no reason for it to
| be a market to begin with and the monopoly should be
| expropriated.
| JI00912 wrote:
| > Monopolies are inherently harmful to the customer. A
| monopoly implies lack of competition.
|
| Depends why there is a lack of competition. Are there
| barriers of entry to the market? Were they put up by the
| company? Or do they just have such an awesome product at
| a great price they no one can offer a better /
| commutative alternative?
| anoncake wrote:
| You have to read the rest of my argument.
| kyrra wrote:
| > Monopolies are inherently harmful to the customer. A
| monopoly implies lack of competition.
|
| I disagree. When you look at a company that is dominant
| in some part of the marketplace at a given point it time,
| you need to understand how they got there. The monopoly
| poster child Standard Oil rose-up when there used to be
| many more oil processing companies, but Standard Oil was
| able to do things for cheaper because they used more
| byproducts from the oil to create different products
| (which let them sell things like lamp oil for less). So
| sometimes monopolies rise-up because that one company is
| able to fill a market segment better than the
| competition.
|
| The question then becomes, once they have a monopoly and
| others see this, how can potential competitors react. Can
| others copy (and improve) the same processing system that
| the monopoly has to produce a similar product for a
| similar price (maybe even less)? If so, then they can
| rise up and the original company will no longer be a
| monopoly. But if that original company takes steps to
| squelch the competition, you start getting into what the
| US has defined as "anti competitive" practices. These
| were developed because the past showed us that this leads
| to harming consumers.
|
| We also have a lot of government granted monopolies.
| Copyright and IP law are time-limited monopolies on a
| given product. We have private business that operate on
| federal land (like national parks) that may be given a
| local monopoly within that region. Sometimes we make
| tradeoffs and grant monopolies.
| dalbasal wrote:
| There's usually some market reason for a monopoly to
| exist. Often, it's a temporary reason. That doesn't mean
| it isn't harmful to consumers, unless you think that
| market dynamics are _inevitably_ beneficial.
|
| Google, has several market reasons for their monopoly.
|
| (1) The biggest reason is like economies of scale and
| network effects, but not quite. Online ad markets need to
| be huge to be good. Bigger market means tighter targeting
| segments, which is everything. This is why FB & Google
| make >10X more per customer than their no. 2s and 3s.
| Data aggregation is like this too. Some data on some
| users is not proportionally valuable to all data on all
| users.
|
| (2) Software's infinite economies of scale. Economists
| like to point to this reason (0 marginal costs) as
| primary, but FWIW, I don't think it's why google is a
| monopoly. It probably is why software is monopoly-prone.
| It does explain the OS/Browser centralisation pretty
| well.
|
| (3)Normal economies of scale and network effects.
|
| (4)Path dependencies.
|
| Does that mean that Google's monopoly benefits consumers?
| Who are consumers anyway? Formally, it's advertisers. If
| monopolies aren't assumed harmful, why do we even need to
| curb anti-competitive practices in the first place?
|
| >> government granted monopolies; Copyright and IP;
| federal land, etc
|
| Agreed. I'm not talking about "monopoly," the dictionary
| definition. I'm talking about the phenomenon in 2021, a
| handful of companies, most with a tell-tale >30% profit
| margin. I'm not talking about the exclusive cafe inside
| on IKEA.
| mdoms wrote:
| > a big company may be big because they are good and people
| use them, which is good
|
| Can you name even one?
| passivate wrote:
| >but a big company may be big because they are good and
| people use them, which is good.
|
| I agree in part, but I disagree that 'good' can be a state
| that applies universally. Personally, I think of it as a tag
| that you can apply to individual actions on a case-by-case
| basis. Also, is there any company that has gotten big solely
| because 'they are good and people use them'?
| Karunamon wrote:
| I'd argue that the latter eventually turns into the former
| with a probability approaching 1. The incentives are just too
| screwed up for it to happen any other way.
| dalbasal wrote:
| True, that's why I'm against general rules (aka laws) as the
| main/only tool. A cloud platform is not a telecom, is not a
| search engine, etc.
|
| I don't agree with " _monopoly_ may* abuse its position*"
| though. Monopolies exert their impact by existing as
| monopolies. They may or may not (as in the adwords case)
| "abuse" this position in specific, known, ways like
| anticompetitive contracts in the adwords-EU case... but this
| tends to be pretty marginal.
