But to clarify, Microsoft ultimately won the case on appeal and had the initial ruling against them overturned.[1]

So in the final verdict, MS did not get into trouble for bundling the browser. In 2001, the DOJ settlement didn't force Microsoft to include Netscape Navigator or any other 3rd-party software on their standard desktop.

The developers in 2020 really don't want to hear this but Apple Inc actually has decades of case precedent to support the idea that Apple controls its own hardware with its own exclusive app store. To force Apple to include Epic's app store would require some new legal arguments that today's judge would be sympathetic to. Not saying it's impossible but it's not a slam dunk antitrust case as many on HN believe.

In other words, the status quo established in previous decided cases (including MS winning its antitrust IE case) actually supports the idea that Tesla is not forced to include Apple's Carplay in its cars' infotainment hardware, and Apple in turn is not forced to include a 3rd-party "Tesla app store" so the Tesla can bypass Apple's App Store review policies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

I suppose 20+ years has erased a collective memory of the conflicts with IE.

Here is a relevant 1998 excerpt[1] from DOJ's own official website:

>The Department today filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction that would:

>-- Require that if Microsoft insists on including its browser on Windows 98, it must also include Netscape's browser so that consumers will have a real choice. Computer manufacturers would have the option of deleting either browser. If Microsoft does not want to include Netscape, it must unbundle its own browser and let it compete on the merits.

As we now know from the 2001 final settlement, the above scenario didn't happen and Microsoft won that IE battle.

Can one do a mental search & replace with s/Microsoft/Apple/ and s/Netscape/Epic/ such as:

"Require that if Apple insists on including its App Store on iPhones, it must also include Epic App Store so that consumers will have a real choice."

If Epic's lawyers (not even the intimidating government DOJ lawyers this time but just a private video game company's lawyers) want to argue the same idea as forcing Netscape onto IE, what would be the new legal argument this time? The previous one failed.

EDIT to sbuk's reply about context: your excerpt trying to show context is itself also missing context. That part about PC manufacturers licensing was the past actions that got the DOJ up to that point of hauling them into court. My excerpt was about the DOJ's proposed future remedy (e.g. must unbundle IE) to reduce Microsoft's future monopoly power -- and that didn't happen. See the very next bullet point below your "context":

>• Microsoft now intends to tie unlawfully its IE Internet browser software to its new Windows 98 operating system, the successor to Windows 95.

DOJ wanted to stop the future IE bundling to Windows 98. They failed.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/19...

Not this again!

MS lost the (one of the many) case with the EU regarding Internet Explorer and that's were most of the confusion comes from: what happens in US is hardly relevant for the rest of the World

> In January 2009, the European Commission announced it would investigate the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows operating systems from Microsoft, saying "Microsoft's tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice."

> In response, Microsoft announced that it would not bundle Internet Explorer with Windows 7 E, the version of Windows 7 to be sold in Europe.

> On 16 December 2009, the European Union agreed to allow competing browsers, with Microsoft providing a "ballot box" screen letting users choose one of twelve popular products listed in random order. The twelve browsers were Avant, Chrome, Firefox, Flock, GreenBrowser, Internet Explorer, K-Meleon, Maxthon, Opera, Safari, Sleipnir, and Slim which are accessible via BrowserChoice.eu. The automatic nature of the BrowserChoice.eu feature was dropped in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in February 2011 and remained absent for 14 months despite Microsoft reporting that it was still present, subsequently described by Microsoft as a "technical error". As a result, in March 2013 the European Commission fined Microsoft €561 million to deter companies from reneging on settlement promises."

Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers to agree to license and install its browser, Internet Explorer, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system.

This was true for AT&T at one time as well.

I agree with your point, but things change when you get too big. Apple might be at that point, but I don't really know, and IANAL.

To further clarify, the EU antitrust authorities decided not to let off Microsoft with a slap on the wrist for their bundling practices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

This is an oversimplification of the appeal, as while the penalty against Microsoft was overturned, the appeals court did affirm several of the antitrust violations against Microsoft. In particular:

1. The appeals court affirmed that Microsoft's license restrictions preventing OEMs from pre-installing alternate browsers violated the Sherman Act.

2. The appeals court found that Microsoft's technical integration of IE and Windows was not a violation of the Sherman Act because Microsoft offered legitimate justification for why the integration was necessary. (When a defendant offers a legitimate justification the burden of proof shifts back to the plaintiff to show that the anticompetitive effect outweighs the justification. In this case the appeals court found the DOJ failed to do this.)

