Let's allow anyone to do in-app purchases, and app stores, then the market would tell us. Currently, we need to trust these quasi-monopolies that there is no way they can make it cheaper (and for some strange reason still, they don't want to open things up).
Whats stopping that now on Android? I have a second app store on my phone.
If they must charge 20% why don't they also let apps take credit cards? 20% is for the payment, its a tax. Why should Spotify have to pay 20% and Apple music effectively doesn't.
There are also a range of topics google will not return the best ranked information. There are a ton of political issues (due to advertiser pressure) where the different results are huge when you search in duckduckgo vs google. This is monopoly power to decide what gets seen and what doesn't get seen.
I don't think the vast majority of the internet understands how the business model of the internet works.
The actual computational resources required to provide search would be a fraction of Google’s operating costs
Added benefit would be pitting private providers against each other so they’re incentivised to provide better outcomes, as opposed to the current decoupling of utility and market position
The current situation is immensely wasteful of everyone’s time and resources (Alphabet shareholders aside)
It really is a Standard Oil situation, but as it’s just inflaming - but not halting -the global economy, it’s been flying under regulators’ radar until a few years ago
No moat is too wide for the flick of sufficiently powerful pens, business models be damned
We need to regulate search and app stores like it is a public utility. Pricing should be dutch auction or something provably fair. 20-30% for in-app purchases is obviously insane when credit cards do 1.5-3.5%.
I worry that the government will not do sensible regulations and instead play investment banker and try to create spin off companies.