In August, Google had just two weeks to begin cracking open Android, and to stop forcing app developers to use its own payment systems, after Epic Games won its Google lawsuit for the second time.

Now, Google has just over two weeks once again — because the US Supreme Court has decided not to save Google ahead of its Supreme Court appeal. Today, the Court denied the company’s request for a partial stay, meaning the permanent injunction is still in effect, meaning Google must do the following things this month or be in violation:

• Stop Google from forcing app developers to use Google Play Billing
• Let Android developers tell users about other ways to pay from within the Play Store
• Let Android developers link to ways to download their apps outside of the Play Store
• Let developers set their own prices
• Stop sharing money or perks with phonemakers, carriers, and app developers in exchange for Google Play exclusivity or preinstallation
• Work with Epic to resolve any disputes as Google builds a system to let rival app stores into Google Play

Epic Games says the deadline for Google to comply is now October 22nd, 2025. “Starting October 22, developers will be legally entitled to steer US Google Play users to out-of-app payments without fees, scare screens, and friction – same as Apple App Store users in the US!” writes Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

[…]

Source: The Supreme Court didn’t save Google from Epic, and now the clock is ticking | The Verge

Alphabet’s Google was hit with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.45 billion) European Union antitrust fine on Friday for anti-competitive practices in its lucrative adtech business, a sharp sanction that riled up U.S. President Donald Trump.

The fine, the fourth penalty Google has faced in its decade-long fight with EU competition regulators, follows bubbling trade tensions between major global powers and U.S. threats of retaliation over EU scrutiny of American tech firms.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the action was “unfair” and “discriminatory” and later told reporters he will take the matter up with the EU directly.

“We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity and, if it does, I will be forced to start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties being charged to these Taxpaying American Companies,” Trump said.

Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the United States to penalize foreign countries that engage in acts that are “unjustifiable” or “unreasonable,” or burden U.S. commerce.

The European Commission’s action was triggered by a complaint from the European Publishers Council. Trump, who has hit Europe with trade tariffs, has threatened to retaliate against the EU for any pushback against Big Tech.

“I will be speaking to the European Union,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday.

While Google plans to appeal, the Commission has warned of stronger remedies – including potential divestitures – if the company fails to address its conflicts of interest. The case underscores growing transatlantic friction over digital market regulation and the EU’s push to rein in dominant platforms.

The EU competition enforcer had originally planned to hand out the fine on Monday but opposition from EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic on concerns about the impact on U.S. tariffs on European cars derailed EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera’s plan.

The Commission said Google favoured its own online display technology services that reinforced its own ad exchange AdX’s central role in the adtech supply chain and allowed Google to charge high fees for its service, to the detriment of rivals and online publishers.

Google has abused its market power since 2014 until today, the EU watchdog said.

It ordered Google to stop the self-preferencing practices and take measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest. The company has 60 days to inform the Commission how it plans to comply with this order, and another 30 days to do so.

The Commission reiterated its preliminary view that Google should divest part of its services but said it wants to first hear and assess Google’s compliance efforts, confirming a Reuters story last year.

[…]

Source: Google hit with $3.45 billion EU antitrust fine over adtech practices

It is good to see that at least the EU has the guts to do something about these monopolistic practices.

See also: EU Google antitrust penalty halted by low level commissioner amid Trump’s tariff threats

Judge who ruled Google is a monopoly says no need for punishment.

The worst possible antitrust outcome – unless you are Google

So you pay hundreds yearly for access to the Connected Drive API. You use Home Assistant to set the charging times of your BMW depending on when the price of electricity is low. BMW shuts you down (no re-imbursement, of course) and forces you to use one of their Charge Point providers. BMW then says it’s because of security.

I guess things are going very badly for BMW when they are making deals like this one as well as charging you subscriptions to use stuff in your car that you already paid for.

Last year, Google lost an antitrust case to Biden’s DoJ. The DoJ lawyers beat Google like a drum, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Google had deliberately sought to create and maintain a monopoly over search, and that they’d used that monopoly to make search materially worse, while locking competitors out of the market.

In other words, the company that controls 90% of search attained that control by illegal means, and, having thus illegitimately become the first port of call for the information-seeking world, had deliberately worsened its product to make more money:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

That Google lost that case was a minor miracle. First, because for 40 years, the richest, most terrible people in the world have been running a literal re-education camp for judges where they get luxe rooms and fancy meals and lectures about how monopolies are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

But second, because Judge Amit Mehta decided that the Google case should be shrouded in mystery, suppressing the publication of key exhibits and banning phones, cameras and laptops from the courtroom, with the effect that virtually no one even noticed that the most important antitrust case in tech history, a genuine trial of the century, was underway:

https://www.promarket.org/2023/10/27/google-monopolizes-judicial-system-information-with-trial-secrecy/

This is really important. The government doesn’t have to win an antitrust trial in order to create competition. As the saying goes, “the process is the punishment.” Bill Gates was so personally humiliated by his catastrophic performance at his deposition for the Microsoft antitrust trial that he elected not to force-choke the nascent Google, lest he be put back in the deposition chair:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/12/whats-a-murder/#miros-tilde-1
a
But Judge Mehta turned his courtroom into a Star Chamber, a black hole whence no embarrassing information about Google’s wicked deeds could emerge. That meant that the only punishment Google would have to bear from this trial would come after the government won its case, when the judge decided on a punishment (the term of art is “remedy”) for Google.

