I doubt it, but it does highlight how weird the notion of "competition" is when juxtaposed with the notion of "a search engine controls its own results page."

(Personally, I resolve the paradox with "The goal is for neither Google nor app developers to 'win', the goal is to make it as easy to flip a coin as possible." Is my keyboard manufacturer competing with both if they put a button in the corner of the keyboard that either lights an LED or doesn't when pressed? Does the coin in my pocket compete with all three?)

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appstorelottery a day ago | parent [-]

I think it's as simple as "if you have a platform - be it OS, marketplace or search engine" - it should be illegal to compete with your platform participants.

For example, this law would have played out with Microsoft not being able to create Word (look at the history of what they did to the Windows version of WordPerfect). Amazon would not be able to introduce their own products and compete with their platform sellers. Apple wouldn't be able to take great independent app ideas and assimilate them into their OS. Google wouldn't be able to make a coin tossing app when its core business was successfully creating discovery for mine.

Perhaps a law like this would have prevented the formation of the mega-tech corporates that we see now? It's so easy to compete if you own the platform.

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shadowgovt a day ago | parent [-]

Companies frequently aren't trying to build a platform. They're just trying to build products people will buy.

I think trying to carve up the world of possible creations into marketplaces like that is sacrificing progress on the altar of capitalism.

If Microsoft added a coin flip to the start menu, are they also competing with your app? If somebody makes a keyboard that has a button on it and when you push it It lights one of two LEDs, are they also competing and should the law stop them? Am I competing if I'm carrying a quarter in my pocket? At some point, there's no compelling societal interest to protect your app from more convenient solutions to the end user.

In general, protection against monopolies in the United States hinges on harm to the consumer. It's real hard to argue that things are worse for the consumer when Google makes the process of digitally flipping a coin easier than installing an app.

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appstorelottery a day ago | parent [-]

I see your point. From the user's immediate perspective, getting a coin flip without an extra click is undeniably easier. But that's zooming in so close that you miss the entire picture.

The real question is what happens when that logic is applied to everything. First, it's a coin toss. Then it's the weather. Then a calculator. Then flight prices. Then hotel bookings. Then product reviews.

Step by step, the platform that was built to be a portal to a rich and diverse ecosystem of creators becomes a wall that primarily shows you its own products. The "progress" you're describing is the progress of a single entity consuming the ecosystem that once fed it.

The ultimate harm to the consumer isn't a slightly less convenient coin toss; it's the eventual death of that vibrant, competitive ecosystem. My tiny app was simply the first course in the platform's long meal of consuming its own creators.

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shadowgovt a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, this is entirely possible. It's why American law generally centers anti-trust on consumer harm as the litmus test; if those hotel bookings all have to go through one place, and as a result the hotels are too expensive, that's an issue. This is why Amazon gets to exist (but has now been sued in 2023 because the FTC is seeing behavior that is probably rent extraction).

If Google started charging a quarter a coin-flip while leveraging its control over search to suppress the fact you'd made a coin-flip app that was free or flat-rate to purchase, there might be a case there under US law.

	▲	appstorelottery a day ago \| parent [-]
		I appreciate your comment, it drove me down a rabbit hole :-) You were right that under the old interpretation, my app had no case. But that rabbit hole led me to the news that the interpretation itself has just been successfully challenged. Judge Mehta found Google liable. The court has officially validated that the 'free vs. free' self-preferencing that killed my app is, in fact, illegal monopoly maintenance. Fascinating to see a legal system's 'unhandled exception' get patched in real time. p.s. Respect for your public comments here :-)