It's funny we (EU, CCPA?) regulate cookies and hit use cases of companies trying to better themselves via analytics or maintain user presence, but we haven't done much in the way of stopping MAGMA from owning the means of communication and commerce outright.
The Apple/Google duopoly on smartphones is insane.
- Companies face 30% tax, can't deploy, can't do native (Apple) or get scare walls (Google), can't form a customer relationship, get ads sold against their brands, forced to use Apple/Google tech and adopt their upgrade cycles, no VMs/runtimes/plugins, etc.
- Customers also have it bad: they're faced with planned obsolescence, no upgrades, encrypted parts ecosystem, green text FOMO. Apple/Google are owning all of payments, navigation, date/sex life, work calendars, emails, etc. etc. And they're not collecting data on us throughout all these activities?
Or what about Google practically owning web discoverability by paying everyone off?
Why don't we regulate smartphone vendors? This seems fair:
- Web is first class. Users can download apps off of it without scare walls.
- Apps can have native code, WASM, self-update, pack runtimes, etc.
- Apps can use their own auth rails, payments rails, etc.
- No limit on the types of apps. You can deploy non-Safari browsers and app stores of your own.
- Search engine providers can't buy access to every single pane of glass.
I'd argue that we should also regulate them on the basis of the power of their defaults, but we're in such a bind that I'd be fine with just the above.
The EU is either cracking down on or actively investigating how to crack down on all of the things you mentioned. Cookies were just their warm-up phase.
Actually, I'm sugarcoating things! The EU was cracking down on Android years before even the cookies. US techies genuinely thought EU antitrust was a shakedown to get money out of Google and have conveniently forgotten things since.
Well, the Digital Markets Act basically regulates the things you're asking for. It's specifically designed to tackle "gatekeepers", such as the Google/Apply duopoly on smartphones, Metas hold on chat (especially in Europe, where WhatsApp is very popular), Amazons hold on the online marketplace, etc.
It's a very new regulation, so we've yet to really see the effects.
Comments
It's funny we (EU, CCPA?) regulate cookies and hit use cases of companies trying to better themselves via analytics or maintain user presence, but we haven't done much in the way of stopping MAGMA from owning the means of communication and commerce outright.
The Apple/Google duopoly on smartphones is insane.
- Companies face 30% tax, can't deploy, can't do native (Apple) or get scare walls (Google), can't form a customer relationship, get ads sold against their brands, forced to use Apple/Google tech and adopt their upgrade cycles, no VMs/runtimes/plugins, etc.
- Customers also have it bad: they're faced with planned obsolescence, no upgrades, encrypted parts ecosystem, green text FOMO. Apple/Google are owning all of payments, navigation, date/sex life, work calendars, emails, etc. etc. And they're not collecting data on us throughout all these activities?
Or what about Google practically owning web discoverability by paying everyone off?
Why don't we regulate smartphone vendors? This seems fair:
- Web is first class. Users can download apps off of it without scare walls.
- Apps can have native code, WASM, self-update, pack runtimes, etc.
- Apps can use their own auth rails, payments rails, etc.
- No limit on the types of apps. You can deploy non-Safari browsers and app stores of your own.
- Search engine providers can't buy access to every single pane of glass.
I'd argue that we should also regulate them on the basis of the power of their defaults, but we're in such a bind that I'd be fine with just the above.
The EU is either cracking down on or actively investigating how to crack down on all of the things you mentioned. Cookies were just their warm-up phase.
Actually, I'm sugarcoating things! The EU was cracking down on Android years before even the cookies. US techies genuinely thought EU antitrust was a shakedown to get money out of Google and have conveniently forgotten things since.
Well, the Digital Markets Act basically regulates the things you're asking for. It's specifically designed to tackle "gatekeepers", such as the Google/Apply duopoly on smartphones, Metas hold on chat (especially in Europe, where WhatsApp is very popular), Amazons hold on the online marketplace, etc.
It's a very new regulation, so we've yet to really see the effects.
SMS doesn’t work. It’s not just an issue of “green bubbles”.
Texts don’t get sent. Group messages don’t work. Images can’t be sent. Videos can’t be sent. You can’t send on WiFi.
It sucks.