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by qeternity 834 days ago
> They did this to themselves

What...by being successful?

2 comments

No, by being anti-competitive. Most countries have laws against monopolies, and it was naive to expect that countries would wait until you destroy the competition to enforce those laws.
> Most countries have laws against monopolies

They have less than 25% smartphone marketshare. What monopoly do they have?

They don't.

That's why the regulation targets "gatekeepers" with revenue in the billions and at least 45Million European users.

The EU decided that this is large enough to be limited in what they can do.

They do. That’s why the EC had to create a new class named “gatekeeper”: because Apple isn’t a monopolist.
That's what I meant. Sorry if it was unclear
It is curious that there are no European gatekeepers either.
Yes. It's the reality of capitalistic end game. You start with a great product, innovate for 30 years and then when you think you got it and can endlessly extract the rent from the market, while adding another megapixel and megaherz and buying out or bulling competitors, then the government knocks on your door and gives you the award of the biggest asshat in the town and asks to retire.

Congrats, you won, now let somebody else play the game and become a boring public utility. And by the way, your research lab is now a public university. And the taxes is what government does, not you.

> And the taxes is what government does, not you.

Because the role of the government (in theory) is to use these taxes for public utility services and projects. Companies only care about their owners and shareholders, a very small subset of the population. If you're not contributing to society, but just profiteering, you should retire. Especially if your position lead you to have a say to what succeed or not in the economy.