Yesterday, he handed down that remedy and it is as bad as it could be. In fact, it is likely the worst possible remedy for this case:

https://gizmodo.com/google-wont-have-to-sell-chrome-browser-after-all-but-theres-a-catch-2000652304

Let’s start with what’s not in this remedy. Google will not be forced to sell off any of its divisions – not Chrome, not Android. Despite the fact that the judge found that Google’s vertical integration with the world’s dominant mobile operating system and browser were a key factor in its monopolization, Mehta decided to leave the Google octopus with all its limbs intact:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/19/breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/#shiny-and-chrome

Google won’t be forced to offer users a “choice screen” when they set up their Android accounts, to give browsers other than Chrome a fair shake:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/12/defaults-matter/#make-up-your-mind-already

Nor will Google be prevented from bribing competitors to stay out of the search market. One of the facts established in the verdict was that Google had been slipping Apple more than $20b/year in exchange for which, Apple forbore from making a competing search engine. This exposed every Safari and iOS user to Google surveillance, while insulating Google from the threat of an Apple competitor.

And then there’s Google’s data. Google is the world’s most prolific surveiller, and the company boasts to investors about the advantage that its 24/7 spying confers on it in the search market, because Google knows so much about us and can therefore tailor our results. Even if this is true – a big if – it’s nevertheless a fucking nightmare. Google has stolen every fact about our lives, in service to propping up a monopoly that lets it steal our money, too. Any remedy worth the name would have required Google to delete (“disgorge,” in law-speak) all that data:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Some people in the antitrust world didn’t see it that way. Out of a misguided kind of privacy nihilism, they called for Google to be forced to share the data it stole from us, so that potential competitors could tune their search tools on the monopolist’s population-scale privacy violations.

And that is what the court has ordered.

As punishment for being convinced of obtaining and maintaining a monopoly, Google will be forced to share sensitive data with lots of other search engines. This will not secure competition for search, but it will certainly democratize human rights violations at scale.

Doubtless there will be loopholes in this data-sharing order. Google will have the right to hold back some of its data (that is, our data) if it is deemed “sensitive.” This isn’t so much a loophole as is a loopchasm. I’ll bet you a testicle⹋ that Google will slap a “sensitive” label on any data that might be the least bit useful to its competitors.

⹋not one of mine

This means that even if you like data-sharing as a remedy, you won’t actually get the benefit you were hoping for. Instead, Google competitors will spend the next decade in court, fighting to get Google to comply with this order.

That’s the main reason that we force monopolists to break up after they lose antitrust cases. We could put a bunch of conditions on how they operate, but figuring out whether they’re adhering to those conditions and punishing them when they don’t is expensive, labor-intensive and time consuming. This data-sharing wheeze is easy to do malicious compliance for, and hard to enforce. It is not an “administrable” policy:

https://locusmag.com/2022/03/cory-doctorow-vertically-challenged/

This is all downside. If Google complies with the order, it will constitute a privacy breach on a scale never before seen. If they don’t comply with the order, it will starve competitors of the one tiny drop of hope that Judge Mehta squeezed out of his pen. It’s a catastrophe. An utter, total catastrophe. It has zero redeeming qualities. Hope you like enshittification, folks, because Judge Mehta just handed Google an eternal licence to enshittify the entire fucking internet.

It’s impossible to overstate how fucking terrible Mehta’s reasoning in this decision is. The Economic Liberties project calls it “judicial cowardice” and compared the ruling to “finding someone guilty for bank robbery and then sentencing him to write a thank you note”:

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/doj-states-must-appeal-judge-mehtas-act-of-judicial-cowardice-letting-google-keep-its-monopoly-power/

Matt Stoller says it’s typical of today’s “lawlessness, incoherence and deference to big business”:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-judge-lets-google-get-away-with

David Dayen’s scorching analysis in The American Prospect calls it “embarassing”:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-09-03-embarrassing-ruling-allows-google-search-monopoly/

Dayen points out the many ways in which Mehta ignored his own findings, ignored the Supreme Court. Mehta wrote:

This court, however, need not decide this issue, because there are independent reasons that remedies designed to eliminate the defendant’s monopoly—i.e., structural remedies—are inappropriate in this case.

Which, as Dayen points out is literally a federal judge deciding to ignore the law “because reasons.”

Dayen says that he doesn’t see why Google would even bother appealing this ruling: “since it won on almost every point.” But the DoJ could appeal. If MAGA’s promises about holding Big Tech to account mean anything at all, the DoJ would appeal.

I’ll bet you a testicle⹋ that the DoJ will not appeal. After all, Trump’s DoJ now has a cash register at the reception desk, and if you write a check for a million bucks to some random MAGA influencer, they can make all charges disappear:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/02/act-locally/#local-hero

⹋again, not one of mine

And if you’re waiting for Europe to jump in and act where America won’t, don’t hold your breath. EU Commission sources leaked to Reuters that the EU is going to drop its multi-billion euro fine against Google because they don’t want to make Trump angry:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-adtech-fine-hold-eu-awaits-lower-us-car-duties-sources-say-2025-09-02/

Sundar Pichai gave $1m to Donald Trump and got a seat on the dais at the inaguration. Trump just paid him back, 40,000 times over. Trump is a sadist, a facist, and a rapist – and he’s also a remarkably cheap date.

Source: Pluralistic: The worst possible antitrust outcome (03 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

So the judge says that because things changed  in the search space (AI / GPT searching) that changes the advertising space (which the GPTs don’t really do much of – yet) which is what the case was about. The anti-competitive facts of the case were before GPTs came along and are not relevant to the current GPTs but all of that somehow doesn’t matter so Google doesn’t really have to change much.

Champagne will be flowing at Google HQ after US District Judge Amit Mehta decided to do very little to rein in the monopolistic web giant.

