- Nov 10, 2017
- 3,247
I started this morning all riled up and ready to write a newsletter about how Google is using its market power in one segment — Gmail — to give itself a potentially unfair advantage in another segment: video conferencing.
That was the plan, but then Apple decided to use its market power in one segment — the App Store — to give itself a potentially unfair advantage in another segment: buying digital goods.
I’m obviously going to focus on Apple. But to get Google out of the way quickly, its abuse was deciding not only to build Google Meet into Gmail, but to inflict a giant button on inbox screens for all G Suite users by default. It can be turned off, but the company is clearly sacrificing user experience to push its own agenda against Zoom. (I’ll come back to Google in a postscript.)
In Apple’s case, the decision was to tell the company that makes the brand new email app called Hey that it cannot distribute its app on the iPhone unless it makes it possible for users to sign up via Apple’s own prescribed methods — which gives Apple a 30 percent cut.
Full information
Apple’s App Store policies are bad, but its interpretation and enforcement are worse
Shakedown as a Service
www.theverge.com