This is exactly what I've been talking about wrt App development on Apple. If Apple likes your product, and they steal your features for their OS or apps, they kick you out so they don't have any competition.
IMHO, it's a real douchebag business decision, and anyone with a popular unique app should always expect Apple to screw you over with no notice and have a contingency plan in the works.
Your point is more than fair, but at this point, does anyone not know the deal with Apple (and Google and Microsoft for that matter?) All these companies are looking out for #1. If it becomes in their interests to screw you, look out. Apple: examples too numerous to mention. Microsoft: the whole world by delaying the internet for 6-10 years by killing off all alternate browsers then stopping any development. Everyone who purchased a computer basically ever by forcing manufacturers to always buy their OS no matter what they sold on the computer. Google: skyhook, google+, dropbox, etc.
Google may create a competitor but will not try to prevent you from doing your own thing. That is really the most you can hope for. You cannot honestly expect another company to not enter your business because you thought of it first (except if you have a patent of course).
But Google will not use any of its substantial infrastructure to prevent you from doing your own business. They will still list you in the search results, offer your software in the android store, allow you to buy ads, etc. This is very different from what is happening here.
One of the examples I gave, Skyhook, so clearly contradicts your entire post that I have to assume you're intentionally lying. Because that was exactly google preventing someone from executing their business essentially via blackmail. See also their negotiations with Yelp / scraping their results. Oh, and twitter results.
None of these are examples of Google shutting someone out of their channels. All of these companies can be found on google search and can offer apps on the android marketplace. And I am sure they can also advertise on adsense if they wanted to.
Twitter wanted Google to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to search tweets. Google was paying that money, but then Twitter wanted to increase the fee and Google refused. But again, if they wanted to have their tweets indexed by google on the same terms as everyone else (i.e., for free) they could.
Google told Motorola if they used Skyhook then their devices wouldn't be android compatible. [1] And from emails:
one email quotes an Android manager saying it was obvious to
phone manufacturers that "we are using compatibility as a club
to make them do things we want." [1]
I'm sure you can come up with some way this wasn't Google shutting someone out of their channels... but please. Because everyone involved believes that was the case:
Motorola flat-out told Skyhook that Android devices are "approved
essentially at Google's discretion," and that Moto couldn't afford
to risk its relationship with Google. Motorola also told Skyhook that
its carrier agreements require Google's apps be preloaded on its
phones, so Google's compatibility decision was doubly important --
if Motorola shipped software that didn't have Google's blessing (and
apps), it would immediately violate its contracts with carriers. [2]
So Motorola can't use Skyhook's software because google used their control over Motorola's ability to include other google apps to screw Skyhook. Now, the lawsuit will decide whether this was legal, but it sure as hell was "Google shutting someone out of their channels."
There's a difference between "We as a handset-manufacturer can't enter into a business relationship where we preload this on our phones, because we've got an extant business relationship with Google which would be threatened" and "users are not permitted to install this from the app store ever at all because we're locking them out to steal their business."
The story is a little bit more complex than that and Skyhook don't come out of it as well as it appears in your quote. I'm afraid I don't have any sources for you immediately as it was a while ago.
1. Skyhook didn't just want their stuff preinstalled, they wanted Google Maps taken out.
2. Google felt that the way Skyhook reported their location data (mixing WiFi/cell tower calculations and GPS data, IIRC) would have polluted their location database if they had tried to use it (the way they use the data gathered via Google Maps). Since getting that data is one of their few direct, tangible benefits from releasing Google Apps on an Android phone, it isn't terribly surprising that they'd be protective of it.
That's not true at all. Our contract just stated that Skyhook was the sole location provider for all apps. There was no restriction on whether they could ship Google Maps. The contract also said Motorola couldn't send our location data back to Google which they would use to build a competitive system on our back.
Google used their might to convince companies that they would be better off not using Shyhook. It is a hardball tactic, but it isn't comparable to Apple just yanking an app. Motorola could have told Google to eff off and used Shyhook. But as Motorola said, they can't afford to risk their relationship with Google. Subtle but important distinction.
Hopefully very few. I wrote that at the end of 2004, and it seems simpler to link to it than to repeat the same old, same old arguments all over again.
You're assuming you know why the app was pulled. Was it pulled because Apple's going to introduce a competing feature in iOS 6 and doesn't want the competition? Or was it pulled because the app is using the leaked AirPlay encryption key? Or was it pulled for some other unknown reason?
We don't know.
Frankly, I doubt Apple would give a damn about competition for a feature they plan to introduce in iOS 6. They don't care about other apps that reimplement iOS features, such as music players or (now) mail clients. Why give a damn about AirFoil?