In his 230-page ruling Mehta, who last August ruled that Google broke US competition law, decided the search behemoth will not have to divest its Chrome browser or Android operating systems, and can continue to pay billions to the likes of Apple to secure a prominent place for its search engine.

“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” he ruled. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

That decision will disappoint the US Department of Justice, because Mehta rejected the remedies it called for.

The only government proposal Mehta accepted was that Google must share access to user-side data, albeit only to “qualified competitors.” While this includes things like a search index and user-interaction data, it doesn’t have to hand over specific advertising data.

“If you think of ingredients as data, like users’ search index, recipes are what they do with that data and how they use that data to make search results more relevant,” Adam Kovacevich, CEO of technology non-profit Chamber of Progress and a former Googler, told The Register.

“What you had is Google’s rivals arguing that Google had to share its recipes’ secret sauce. And the judge rejected that. He said: ‘You only have to share their ingredient list, effectively their search and search index.'”

The ruling also includes a requirement for Google to stop entering into exclusive deals that make the search giant the default search engine on mobile devices. It also requires Google to submit to six years of regulatory oversight by a technical committee that will monitor it to ensure it’s not backsliding.

You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot

The DoJ is likely to appeal but had no comment at the time of publication. However, the ruling has infuriated antitrust groups.

“You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot,” said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the non-profit American Economic Liberties Project.

“Similarly, you don’t find Google liable for monopolization and then write a remedy that lets it protect its monopoly. This feckless remedy to the most storied case of monopolization of the past quarter century is a complete failure of his duty and must be appealed.”

Yet another thing AI has ruined

So what was it that caused the judge – who said barely a year ago that the ad slinger was an “overbearing illegal monopoly” – to do so little to change the status quo?

Mehta found that AI has changed the competitive landscape Google faces since the DoJ first brought its case in October 2020.

“The emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case,” he wrote. “No witness at the liability trial testified that GenAI products posed a near-term threat to general search engines (GSE).

“The very first witness at the remedies hearing, by contrast, placed GenAI front and center as a nascent competitive threat. These remedies proceedings thus have been as much about promoting competition among GSEs as ensuring that Google’s dominance in search does not carry over into the GenAI space.”

Mehta argued that over the past year he has sought out multiple sources of testimony to discuss AI and the issues that surround it, and is therefore cognizant of the issues it creates. But the original case was about Google’s existing advertising practices. The judge claims he addressed that matter.

Google clearly agrees with Mehta when it comes to AI changing the antitrust situation. In a statement, it welcomed the ruling and said it will continue to dispute his initial finding that it is an illegal monopoly.

“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,” Google said in a canned statement. “This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want.”

Google and Mehta do have a point. The Chamber of Progress’s Kovacevich – who attended many of the hearings – pointed out that when the case was heard generative AI was very new, and the AI search market was still in its infancy. In the nearly five years since, much has changed.

“Anybody who has been paying attention to technology in the last two years would say that generative AI does pose a competitive challenge to traditional search engines,” he opined.

Anybody who has been paying attention to technology in the last two years would say that generative AI does pose a competitive challenge to traditional search engines

“So I think what the judge was grappling with was this reality that it changes the game, and it changed the game since Google was found liable in the first phase of the trial. So I thought it was great that he was acknowledging that, and spent so many pages [of the ruling] just talking about how much that poses a competitive challenge to traditional search engines.”

And the billions will keep flowing

Google’s stock price shot up by eight percent in after-hours trading and Apple’s jumped 2.5 percent, suggesting investors like this ruling.

That sentiment may stem from the fact that during the trial it emerged that in 2021 Google paid more than $26 billion to other companies to make sure that it was the default search engine on their platforms. Apple raked in $18-20 billion in 2020 alone, around a quarter of its profit in that year [PDF]. Google wouldn’t spend that sort of money unless it paid off, so its shareholders may be pleased that a big source of revenue remains viable.

Mozilla is another beneficiary of Google’s largesse. While the amount it gets is trivial in comparison to Cook & Co, thought to be around $400 million, the foundation has very few other sources of revenue. Earlier this year Mozilla’s CFO warned that cutting the Google subsidy would “potentially start a downward spiral of usage as people defected from our browser, which … could at the end of the day put Firefox out of business,” the judge notes.

At the time of publication, Apple and Mozilla had no comment.

Mehta noted that the loss of such payments would be “crippling,” and “downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban.”

So what will change for consumers? In effect, almost nothing. Google will carry on as before, and the case will drag on for years.

“Users will be in much the same position as before,” Mitch Stoltz, litigation director for the EFF told The Register.

“The lack of any restructuring of Google, or even a ban on the massive revenue sharing payments to Apple and others for default search placement that were at the heart of the government’s case, mean that Google’s incentives won’t change, and the data-sharing remedies may be undermined.” ®

Source: Judge who ruled Google is a monopoly orders modest remedies • The Register

As first reported by TorrentFreak, Apple is preventing downloads of the iTorrent app on iPhones in the EU. Developer Daniil “XITRIX” Vinogradov’s app was a popular BitTorrent client available from AltStore PAL, which is among the most popular third-party iOS app stores overseas. The company revoked the app developer’s ability to distribute apps on such third-party marketplaces. While Apple has historically banned torrent clients from iOS devices in the United States, the EU’s Digital Markets Act that went into effect last year requires Apple to allow apps from third-party stores to be installed by users.

According to TorrentFreak‘s reporting, the motivation behind the revocation of XITRIX’s alternative distribution rights is not yet certain. The publisher spoke directly with TorrentFreak and said that Apple never reached out to him about the matter. “I still have no idea if it was my fault or Apple’s, and their responses make no sense,” Vinogradov told TorrentFreak. Apple has responded to Vinogradov with a generic message about app store issues.

