Google Criticizes EU Regulators for Ignoring Apple in Bid to Get $5.1 Billion Antitrust Fine Annulled

[Sciomar]

I don’t. Google is not small player.
But, only Apple is valued as 3 Trillions and Google is not quite there. Hence why I use “smaller”, even though market value is usually hugely inflated and not really indicative of anything.

You're comparing Apple to a branch of a bigger entity, everyone seems to have forgotten Alphabet is the parent company. They would be a trillion dollar company if they'd slow down on investments and acquisitions.

 

[Bull 07]

Treacherous who?

 

[Thrutheroofnunderground]

Interesting choice of words when you consider the fact that Apple tells developers that if they want to use in-app purchases in their app they have no choice but to use Apple's pay system. So google is told they are being anticompetitive but in the same vein, Apple are told what they are doing is ok.

That will be changing soon, you're on an Apple fan/rumor site, that should be more than obvious at this point. Apple is going to have to allow links to outside payment methods.

Also, that is the way is was done on the iPhone which is developed and sold under Apple's name. Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Huawei, and the plethora of other mobile manufacturer's is not.

 

[gamod13]

How can the competitive dynamic be the same if Google is licensing their OS's to third party OEMs. Apple doesn't do that.

Apple just uses third party software on their iOS lol and forces them to downplay so that Apple software can take obvious advantage. Ye this is really bad. Apple shouldn't be allowed to work with third party software then following your logic.

 

[gamod13]

That will be changing soon, you're on an Apple fan/rumor site, that should be more than obvious at this point. Apple is going to have to allow links to outside payment methods.

Also, that is the way is was done on the iPhone which is developed and sold under Apple's name. Samsung, Nokia, Motorola, Huawei, and the plethora of other mobile manufacturer's is not.

Apple was forced to allow it thanks to Epic trial. Otherwise you would r have nothing from Apple 🍎

 

[ElectricPotato]

I imagine a five year old being called to account and pointing at another kid: "But Timmy did it too!"

 

[gamod13]

Google is actually an "exceptional success story of the power of privacy violation & data mining," MR's users said.

And apple is a success at bringing together ignorant IT users that are easily sold on the promise of fake security. For then to be then to be collecting data without user consent. Apple users are so easy to fool and apple knows it pretty well. It works like "magic"

 

[Aichon]

Interesting choice of words when you consider the fact that Apple tells developers that if they want to use in-app purchases in their app they have no choice but to use Apple's pay system. So google is told they are being anticompetitive but in the same vein, Apple are told what they are doing is ok.

You wrongly assume that regulators aren’t currently pursuing Apple over this exact issue. See recent JFTC, KFTC, and Epic v. Apple rulings. While this stuff may be related, however, in the sense that we're talking about tech titans, it's a distinct market from the case at hand with Google. The two cases don't interact at all.

 

[svish]

Google and its ways!! Definitely Android installed base will be much bigger than iOS.

 

[iPadified]

Different industries. There are millions of mom-and-pop shops. Tens of thousands of clothing brands. Maybe 20 car manufacturers. A few giant grocery stores. Three bleeding-edge node manufacturers (TSMC, Samsung, Intel). Two mobile OS providers. One bleeding-edge node machine maker (ASML).

The market usually always settles into two popular operating systems because app makers don't want to support more and consumers go where the apps are.

The consumers and app makers choose the winning mobile operating systems. They've chosen Apple and Google. WebOS, FireFoxOS, Windows Mobile, Nokia, Motorola, etc. all failed.

Exactly. In the other industries the market economy is thriving. Mobile OS not at all. We have the same problem with desktop OS. If you sit on duopoly you need to take extra care about misusing the situation. Just a hint of misuse is enough to get scrutinised and that will continue as long as these two are top dogs and rightly so. EU and all other governments are obliged to do this by law and I have no clue how people can defend not scrutinising these two for misuse of their power.

 

[Pezimak]

You are missing the whole mountain.
google forces companies to install services on their phones to gain a market edge. EU don’t care what google does on pixel phones.

Ape have never in the history of apple ever forced a phone maker to install safari on it. Apple only does this on their phones they produce. Apple is payed by google to have their search engine as default instead of others.

