Apple Subject to 'Special Abuse Control' Says German Antitrust Regulator [Updated]

[Alpha Centauri]

This coming from Germany that over regulates everything and everyone in all aspects of life. Practically and within its own walls, there’s little consumer protection laws to speak of and no ombudsman to aid those in genuine conflict with large companies. Politics will often have hidden agendas when pretending to represent its own people. Rant over.

 

[gund1234]

There is a difference between trying to enforce user privacy and using user privacy as justification for anti-competitive practices. My understanding is that the authority is fine with the former but wants to make sure Apple is not actually engaged in the latter.

anti-competitive practices
What are they ?
and they should be looking at market share in Germany to determine if an action is needed.

 

[gund1234]

Roughly 40% market share for iOS in Germany. That’s a big number for the maker of a proprietary solution in said market.

Android has 60% ?
Does Android give options for customers to not track ?
is Germany asking Apple to follow Android ?

 

[constructor]

Those laws only apply to companies and individuals tracking others, but not to the government itself. Germany is just butthurt that Apple keeps them from invading the privacy of their own citizens because ... security.

Wrong!

GDPR also protects citizens from government overreach and that kind of thing has indeed been beaten back on this basis in multiple cases!

 

[constructor]

Stupid Germans, as if they didn't have a million more pressing issues right now. Like making sure everything, including the referenced press piece is written in "gender just" language.

Some countries can chew gum, walk, defy russian energy blackmail, support Ukraine, push for climate neutrality, clean up from 16 years of Merkel, generally tighten corporate oversight and a lot more at the same time, actually!

Elected politicians in Germany don't give a damp warm fart what the voters want.

Butthurt just because they don't only do what you want? 😉

 

[constructor]

This coming from Germany that over regulates everything and everyone in all aspects of life.

Nonsense. There are plenty of absolutely straightforward regulations which just make sense, especially limiting the power businesses and even the government can have over citizens and consumers.

There are some which are outmoded and in need of reform to be sure, but you're mischaracterizing the overall situation by a lot there!

Practically and within its own walls, there’s little consumer protection laws to speak of

Apparently just none you have bothered to inform yourself about!

and no ombudsman to aid those in genuine conflict with large companies.

Improvements are certainly still possible, especially after 16 years of conservative neglect in this specific area, but while there are some obvious gaps this is not remotely the universal picture.

Politics will often have hidden agendas when pretending to represent its own people. Rant over.

Politicians are held to account by citizens who actually bother to inform themselves and actually vote – which actually matters in our electoral system of proportional representation, contrary to several other countries where politicians can game and manipulate the elections basically at will.

 

[constructor]

anti-competitive practices
What are they ?

If Apple applied privacy protection in an uneven way to their own selective benefit that would be an example.

Notably the KA has not stated that this was the case, just that this merits particular attention.

and they should be looking at market share in Germany to determine if an action is needed.

The argument here is that Apple has relevant activities in so many different market areas that in aggregate this makes them worthy of special attention even while they don't have majority positions in either of those areas individually.

 

[boss.king]

There is a difference between trying to enforce user privacy and using user privacy as justification for anti-competitive practices. My understanding is that the authority is fine with the former but wants to make sure Apple is not actually engaged in the latter.

This. A lot of people here seem to have no understanding of nuance.

 

[CapitalIdea]

If only the Germans had been as aggressive when Volkswagen scammed all those customers with those fake emissions over many years.

 

[erikkfi]

This is the part of the nature documentary where the predators are circling the prey animal over and over, but none of them have just yet had the courage to extend their head over and take a real bite yet. It's coming, and the tension from waiting is agonizing.

 

[constructor]

If only the Germans had been as aggressive when Volkswagen scammed all those customers with those fake emissions over many years.

Part of why that wasn't pursued more urgently was the Merkel government's lax to negligent attitude towards corporate malfeasance.

The Scholz government is exactly now tightening some of those screws, even if this is not exactly the same thing.

And similar to the european competition oversight this applies to both domestic and to foreign corporations.

 

[genovelle]

This article does not cover the full story. It is not actually about the fact that Apple decided to hinder tracking, what they want to know or look into is why Apple is seemingly excepted from that rule and if Apple says they do not track in the first place GREAT but it doesn’t hurt to make sure this claim is true. Just like the US is still looking into TikTok, even though TikTok says they don’t share data with China


In a specific case, the Cartel Office is investigating Apple's App Tracking Transparency Framework. This ties the tracking of user behavior for third-party app providers to certain conditions and is particularly important for app providers whose offerings are financed with advertising. "In particular, the Bundeskartellamt is investigating the initial suspicion that these regulations give preferential treatment to Apple's own offers," the authority explained.

It’s actually not exempt. They actually tell you if they are tracking you before you start and since they are not sharing that information with anyone else there’s nothing to inform. The other part is many of their functions don’t track personal information at all. Data is stored and processed on the device so Apple doesn’t know who is accessing their servers and building data off that. Even Maps uses anonymous crowd data. Siri knows where you are but has function on device for a number of years now.

 

[britboyj]

Good. This is the sort of thing legislative bodies should be focusing on, not whether you can use first-party user behavior to improve your own damned product without explicit informed consent (looking at you, CNIL).

