Apple and Google oppose antitrust agency’s draft laws

Apple and Google oppose antitrust agency’s draft laws

24. 1.2022

Apple and Google have publicly opposed two U.S. antitrust bills that would prevent tech companies from favoring their own products and force more competition in app stores.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has taken up the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which would apply to tech giants Apple, Amazon, Meta, Google, TikTok and WeChat. The bill, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), seeks to prevent companies from giving their own products an advantage on their platforms – just as Amazon favors its own-brand products over third-party sellers.

The second bipartisan bill, the Open App Markets Act, was also before the committee. HE is mainly limited to app stores. It would prevent companies like Apple from requiring developers to use their store’s in-app payment systems.

Google and Apple have argued that the bills would have a negative impact on the privacy and security of people’s personal devices. Apple took the position that these laws could open the door to security breaches and malware infections on iPhones through sideloading or downloading apps outside of its App Store.

In a letter to Grassley and committee chairman Dick Durbin, Wyze, Yelp, DuckDuckGo and other companies argued that Big Tech’s „gatekeeper status“ prevents them from „competing on the merits.“