Both Apple and Google need to be regulated. Their vice grip on app distribution, app defaults, search defaults, payments defaults, user credential saving defaults, messaging defaults, browser defaults, and then their brutal taxation of almost all web e-commerce and businesses is beyond the scale of whatever Standard Oil had.
You cannot do business on the Internet without paying the Apple and Google toll. They control all the points of ingress and egress, and they tax everything that moves.
It'd be bad enough if they were just charging money, but they also make you jump through hoops to design software their way, do unplanned upgrades to their cadence, prevent you from deploying emergency hot patches, prevent you from updating software dynamically, prevent you from knowing your own customer, etc. etc. etc.
And they're happy to sell your competitors ads to outrank you for your own trademark.
These companies need to lose their control over this. Web distributed apps must become the norm.
You can't tell me that with sandboxing, signature scanning, and some clever heuristics, that we can't make mobile completely safe for free and open distribution.
For reference, the regulation you are probably referring to is Article 30[1] and Article 31[2] of REGULATION (EU) 2022/2065 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 19 October 2022 on a Single Market For Digital Services and amending Directive 2000/31/EC (Digital Services Act).
Article 30 requires capturing and vaguely defined validation of the following information supplied by a trader (includes traders of software):
- the name, address, telephone number and email address of the trader;
- a copy of the identification document of the trader or any other electronic identification as defined by Article 3 of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council;
- the payment account details of the trader;
- where the trader is registered in a trade register or similar public register, the trade register in which the trader is registered and its registration number or equivalent means of identification in that register;
- a self-certification by the trader committing to only offer products or services that comply with the applicable rules of Union law.
Article 31 requires at least the following trader information to be displayed to potential buyers:
- name;
- address;
- telephone number;
- email address;
- clear and unambiguous identification of the products or the services;
- information concerning the labelling and marking in compliance with rules of applicable Union law on product safety and product compliance.
Do you think I somehow personally chose where my apps would be more popular or less popular? If they wanted to cut off my apps in only European regions due to European regs it would be disappointing but understandable.
It's amazing to me that there are some people that will go to these lengths to defend the profits of one of the largest corporations in the world.
At no point does it even occur to you that Google are already bending you over a table with their cut, and you're already white knighting for them even in a completely hypothetical situation.
Do you have very strong investments on Google? Otherwise, I really can't explain why an entrepreneur would ever think the way you do.
You cannot do business on the Internet without paying the Apple and Google toll. They control all the points of ingress and egress, and they tax everything that moves.
It'd be bad enough if they were just charging money, but they also make you jump through hoops to design software their way, do unplanned upgrades to their cadence, prevent you from deploying emergency hot patches, prevent you from updating software dynamically, prevent you from knowing your own customer, etc. etc. etc.
And they're happy to sell your competitors ads to outrank you for your own trademark.
These companies need to lose their control over this. Web distributed apps must become the norm.
You can't tell me that with sandboxing, signature scanning, and some clever heuristics, that we can't make mobile completely safe for free and open distribution.