3. The appeals court affirmed that Microsoft's deals with ISPs to promote IE at the expense of other browsers violated the Sherman Act.

4. The appeals court affirmed that Microsoft's deal with Apple to bundle IE with Mac OS in exchange for the development of the Mac version of Office violated the Sherman Act. (Bill Gates threatened to pull Office for Mac if Mac OS bundled Netscape instead of IE.)

5. The appeals court did not actually address whether tying IE to Windows was an antitrust violation or not. They concluded that it could not be a per se violation, and the issue was remanded back to the district court for further analysis under the rule of reason which would have required additional proceedings, which never happened as Microsoft and the DOJ eventually settled.

6. The appeals court found that the DOJ failed to prove their claim that Microsoft attempted to monopolize the browser market, largely because they failed to provide sufficient evidence that Microsoft had a "dangerous probability" of success.

Finally, the reason the penalty was overturned by the appeals court largely had to do with the district court judge not following the correct legal procedures and failing to reasonably justify why such a large penalty (breaking up the company) was warranted. Plus they were really unhappy with that judge going and talking to the media about the case.

Yes, ultimately Microsoft was not broken up. After Bush was elected, DOJ policy changed and they decided to no longer pursue the breakup. But it's a bit misleading to say they won the appeal. It's more like: they won a couple claims, they lost a bunch of claims, and the overall penalty was deemed too harsh.

(Note: I skipped some details but the full text of the appeal is an interesting read: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=179876183890909...)

---

That all being said, it's worth noting that most of the violations affirmed were related to Microsoft's attempts to unlawfully maintain their operating system monopoly which at the time had over 95% market share, not due to their attempts to dominate the browser market. And it's possible that if they had merely included IE with Windows and not taken extra actions to force other companies (OEMs, ISPs, Apple) to bundle IE over Netscape, they may not have have been found liable at all.

As applied to the current situation with Apple, it's unlikely that Apple will be exposed to the same liability because they simply don't have the level of monopoly power that Microsoft did at the time.

It's hard for me to reconcile this, and I keep seeing that 3rd party app stores would be better for users, but it all seems very handwavy. You would think this would be an easy point to prove as Android has had alternative app stores for years, but there seem to be no winners there. I'm not sure how having to download app specific app stores (i.e. Epic's app store) is better for anyone except for Epic.

Let's start with one point. Third party stores don't have to be popular in order for them to be beneficial, because their existence causes the dominant store to take competitive steps to avoid their attaining popularity.

For example, you can install actual Firefox on Android, from Google Play, instead of it being nothing but a skin over the system browser like it is on iOS. Because if they didn't allow actual Firefox in Google Play, it would still be in F-Droid or similar, and that would make the competing store more popular. Since they don't want that, they allow it in the default store. Then the default store remains dominant, but only because it does beneficial things like that as a result of the competitive pressure. And third party apps can send and receive SMS on Android and various other things that Apple doesn't allow solely because it pushes people to use Apple's apps instead and there is no competitive pressure from other stores pushing Apple to allow those competing apps in their store.

But more than that, the other Android stores are actually useful, they just tend to have a niche. Because people are still going to use the default store unless there is a reason not to, since it's lower friction. But the other stores still get to address the cases that the default store fails at. So the fact that they exist at all is proof that they're doing something useful, since otherwise who would sustain them?

> I'm not sure how having to download app specific app stores (i.e. Epic's app store) is better for anyone except for Epic.

I mean, the fact that they're not paying Apple 30% and then passing most of that savings on to the customer is obviously going to save the customer money.

I see no evidence of Epic passing savings to the consumer in this scenario. Unless by customer you mean stock holder in which case the fight is about which stock holders get paid.

Edit: unless you are referring to a temporary PR sale where they were still paying the 30% cut in many cases.

F-droid maintains a modest but robust marketplace of open source software, some of which include things that are not allowed in either Apple or Google app stores.

3rd party stores also allow numerous country-focused stores which arguably serve their home markets better than Google or Apple are willing to.

It's not a large store, I expect, and I don't often use it install things, but it seems to be an unambiguous example of something that benefits users. I bought things via Humble, and then am able to install them on any android device I ever have (in theory).

