What you need to know
- The US is trying to pass new laws that would shake up Apple's business model.
- The Department of Justice now says it supports the new measures.
- It wants to see an end to large digital platforms favoring their own products and services.
The Department of Justice says that it welcomes planned US bills that could impact big tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon.
As WSJ reports:
The Justice Department Monday endorsed legislation forbidding large digital platforms such as Amazon and Google from favoring their own products and services over competitors', marking the Biden administration's first full-throated support of the antitrust measure.
The DOJ says that it views "the rise of dominant platforms as presenting a threat to open markets and competition, with risks for consumers, businesses, innovation, resiliency, global competitiveness, and our democracy," and goes on to state that discriminatory conduct by companies like Apple can "sap the rewards from other innovators and entrepreneurs, reducing the incentives for entrepreneurship and innovation" and says the new laws could also help the growth of new tech businesses adjacent to platforms, which may themselves require regulation in the future.
The bill could impact the way Apple does business on its best iPhones such as the iPhone 13, by making iOS more open to alternative App Store payments.
As the report notes, while efforts to push the bills through are bipartisan there is a large amount of skepticism over the measures:
But it still hasn't received a vote on the floor of either chamber, and it faces industry resistance as well as skepticism on both sides of the aisle. Some conservatives are wary of expanding the government's power to police digital markets, while some Democrats, particularly from California, say the legislation unfairly targets a handful of large companies.