|
| Google bought Doubleclick in 2007. After this, they owned
| both the biggest search engine and the biggest ad
| marketplace... their competitors' only revenue source. Throw
| in Android, Chrome & a $20bn contract to be Apple's default.
|
| At this point it's all about market structure and control
| over choke points, nothing to do with consumer preferences.
| I'm not saying shut down google, or prevent people from using
| it. I'm saying that a market structure with only one choice
| is a monopoly, and that's bad for everyone but the
| monopolist.
| JI00912 wrote:
| Good.
| tester34 wrote:
| Weekly Google fine
|
| Is it even possible to split them?
| Tade0 wrote:
| In 2018 Google paid more in fines than taxes in the EU.
|
| I guess at this point they're so dependable in being an evil
| corporation that this can be seen as a form of tax.
| dicomdan wrote:
| This is the app in question:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.enel.mobil...
|
| Mostly 1 star reviews on it.
| jason0597 wrote:
| What do you wish to imply?
| yupper32 wrote:
| Regardless of the merit of this particular fine, what happens
| when every country realizes they can just arbitrarily fine huge
| international companies to fund their countries?
|
| In theory all 50 countries that Google has offices could fine
| them $100M - $10B based on whatever their laws are at the time,
| regardless of how ridiculous the laws are. It doesn't even have
| to be truly bad stuff. It could be something like, a country
| doesn't like that Google didn't censor something worldwide.
|
| It seems like we need a more centralized way to deal with this.
| this_was_posted wrote:
| Given that many countries are willing to give these same
| companies huge tax breaks I don't think the power balance is
| biased too much towards countries.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| The whole thing is weird because Google makes an example ev
| charger app design guide available for Android auto
| midrus wrote:
| Which for them is like 0,01EUR for me.
| akie wrote:
| Small change. I'm sure Google will just write it off as "the cost
| of doing business".
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| EUR100M for not allowing the EnelX app (electric car charging
| infrastructure in Italy) with Android Auto is a significant
| fine. Even if EUR100M on its own is not much to Google, it is
| still an expensive precedent for similar cases in the future.
| varispeed wrote:
| In Italy, the judgements are not a source of law, so this
| ruling does not mean that a similar situation would have the
| same outcome in the future.
| eru wrote:
| Yes, but in practice precedence has some informal weight
| even in civil law systems.
|
| (And in the same spirit, precedence can be overridden
| relatively easily in a common law system, too, the judge
| just has to find an obscure aspect of the new case that
| allows her to argue that the old cases don't apply.)
| mdeck_ wrote:
| So, in reality, virtually identical to a common-law
| (US/UK-style) legal system.
| hrktb wrote:
| Doesn't it at least constitue a data point for future
| cases, where Google won't just be able to say "we just
| don't hinder competitors, you must be mistaken" and we also
| get vetted documents on their inner workings and processes
| that will make the discovery process faster on other cases.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I think some degree of jurisprudence is always present in
| any legal system. It's the natural law.
| 1_player wrote:
| I don't think the word you're looking for is
| jurisprudence, which is defined as "legal theory" or
| "legal philosophy" as opposed to legal practice.
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| Jurisprudence doesn't necessarily imply a legal system
| where a legal precedent carries outsize weight, so I
| don't quite get what you mean by it being a natural law.
| waheoo wrote:
| It's almost like the government's around the world are waking up
| to the fact they can actually push back on the ultra mega corps
| of the world.
|
| Or they're seeing weakness in the US and taking their
| geopolitical shots.
| gverrilla wrote:
| this is just pretending and games. it's a novel around
| something in the periphery, when the center is very stable and
| established
| oblio wrote:
| What does your comment mean, in less poetic form?
| spoonjim wrote:
| If I can take a stab at it, it means that these $100
| million fines are minor blips around an unchallenged
| central belief, held by all powerful stakeholders, that
| corporations should basically be allowed to exert
| tremendous power over markets and individuals. Essentially,
| the "Overton Window" for how to deal with something like
| Google is narrow -- fine them a hundred million or a
| billion -- instead of wide where possible solutions include
| shutting Google down, turning it into a citizens-owned co-
| op where every citizen in the country sits on its board, or
| other seemingly "outlandish" ideas.
| gverrilla wrote:
| I'm sorry but I can't express myself in a "less poetic
| form", because this space is not suitable for in-depth
| conversation and also because I don't have enough domain
| over the language. There's a book I can recommend though:
| Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord, 1967.
