Re:Antitrust, the App Store, and Apple
by naravara on Thursday November 29, 2018 @02:04PM
(#18562856)
>Public utilities are regulated as such because of the high capital costs to deliver to everyone and the need to gain the right of way to serve people.
In other words, they're natural monopolies which we regulate because market dynamics don't work when you have a natural monopoly. The same reason we highly regulated and then broke up Bell Telephone and Standard Oil before it.
App stores and online infrastructure are also natural monopolies, but they become so due to agglomeration and network effects. Regardless of the route, the end result is the same.
>So now an iPhone is a “necessary tool”?
A smartphone and its associated app ecosystem is, yes. Google's system isn't much better. And there doesn't seem to be much room for many other players.
Again, regular home telephones were deemed necessary enough to regulate and break up. So was oil refining and finance.
Public utilities are regulated as such because of the high capital costs to deliver to everyone and the need to gain the right of way to serve people. Last time I checked, Apple didn’t need to dig up roads to connect users. Most people think of utilities as being a public necessity. The right for Pornhub to put an app on the store. Not so much.
When people start building transportation access into them or make it contingent to being able to do some jobs it becomes a necessary tool for participating in society. The average car costs over $30k, that doesn't mean we would have put up with things like proprietary gas stations either.
So now an iPhone is a “necessary tool”?