Shane Gill, the co-founder of AltStore PAL, told TorrentFreak that the company’s request for information from Apple has not resulted in it explaining its justification for the takedown. “I can confirm that we are in communication with Apple about this issue. We’ve told them what’s going wrong, and they said they’re looking into it, but we haven’t gotten any further information as of yet,” said Gill.

Source: Apple pulls torrenting app from a third-party store in the EU

Australia’s Federal Court has given Epic Games another win in its global fight against the way Apple and Google run their app stores.

The Court yesterday delivered its oral decision in a long-running case that, like similar cases elsewhere, considered whether the tech giants abuse market power by preventing developers from pursuing distribution channels that cost less than using their app stores or alternative payment systems.

The Australian case also represented the first major test of a revised definition of abuse of market power under local law.

As explained by law firm Gilbert + Tobin, the court found that both Apple and Google abused market power. Justice Beach found Apple’s App Store and requirement to use only its payment systems for apps sold there “had the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition” and therefore breached Australian competition law.

The Court found Google also misused power it wields in the market for app stores and payment services on Android.

Epic Games hailed the result as a win for developers and consumers. The games developer interpreted the judgement as meaning Apple will be forced to allow it to sell its wares in the App Store, something Cupertino has declined to do after Epic started using external payment systems.

However Epic also noted that the written decision runs to over 2,000 pages, and its expectation it may therefore contain other matters it needs to consider. At the time of writing the Court had not published the judgment and it may be some time before it emerges, because Gilbert + Tobin says the full terms outlined in the decision “are currently embargoed pending resolution of confidentiality claims.”

The matter is therefore far from over, for several reasons. One is that Apple and Google can appeal and appear likely to do so as both already expressed their concerns with some aspects of the judgement. Another is that a class action seeking compensation for overcharging flowing from Apple and Google’s abuse of market power has scarcely begun.

Gilbert + Tobin does, however, note that Australia joins South Korea, India, and Japan in having found or decided that app store operators need to allow more competition, and that the UK is investigating the same issues. Epic, Apple, and Google have also fought over the same issues in the US, where the games developer scored important wins. ®

Source: Epic Games has another win over Apple and Google, in Oz • The Register

Yesterday, when Epic won its Google antitrust lawsuit for a second time, it wasn’t quite clear how soon Google would need to start dismantling its affirmed illegal monopoly.

Today, Google admitted the answer was: 14 days. Google had just 14 days to enact major changes to its Google Play app store, and the way it does business with phonemakers, cellular carriers, and app developers, unless it won an emergency stay (pause) from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as it continues to appeal. It must stop forcing apps to use Google Play Billing, allow app developers to freely steer their users to other platforms, and limit the perks it can offer in exchange for preinstalled apps, among other changes.

Those changes would not yet include Epic’s biggest wins. They don’t yet force Google to carry rival app stores within the Google Play Store, or to share its full app catalog with those rival stores, so don’t expect the Epic Games Store or the Microsoft Xbox Store to appear inside Google Play quite yet.

And as of Friday afternoon, all of this may take even longer. Hours after we published our story, Google won its emergency stay, and now has at least three weeks before it has to change Android app store policy.

When he issued the permanent injunction to begin cracking open Android, Judge James Donato gave Google eight months to come up with a “narrowly tailored” system of safety and security procedures before it would be forced to carry rival app stores, so Google has seven and a half months left once the stays have been lifted. Rival app stores won’t appear inside Google Play until 2026 at the earliest.

[…]

Source: Google has just two weeks to begin cracking open Android, it admits in emergency filing | The Verge

Google’s attempt to appeal the decision in Epic v. Google has failed. In a newly released opinion, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided to uphold the original Epic v. Google lawsuit that found that Google’s Play Store and payment systems are monopolies.

The decision means that Google will have to abide by the remedies of the original lawsuit, which limits the company’s ability to pay phone makers to preinstall the Play Store, prevents it from requiring developers to use its payment systems and forces it to open up Android to third-party app stores. Not only will Google have to allow third-party app stores to be downloaded from the Play Store, but it also has to give those app stores “catalog access” to all the apps currently in the Play Store so they can have a competitive offering.

In October 2024, Google won an administrative stay that put a pause on some of those restrictions pending the results of this Ninth Circuit case. “The stay motion on appeal is denied as moot in light of our decision,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown, who oversaw the case, writes.

[…]

The origin of the Epic v. Google lawsuit was Epic’s decision to circumvent Google’s payment system via a software update to Fortnite. When Google caught wind, it removed Fortnite from the Play Store and Epic sued. Epic pulled a similar gambit with Apple and the App Store, though was far less successful in winning concessions in that case — its major judicial success there has been preventing Apple from collecting fees from developers on purchases made using third-party payment systems.

Source: Google lost its antitrust case with Epic again

In late May, Apple announced what seemed on its face to be a big, positive development for iPad owners: It was going to begin selling repair parts for iPads to the general public, which is a requirement of a series of new right-to-repair laws. “With today’s announcement, we’re excited to expand our repair services to more customers, enabling them to further extend the life of their products—all without compromising safety, security, or privacy,” Brian Naumann, Apple’s vice president of AppleCare, said in a press release announcing the move.

The announcement was generally covered positively by the press: “Save Money, Make Your iPad Last Longer,” a Forbes headline read, for example. But independent repair professionals who have used the program told 404 Media that the prices Apple is charging for some repair parts are absurdly high, and that this functionally means that the iPad is as unrepairable as it has always been.