| oblio wrote:
| Writing concise yet non cryptic messages is both an art
| and a skill.
|
| Might be worth practicing.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Everything is cryptic before we understand it. When we
| talk for instance about Google, governments, fines, power
| balance, etc, we're refering at least to an immense
| superposition of complex systems, or perhaps you could
| say an hypercomplexity, or perhaps totality may be the
| best word depending on your perspective. In that context,
| my cryptic poetics only constitute an heuristic which has
| the intent to provoke thought, because I do not wish to
| abandon the totality point of view, and that would be
| impossible otherwise in a space like this where concision
| is the rule. I hope you can understand what I'm trying to
| say - although it took me 20 minutes to write this short
| reply, I'm still not confident it will adequately
| communicate what I'm thinking or purvey the apropriate
| "emotionality", which is rather cultural in essence.
| jamescostian wrote:
| I'd like to help you see how to write more concise
| messages. Here's how I'd rewrite your entire message:
|
| "This is a very complex subject matter, and I don't know
| how to express my thoughts on it concisely. I don't want
| to get downvoted for my long-windedness."
|
| It's less than a 1/5 of characters, but conveys just as
| much of the on-topic and non-meta parts of your response.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Is this a joke?
| jamescostian wrote:
| No. Truly, the 2 sentences I provided were made of all
| the real meaning I could find in your paragraph that was
| relevant to oblio's messages you were replying to, even
| after re-reading your message several times.
|
| Judging by the upvotes I have received, other readers
| also agree that my summary was a good summary of your
| comment. I'd encourage you to practice making that
| paragraph you wrote smaller, with a goal of reaching a
| length similar to my rewrite's length. It's something
| I've been doing more often to make my own messages more
| concise, and it has definitely helped.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, but then he wouldn't get to feel smart and make fun
| of me :-)
| gverrilla wrote:
| Making fun of you?
| sbr464 wrote:
| I rather liked and prefer your poetic form.
| f6v wrote:
| Or they are waking up to the fact they can just grab some cash.
| baybal2 wrote:
| People, it's good point actually.
|
| In a recent article on a new lobbying group trying to onshore
| chip production https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121586 a
| lot of people pointed out it's this weakness incentivising
| lobbying.
|
| In other words US establishment invites regulatory capture
| through expectation of lobbying action creating even bigger
| opportunities to draw a dire picture, and demand more state
| intervention favourable to the industry.
|
| More lobbying & pushback > industry situation worsens >
| opportunity to draw a dire situation > favourable intervention
| & more handouts > repeat
|
| The poorer they do, they bigger are the handouts.
| Animats wrote:
| Right. That's called "lemon socialism". Britain, in its most
| socialist period, the 1950s, had the government owning the
| railroads, the coal industry, and the steel industry. All
| lemons, and all way overstaffed.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Google is probably a bigger economic unit than Italy at this
| point. Much of Europe has yet to recover economically since the
| 2000 market crash and Italy is worse off than most. I doubt its
| taking geopolitical shots and more trying to find any source of
| revenue they can
| bjohnson225 wrote:
| > more trying to find any source of revenue they can
|
| EUR100M would be about 0.0000125% of the revenue Italy
| expects in 2021. It's totally irrelevant to the national
| budget.
| joering2 wrote:
| Slightly OT but still Google related - you did hear horrible
| stories of Google having close to zero customer support when it
| comes to their free products, but you kind of hoped it will be
| somewhat different with Google Suite, since well.. you are a paid
| customer? Well, today I'm here to tell you that after 3 months of
| back-and-forth thru their customer support ticketing system, I
| finally called my bank and asked them to file a chargeback
| dispute and give me back my $18 for 3 months worth of Gsuite
| email account. Yes, we are talking about $6 per month. But the
| amount of crap I witnessed thru their "customer support" is
| astonishing and someone should write a book about it! I was
| literally asked for the same questions over and over again with
| different reps. I was asked questions, I answered then 3 days of
| silence so that next rep will ask same questions. Forwarded
| previous questions - 3 days later another rep asks exactly the
| same. My favorite was argument that you cannot answer question
| under the question we ask - you have to add a colon ":" and then
| answer question next. "We cannot accept answers if you use your
| Enter key answering question". Unbelievable. One of the most
| valuable company on the planet. Fuck Google! And today, I finally
| have switched to Duck Duck. Even If I have to force myself to
| like the differences, I will not go back to using Google. /rant
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