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Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by vineyardmike on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @07:12PM (#28149275)
Obviously phones/game consoles would be game changing with this law, but i wonder what else would get hit...

Could this impact the infotainment on cars? Google Home devices? Smart TVs?

This could have major affects on user's ability to control their devices.

Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by judge2020 on Thursday August 12, 2021 @01:20AM (#28152268)
As always, they draw an arbitrary line in the sand since they know they just want to target specific things.

This hasn't been introduced yet, btw, so it doesn't have a real congress.gov entry - you'll have to settle for this https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/8.11.21%20-%...

> APP STORE.—The term ‘‘App Store’’ means a publicly available website, software application, or other electronic service that distributes Apps from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device

General purpose computing device isn't even defined in this bill! Is the Xbox general purpose? Sure, most people use it to play games, but it has a full web browser with Microsoft Edge! the Switch and PS5 also have web browsers, just not with a URL bar. Do they qualify?

Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by Vespasian on Thursday August 12, 2021 @02:43AM (#28152814)
Laws need to hit the right amount of vague in order to be practical.

Courts and legal traditions will fill in the gaps (especially in a precedence heavy system like the US one).

It wouldn't surprise me if there isn't already a standard interpretation for "general computing device".

Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by judge2020 on Thursday August 12, 2021 @12:38PM (#28158438)
> general purpose computing device

There really isn't, at least in the US Code. If there was and this law was referring to it, it would refer to it "as defined by U.S.C <number>".

This discussion from a year ago illustrates my point; this bill is PR fluff and the one they actually discuss putting into law will have to be more specific https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24191018

Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by musicale on Friday August 13, 2021 @07:07PM (#28175949)
A simple way to determine whether a device is primarily a "gaming handheld" is to follow the money.

According to statista.com, "gaming apps accounted for 85 percent of gross app revenues in the Google Play store in 2019."

Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by dillondoyle on Thursday August 12, 2021 @12:24AM (#28151896)
That's a good question!!

Do you think Alexa 'apps' count? If so making that work seems like it have to completely open 'Alexa' up (hooks into voice recognition, programming logic) as basically an extensible AWS type platform.

Re:Senators introduce bipartisan antitrust bill to promote a... by vineyardmike on Thursday August 12, 2021 @02:15PM (#28159590)
It doesn't seem like it since it specifies on-device stores, but hopefully!