Last week the six biggest operators – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance – were forced to toe the line on competition, advertising, interoperability and more. It was a gamechanger
The act doesn’t apply to all tech companies, only to those with either a market capitalisation of more than €75bn (£64bn), or having at least 45 million users and €7.5bn annual turnover in the EU.
In effect, this means just Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft and ByteDance (owner of TikTok). The fact that five of the six are US companies has, of course, led to complaints that the pesky Europeans have it in for poor defenceless American giants. Cue violins.
The act imposes serious obligations: companies will have to allow third-party apps and app stores on their platforms; provide transparent advertising data; allow users to easily uninstall pre-installed software or apps; enable interoperability between different messaging services, social networks, and other services, allowing users to communicate seamlessly across platforms; and be more transparent about how their algorithms rank and recommend content, products and services.
It also prohibits certain practices by gatekeepers: favouring their own services over third-party ones, for example; engaging in self-preferential activities; and using private data from business users to compete against them. In other words, an end to tech business as usual.
Sweet. What the corrupt US departments couldn’t - and refused to - do.
Member that time micro$quash was in court for a decade to prove they weren’t a monopoly despite being a monopoly, and then after all that the court declared they were a monopoly? Member? And then absolutely sweet fuck-all happened and they’re still out there monoply-ing without any care or hindrance? Yeah.
It actually did, solve it, unironically. The concern was that Microsoft was going to de facto take over the HTML standard and make it so that you had to use Internet Explorer and proprietary Microsoft extensions if you wanted to browse the web, eliminating all competition.
Now, more than 20 years later, Internet Explorer is defunct. Microsoft’s current browser is built on Chromium, an open source engine that was created by one of its competitors. If anything it’s Google that’s now the problematic one.
This happened in 2009, when IE had a market share of 56% and declining. IE is (arguably) defunct because it sucked, not because of a one-time, court-mandated popup.
Back then Chrome didn’t exist and they didn’t implement the pop up, just assigned some overview and opened some APIs.
However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor did it prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future.
Seems to me they continued to take actions in 2009 as a result of their loss in 2001. “Some overview” continued after the case was decided. Unless there was a subsequent court case I’m unaware of?
You remember how all the US politicians are funded by the same huge corporations and rich people who all benefit from the regulators doing nothing but pretending to care?
Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life’s problems and saying they’ll make them pay their fair share, but those politicians have multiple houses and blatantly conduct insider trading every day, but Americans still vote for them time after time?
I’d like to say you could just not use their products, but that means you have to replace windows with some other os, not buy a major manufacturer cell phone, or do much else 🤷
This right here. It is so far gone, and deeply entrenched into how society works at fundamental levels, that it is impossible to avoid any mega corporations and their influence on how we live (not just tech companies too).
I know that pointing fingers does nothing to help, but this really is Reagan’s fault with his so-called trickle down economics.
The comment was meant to be syndical and sarcastic.
Of course it’s not representative of the entirety.
But it does express my frustration with political hypocrisy and insider trading. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find me any politicians that haven’t engaged in that at some point, to some degree. One of the famous ones that comes to mind is Nancy pelosi, but she is not alone, and this is not particular to one party or another, they both definitely engage in it, it’s been well documented and is irrefutable.
If you look past one party or another, you’d see that it’s a broken system. The fact that it’s legal for our elected representatives to conduct in activities that would otherwise be illegal for the general population is outrageous, and the fact that we all know they do it and they are the only ones that can control it in police themselves is also outrageous. It’s the only self-serving career that I can think of that is completely unchecked, has unlimited benefits for only 4 years of service, and the only ones that can control it or police it is themselves.
Remember when Nokia was king? Yup, lack of regulations then. I’m not saying it’s not a coincidence, but it certainly could be. I am glad to see Nokia’s resurgence in the infrastructure area in tech though.
Sweet. What the corrupt US departments couldn’t - and refused to - do.
Member that time micro$quash was in court for a decade to prove they weren’t a monopoly despite being a monopoly, and then after all that the court declared they were a monopoly? Member? And then absolutely sweet fuck-all happened and they’re still out there monoply-ing without any care or hindrance? Yeah.
US, you fucked that up royal. As usual.
I mean, we got this “choose your default browser” screen for a few years. That solved it, right?
It actually did, solve it, unironically. The concern was that Microsoft was going to de facto take over the HTML standard and make it so that you had to use Internet Explorer and proprietary Microsoft extensions if you wanted to browse the web, eliminating all competition.
Now, more than 20 years later, Internet Explorer is defunct. Microsoft’s current browser is built on Chromium, an open source engine that was created by one of its competitors. If anything it’s Google that’s now the problematic one.
This happened in 2009, when IE had a market share of 56% and declining. IE is (arguably) defunct because it sucked, not because of a one-time, court-mandated popup.
It happened in 2001, you’re off by 8 years.
Back then Chrome didn’t exist and they didn’t implement the pop up, just assigned some overview and opened some APIs.
The popup came in 2009.
Seems to me they continued to take actions in 2009 as a result of their loss in 2001. “Some overview” continued after the case was decided. Unless there was a subsequent court case I’m unaware of?
You remember how all the US politicians are funded by the same huge corporations and rich people who all benefit from the regulators doing nothing but pretending to care?
Remember how the politicians pander to Americans by blaming rich people for all of life’s problems and saying they’ll make them pay their fair share, but those politicians have multiple houses and blatantly conduct insider trading every day, but Americans still vote for them time after time?
I’d like to say you could just not use their products, but that means you have to replace windows with some other os, not buy a major manufacturer cell phone, or do much else 🤷
This right here. It is so far gone, and deeply entrenched into how society works at fundamental levels, that it is impossible to avoid any mega corporations and their influence on how we live (not just tech companies too).
I know that pointing fingers does nothing to help, but this really is Reagan’s fault with his so-called trickle down economics.
That’s a minority of US politicians and you know it. Not to mention it’s a minority of a minority of those politicians that get elected.
We got exactly what we voted for and that’s the truly maddening thing.
Part of that is definitely manipulation of representation (i.e. gerrymandering) but not all of it.
Now that I think about it, Johnny Harris did a really good report about insider trading by Congress.
The comment was meant to be syndical and sarcastic.
Of course it’s not representative of the entirety.
But it does express my frustration with political hypocrisy and insider trading. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find me any politicians that haven’t engaged in that at some point, to some degree. One of the famous ones that comes to mind is Nancy pelosi, but she is not alone, and this is not particular to one party or another, they both definitely engage in it, it’s been well documented and is irrefutable.
If you look past one party or another, you’d see that it’s a broken system. The fact that it’s legal for our elected representatives to conduct in activities that would otherwise be illegal for the general population is outrageous, and the fact that we all know they do it and they are the only ones that can control it in police themselves is also outrageous. It’s the only self-serving career that I can think of that is completely unchecked, has unlimited benefits for only 4 years of service, and the only ones that can control it or police it is themselves.
Remember when Nokia was king? Yup, lack of regulations then. I’m not saying it’s not a coincidence, but it certainly could be. I am glad to see Nokia’s resurgence in the infrastructure area in tech though.