Google and Apple scare us, app makers tell Congress

Some app makers, which rely on mobile distribution from Apple and Google, are afraid of how much power the technology giants have over their businesses, according to the testimony of the congress delivered on Wednesday.

“We are all scared,” Jared Sine, chief legal officer of Match Group, told Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Chair of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, during a hearing on Wednesday.

The trial brought together representatives of Apple along with Google and several of their most outspoken critics, including Match Group, which owns the dating site Tinder; Tile, which makes devices that help users find lost items and face new competition from Apple’s AirTag technology; and streaming music service Spotify.

The trial comes as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are working on updates to the antitrust laws that could better account for the power that some technology giants possess across many digital markets. This includes the ability of platforms like Apple and Google to manage the main distribution platform for applications while increasingly hawking their own competitors.

During the trial, the app manufacturers expressed fears about how easily any company could undercut their businesses by making minor changes to their app store rules. They also complained about high fees for in-app purchases and unclear application of standards.

Several executives have accused Apple and Google of threatening their business.

Sine said Google called Match Group on Tuesday night after its testimony was made public to ask why its testimony differed from the company’s comments in their latest call.

On the revenue call, Match executives said they believe they are having productive conversations about Google’s 30% paid fee via the Google Play store. But in testimony, Match complained that Google had made “false pretenses of an open platform” and complained about the “monopolistic power”.

Google White’s Senior Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, Google White, said it sounds like employees working in Google’s business development team are asking an ‘honest question’. Wilson said he does not see it as a ‘threat’ and we will never threaten our partners’ because Google requires app developers to use the app store to be successful.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Said the call was ‘potentially feasible’.

Klobuchar said she plans to investigate the matter further.

Horizio Gutierrez, Spotify’s chief legal officer, said he could think of “at least four clear examples of threats and retaliation” from Apple after Spotify decided to talk about alleged competition against competition and Apple’s fees for developers on digital products provided by the platform was purchased. These included threats to remove Spotify’s app, refuse to promote it, or wait months for minor app updates to be approved.

“They basically threw the book at us to make it difficult for us to continue with our decision to speak,” he said.

Many app manufacturers have complained about the fees that gatekeepers charge for purchases in digital app for digital services.

Gutierrez has complained about what he calls Apple’s gag order ‘about how it can communicate with its own users about how to upgrade to its paid version.

Spotify, for example, allows customers to upgrade only outside of their iOS app to avoid Apple’s commission fees of 15% to 30% on digital services purchased through its platform. But because Spotify does not sell the paid service through its iOS app, Apple also does not let the app manufacturer talk to customers about the upgrades through the app – instead, users have to go through a web browser on a computer or a upgrade other method. .

At the same time, Apple operates a competitive service, Apple Music, which does not have such restrictions. Gutierrez claims this gives Apple’s version an unfair advantage.

Representatives of Apple and Google have both told lawmakers that their fees for developers are intended to cover the costs associated with distributing applications through their platforms and to secure them properly. Apple Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer compares the services offered in the App Store today to the cumbersome and expensive process that app manufacturers had to strive to distribute their apps before the App Store existed.

White described the group as a set of “small but vocal” voices of “mainly large companies”. He said he was concerned that “we lay the emphasis that could make the Android open source ecosystem work so well for a much larger set of small and medium-sized businesses, if we try to satisfy their complaints.”

In addition to complaints about fees, developers were concerned that Apple’s own competitive products were encouraging them to make unfavorable decisions towards them.

Kirsten Daru, Tile chief adviser, for example, said the company had asked Apple for permission to use ultra-wideband (UWB) technology on iPhones to make the article tracking technology more accurate than it could use with Bluetooth alone. She said Apple rejected the request and then reserved the technology for its own rival AirTags, which was announced Tuesday.

While Apple is developing a way for third-party developers to build on the more accurate location data, Daru said that in order to access it, we need to give Apple unprecedented control over our business and customers to the Find My app aimed at finding their lost items. ‘

Andeer argued that AirTags is a separate product from Tile, which currently has the largest market share for the space, and that opening up tools to more third-party developers will encourage competition.

App manufacturers have also complained that Apple’s application of its app store rules could be arbitrary and could delay the introduction of key features. Apple can tell developers what rule they violated, but not exactly how or what to do to fix it, Sine said.

He said Tinder had tried to submit a version of its app with a feature aimed at protecting its LGBTQ + users by notifying them when they were in a country where they would be at risk walk to expose their sexuality or gender identity. Sine said it took two months and a conversation between top executives of Match Group owner IAC and Apple to clarify the issue.

An exchange between rankings Mike Lee, R-Utah and Andeer of the subcommittee showed how complicated Apple’s App Store rules can be.

Lee asked Andeer to distinguish between why a paid service by Tinder could incur a commission, while one for Uber could not. Andeer explained that an Uber customer pays for a non-digital service – a car that arrives at their home – while not expecting the same return from Tinder, and says that it would be a different service in a insinuation. of sex work.

The app manufacturers have emphasized their dependence on the app stores because of their unprecedented access to consumers. But according to them, this is not the symbiotic relationship that Apple and Google like to paint.

“We are not successful because of what Apple did, we were successful despite Apple’s interference,” Gutierrez said. “And we would have been much more successful, but because of their competitive competition.”

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