In today’s antitrust hearing in the US Senate, Apple and Google representatives were asked if they were setting up a ‘strict firewall’ or other internal policies that would prevent them from using the data of third-party companies operating in their app stores to develop their own competitive products. In particular, Apple has been called upon by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) for the practice of copying other apps, saying that the practice has become so widespread that it has earned a nickname from Apple’s developer community: ” sherlocking. “
Sherlock, who has his own Wikipedia entry under software, comes from Apple’s search tool in the early 2000s called Sherlock. A third-party developer, Karelia Software, has created an alternative tool called Watson. Following the success of Karelia’s product, Apple added the same functionality to Watson in its own search tool, and Watson was effectively disabled. The nickname “Sherlock” later became, for each occasion, a brief example of Apple copying an idea from a third-party developer that threatened or even destroyed their business.
Over the years, developers have claimed that Apple has “closed” a number of applications, including Confabulator (desktop widgets), iPodderX (podcast manager), Sandvox (website building app) and Growl (a notification system for Mac OS X) and, in more recent years, F.lux (blue light reduction tool for screens) Duet and Luna (apps that make iPad a secondary screen), as well as various screen time management tools. Now Tile claims Apple has also unfairly entered its market with AirTag.
During his interrogation, Blumenthal asked Apple and Google’s representatives during the trial – Kyle Andeer, Apple’s chief compliance officer, and Wilson White, Google’s senior director of public policy and government relations, respectively – whether they were using some kind of “firewall” between their app . stores and their business strategy.
Andeer evaded the question a bit, saying, “If I understand the question correctly, we have separate teams running the App Store and working on product development here at Apple.”
Blumenthal then explained what he meant by ‘firewall’. He explained that this does not mean that there are separate teams, but that there is an internal ban on the sharing of data between the App Store and the people who run Apple’s other businesses.
Answer then: “Senator, we have controls in place.”
He further noted that Apple has only launched a handful of applications and services over the past twelve years, and that there are always ‘dozens of alternatives’ in the App Store. And sometimes the alternative is more popular than Apple’s own product, he noted.
“We do not copy. We do not kill. What we do is offer a new choice and a new innovation, ‘said Andeer.
His argument can be valid if there is strong competition, such as Spotify versus Apple Music, or Netflix versus Apple TV +, or Kindle versus Apple Books. But it’s harder to extend it to areas where Apple is making minor improvements – like when Apple introduced Sidecar, a feature that allowed users to make their iPad a secondary screen. Sidecar ended the need for a third-party app after apps like Duet and Luna first proved the market.
Another example was when Apple built screen time control into its iOS software, but third-party screen time maker manufacturers did not provide an API so that consumers could use their preferred apps to set Apple’s screen time settings via the third-party setting. party’s specialized interface or use other unique features.
Blumenthal said he interpreted Andeer’s answer as to whether Apple had a “data firewall” as ‘no’.
The same question, White’s representative, White, states that his understanding was that Google “sets up data access controls that determine how data from our third-party services is used.”
Blumenthal pressured him to explain whether it was a ‘firewall’, which means he again explained: ‘do you have a ban on access?’
“We have a ban on using our third-party services to compete directly with our first-party services,” White said, adding that Google “has internal policies governing it.”
The senator said he would follow up on this matter with written questions as his time had expired.