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UK Regulator Plans To Launch Probe Into Google's and Apple's Mobile Duopoly (engadget.com) 40

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has concluded that Google and Apple "hold all the cards" when it comes to mobile phones a year after taking a closer look at their "duopoly." It's now consulting on the launch of a market investigation into the tech giants' market power in mobile browsers, as well as into Apple's cloud gaming restrictions. From a report: In addition, the CMA has launched a separate investigation into Google's Play Store rules -- the one that requires certain app developers to use the tech giant's payment system for in-app purchases, in particular. The CMA has concluded after its year-long study that the tech giants do indeed exhibit an "effective duopoly" on mobile ecosystems. A total of 97 percent of all mobile web browsing in the UK is powered by Apple's and Google's browser engines. iPhones and Android devices typically come with Safari and Chrome pre-installed, which means their browsers have the advantage from the start. Further, Apple requires developers to make sure their iOS and iPadOS apps are using its WebKit engine to browse the web. That limits the incentives Apple may have to invest in Safari, the CMA said.
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UK Regulator Plans To Launch Probe Into Google's and Apple's Mobile Duopoly More

UK Regulator Plans To Launch Probe Into Google's and Apple's Mobile Duopoly

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  • What you gonna do about browsers UK? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @06:09PM (#62610634)

    market investigation into the tech giants' market power in mobile browsers,

    You know what's really a lot worse than two giants with different mobile browsers? All companies using the same mobile browser engine, Chrome.

    Please do not make Apple support Chrome.

    • What's the fear? That Safari is so far behind that Chrome will dominate if the field is level? The regulators have similar thoughts, but came to the opposite conclusion.

      • What's the fear? That Safari is so far behind that Chrome will dominate if the field is level?

        That you do not fear a monoculture of the most important software on the planet is frightening all by itself.

        • Safari kicks chrome all the way back to the school yard. Chrome sucks donkey dick. Firefox has become a much better browser in recent revisions. Chrome is bloatware, spyware, and crapware all rolled into one. When it first came out, it was fantastic and brought fourth some amazing innovation. Since then, it has become shit. It has become utter horseshit. Safari is still great. The only problem with it is it is no longer developed for windows. Oh, and with regards to market share, there is a distinct fiscal

          • You know what is worse than a duopoly? A regulation. Monopolies and duopolies and oligopolies are only bad when they abuse their position and hurt consumers.

            The problem with that assertion is (1) the assumption that unregulated predatory capitalism always results in a large number of fiercely competitive companies through the guidance of the infallible ever rational invisible hand of the free market rendering the creation of monopolies and duopolies and oligopolies an impossibility, and (2) the assumption that through the guidance of the infallible ever rational invisible hand of the free market an unregulated predatory capitalist system would be completely fre

    • How about just opening up the app store to allow competing browsers and not just re-faced Safari. Safari webkit is buggy and limited compared to what is available on any other platform.

  • Before all of the inevitable "Apple's not a monopoly" posts.. friendly reminder that the real issue is that Apple is using technological measures to prevent you from doing things you may want to do with the phone you bought. If Apple continues to get away with it, cars will eventually be "transportation platforms" and any store that they drive you too will owe the car maker 30% for allowing you to go there. That future seems pretty sad to me.
    • Hello, customer support? Yeah, I was driving my new car and when I turned towards my favorite store, the speed dropped to half. What? No, I wasn't going to Wal-Mart, I was going to a different... What? Wal-Mart is your preferred partner? What does that even mean?.... So my car can only go the speed limit if I'm driving to stores that you've partnered with and going anywhere else will result in a speed reduction? AND THE WINDOWS WON'T ROLL UP OR THE DOORS LOCK IN A COMPETITOR'S PARKING LOT?

  • Samsung (Score:3)

    by fermion ( 181285 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @06:31PM (#62610660) Homepage Journal
    With software, Google has a clear monopoly with two android phones being sold for every iOS phone in some quarters. Also chrome, and the built in tracking by Google, is very problematic.