Apple's crackdown on third-party advertising only to supplant them with its own solutions is exactly the kind of monopoly abuse of power

Apple wrapped up its own advertising business pitch in user privacy. If they really cared about user privacy, they wouldn't have introduced Search Ads, SKAdNetwork, or given any option for users to opt-in.

They don't care about your privacy. They just don't want the competition to do better, for less, than they charge in their ads, because if there's anything we learned from iAd, it's that Apple is actually garbage at advertising services.

If you don't think Apple is interested in continuously building out their own ad offering on your data, they wouldn't have quietly hired Antonio García Martínez, and then had to let him go when female employees brought up how much of a creep he was - but they knew that going on since... ya know, he's written a book about it beforehand (Chaos Monkeys).

 

[svish]

Governments across the world are scrutinizing Apple.

 

[abhibeckert]

The absurd option would be for Apple to voluntarily restrict production, sales, and subscriptions so they are no longer dominant. And/or maybe Apple and Google should each donate a few billion euro to fund European startups to create alternatives.

Seems like it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper to just allow third party developers to do all the things that Apple's own internal dev teams are allowed to do.

This investigation is about "App Tracking Transparency" which simply requires app developers to publicly summarise whatever tracking they do. Apple can simply order their own app dev team to do the same thing (and as far as I can tell, Apple does that - search Messages in the App Store for example, and you can see the same privacy card as, say, Facebook messenger... except of course Apple's app does a lot less tracking).

 

[wanha]

German regulators are already looking into Apple's ad tracking rules and App Tracking Transparency, a measure that requires apps to get explicit user consent before tracking them. The investigation began in 2022 with the aim of determining whether Apple's anti-tracking technology is anti-competitive.

Undermining user privacy sure is a strange hill to die on for "anti-competitive practices"

 

[d686546s]

It's not surprising that Apple is under particular regulatory scrutiny given how tightly integrated and walled off its services are.

I also wouldn't be surprised if regulators increasingly started to consider other factors than just domestic market share since some of the policies affecting European consumers are based on are driven by US companies competing for US consumers and the Bundeskartellamt is right that this sets standards beyond the US.

Apple will win some of these battles and it will lose some. There is no doubt in my mind that Apple is actively trying to use its strong position in the smartphone market to enter other markets and disadvantaging competitors as much as it can.

Some of that has benefitted consumers in a narrow sense, but it may just as well have wider negative impacts for consumers outside of the US that are not immediately tangible. I think it's no one's goal to bring Apple down or something like that, but Europe (and other places, of course) will have a natural interest to push back against dependency on US companies that have created ecosystems that make it very hard for local competition to get a foot in the door. Hence they will increasingly face a stronger headwind.

 

[bsolar]

Undermining user privacy sure is a strange hill to die on for "anti-competitive practices"

My understanding is that the investigation is whether Apple is applying these user privacy protection rules to third-party applications and services but not applying the same rules to the same degree to its own first-party applications and services.

If that's the case (and I stress, if: it's all hypothetical for now), the regulators would require Apple to enforce these user privacy protection rules to itself to the same standard it does to third-parties. That would actually reinforce user privacy, not undermine it, unless Apple decides to relax these rules once they were to abide to them too. That would be quite controversial though.

 

[genovelle]

Roughly 40% market share for iOS in Germany. That’s a big number for the maker of a proprietary solution in said market.

So what. They don’t have to even offer a 3rd party platform at all. They make self contained devices and could just offer free and licensed apps through a single subscription service model like Arcade. That is exactly what they should do going forward.

 

[genovelle]

Not sure about tablets and watches, but they have about 40% share in the smartphone market, which is about the same as Samsung.

The reason Apple is under stricter control is not only due to the large market share alone though: it's also due to the high level of vertical integration they have.

That would mean that car and TV manufacturers should be under review because they control the technology in their products and limit what software can be integrated with their products.

 

[d686546s]

So what. They don’t have to even offer a 3rd party platform at all. They make self contained devices and could just offer free and licensed apps through a single subscription service model like Arcade. That is exactly what they should do going forward.

Removing the thing that made the iPhone extremely popular and successful (being able to install the apps and games you like) is certainly one way of addressing Apple's strong market position, I'll grant you that.

 

[swm]

governments, when technology improves their surveillance capabilities: 😍🥰😘
governments, when technology is used to hide from their eyes:

 

[nicolas_s]

"Bring back in-app tracking!"
- Nobody

 

[bsolar]

That would mean that car and TV manufacturers should be under review because they control the technology in their products and limit what software can be integrated with their products.

Taking TVs as example, Samsung dominates the market in Germany with about 40% share, but AFAIK you can side-load third-party applications on them if you want.

For cars, not sure a specific brand dominates enough of the market, but e.g. Volkswagen allows integration of smartphone apps from either Android or iOS.

In any case, vertical integration in itself is not a problem: it's vertical integration coupled with a strong enough market share that the potential for abusing said vertical integration to impose unfair limitations to competitors arises.

 

[ericwn]

So what. They don’t have to even offer a 3rd party platform at all. They make self contained devices and could just offer free and licensed apps through a single subscription service model like Arcade. That is exactly what they should do going forward.

Thanks for the chuckle.