Finally, unless you own, or no one owns, the platform on which you're developing, you're always at risk for something like this happening. This is nothing new, and it's definitely not behavior that's isolated to Apple.
What you're describing is the situation every time you develop on someone else's platform: Apple's, Microsoft's, Facebook's, everyone's.
If you're developing apps for a platform you want to be in one of two positions:
1. The app is secondary to whatever service you're providing (eg the Facebook app on iOS); or
2. You're developing games.
Everything else has to walk a fine line between failing and being successful enough that it gets absorbed into the platform.
Apple is just like everyone else in this regard. No platform owner is going to ignore something that they decide has become of critical importance to their platform. It's simply a fantasy to assume otherwise.
If you're not in one of those two categories you're basically hoping to be the lucky one who gets bought out (eg the official Twitter mobile client).
> What you're describing is the situation every time you develop on someone else's platform: Apple's, Microsoft's, Facebook's, everyone's.
Ah, so that's why FireFox and Chrome were banned from Windows. Oh wait they weren't.
Ah, so it must be why the Amazon Appstore for Android can't be installed on Android any more. Oh wait, it can, along with dozens of other app stores.
But it does explain why the Kindle app is crippled on Android so that Google Books can take prime position. Oh wait, it's not.
You have a point, but you try to use that point to gloss over the real issue here. On other platforms your product just has to be good enough to succeed (eg: Kindle app). On Apple's platform(s) it is not about being good, in fact the better your product is the more threatened it is by Apple's anticompetitive practices.
One may believe that it's unscrupulous to undercut another company and co-opt their ideas without believing that the software patent system is tenable or just. Similarly, I believe lying is generally unethical; but I certainly don't believe there should be a law against lying.
"Stealing" features is one thing, taking advantage of your control over a particular market to shut out the "competition" you "stole" said features from isn't justifiable in any way (IMHO).
Exactly. If Apple clones this thing and produces a better product, it's a good thing, because we all have better software to use. Likewise, if Microsoft were to produce a better browser than, say, Netscape, no one would complain.
When either company leverages its control over the market to exclude its competitors using mechanisms other than technical quality, that's a bad thing and needs to be condemned.
I'm waiting for the day when the App Store (et al) become classified as a "market", in the sense of "shutting competitors out of the market". On a desktop, Microsoft can't get away with making a browser (for example) and then locking out all other browsers. That's abuse of their monopoly position. Apple should be living up to the same standards in mobile.
I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.
>I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.
Apple does not insist the post-PC devices are fully functional. In fact, Jobs compared PCs to trucks and iOS devices to cars. By post-PC they imply that lockdown that comes with it.
Hey, it's Apple's marketplace - private property and all that. Nobody has a right to sell there.
Now, I also think this is a dick move, but it's because of dick moves like this that the patent and copyright systems exist in the first place, and why I think they need to be reformed rather than abandoned.
I wish that we could rely on the companies that are increasingly controlling semi-public commons like social networks and software repositories to have some integrity and respect for the roles that they are playing in this regard.
I don't think anyone is complaining about the theft of the feature here. It's the fact that Apple is leveraging its power as the ecosystem owner to harm the competition.
Everyone expects Apple to call the shots on their own app store to some extent, but it becomes unacceptable when well intentioned and heavily invested developers get screwed over by Apple making anticompetitive exceptions to their own, already volatile, set of rules.
This, however, has nothing to do with that: it's about consumer choice: making a better product and tempting people away with it is normal and healthy but abusing a lead in one market to prevent people from being able to make a choice in another is always bad.
This is the strongest criticism of Apple's app store policies: on the Mac if you get Karelia-ed that's not pleasant but it's a business risk you assume along with the possibility of any other large company entering the market. On iOS, Apple will preemptively kill your ability to sell a product before their competitor even ships, preventing your customers from even being able to decide that they prefer the app which ships with the OS.
It really just goes back to the concept of "barriers to entry". If Apple can reproduce your software easily, they will. They might even do it better than you. They'll only go out of their way to buy you anymore when you've implemented something like Siri that's actually difficult, or something like Logic that has a massive and lucrative installed base. If you implement something trivial, don't be surprised when your competitors reimplement it instead of giving you a millions-dollar signing bonus just for your ideas.
Good point. I guess the difference is those are apps they couldn't recreate themselves for cheaper than the purchase cost, whereas they used to buy trivial apps (MenuClock being a good example of that).
...which happened after Steve came back to Apple. Before that they bought software like MenuClock, the Hierarchical Apple Menu, WindowShade, Stickies, etc.
IMHO, it's a real douchebag business decision, and anyone with a popular unique app should always expect Apple to screw you over with no notice and have a contingency plan in the works.