EU fines Apple €1.8 billion over music streaming competition

[President Johnson]

https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1764629512526925969

The EU Commission says Apple violated antitrust regulations by unfairly favoring its own service. Apple claim Spotify is the biggest beneficiary of the ruling.

The European Union on Monday hit tech giant Apple with an antitrust fine worth €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion).

The statement said that the company had been unfairly favoring its own music streaming service over those of its rivals.

"The Commission found that Apple applied restrictions on app developers preventing them from informing iOS users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of the app," the European Commission said in a statement.

[...]

"This is illegal under EU antitrust rules."

Apple charges a 30% fee for sales made through apps in the iOS operating systems. It also prohibits apps within the operating system from providing links to external sign-up pages to bypass the fee.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The EU vs American multinationals war continues.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

[GoTfan]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

FOMO is a disturbingly effective marketing tactic, but how can it be effectively outlawed?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

It really blows my mind that there's actually people who care about that. Like why on earth is the color of a text bubble in your messages such a pressing concern?

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

It really blows my mind that there's actually people who care about that. Like why on earth is the color of a text bubble in your messages such a pressing concern?

IMO the real issue is the image quality being significantly lower between Android and iOS vs using iMessages between two iOS devices. This is something that Apple needs to address.

Anyone who gets mad over the color of the bubbles isn’t worth dealing with though.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

It really blows my mind that there's actually people who care about that. Like why on earth is the color of a text bubble in your messages such a pressing concern?

It's not about the color.  The color is just an indicator of degraded performance.  Apple intentionally degrades the quality of communications pretty much across the board for Android.  The main impact this has is that when you add an Android phone to a group chat, everyone in that group chat loses their functionality, even if they are only trying to talk to each other.  So what happens is that people just won't add you to their group chats if you have a green bubble.  Since most of teens' social life these days takes place "in the groupchat", this amounts social exclusion.  Teens don't want to be socially excluded, so they beg their parents for an iPhone.  Parents don't want their teens to be socially excluded, so they pony up $1500 for one.

The thing is that Android has had the capability to do all the things iPhone can do for a long time, at least the important stuff, but Apple just refuses to integrate with Android on this.  Instead they would rather keep Android performance on iPhone in a degraded state, and rely on users blaming it on Android (you have the green bubble so it's your fault) rather than Apple (you have the green bubble because my phone can't talk to you).  As long as regulatory agencies keep letting Apple get away with this strategy, and users keep refusing to blame Apple for their iPhone turning into a potato when it has to talk to Android phones, Apple will keep doing it, because it's an extremely powerful strategy.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

FOMO is a disturbingly effective marketing tactic, but how can it be effectively outlawed?

It's not FOMO, it's more like if Apple launched a ticketing service called iTix to compete with TicketMaster and then made it so that the TicketMaster app didn't work on iPhones, so every event company had to use iTix or lose the entire Apple audience.  I think that would be universally recognized as an abuse of monopoly power to boost your own product over a competitor.  Yet Apple is able to make it so Android messages don't work on iPhones, so everyone who wants to send a message to an iPhone has to buy an iPhone.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

FOMO is a disturbingly effective marketing tactic, but how can it be effectively outlawed?

It's not FOMO, it's more like if Apple launched a ticketing service called iTix to compete with TicketMaster and then made it so that the TicketMaster app didn't work on iPhones, so every event company had to use iTix or lose the entire Apple audience.  I think that would be universally recognized as an abuse of monopoly power to boost your own product over a competitor.  Yet Apple is able to make it so Android messages don't work on iPhones, so everyone who wants to send a message to an iPhone has to buy an iPhone.

The rest of my family except one brother all uses iPhones and they get my texts fine.

[lfromnj]

Wow protectionism from the yuropoors to protect their one major software tech company.
We should tarrif Spotify in vengeance .

[dead0man]

Still waiting for the massive blue/green bubble fine.  One of the most disgusting yet effective practices -- build a function into the phone hardware to socially ostracize anyone who doesn't have the same brand of phone.  The DMA was supposed to put a stop to it.

It really blows my mind that there's actually people who care about that. Like why on earth is the color of a text bubble in your messages such a pressing concern?

It's not about the color.  The color is just an indicator of degraded performance.  Apple intentionally degrades the quality of communications pretty much across the board for Android.  The main impact this has is that when you add an Android phone to a group chat, everyone in that group chat loses their functionality, even if they are only trying to talk to each other.  So what happens is that people just won't add you to their group chats if you have a green bubble.  Since most of teens' social life these days takes place "in the groupchat", this amounts social exclusion.  Teens don't want to be socially excluded, so they beg their parents for an iPhone.  Parents don't want their teens to be socially excluded, so they pony up $1500 for one.

The thing is that Android has had the capability to do all the things iPhone can do for a long time, at least the important stuff, but Apple just refuses to integrate with Android on this.  Instead they would rather keep Android performance on iPhone in a degraded state, and rely on users blaming it on Android (you have the green bubble so it's your fault) rather than Apple (you have the green bubble because my phone can't talk to you).  As long as regulatory agencies keep letting Apple get away with this strategy, and users keep refusing to blame Apple for their iPhone turning into a potato when it has to talk to Android phones, Apple will keep doing it, because it's an extremely powerful strategy.

tl:dr version-Apple owners are dumb sheep, example #5

[CumbrianLefty]

Wow protectionism from the yuropoors to protect their one major software tech company.
We should tarrif Spotify in vengeance .

Protectionism is not always bad, though I don't expect you to agree with this.