| I mostly agree with you, but I think your examples might miss the mark a little. Craigslist charging employers to post job listings doesn't seem like it would have much of an impact on the consumer market. I'd guess that the business-to-business expense in this instance probably isn't significant enough for it to be passed on to the (employer's) customers or impact their experience. Restaurants probably don't take as large of a chunk of their revenue or have as many restrictions placed upon them by Grubhub as Spotify does by Apple. Amazon, on the other hand, is probably the closest comparison. However, I suspect Amazon's services to their sellers involve greater capital and operating expenses than the services Apple provides to their sellers. Both companies need to spend money on tech infrastructure, development, and support. In addition to this, Apple needs to employ reviewers to act as the gatekeepers of the App Store and possibly buy hardware for those reviewers to use. In contrast, Amazon needs to build/purchase/rent warehouses, employ warehouse workers, and purchase warehouse equipment (forklifts, etc.). Amazon also doesn't take a cut of, for example, Microsoft's subscription fees if someone orders an Xbox and subscribes to Xbox Live. This might be different for Amazon's app store for their Fire OS devices, but I'm guessing you were referring to their general marketplace. To be fair, I probably don't know enough about any of these markets for my opinions to hold much weight, but I'm not sure if the examples you gave really line up with the situation between Apple and Spotify. But I definitely agree that it's important for people to try to remember to stay unbiased with these things. |