🏛️ Litigation forces the app-store duopoly to open up and cut the 30% rake

“these app stores are absolute monopolies within their ecosystem and Apple and Google Android are absolutely a duopoly within the mobile space... And so I do think they have to be controlled. And I think Epic is doing the ecosystem a favor.”

“The entire industry should come at them in unison, tons of lawsuits, group lawsuits, until they allow, when you turn on your Apple phone, the ability to load Amazon's app store, Epic's app store, whoever else wants to have an app store.”

“Google's going to appeal. They feel very strongly they'll win an appeal... it's going to be very hard to kind of see a massive change in App Store behavior as a result of this case, even though it's been hyped up to be that”

“And so I think Friedberg is right. What does it materially prove? Nothing with respect to the body of law.”

“I mean, whatever dispute you have with Epic, you don't boot them out of your app store because you don't like their criticism of you. I mean, this is basically proving exactly what everyone's been saying about Apple.”

“And in this AI shift, they can still do that, where now people are chipping away at the 30%, right? People are saying, well, I can just build around you. They need to do something.”

“Services seems like the best place for them to make money, but as we see, the app store is under assault.”

“at least based on the press coverage, I have yet to see a single smoking gun example coming out of this lawsuit... I'm a little bit doubtful right now that the government's going to be able to win this case”

“I don't think anything is going to happen here because it's taken them five years to file. There's at least a 50% chance that the administration is going to turn over, which means that this lawsuit changes or goes away entirely.”

“Google and Apple don't price fix because Android is an open access system. You can put any application you want, any way you want. There are several app stores to put Android apps on your Android device.”

“these companies will, if you give them an inch, they'll take the mile. And that's exactly what Apple does consistently. They consistently try to squeeze... I think the government's going to win changing three of these.”

“as they've always said, we can't do this because it would jeopardize user privacy and user security. Well, here they are opening themselves up to OpenAI in a very deep and fundamental way”

“we've talked a lot about the 30% VIG that Apple takes on their App Store, and how regulators are now stepping in and take a look at this”

“everyone likes to talk about Google, I think the prime candidate is likely to be, and I'm speaking as an individual and as a venture capitalist here, is Apple with the App Store.”

“Apple, really good example, because they drive everything through the App Store, you're not allowed to do side loading. They want to take, what is it, the 30% piece of any sales”

“forcing Apple to allow, you know, a startup to do an App Store would solve the entire problem. And it seems like that's where it's going to go.”