Home » The US Senate wants to dismantle the Apple and Google App Stores

The US Senate wants to dismantle the Apple and Google App Stores

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A first signal from Apple came a few days ago, when Apple explained that it will also be allowed to publish applications on its App Store “not listed“. That is, not indexed but reachable only through a direct link. Few things. The app store, the digital stores that have marked the app economy since the launch of the iPhone, may in fact soon have to change in depth. The Justice Commission of the US Senate has in fact just approved a bill which faces the restrictions imposed by Cupertino and Mountain View on the developers of the apps that populate our smartphones.

What is the Open App Markets Act

The Commission voted in favor ofOpen App Markets Act, thus allowing the process for discussion and voting in the classroom to continue, with a result of overwhelming bipartisan majority: 20-2. The only two votes against were the two Republicans Coryn, Texas, and Tillis, North Carolina. The measure aligns with another that is actually broader, approved last month: theAmerican Innovation and Choice Online Act, which also addresses other areas of digital business by prohibiting, for example, large companies from offering their services or products more prominently than those of their competitors.

Here, however, we are interested in the fate of the app stores, those hubs from which we download (and on which we discover) millions of applications for practically every daily activity, creative, financial or playful. According to the bill, the app stores with more than 50 million users (from US territory) will no longer be able to require app developers to use i internal payment systems of the platform as a mandatory condition for approval and distribution.

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Green light to “sideloading”

The proposal sees among the first signatories Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat from Connecticut, and Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican from Tennessee, among other things also at the top of the subcommittee on consumer protection: according to the draft it will be forbidden to owners and managers of these huge hubs to boycott or in some way sanction the developers who should offer their applications at different prices on different stores. In addition, it would require them – as Apple has already begun to do in some markets – to allow developers to reach directly its users for legitimate business purposes.

In short, it is a very strong response not only to the now well-known judicial controversy that opposes Apple a Epic Games on the universe of Fortnite but also to other similar causes, appeals or protests raised in recent years by other platforms such as Spotify, Tile, Match Group or Basecamp on commissions of 30% (cut to 15% by Apple for developers with a turnover of less than a million dollars) withheld by the two giants for subscriptions or in-app purchases, on the inability to communicate directly with users of commercial matters.

The position of Apple and Google: “User privacy at risk”

Obviously the two giants opposed the current wording of the bill, denouncing the privacy risks resulting from this wild deregulation and therefore a worse user experience. Their contention is that app stores are not just application distributors but all-round curators: they check them, analyze them, try to better verify their appropriateness for specific age groups, manage the payment procedures correctly and so on. A job that, they argue, would not be feasible with the invasion of millions of apps that were not forced to adhere to a series of constraints and conditions in order to work through the App Store or even downloadable on iPhone from external marketplaces.

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“This bill could destroy many of the consumer benefits that are currently provided by current payment systems as well as distort competition by exempting gaming platforms, which amounts to an attempt by Congress to artificially choose winners and losers in a highly competitive market” has explained Mark Isakowitz, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy in a statement before the vote. La Mela, for its part, replied through a letter sent to the top of the Commission and signed by Timothy Powderly, head of government affairs for the American continent. Specifically targeting social networks: “We are deeply concerned that the law, if not amended, would make it easier for large social media platforms to dodge the consumer practices of the Apple App Store and allow them to continue to work as usual. It would do so by requiring Apple to allow sideloading of apps from platforms that do not have to comply with the App Store’s consumer privacy protections. “

Clear, right? On the one hand, politics which, with a bipartisan front that is now very solid, intends dismantle the ecosystem of app stores as we have known it so far. On the other hand, Apple and Google who explain how this “deregulation” (which today earns them billions of dollars) would leave gaming hubs out and above all how this distribution and payment anarchy it would cause more risks than benefits for users. An argument that, however, according to the words of the Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar (also one of the promoters of the bill), does not seem to take hold. We will see how the assembly will vote, whose calendar is rather crowded. In the background there is another story that could converge on this point: the US Department of Justice and 35 general prosecutors of as many states have in fact questioned, with a new instance, the sentence of the Epic vs Apple trial that acquitted the Apple of a series of indictments on the subject of unfair competition.

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