    In terms of devices, most are going to be made by Samsung with its proprietary browser and software and login. Apple will be a distant second

    As far as the App Store, there does seem to be similar terms with similar changes made concurrent;y. This could be indication of cartel behavior or just a competitive market. Opening up,the app stores are likely not going to help as one can side load android devices yet Google play generally has the arduous terms as other stores.

    • Samsung dominance, like it was on TVs a couple years ago, is not a problem because we can easily switch to another vendor.
      The problem is when corporations abuse their dominance to lock-in the users.

      I have a Samsung phone but don't use any of the Samsung application, except for the camera. I replaced the launcher, browser (firefox), email, calendar, etc. So I'm not locked-in to Samsung at all. And it wasn't hard to do, the biggest inconvenience is that I can't delete many Samsung applications.

    • Google doesn't have anything like a monopoly. But even if they did, it's a weird one. The thing they and Apple are both doing where they are forcing people to use their payment systems if they want to use their store is obviously anticompetitive. But only Apple has a monopoly on app and app stores for their devices. Google not only permits sideloading, they explicitly support third party app stores in Android 12 to the point that they are allowed to do unattended updates, which prior to this version require

      • A lot of people are fussing about what they believe to be the etymological definition of "monopoly" without thought to either the legal definition or whether the law even references the word in the first place.

        Abuse of a dominant position in the UK is illegal, no monopoly in any sense required.

        Also, I don't think those things will get google off the hook: Microsoft allowed competing stuff and yet managed to do the most appalling abuse of a dominant market position. And google are definitely using a dominant

        • Abuse of a dominant position in the UK is illegal, no monopoly in any sense required.

          If Google is guilty of the same thing as Microsoft, it seems to me the remedy is the same, too. Make them offer other browsers, no big deal. The issue of their dominance over the web is a much bigger one, but the truth is that their handhelds are largely irrelevant to their dominance of desktop browsers, even though they both run Chrome. Firefox was the only unbundled browser even worth mentioning (by the numbers, that is) and they shot themselves in the foot by ignoring users (and open bugs) and making the

          • Unless you can prove that Google manipulated the Mozilla foundation leadership into these counterproductive behaviors, the sheer disparity in web browsers today is frankly the Moz foundation's fault.

            I disagree. I do think the the mozilla foundation made some serious missteps. However, I remember hitting google.com and finding an advertisement for chrome on the front place where no other advertiser has ever been allowed. They ended up toe-to-toe with the worlds largest advertiser and dominant search engine w

  • UK Regulator Plans To Launch Probe Into Google's and Apple's Mobile Duopoly

    Can't anyone simply invest billions of dollars and millions of development hours in competing products?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dysmal ( 3361085 )

      Microsoft tried and... umm... yeah...

      What's the saying about getting between two dogs fucking?

    • Yeah. Sailfish works great and can run Android software.

      I'm not too worried about Google as a monopolist in this case though. Bear in mind that with AOSP available the only carrot that Google offers is continued development of all of the extras that they contribute, and their only stick is access to the Play Store. If Google ever gets too lax, as Microsoft did once they had their IE monopoly, then the device manufacturers just fork AOSP and Google loses its monopoly.

      This doesn't mean that Google can't

  • "... come with Safari and Chrome pre-installed, which means their browsers have the advantage from the start."

    The Edge browser is not only the default in Windoze but now also can't be uninstalled. M$ hasn't changed at all!

  • Leave the App Store as is. But make them open up iMessages to third party integration. iMessages got their monopoly by piggybacking off SMS, which wasan industry standard. Also, Apple stole ideas from ICQ and AIM. I feel like it's not unfair to make Apple give back by allowing third parties to integrate with iMessages and Facetime too.