Googl have android OS with GooLe play store, with google services and google search. Everything is forced and bundled as they have 80% of the market. Same reason why Microsoft was forced to make internet explorer optional as windows is installed on other computers not their own(untill recently)

edit: they are fining apple and suing them based on their anti competitive actions of the App Store. It’s just completely different laws being broken by apple and google.

As stated I’m pretty Google doesn’t force anyone to do that. And you can install number of other stores then Googles as a default.

 

[AdonisSMU]

If this is the case I'm thinking of, Apple really has nothing to do with it since this isn't about competition between mobile phone platforms in the least. This is about competition between cloud services and how Google illegally stifled competition in that space.

Google was found guilty of acting anticompetitively by illegally bundling its cloud services with the Google Play Store, telling Android handset manufacturers that if they wanted to use the wildly successful Google Play Store (i.e. pretty much the only game in town) they had no choice but to also use Google's other services as well. But there's loads of precedent saying you can't do that in the EU because it means using your advantage in one market—app stores—to leverage an unfair advantage in an unrelated market—cloud services. None of that changes if you factor Apple or iOS into the equation, so this appears to be an attempt at dragging Apple into this, rather than an attempt at getting themselves off the hook.

And to be clear, this sort of bundling has been illegal in the EU for decades. See: Microsoft being told to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows in the EU in the early 2000s.

To be fair everyone who buys a phone wants some default apps on it like the phone, messages, music, calendar, settings… the same is true for a computer how do you install a browser without even a default browser on a computer? Now the app stores exist but before they didnt exist. So I dont by the entirety of the EU claims about default software.

 

[danpass]

Is there any more useless yet meddlesome organization than the EU?

-

 

[Kierkegaarden]

I agree with this entirely, I think Googles excuse here is just desperation to try and defend against the decision as expected.
But I really struggle to understand the reason for the fine as you say. Practically everyone would choose google apps like email and browser on a google phone OS?
And why are they not fining Apple for doing the exact same thing? I don't recall Apple EVER not installing Safari as it's default browser or allow to setup other search engines, yet the EU has a problem with Google doing the same with Chrome? Something seems incorrect there.
Am I missing something with this?

Maybe the difference is the mobile market dominance that Google has compared to Apple. And maybe the fact that Google makes their money mainly through search ads, and Apple isn’t in this business. I don’t use Chrome, but maybe the integration with their own search engine weaves into their ad business?

 

[thenewperson]

I don’t. Google is not small player.
But, only Apple is valued as 3 Trillions and Google is not quite there. Hence why I use “smaller”, even though market value is usually hugely inflated and not really indicative of anything.

2.35T vs 1.82T, such a huge difference ◔_◔

Even if we pretend their market caps have anything to do with their share of the relevant market, Google is still big enough to pull the moves the EU is dinging it for... which it did!

 

[Pezimak]

Maybe the difference is the mobile market dominance that Google has compared to Apple. And maybe the fact that Google makes their money mainly through search ads, and Apple isn’t in this business. I don’t use Chrome, but maybe the integration with their own search engine weaves into their ad business?

Perhaps, but I still don't see why that would lead to a 5 billion euro fine? Because it's Android any manufacture to setup as default what they like.

 

[hans1972]

Currently Apple does not bring much money to the EU with their TAX avoidance tricks, but this will also change. Tax should be paid where products are bought, simply as that.

But not paid where things are designed and produced?

 

[visualseed]

2.35T vs 1.82T, such a huge difference ◔_◔

Even if we pretend their market caps have anything to do with their share of the relevant market, Google is still big enough to pull the moves the EU is dinging it for... which it did!

Microsoft only had a ~$200B market cap when they were forced to unbundle IE in the EU. Any business of any size could do things that could be ruled anticompetitive.

 

[Wildkraut]

But not paid where things are designed and produced?

R&D tax is paid by employees salary/contract tax, as a service to the company that is employing them. Also by other local/HQ business corporate tax.


Anyway, this is also on the kill bill:

Double Irish arrangement - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sudo-sandwich]

As someone pointed out above there are essentially two players : Google and Apple. Who in their right mind call that a healthy competition? Apply that situation to the car industry, groceries, cloths, games, number of sport clubs in for instance football etc and you would conclude you where living in a totalitarian state with very expensive goods and very little variation.

