[mrep]

I agree that there are substitutes for everything except the IOS distribution one. I also agree that most of these metrics are not true monopolies. However, I'm using the term "monopoly" in the way the EU sees it when enacting antitrust fines to curtail this type of behavior because what they basically use is >50% in some arbitrarily chosen metric (percent of of smartphones running an OS used for the EUs recent 5 billion dollar android fine on google) as that is what the EU is currently using to fine companies into "behaving" despite IOS being a much more abusive platform IMO.

This is why I think we need a new way of identifying market abuse.

[AnthonyMouse]

The problem with what the EU is doing is that they aren't interested in applying a rigorous standard. It's perfectly possible to define markets or abuse in various ways, but if all they're really doing is to backfill reasoning to justify enormous fines on American businesses there is no point in arguing about what is in practice a rationalization, and the response if they continue to use such ambiguous rules probably ought to be something like lobbying the US government to negotiate a truce (or retaliate in kind against EU businesses).

[mrep]

Wow, I cannot upvote you enough.

> The problem with what the EU is doing is that they aren't interested in applying a rigorous standard.

Yeah, this is what I and a lot of other people have a problem with these EU antitrust laws and even GDPR . In the google case, they literally had the android play clauses set from day 1 when they had 0% market share and instead of telling google that they could no longer bundle chrome/search to the play store now that they reached 50% market share in mobile OS (their magic antitrust metric), they waited 7 years and then threw a ridiculous fine at them. If the laws were clear, this wouldn't be a problem.