>Ok but you should at least have an idea because it's the central premise of your proposal. I'm not asking for you to split hairs between a percent or something but to provide something meaningful from a categorical standpoint.
The central premise of my proposal is that once a company reaches antitrust-size, it should be regulated as such. Perhaps percent of all digital transactions is one way to do it without writing company-specific regulation that could be worked around in the future, perhaps not. I categorically do not want a handful of companies to control our digital landscape, and we need regulators to step in.
>On the consumer side I don't see this as a big threat, it's more of a threat to developers. The vast majority of apps, games, etc. are junk and not worht acquiring for free or paid, and if those prices increase because companies are charging more then the likely scenario is they just die off which is good for the economy and the quality of the app stores. On the developer side this also has the added benefit of weeding out uncompetitive apps and poor products, and the cost burden is beared by developers instead of the corporations and personally I don't really care that much if, say, Epic gets more or less revenue than Apple because of these dynamics. Neither are lowering their prices so it's not relevant to me.
Just because you don't feel personally impacted doesn't mean others aren't.
> Nothing stops those new products or features today though so I'm not sure what the argument here is. Are you suggesting if Apple and Google open up their APIs then other competitors will... open up their non-existent APIs? If anything these things just further cemement Apple and Google dominance.
If you zoom out a bit, you'll notice the entire web is effectively controlled by 2-3 companies via Chrome/Safari. It's not about being able to build on particular APIs per se. It's that if Apple/Google want web browsers to have (or NOT have) certain features, it's them who get to decide, and developers will fall in line. Google in particular has been working on features that make ad blocking worse, thus protecting their advertising empire, for example [1]. Edit: Just to clarify, what can/cannot be done on web browsers directly impacts the kind of apps developers build for app stores. However, the takeaway here is that what these big corporations want happens both in and out of app stores for their own benefit, because consumers lack choice.
>Are you suggesting regulation overall due to company size or regulation within a sector?
I meant that if we lived in a world where 1 in 2 people had to pay Nintendo ~30% when buying a digital good (Costs are passed to consumers), they too should be regulated. The rationale is protecting consumers from harm via higher prices, which result from a lack of competition.
The central premise of my proposal is that once a company reaches antitrust-size, it should be regulated as such. Perhaps percent of all digital transactions is one way to do it without writing company-specific regulation that could be worked around in the future, perhaps not. I categorically do not want a handful of companies to control our digital landscape, and we need regulators to step in.
>On the consumer side I don't see this as a big threat, it's more of a threat to developers. The vast majority of apps, games, etc. are junk and not worht acquiring for free or paid, and if those prices increase because companies are charging more then the likely scenario is they just die off which is good for the economy and the quality of the app stores. On the developer side this also has the added benefit of weeding out uncompetitive apps and poor products, and the cost burden is beared by developers instead of the corporations and personally I don't really care that much if, say, Epic gets more or less revenue than Apple because of these dynamics. Neither are lowering their prices so it's not relevant to me.
Just because you don't feel personally impacted doesn't mean others aren't.
> Nothing stops those new products or features today though so I'm not sure what the argument here is. Are you suggesting if Apple and Google open up their APIs then other competitors will... open up their non-existent APIs? If anything these things just further cemement Apple and Google dominance.
If you zoom out a bit, you'll notice the entire web is effectively controlled by 2-3 companies via Chrome/Safari. It's not about being able to build on particular APIs per se. It's that if Apple/Google want web browsers to have (or NOT have) certain features, it's them who get to decide, and developers will fall in line. Google in particular has been working on features that make ad blocking worse, thus protecting their advertising empire, for example [1]. Edit: Just to clarify, what can/cannot be done on web browsers directly impacts the kind of apps developers build for app stores. However, the takeaway here is that what these big corporations want happens both in and out of app stores for their own benefit, because consumers lack choice.
>Are you suggesting regulation overall due to company size or regulation within a sector?
I meant that if we lived in a world where 1 in 2 people had to pay Nintendo ~30% when buying a digital good (Costs are passed to consumers), they too should be regulated. The rationale is protecting consumers from harm via higher prices, which result from a lack of competition.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/12/chromes-next-weapon-i...