According to a new report from Reuters this morning, The DOJ may be considering antitrust probes for both Google and Apple:
The U.S. Justice Department has jurisdiction for a potential probe of Apple Inc as part of a broader review of whether technology giants are using their size to act in an anti-competitive manner, two sources told Reuters.
The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) met in recent weeks and agreed to give the Justice Department the jurisdiction to undertake potential antitrust probes of Apple and Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, the sources said.
The FTC was given jurisdiction to look at Amazon.com Inc and Facebook Inc, the sources said.
The sources did not say what the government’s potential concern might be regarding Apple.
Streaming music leader Spotify Technology SA and others have criticized the iPhone maker’s practices, describing the company as anti-competitive in a complaint to the European Union’s antitrust regulators. Central to Spotify’s complaint is a 30% fee Apple charges content-based service providers to use Apple’s in-app purchase system.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company has defended its practices in the past, saying it only collects a commission if a good or service is sold through an app. “Our users trust Apple – and that trust is critical to how we operate a fair, competitive store for developer app distribution,” it has said previously.
This is why it took Amazon forever to come to Apple TV. In many Amazon apps on other platforms, you could purchase directly through the app to rent or buy movies. But because of Apple’s 30% fee, they refused for a long time to put their app on Apple TV. The way they got around it was to force users on Apple TV and other Apple devices to make their purchases via Amazon’s website. Then your purchase will show up on those devices and Apple doesn’t get a cut.
Now I don’t know how Spotify works as I’ve never used it, but perhaps they don’t have a good way around this fee?
The news this morning hurt Apple’s stock price, dropping it from 178 to 170. It has since recovered some but appears to still be in decline. As I’m looking at it now it’s currently back down to 172.