“As is typical for Apple, they’ve been pushing and testing the limits as time has gone on, and now they pushed too far. There are plenty of other examples of absurdly priced parts from Self Service, but these iPad parts are by far the worst,” Brian Clark, the owner of the iGuys Tech Shop, told 404 Media.

“For years, Apple effectively considered the iPad non-repairable. They did not offer any repairs on iPads, and Apple authorized service providers were not allowed to do iPad repairs of any kind, so this was a huge shift in their view of iPads. I was excited until the day they actually put the parts up and seeing the ridiculous prices of things, it was really, really disappointing,” Clark added. “It kind of sends the message that they don’t really want iPads to be repaired.

Clark points out that a new charge port for an iPad Pro 11, a part that goes bad all the time, costs $250 from Apple. Aftermarket charge ports, meanwhile, can be found for less than $20. “It’s a very basic part, and I just can’t see any reasonable explanation that part should be $250 from Apple,” he said. “That’s a component that probably costs them a few dollars to make.”

Clark said a digitizer for an iPad A16 is $200. That part can be bought from third-party suppliers for $50, and the iPad A16 sells brand new from Apple for $349, Clark said. The replacement screen assembly for an iPad Pro 13 costs $749 from Apple.

[…]

Source: Apple Is Selling iPad Repair Parts for Astronomical Prices

They have been doing this with people forcing them to open up the app store too – these headlines are from the last year alone, showing them crying and stamping their feet and basically doing everything in their power to childishly stop doing anything that benefits the customers.

Apple Hit with Class-Action Lawsuit for App Store Injunction Violation after Judge rules apple execs lied and willfully ignored injunction – join here

Judge: Apple Lied In Fortnite Case, chose to not comply with court order, must immediately allow external payments without a cut

Apple tries again to make EU officials happy with new fees for in-app purchases

Apple stamps feet but now to let EU developers distribute apps from the web

Apple reverses hissy fit decision to remove Home Screen web apps in EU

Shameless Insult, Malicious Compliance, Junk Fees, Extortion Regime: Industry Reacts To Apple’s Proposed Changes Over Digital Markets Act

Mozilla says Apple’s new browser rules are ‘as painful as possible’ for Firefox

I can have app store? Apple: yes but NO! Give €1,000,000 + lock in to Apple ecosystem. This is how to “comply” with EU anti competition law

Secure comms biz Proton has joined a lawsuit that alleges Apple’s anticompetitive ways are harming developers, consumers, and privacy.

Proton is a Switzerland-based (for now) provider of encrypted communications services and on Monday filed a legal complaint [PDF] against Apple, claiming the iGiant is abusing its control of iOS and the App Store in ways that reduce competition.

Apple has been fighting legal battles on this front for some time. Most notably, Epic Games sued in 2020 to try and allow itself and other app makers to sell its wares for use on Apple devices through channels other than Apple’s own App Store and payment systems. While Apple mostly won that case, the court said it had to allow third-party developers to inform customers of payment systems other than Apple’s own. (A judge recently questioned whether Apple has complied and pondered whether the company is in contempt of court.)

In Europe, regulators have taken a harder line, forcing the mega-biz to allow sales of iOS apps on third-party app stores.

Proton would like to see that happen in the US and has therefore asked the US District court for Northern California to require Apple to get out of the way and give app developers direct access to customers. The company’s filing suggests making that happen by requiring Apple to allow alternative app stores, expose those stores through its own Apple App Store, plus allowing developers to disable Apple’s in-app payment system and to gain fill access to Apple APIs.

[…]

Secure comms biz Proton has joined a lawsuit that alleges Apple’s anticompetitive ways are harming developers, consumers, and privacy.

Proton is a Switzerland-based (for now) provider of encrypted communications services and on Monday filed a legal complaint [PDF] against Apple, claiming the iGiant is abusing its control of iOS and the App Store in ways that reduce competition.

Apple has been fighting legal battles on this front for some time. Most notably, Epic Games sued in 2020 to try and allow itself and other app makers to sell its wares for use on Apple devices through channels other than Apple’s own App Store and payment systems. While Apple mostly won that case, the court said it had to allow third-party developers to inform customers of payment systems other than Apple’s own. (A judge recently questioned whether Apple has complied and pondered whether the company is in contempt of court.)

In Europe, regulators have taken a harder line, forcing the mega-biz to allow sales of iOS apps on third-party app stores.

Proton would like to see that happen in the US and has therefore asked the US District court for Northern California to require Apple to get out of the way and give app developers direct access to customers. The company’s filing suggests making that happen by requiring Apple to allow alternative app stores, expose those stores through its own Apple App Store, plus allowing developers to disable Apple’s in-app payment system and to gain fill access to Apple APIs.

Rather than suing anew, Proton is joining a group of Korean developers that took Apple to a US court in May [PDF] on similar grounds.

“We believe that Apple’s conduct constitutes further violations of US antitrust law,” Proton said in a blog post.

“Without this case, Apple could get away with behavior in the US that is already outlawed in the European Union. If this were to happen, American consumers, and developers focused on the American market, would have to pay higher prices for fewer choices, and be left at a disadvantage.”

Proton’s complaint covers many of the same issues raised by Epic and other app makers, and adds a novel argument that Apple’s system also harms user privacy. The Swiss company argues that developers of free apps usually harvest user data and sell that to cover their bills. Companies like Proton that don’t collect or sell user data have no choice but to charge subscriptions for revenue. Apple’s pricing model particularly penalizes these companies by taking a cut of annual subscriptions sold on its App Store.

