Italy's antitrust agency opens probe into Apple App Store dominance

Why is it in all these investigations by the various countries involved, think they have the legal right to levy fines based on the offending corporation's world wide income? That is an inherently unreasonable position! But, then again how often has any government been accused of acting reasonably?

"the agency said that Apple imposes 'a more restrictive privacy policy' on third-party developers than it does to itself."

Yes, that's right. If I choose to bank at Chase, then Chase is going to know my name, address, phone, and all about my accounts and how much money is in each one. But all those third-party vendors I use my Chase card to purchase from? They won't get all that info, at least not without my permission.

Duh, of course if I choose to use an Apple iPhone, Apple is going to have much greater access to my personal info than any third-party app creator. C'mon. Did anyone ever think it could be otherwise?

If these brilliant others were so smart, where were they when Apple spent lots of money developing their ideas into a working product?

Oh, that’s right, they are entitled because they breathe air and expended zero money to have complete access to all if Apple’s propriety and patented work.

Apple products do not have a monopoly on the world of innovation, just on their products. Ford and GM do not have to share their secrets and there is no bitching in that world about their monopoly of their designs

camber said:

Why is it in all these investigations by the various countries involved, think they have the legal right to levy fines based on the offending corporation's world wide income? That is an inherently unreasonable position! But, then again how often has any government been accused of acting reasonably?

It is entirely reasonable and fully explained in the relevant sections of various EU web sites. 

darelrex said:

"the agency said that Apple imposes 'a more restrictive privacy policy' on third-party developers than it does to itself."

Yes, that's right. If I choose to bank at Chase, then Chase is going to know my name, address, phone, and all about my accounts and how much money is in each one. But all those third-party vendors I use my Chase card to purchase from? They won't get all that info, at least not without my permission.

I think you’ve misunderstood the article somewhat. Putting aside the other EU and US investigations, the Italian one is specifically responding to complaints that Apple unfairly withholds metrics about the success rate of the ads that run in the App Store — data that Apple does have access to, but that the advertising developers do not.

This would not under any circumstances be as specific as “here’s Darelrex’s card details and home phone number,” it would be more like “50 percent of the people who saw your ad clicked on it, specifically in these countries.” IOW, aggregate data that Apple collects, but does not break down as specifically as advertising developers would like.

The Italian investigation seems to be presuming that Apple does collect a far more granular level of detail — and perhaps it does — but uses that granularity for a competitive advantage. That, I personally doubt — but that’s not outside the realm of possibility, so it seems to me that the accusation (by the advertisers, not Italy) is worthy of investigating.