    • Please don't. Android is fine without any iMessage-compatible application.
      iMessage is not going to survive (as a proprietary, single vendor messaging network, it is doomed, but it could of course survive as an SMS client), and we better let it die. Same for Facetime.

      What we should do however, it force Apple to allow deleting iMessage and Facetime, so that people can install and use only third-party SMS / video call / messaging applications. This way they will die even faster. Or even better, have th

      • iMessage spam I receive: none

        Text message spam I receive: lots

        Why the fuck would I want iMessage interoperable with anything else?

        • They should make iMessage even more exclusive to reduce risks of spam. A good idea would be to divide the iMessage user base randomly into 1000 groups.
          People could only communicate with people from their own group. So we would have 1000 different closed networks. Sounds like paradise.

      • iMessage is better than SMS for two reasons. First it doesn't need cell service and works over wifi. Second is acknowledgement that the message was delivered. I've had people get SMS messages a week later.

        • Did Apple really made a messaging protocol that doesn't require a cell phone connection to work? How clever! Thank god Apple is there. Without Apple, we would be forced to use SMS!

  • Not the same (Score:4, Insightful)

    by schweini ( 607711 ) on Friday June 10, 2022 @08:19PM (#62610726)
    It annoys me to no end that Google is constantly being put in the same bucket as Apple in these lawsuits.
    The Epic lawsuit also sued Apple AND Google
    Love or hate Google and Android, but I do think they are way, way better behaved and less monopolistic than Apple. Sideloading was always an option, and there are various non-Google offshoots of Android (Amazon, Huawai, many no-name chinese ones and a couple of open source ones) that can be quite funtional, too.
    The non-apple mobile space is relatively open and dynamic, and lets the best one win.
    Apple's constant walled garden approach and locking people into their ecosystems is way more monopolistic than whatever Google is doing in the mobile space.
    Hell, there wasn't even a decent way to migrate a Whatsapp account from an iPhone to Android for a long time, because Apple insists on only allowing iCloud backups, which are obviosly not availabe to other platforms.

    • but I do think they are way, way better behaved and less monopolistic than Apple

      Hahaha what? Less monopolistic maybe, but better behaved? Can you even go anywhere on the internet without Google knowing about it?

      I put it this way: how hard is it to not give Apple your data and money? Now, how hard is it not to give Google your data and money? Don't forget to include the money you pay indirectly because companies that make the things you buy are probably paying Google... and they probably aren't paying Appl

    • That's how you know the Epic lawsuit was in bad faith and not about what they said. They just want a bigger slice of the pie.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      It annoys me to no end that Google is constantly being put in the same bucket as Apple in these lawsuits.
      The Epic lawsuit also sued Apple AND Google
      Love or hate Google and Android, but I do think they are way, way better behaved and less monopolistic than Apple. Sideloading was always an option, and there are various non-Google offshoots of Android (Amazon, Huawai, many no-name chinese ones and a couple of open source ones) that can be quite funtional, too.
      The non-apple mobile space is relatively open and dynamic, and lets the best one win.
      Apple's constant walled garden approach and locking people into their ecosystems is way more monopolistic than whatever Google is doing in the mobile space.
      Hell, there wasn't even a decent way to migrate a Whatsapp account from an iPhone to Android for a long time, because Apple insists on only allowing iCloud backups, which are obviosly not availabe to other platforms.

      As much as I agree here, Google and Android are definitely the least evil and most open platform... Have either of them actually done wrong here?

      I disagree with Apple restricting choice on their platform, but it's my choice to have nothing to do with that platform. It's not like MS where I couldn't avoid it 100% if I tried, thanks largely to Google, the mobile device marketplace is thriving and competitive even if Apple disappeared up it's own arse overnight. So Apple can get away with limiting what user

  • UK regulators have sorted out Brexit and gotten down to the real issues.

  • Kinda rich coming from a country that basically has a political duopoly. It could only be more ironic if the US tried something like that.

  • Hearings will be heard in Tripoli.

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