The post also revisits Proton’s 2020 run-in with Apple that saw the iBiz reject an update to Proton’s VPN after the Swiss company pointed out it could be used to “unblock censored web sites.” Apple eventually relented but the episode shows how Apple puts profit before privacy, Proton argued.

“We don’t question Apple’s right to act on behalf of authoritarians for the sake of profit, but Apple’s monopoly over iOS app distribution means it can enforce this perverse policy on all app developers, forcing them to also be complicit,” it wrote.

[…]

Source: Proton joins anti-Apple lawsuit to force App Store changes • The Register

It’s just a comma in a 66-page document. But a comma that will cost Apple billions of euros in Europe. Starting June 23, the Cupertino-based company will no longer be able to collect commissions on external transactions made from an iPhone or iPad. In other words, all app developers will be able to redirect their users to a website to make a purchase or subscribe to a service without paying Apple a single cent.

This bombshell, which comes just after an unfavorable ruling in the US, is the result of a months-long syntactic battle with the European Commission over the exact meaning of an article in the Digital Markets Act (DMA), designed to strengthen competition in the digital space. In late April, Apple had already been fined €500 million.

Enacted last year, the DMA bans the so-called anti-steering practice, which Apple has enforced since the launch of the App Store. This required developers to use its payment platform and pay it 15% or 30%. Officially, Apple has abandoned this, though Brussels still accuses it of maintaining “technical and commercial restrictions.”

However, Apple has not given up on collecting commissions. It initially set them at 12% or 27% for purchases made within seven days after redirection. It has since introduced a more complex system, with fees of up to 25% on transactions during the twelve months following installation or update of an app. According to the EU, these commissions not only go “beyond what is strictly necessary”—as noted a year ago—but they also violate the DMA.

A comma that changes everything?

The disagreement between Apple and Brussels centers on Article 5.4. In its English version, the article states that the gatekeeper—the term used by the Commission for the seven major tech companies subject to the DMA—“shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions […], and to conclude contracts with those end users.”

This lengthy sentence creates ambiguity: what exactly does “free of charge” apply to? Apple claims it only applies to “communicate” and “promote,” meaning the right to insert redirect links in an app. But not to “conclude contracts,” meaning making purchases. Based on that, Apple argues it can still charge commissions on those external transactions.

The European Commission interprets it differently: contract conclusion must also be free of charge. It relies on the comma before the phrase “and to conclude contracts,” turning the sentence into an “enumeration.” “That ‘free of charge’ applies to all that is being enumerated after”, it explains in its detailed decision sent to Apple as part of the €500 million fine, which was made public last week.

“In other words, the price for app developers to pay [for external purchases] is zero,” writes the Commission. However, its case could be weakened by inconsistencies in the French and German translations of the text, which it acknowledges are “ambiguous.” Still, “other linguistic versions leave no room for interpretation,” notes Brussels.

Daily penalties of up to €47 million

To complicate matters further, the regulator acknowledges that Apple can be compensated for the initial acquisition of a customer by a developer. But this commission—whose rate must be determined by the company—can only apply within a “limited initial time window” after the first installation of an app.

Crucially, it only concerns the very first transaction, even if the user deletes and later reinstalls the app. “An end user can only be acquired once,” says the Commission. Apple contests this, arguing that “the value of the initial purchase is a poor measure of value delivered by App Store” since it only represents a “small fraction of acquisition value to developer”.

[…]

For a year now, it has adopted a very combative stance toward the DMA, aiming to concede as little as possible. But it faces daily penalties of up to €47 million. In April, European officials said they would not hesitate to apply them if necessary.

[…]

Source: A simple comma is going to cost Apple billions in Europe

Apple has been putting spanners in the works of the EU DMA since inception and has been pissing off developers, the EU and customers since then. The EU is toughening it’s stance – the spirit of the law is more important than a single comma in a huge document in Europe.

Apple has filed an appeal with the European Union’s General Court in Luxembourg challenging the bloc’s order requiring greater iOS interoperability with rival companies’ products under the Digital Markets Act. The EU executive in March directed Apple to make its mobile operating system more compatible with competitors’ apps, headphones, and virtual reality headsets by granting developers and device makers access to system components typically reserved for Apple’s own products.

Apple contends the requirements threaten its seamless user experience while creating security risks, noting that companies have already requested access to sensitive user data including notification content and complete WiFi network histories. The company faces potential fines of up to 10% of its worldwide annual revenue if found in violation of the DMA’s interoperability rules designed to curb Big Tech market power.

[…]The new lawsuit was filed May 2, 2025, following news that a federal judge found the tech giant in contempt of court for violating a 2021 antitrust injunction which required Apple to permit its app developers to sell subscriptions and other in-app products directly to their customers using links within their apps. Without the injunction in place Apple charges app developers uniform transaction fees (defaulting at 30%, and 15% under some programs). The court found that Apple implemented a scheme to violate the injunction and prevent developers from directing customers to their own websites and payment platforms.

“It appears as though Apple has been caught red-handed blatantly seeking to undercut the law,” said Steve Berman, Hagens Berman managing partner and co-founder. “We believe app developers deserve a fair market to promote and sell their products, and the world’s largest corporation doesn’t get to bully them out of this billion-dollar revenue stream.”

If you sold an in-app digital product (including subscriptions) through Apple’s App Store after Jan. 16, 2024, find out your rights as an iOS app developer.

