[dkonofalski]

Isn't that kind of self-defeating, though? Like the ACA without the individual mandate? The only way this works is if people use the apps on the iPhone. There's nothing stopping you from using Google Maps on an iPhone but, in order for the tech to improve while remaining strong with privacy, is for Apple to utilize their existing technology. Also, I disagree that it's anti-competitive. Users are always allowed and able to switch to another device/ecosystem.

[judge2020]

It's extremely similar to the microsoft IE issue, users should be able to set a default web browser.

[criddell]

The difference is that Microsoft dominated the market. Apple has a relatively small slice of the smartphone pie.

If Google restricted the user in the same way, that would arguably be closer to the Microsoft situation because their marketshare is 2x Apple's.

[ASalazarMX]

How about we bake in competitive openness regadless of company size? Why is it right to build corrals as long as yours is not the biggest?

[robin_reala]

Because the user has an easy choice. Monopolies are not a problem in themselves, it’s when that monopoly is leveraged to crush competitors out of the overall market.

[riversflow]

I seriously don’t understand why this sentiment(not yours) is so prevalent on HN. If we want competition in the tech sector, it seems to me that government enforcement of modulization would only hinder such competition. Why should a large corp’s web dev team care about mobile safari if they can just write on their page, “it seems you are using safari on mobile, we recommend downloading mobile chrome(AppStore hyperlink) and setting it to default, as of $PREVIOUSYEAR we will no longer support it.”? To me as things currently stand(that is Apple is not a monopoly), Apple’s walled garden approach absolutely embodies the spirit of a free market. Consumers have the choice of products and the defaultness of iPhones is fairly widely understood at the market level, best I can tell. Anecdotally of course, but almost all the l people I’ve talked to who buy an iPhone state that they buy it because they “don’t want to think about their phone” that seems fair to me.

[dkonofalski]

Exactly! And, to my point that's being voted down, it really only works the way it's intended if they have the ability to control each step of the ecosystem. If they allow people to replace experiences at different points then it's not possible to ensure the consistency that Apple's really known for.

[zepto]

I think this is fine, but only if we also bake in all of the things that Apple has achieved using their dominance.

- Strong encryption - Privacy Protections - Not using user data

[airstrike]

I think that depends on how you define "market". Globally, sure, but in the US that's not the case

https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-...

[criddell]

The market is all the places the devices are sold. So global makes sense. If you define the market as San Francisco then Apple might have a monopoly. But that feels a little like market gerrymandering.

Even if you were going to restrict to just the US, Apple still sells fewer than 50% of the phones.

[airstrike]

Fewer than 50% is different from "Google sells twice as many"

> The market is all the places the devices are sold.

Certainly US regulators / courts don't purport to have jurisdiction over foreign markets, agreed? The aforementioned EU case against Microsoft was about the EU market alone.

[tssva]

"Users are always allowed and able to switch to another device/ecosystem."

Google would like you to have a discussion with the EU on their behalf.

[dkonofalski]

Google's market share globally dwarfs Apple's. That comparison isn't the same at all. If Google pushes their own products on consumers using the power it has established in that market, it's a monopoly and the EU is 100% in the right in enforcing restrictions to that. It's exactly the situation Microsoft found itself in during the 90s.