maynarkh

There absolutely are big differences. Civil vs. common law is about the judicial, and compliance (if it's lucky) deals mostly with the legislative.

The EU itself has been created partly to synchronize legal frameworks across member states, so companies like Apple can operate more smoothly and uniformly. Just think about stuff where Wolfenstein games either didn't release or had separate editions just for Germany. Or just the existing different tax systems in the EU where they are not just different by value but by structure.

Meta has already got fined for more than a billion at one point for breaking the GDPR, which has smaller fines than the DMA. The US did not really do anything. The US will not go to war with its biggest ally over Apple, hell, it doesn't stop militarily supporting key regional allies over genocide.

Also, fines are not based on market capitalization, but on global revenue. How this would bankrupt Apple is not that the EU would bite off a trillion, but that they would grab a few bil from the revenue, and that would put Apple in the red, triggering selloffs and Apple's valuation evaporating.

there’s nothing in the law that states they have to let you sideload whatever you choose.

There is, actually. And there is much more, you also will be able to publish on the App Store without using Apple's payment services for example.

EU lawmakers are slow, but not completely stupid.

This would actually be a big step for many Android users wanting to try out another OS.

That's the biggest benefit, competition ripples back and forth across services and improves everything. One thing gets better, so other things have to get better, so everything gets better.

Knock-on effects are insanely good.

I think Steam is not a good comparison. People go to Steam on PC for expensive applications (video games), and for good customer service. Steam actually presents a good value proposition for maintaining your game library. People refused to go to other stores because other stores were crap.

As I understand, there is a significant amount of trivial but essential apps that could be made, and will never get on the App Store, like a calculator that has no ads and no in-app payments. Or for companies like Epic who have big enough IPs that they don't care about discoverability, because they are already viral.

Yes, exposure is a big factor, but if you don't need the exposure, you don't need it. Xbox Game Pass is not on Steam. Microsoft Flight Sim and DCS World both have their non-steam presences alive and kicking, with DCS simply giving you a much better deal if you buy outside Steam, so the niche community around it mostly does.

"Google to kill its own browser monopoly and encourage competition instead by leaving a market bigger than the US open"

Nah, they already announced they will let EU users uninstall Edge. But only EU users because consumer choice bad.

Law says that they can't favour their own service over that of their competitors. I guess they'll break it though.

How are NFTs relevant?

Just maybe they shouldn't auto-upload stuff, or properly tag content coming from M rated games as M rated.

It would cut into 10 year olds feeling peer pressure to get into GTA though I guess.

And this is why defunding the regulation of critical industries is bad.

Boeing is largely self-regulating on the safety department, which cost hundreds of lives recently.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU law that takes effect on March 6, 2024. As a result of the DMA, in the EU, Google offers you the choice to keep certain Google services linked.

Gotta love the weaselly language.

I'm wondering if they try to slither out of actually complying with the law.

• They say they will unlink whatever "Ad Services" is and everything else. IMO they should unlink customer ad profiles from other service accounts, which I don't expect them to do.
• The whole point of the DMA is not just to have Google unlink your Youtube account from your Gmail account, but that they provide the same level of service and integration to outside services as with their own, without prioritizing their own. That means that I should be able to use Google Chrome and Search together to the same degree as Firefox and Search. Execs at Google are on record saying the only point of them developing Chrome is to do stuff that is now against the law in Europe. I wonder if they find a new business model or keep the current, illegal one.