[…]

The court ultimately held that Apple willfully violated the injunction to protect its revenues, and then “reverse engineered justification[s] to proffer to the Court” often with “lies on the witness stand,”

[…]

The lawsuit’s named plaintiff is Pure Sweat Basketball Inc., a corporation offering an app used by players across the country to train and improve their basketball skills. Had Apple complied with the injunction, as required, Pure Sweat would have been able to sell subscriptions to its app directly to its customers, using “link-out” buttons directing customers to Pure Sweat’s own website.

As a result of Apple’s misconduct, attorneys estimate that potentially more than 100,000 similarly situated app developers were prevented from selling in-app products (including subscriptions) directly to their customers, and were forced to pay Apple commissions on in-app sales that Apple was not entitled to receive.

Find out more about the class-action lawsuit against Apple on behalf of iOS app developers.

[…]

Source: Apple Hit with Class-Action Lawsuit for App Store Injunction Violation by Same Law Firm That Secured $100M iOS Developer Win | Hagens Berman

Epic Games v. Apple judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has ruled that, effective immediately, Apple can no longer take a cut from purchases made outside apps and has blocked the tech giant from restricting how developers can point people to third-party payment options. The judge was also not happy that Apple has seemingly not complied with a previous court order and has referred the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for possible contempt charges. Apple is already planning to appeal the ruling.

This is the latest development in the Epic v Apple court case that started back in 2020 after Epic added its own payment option to Fortnite on iOS and Apple pulled the game as a result. The Fortnite maker’s case against Apple was focused primarily on the large fees the tech giant took from all in-app purchases and its strict restrictions against allowing other app stores and third-party options on iOS devices.

In 2021 the judge sided with Apple on most points, but declared the company needed to allow app makers to use third-party payment systems that could avoid Apple’s cut. In 2023, after a series of appeals, Apple declared a “resounding victory” over Epic, though it was still forced by the court to allow third-party payment options and to not take a cut of outside app purchases. Epic alleges that Apple never complied with that order. Now Apple finds itself in a lot of trouble with judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers.

“That [Apple] thought this Court would tolerate such insubordination was a gross miscalculation,” wrote the judge in a ruling filed on April 30 in California. “Apple willfully chose not to comply with this Court’s Injunction. It did so with the express intent to create new anticompetitive barriers which would, by design and in effect, maintain a valued revenue stream; a revenue stream previously found to be anticompetitive.”

Elsewhere in the filing, the judge says that an Apple executive lied under oath when talking about forcing devs to pay a 27 percent fee for outside app purchases and wrote that Apple CEO Tim Cook “chose poorly” when listening to execs at the company who convinced him to ignore the injunction.

“Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly,” wrote the judge. In the filing the judge also suggested that Apple’s actions might constitute contempt charges and has referred the case to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

As explained in the filing, Apple must now “immediately” comply with the court’s orders to allow developers to include third-party payment options, to not take a cut of those purchases, and to not block or hinder devs from including these outside payment methods through various means and UI messages.

[…]

Source: Judge: Apple Lied In Fortnite Case And Just Blew App Store Open

A federal judge has ruled that Google maintained illegal monopolies in the digital advertising technology market.

In a landmark case, the Department of Justice and 17 states found Google liable for antitrust violations.

Federal Court Finds Google Violated Sherman Act

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google illegally monopolized two key markets in digital advertising:

• The publisher ad server market
• The ad exchange market

The 115-page ruling (PDF link) states Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power.”

It also found that Google unlawfully tied its publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX) together.

Judge Brinkema wrote in the ruling:

“Plaintiffs have proven that Google possesses monopoly power in the publisher ad server for open-web display advertising market. Google’s publisher ad server DFP has a durable and ‘predominant share of the market’ that is protected by high barriers both to entry and expansion.”

Google’s Dominant Market Position

The court found that Google controlled approximately 91% of the worldwide publisher ad server market for open-web display advertising from 2018 to 2022.

In the ad exchange market, Google’s AdX handled between 54% and 65% of total transactions, roughly nine times larger than its closest competitor.

The judge cited Google’s pricing power as evidence of its monopoly. Google maintained a 20% take rate for its ad exchange services for over a decade, despite competitors charging only 10%.

The ruling states:

“Google’s ability to maintain AdX’s 20% take rate under these market conditions is further direct evidence of the firm’s sustained and substantial power.”

Illegal Tying of Services Found

A key part of the ruling focused on Google’s practice of tying its publisher ad server (DFP) to its ad exchange (AdX).

The court determined that Google effectively forced publishers to use DFP if they wanted access to real-time bidding with AdWords advertisers, a crucial feature of AdX.

Judge Brinkema wrote, quoting internal Google communications:

“By tying DFP to AdX, Google took advantage of its ‘owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network’ of advertising demand.”

This was compared to “Goldman or Citibank own[ing] the NYSE [i.e., the New York Stock Exchange].”

[…]

What’s Next?

Judge Brinkema has yet to decide on penalties for Google’s violations. Soon, the court will “set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine the appropriate remedies.”

Possible penalties include forcing Google to sell parts of its ad tech business. This would dramatically change the digital advertising landscape.

This ruling signals that changes may be coming for marketers relying on Google’s integrated advertising system.

Google intends to appeal the decision, extending the legal battle for years.

[…]

Source: Google Found Guilty of Illegal Ad Tech Monopoly in Court Ruling

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has removed over 300 blog posts published during the agency’s leadership under former chair Lina Khan, Wired reports. These include posts that are critical of companies like Amazon and Microsoft for their handling of customer data.

The FTC did not respond to a request for comment.

As FTC chair during the Biden years, Khan was known as a tough enforcer of antitrust law, seeking to hold mega-corporations accountable for their potential to stifle competition in American markets. In an interview with TechCrunch, she once referred to Big Tech leaders as “mob bosses.” But in the Trump era, the FTC is unlikely to be as vigilant about Big Tech.

