This week, I’ve had the pleasure to read the post-modernist triumph that is CASES DMA.100013 Apple – online intermediation services – app stores, DMA.100025 Apple – operating systems and DMA.100027 Apple – web browsers (PDF), which details some of Apple’s attempts to avoid being regulated. I call it a “post-modernist triumph” because its prose is almost as incomprehensible as James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and it is so full of preposterous lies and contradictions that it can only be sanely read as a metatextual joke like the Illuminatus! Trilogy.
In order to avoid having Safari being deemed a Core Platform Service (and thus falling under the remit of DMA), Apple argues “Look, those Safaris on iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, TvOS, WatchOS are TOTALLY DIFFERENT PRODUCTS and none of them have enough users in the EU for you to even think about regulating us, alright? We’re a tiny start-up! Will nobody think of the children?!?”. (I paraphrase somewhat).
Entirely unsurprisingly, Apple’s legal contortions did not work – the EU basically tossed this nonsense out right away, using Apple’s own marketing claims about Safari against them.
The key battleground is iMessage.