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Open Letter to Tim Cook: Sabotaging Web Apps Is Indefensible
(letter.open-web-advocacy.org)
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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The fine will have to be pretty hefty to cancel out the risk to Apple of PWAs taking off.
A free and open app platform sitting above the OS is surely a terrible threat to both Google and Apple.
Up to 10% of global revenue, 20% if they keep repeating the same offense, so nothing to sneeze at.
Is that revenue from all sources, the mobile division, or just the revenue from this particular mechanism (essentially zero)?
Pretty much all sources as far as I understand it. The exact definition is here if you're interested (Article 5).
So I'm not sure what "the undertaking concerned" means exactly, but it's probably the mobile portion of the business (and maybe just app store sales). But I guess that's yet to be determined.
The article even explicitly lists subsidiaries and holdings with >50% of the ownership or voting rights, so I don't think it's limited to just one department or devision of a company. But yea, we'll have to wait and see how this is applied in a real case.
Google and apple both allow pwas right now though, don't they? I don't think it's a threat. It's just apple trying to say fu to the eu. The eu will slp a billion dollar fine on them. They'll pay it.
A PWA running in a browser engine that they can’t control can have access to features that they can’t vet and restrict. If PWAs aren’t restricted to 50MB of storage and have near feature-parity with native apps then they’ll eventually lose the ability to enforce their revenue cut on In-App Purchases.
Not sure how it works on android, but on iOS I’m pretty sure this means that mobile game devs will start shipping games as WebGL/WASM with asset streaming and implement their own payment channels for micro-transactions.
Apple can’t risk it and I believe they will fight it tooth and nail to the bitter end.