50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust investigation of Google

Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by enitihas on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:15PM (#20921965)

If you see the original iPhone introduction by Steve Jobs, being able to play iTunes songs was a huge deal. No other phone could do it. (Well apple did try with Motorola for some phone to play iTunes, but those were heavily restricted). iTunes was the dominant music store. Did they ever offer a version for either Symbian, Blackberry, android, Windows Phone? No.

Windows phone had no Instagram too, and even that made it painful to use. If the platform doesn't have enough users, developers aren't obliged to develop for it.

You could always use a web browser for all of Google's services. They never blocked HTML5 apps.

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Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by GeekyBear on Monday September 09, 2019 @05:33PM (#20922694)

Windows Phone came out a year after iTunes dropped the use of DRM, so any native Windows Phone music app would work.

This was not true of YouTube, where Google actively blocked Microsoft from building a native client.

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Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by cameronbrown on Monday September 09, 2019 @05:38PM (#20922737)

If I recall Microsoft's client was blocked because it refused to serve ads.

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Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by GeekyBear on Monday September 09, 2019 @06:05PM (#20922986)

Microsoft rewrote their native YouTube client so that it would serve Google's ads and disallow video downloads.

Google still disallowed it.

Google likewise disallowed various Amazon devices from accessing YouTube during their Amazon dispute.

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Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by neogodless on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:26PM (#20922076)

I'm not really following what you're saying. I believe you're making my point - if you are in Apple's ecosystem, you're in. And it is popular. But Google provides search and email and maps and contacts for "everyone." That's why when they actively blocked Windows Phone from their services, it was anti-competitive.

Other entities like Instagram were under no obligation to build for Windows Phone, but 6tag was built and served the purpose. I don't believe Instagram blocked 6tag from working. If they did, it might not be anti-competitive, but just anti-consumer.

Beyond this, Google's behavior had ripple effects. Developers could tell that Google was putting up roadblocks to make Windows Phone an undesirable platform, and that discourages contributions.

If iTunes only exists on iPhones, but not Android, then it doesn't matter if it also doesn't exist on Windows Phone. Apple, the iPhone and iTunes are not monopolies. They are a walled garden, though. That's just a separate issue.

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Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by r00fus on Monday September 09, 2019 @04:56PM (#20922384)

> iTunes was the dominant music store. Did they ever offer a version for either Symbian, Blackberry, android, Windows Phone? No.

Is it me or does that just sound like whataboutism? So people complain about Google intentionally screwing over a competitor but what about Apple? Apple is very much "we play on our own court".

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