If they were to add the ability to actually buy things in the app, it would effectively turn into something with an interface like the Kindle app (which shows me both my library of books, as well as a shopping interface).

If we could install apps from Github it would be better because predatory pricing and invasive data collection has the upper hand on the iOS store. Many common utilities are charging ridiculous amounts of money that they could never charge on Mac or Windows because of high quality, free and open source software on Github.

[1]: https://appcenter.ms/

1. Users to have the ability to choose, on the expensive devices that they own.

2. Competition, which drives the companies to try to improve their offering (for users and developers) in order to stay ahead. Competition is healthy and prevents stagnation.

The winners are the users that can easily side load apps without goingt through the Goggle store

I think the only group that will benefit from 3rd party app stores on iOS is developers. I don’t see end users benefiting at all. The simplicity and convenience in downloading and discovering apps is gone. You said you have trouble discovering apps now with a unified store, so I’m not sure how discovering apps on multiple different app stores will be any easier. Frankly I’m sure it will become much more difficult and complicated for end users. Also I’m not sure how much more convenient Apple can make the App Store for iOS users. Payment information isn’t being shared between multiple parties. Switching payment info doesn’t involve going through each service. Receipts are automatically sent to emails. Automatic app updates. No confusion when it comes to where to download an app.

The App Store consistently brings in more money than the play store each year, despite Apple and iOS having a much smaller market share than Google and Android. I attribute this to Apples guidelines and developer tools, but also because of user confidence in the App Store. More people are willing to scan their face or use Touch ID because how simple and convenient IAP is. That and users are aware their payment info isn’t being sent around to multiple parties. I believe everyone arguing for 3rd party app stores on iOS aren’t thinking as the end user. at all. You said that allowing 3rd party stores will benefit end users with innovation, but innovate what exactly ? How much more innovation does the process of finding and downloading apps need?

>Microsoft got into trouble for bundling a web browser, where they didn’t directly make money, Apple should get into trouble for the App Store, where they do directly make money due to their artificial lack of competition.

Why should they get in trouble? Let’s not forget that Microsoft only developed one part of the final product(the OS). In Apples case they created every part of the product. The hardware , the software and the market on the software. I think they’re well in their rights to decide what and how 3rd party software gets on their OS..

90% of the reason people are even talking about alternative app stores is because this 30% is extortion made possible by excessive monopolistic power provided by tight vertical integration. If it was 10% no one would blink an eye and it would still be massively profitable for Apple. They're just too fucking greedy, and the amount of their apologists here is insane.

The collective hypocrisy of chanting for things like the right to repair while not even recognizing the right to install arbitrary apps on a computing device you paid for in full is just mind boggling.

Americans trust everyone with a fucking gun but oh no, being able to install a non-Apple-approved app or - gasp - use a non-apple payment method - will collapse the whole ecosystem. Haha.

Because multiple competing stores pushes them to compete on something. Apple is super rich, it would be really hard to compete with price alone, so a competing store has incentive to compete on features or other innovations, including novel ways to make discoverability on their stores easier. Maybe it wouldn't happen, but right now, Apple have zero incentive to do anything to improve their App Store.

It shows that there is some convenience from a "single" app store, such that people won't flood away and lead to a race to the bottom in quality. But it also shows that you can maintain that experience while allowing users to install whatever they want.

So Apple is claiming that allowing people to install whatever they want, or having multiple App Stores will lead to crumbling of the convenient and secure ecosystem that they have created. However Android has shown that this is not the case.

Anyway, the argument was that the Apple app store was stifling app development. In your reply you yourself say the apps on the Google store are “Maybe not quite as high” quality.

Which doesn't matter, because the person who is going to test your patch does, or the person who will write their own and submit it. Which makes the app better, for everybody.

> Anyway, the argument was that the Apple app store was stifling app development. In your reply you yourself say the apps on the Google store are “Maybe not quite as high” quality.

There is a difference between the quality of an app and the quality of a store. If Google Play contains all the same apps as Apple's app store, but they're higher quality because people hack on them more, it could still have a lower average quality if the store itself is less selective and there are also a bunch of lower quality apps. Which doesn't really matter because nobody is making you install those ones. Especially when you're not using the store for discovery to begin with, which they're increasingly useless at.

Also the "maybe not as high" comment was about security because you can make an argument that the human review is better. However there doesn't seem to be overwhelming evidence on either side comparing human review to mostly automated.