2 players is what many industries tend towards because it rarely makes business sense to be #3 forever. It's fine, the big two compete with each other. Apple and Google are rapidly improving their products. If somehow both of them stop doing that, there's a ripe opportunity for a new player.

Other industries have more competitors because they're localized. Like, there's no advantage of one chain owning worldwide grocery stores. With tech it's extremely global. And you mentioned football as if it has more competitors... In the US, I see the NFL and nothing else except maybe NCAA.

 

[sudo-sandwich]

I agree with this entirely, I think Googles excuse here is just desperation to try and defend against the decision as expected.
But I really struggle to understand the reason for the fine as you say. Practically everyone would choose google apps like email and browser on a google phone OS?
And why are they not fining Apple for doing the exact same thing? I don't recall Apple EVER not installing Safari as it's default browser or allow to setup other search engines, yet the EU has a problem with Google doing the same with Chrome? Something seems incorrect there.
Am I missing something with this?

They did the same thing in the EU with Windows. In XP they couldn't bundle Windows Media Player. In 7 they had to give users different browser options upon installation. In hindsight, it was useless. There's no explanation for it other than ulterior motives or ignorant politicians.

 

[pasamio]

Does the EU understand why Google bothered to make their own mobile OS and browser? Do they know how they make money? Of course they are the default search engine and their apps are pre-installed. They are data miners!

Their own mobile OS and browser? They lifted Apache Harmony and Linux to make their operating system and the Chromium browser is a fork of Apple's WebKit. Google put a lot of work into Android however let's do a reality check: they're standing on the shoulders of giants.

Currently Apple does not bring much money to the EU with their TAX avoidance tricks, but this will also change. Tax should be paid where products are bought, simply as that.

Actually in a sense Apple Distribution International located in Ireland brings in a disproportionate amount of money because many of Apple's international operations are run through this office in Ireland. In a sense Apple brings money into the EU from outside of the EU through this tax structure. If tax was paid where the products were bought would likely result in a reduction in the amount of money funnelled into the EU if globally applied because much of the international revenue and payments would be have to be routed through those countries.

Many companies have "international" headquarters in Ireland because of their "unique" tax value proposition.

 

[cmaier]

Is there any more useless yet meddlesome organization than the EU?

-

Have you met my homeowners’ association?

 

[Wildkraut]

…and the Chromium browser is a fork of Apple's WebKit. Google put a lot of work into Android however let's do a reality check: they're standing on the shoulders of giants.

Yeah, let’s do a quick reality check.

WebKit is a fork of KDE HTML, a lot of newer WebKit features are just backports of Google Blink Engine, incl. this „new fancy“ UI coloring. Check GitHub WebKit Top Contributors, and you find Google employees there, despite the Blink fork. Google’s Project Zero is also one of the biggest contributors helping Apple to fix their own security issues. Apple did not even have a own Printing System, they had to buy CUPs. Their Kernel wouldn’t exist without FreeBSD, and tons of other OpenSource core Libraries and Terminal Tools are incorpoted into their System. XCode uses LLVM, Clang, DTrace, just to name a few more core stuff, all OpenSource too.

Who is standing on the shoulders of who again?!

If tax was paid where the products were bought would likely result in a reduction in the amount of money funnelled into the EU if globally applied because much of the international revenue and payments would be have to be routed through those countries.

Many companies have "international" headquarters in Ireland because of their "unique" tax value proposition.

Dunno from where you got that story, but just for the sake of your reality check:

Until the EU tackles tax avoidance, big companies will keep getting away with it | Aidan Regan

Ireland may not have given Apple illegal state aid, but the system still needs to change, says Aidan Regan, a professor at UCD’s School of Politics and International Relations

www.theguardian.com

Yeah, many Companies have subsidiaries in Ireland, but simply to avoid tax.

 

[Abazigal]

That will be changing soon, you're on an Apple fan/rumor site, that should be more than obvious at this point. Apple is going to have to allow links to outside payment methods.

While still being entitled to a cut on transactions made this way.

Therein lies the irony of choice - when it doesn’t give users more of what they want, but instead just saddles them with more issues to contend with.