The deletion of these blogs could potentially violate laws on how government data is handled; meanwhile, the behavior is consistent with the Trump administration’s ongoing campaign to remove certain words and phrases from public and private government documents. These terms include “Black,” “disability,” “feminism,” “genders,” “Latinx,” “LGBTQ,” “transgender,” “victims,” and “women,” among others.

Source: FTC removes posts critical of Big Tech from its website | TechCrunch

Brazil has ordered Apple to allow users to bypass the App Store and sideload apps within 90 days, according a report in Valor Econômico seen by 9to5Mac. The new ruling follows similar orders issued in Europe and elsewhere that were referenced by the Brazilian court. “[Apple] has already complied with similar obligations in other countries, without demonstrating a significant impact or irreparable damage to its business model,” wrote judge Pablo Zuniga.

Late last year, Brazil’s antitrust regulator CADE ordered Apple to allow users to download apps and make purchases from outside its App Store, with a 20-day deadline and fines for not complying. However, Apple appealed that ruling on the grounds that the changes would be too difficult to implement within the time frame. The court agreed, calling the injunction “disproportionate and unnecessary,” buying Apple more time but forcing it to face a public hearing in Brazil.

Following another appeal, this time by CADE, the court ordered Apple to allow sideloading and third-party app stores within the next three months or face fines.

The litigation was launched by the Latin American e-commerce firm Mercado Libre, which complained about developers being forced to pay hefty commissions through Apple’s App Store. That was followed later by other developers including Match and Epic Games.

An Apple spokesperson told Valor Econômico that it “believes in vibrant and competitive markets,” but said that the changes will “harm the privacy and security” of iOS users. Apple plans to appeal the decision.

Source: Apple must allow app sideloading in Brazil within 90 days, judge orders

Amazon is once again demonstrating that buying things in today’s world does not mean you actually own them. The company is closing a loophole that enabled owners of Kindle books to strip them of their anti-piracy protection and take them elsewhere.

Some avid digital books enthusiasts prefer other e-reading applications to Amazon’s Kindle—perhaps because another e-reader has a better color screen or other features not present on Kindle. The “Download & transfer via USB” tool was an old Kindle feature that allowed owners of e-books purchased through Amazon to be downloaded and transferred to another Kindle without using WiFi or Bluetooth. Clever individuals found that some older e-books used a file format with security measures that are easy to circumvent, meaning they could use the tool alongside other hacks to successfully transfer their books elsewhere. Now, books purchased through Amazon are effectively stuck there.

[…]

A standard security format would enable books to be transferred while protecting copyrights, but Amazon does not have an incentive to go with that.

That has, of course, been great for Amazon. The company was early into the e-book industry and the Kindle is synonymous with e-books; it accounts for 70% of the market. If you have a large collection of books you have purchased on Kindle, you kind of have to stay in its ecosystem. Furthermore, some books are only available on Amazon’s marketplace, and the company will always match the price of competing marketplaces since it really makes its money off the ads littering the site these days. While Amazon does have a monopoly in digital books, it would likely argue it is not a monopoly in the broader book category as Barnes and Noble sees a resurgence in popularity.

Users on sites like Reddit have shared workarounds over the years to take their purchased books elsewhere, but it has been something of a cat-and-mouse game, with successive updates by Amazon closing loopholes.

[…]

 

Source: Amazon Is Making It Harder to Move Your E-Books Around

The complaint, filed in May 2021, accuses Apple of breaching European and UK competition laws by “its exclusion of any other app stores from iOS devices” like iPhones and iPads.

It claims that some 20 million Apple users may have been overcharged by the company “due to its ban on rival app store platforms”.

The complainants says a “30 percent surcharge” that the company “imposes” on apps purchased through Apple’s App Store comes at “expense of ordinary consumers”.

The case, which Apple has called “meritless”, has been brought by Kings College London academic Rachael Kent and the law firm Hausfeld & Co.

The trial is set to last seven weeks at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London.

At the heart are accusations that Apple used the App Store to exclude competitors, forcing users to use its system and boosting profits in the process.

“The 30 percent surcharge relates to most of the applications that you’re going to be using when you’re downloading and making in-app purchases on the App Store,” Kent told AFP, citing dating platform Tinder as an example.

However, it does not apply to applications offering physical products such as the delivery services Deliveroo and Uber Eats, the academic specifies.

Any user who purchased applications or subscriptions in the British version of the App Store between 1 October 2015 and 15 November 2024 may be entitled to compensation from Apple, believes Kent, a lecturer in the digital economy.

The claim seeks total estimated damages of £1.5 billion (EUR1.8 billion).

According to British law, in this type of class action, all potentially affected persons are included in the procedure by default, and may benefit from possible compensation, unless they voluntarily opt out.

[…]

Source: Billion-pound lawsuit against Apple over App Store opens in UK – Euractiv

A 30% surcharge is ridiculous, especially when you are rabid about not allowing anyone else have a marketplace – yes, they do allow 3rd party marketplaces but the prices for that are extortionate.

Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolized the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.

Antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, also plan to recommend Wednesday that federal judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

[…]

Owning the world’s most popular web browser is key for Google’s ads business. The company is able to see activity from signed-in users, and use that data to more effectively target promotions, which generate the bulk of its revenue. Google has also been using Chrome to direct users to its flagship AI product, Gemini, which has the potential to evolve from an answer-bot to an assistant that follows users around the web.

[…]

Source: DOJ Will Push Google to Sell Chrome to Break Search Monopoly – Bloomberg

It’s a start.