Blockbuster antitrust lawsuit debuts in surprisingly readable format

A blockbuster antitrust lawsuit against Apple (once and for all called United States v. Apple) is here ('United States' in this case made up of Arizona, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Maine, Wisconsin, Oregon, Vermont, New York, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Tennessee and Oklahoma plus DC and the Justice Department), in a way that for a surprisingly long 56 and a half pages is quite readable and designed to be read aloud on news shows (given the document's 88 pages, that's around 5/8 of the whole thing), with the incomprehensible judicial talk only beginning halfway down page 57 (starting with things that even many centenarians would know). It rants every part of Apple's closed ecosystem that it can, from the NFC chip to 'super apps' to Messages to iPhones to, well, everything else (although with no focus on controversial App Store payments). 2 whole pages don't even have numbered paragraphs, and the start to those two pages is more of hook journalism about Apple disliking a 2010 Kindle ad that showed switching from Apple to Android and having their ebooks intact than anything else. Merrick Garland, Attorney General, has stated at a press event that Apple "has maintained its power, not because of its superiority [and control of 65%+ of the market for smartphones, according to another thing he said], but because of its unlawful exclusionary behavior", and Apple has said in response to the lawsuit that "this lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive markets" and that "if successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple--where hardware, software, and services intersect."

Due to the lawsuit, Apple stock fell 4%+ on Thursday (as of closing Friday, it's at $172.28, down from Wednesday closing of $178.66), with its market cap down $113 billion. According to the government, Apple locked in users of its platforms so as to stop them from gaining access to software that might bring them to cheaper phones, and the lawsuit says that Apple was worried about a place when "all that matters is who has the cheapest hardware" and people could buy an "Android for 25 bucks at a garage sale and have a solid cloud computing device", the lawsuit quotes officials at Apple for saying. Apple criticals like the Coalition for App Fairness (consisting of Deezer, Epic Games, Spotify and more) have praised the lawsuit, saying it's a "strong stand against Apple's stranglehold" on mobile apps. A link to the full text of the lawsuit is located here.

By Leo