So if you don’t want policy to be completely arbitrary, you’ll need some principles to follow when drawing industry boundaries.
That's ridiculous. Sure, it may be easiest to order from the guy next door, but if you don't like the pizza next door, you can easily call the guy 3 blocks down the street.
My point is you have options when it comes to pizza. There are many types of businesses that simply do not have any options besides Google. Don't believe me? Ask literally anyone who works in digital advertising. If you were planning any kind of digital ad campaign that relied on search, and you said you weren't going to spend on Google, they'd think you were insane. "Oh yeah, I've decided to put all my search ad spend on Bing." It sounds ridiculously laughable just writing it out.
[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/03/apples-app-store-...
The point I'm trying to make here is that people will use that figure (often without much thought) to justify giving Android users a sub-par experience - which only serves to reinforce it. I've worked for several companies that have given parity to iOS and Android, and one that did not. For the former we did not observe a disparity that large. YMMV by region and industry of course.
[0] https://www.mobilemarketer.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spe...
And even if the trends did hold up internationally, and I really suspect they don't, Android would still be better for ads and subscriptions internationally due to nearly three times the market share, despite a bit more than half the disposable income.
People don't really buy iPhones as soon as they have money unless it is a status symbol in their culture, which it really is the more the country is Americanized/anglophone. I think that correlation holds up much better than GDP PPP. There is no real reason for money to predict iOS market share except for that.
In any case, if you're making a social media app or other international app, an Android version is likely more important.
There is no such thing as international anti-trust. In this conversation the US market is the only thing that matters since we are talking about US law. Hence, android does not really matter much for revenue.
Even in the US, Apple does not have even close to a monopoly over Android, anyways. At best they have 50% of the marketshare.
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45063002#:~:text=The%20d....
[1]: https://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_downloads/apple-dev/201...
Would consumers be better served if app developers had to pay the Google tax, the Apple tax aaaaaand the Microsoft tax, the Samsung tax, the HTC tax, etc etc etc?
And inversely, if you cut any industry coarsely enough, you will never find any monopolies.
"Don't break us up! Sure, we may own the entire telephone service, but we do not have a monopoly. See, you should be looking at total human communications. People talk in person, send letters, etc. We own a teeny tiny slice of total human communications."
"Don't break us up! Sure, we may own the entire rail network, but we do not have a monopoly. See, you should be looking at entire human travel. People walk, ride horses, travel by ships, etc. We own a teeny tiny slice of total travel industry."
“Anyone that has a monopoly will pretend that they're in incredible competition. If you're a non-monopolist, you will rhetorically describe your market as super small, you're the only person in that market.If you have a monopoly, you will describe it as super big, and there is lots of competition in it"
In this definition, Google's not going to be a monopolist as advertisers can easily reallocate their budget to alternative options (FB, Amazon, etc) to improve their ROI if Google decides to increase their fee significantly. Publishers don't have much options other than AdSense to sell their ad slots so it's monopsony(=single buyer controls the market). Not sure if the US antitrust law can handle this situation. If so, then this is going to be a landmark case.
That is the point I 100% absolutely disagree with. Ask any digital marketer, most of them see FB and Amazon as serving different purposes than what targeted search ads do. If you put 'Bing' or 'DuckDuckGo' I would agree with you, but in that case you'll find that the way Adwords bidding work that Google pretty much already takes a huge portion of potential margin - in many areas with deep-pocketed investors who think they'll eventually turn profitable Google actually takes more than 100% of potential margin.
I'm very well aware of this, but this doesn't necessarily mean that budget planning will be done completely independent across multiple different channels. We already have observed a significant fraction of search advertisements budget has been moved from Google to Amazon as Amazon becomes a more effective ads platform. In fact, nowaway this becomes a much more attractive option since Amazon now owns literally everything from advertisements, auction, optimization and measurements in a single platform.
> in many areas with deep-pocketed investors who think they'll eventually turn profitable Google actually takes more than 100% of potential margin.
Most of the Google's largest advertisers are big, conventional companies with a strong cash flow, not those burning the money from investors. They really care about incrementality, efficacy, measurement and performance. Sure, you can probably burn a few million dollars without a good reason but you cannot spend x100 like that.
If you limit them, you are not improving your ROAS or even efficiency. For most of the companies, they would end up spending higher per qualified lead compared to what they get from Google. This is very hard to break and side by side ensure that the advertisers (and publishers) are not harmed in the process.
Facebook has its own audience Network, but that is really bad in terms of returns. There are others like Taboola, Smarty Ad and so on, but all of them end up not delivering enough returns, and as a publisher, you end up going to google.