Technology

58135 readers

5237 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

376

Apple hit with $2 billion EU antitrust fine in Spotify case (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 6 months ago by ForgottenFlux to c/technology

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Apple has been fined €1.8bn ($2bn) by the EU after an investigation found it had limited competition from music streaming services such as Spotify.
The European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said a smaller fine would have been nothing more than the equivalent of a parking fine and the €1.8bn was designed to act as a deterrent against a repetition of such practices by Apple or others.
“Apple’s rules ended up harming consumers. Critical information was withheld so that consumers could not effectively use or make informed choices. Some consumers may have paid more because they weren’t aware that they can pay less if they subscribed outside of the app,” Vestager said.
Vestager said consumers may have paid two or three euros a month more for music streaming because of the lack of open competition. However, she conceded that the fine would not be distributed to customers who had been allegedly exploited but to individual member states.
She said the fine represented 0.5% of Apple’s global turnover.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Honestly tho… it seems like they have a point. It isn’t just blind ranting, there’s a lot of truth here.

And I say that as someone that doesn’t even particularly like Apple, I use Windows and prefer Android.

[–] FilthyHookerSpit 9 points 6 months ago

Yeah, for a second I was "fuck apple" but what they wrote in there does make sense. Now, I'm still "fuck apple" but I am also "fuck Spotify too".

[–] nialv7 6 points 6 months ago

Well they have successfully gas lit you

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Which point would that be?

[–] Giooschi 3 points 6 months ago

They do kinda have a point against Spotify but they conveniently omit the fact that Apple Music, their own music app, competes against Spotify without those restrictions that Spotify wants to remove.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Note, however, that the mere fact that all those apps exist for iOS adds a lot of value for Apple too. Apple wouldn’t sell nearly as many iPhones if the most important apps weren’t available on their platform. They spin it as if they are only creating value for the app developers without asking for much in return, while the App Store is an enormous cash cow, which they’ve been able to build due to the lack of restrictions (pre DMA). A good API is not just a service for app developers, it’s a way to enhance the user experience and sell more phones, because of all the work that app developers do to turn it into useful and exciting features.