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When Tim Cook wrapped up his appearance before the House Judiciary Panel in July, conventional wisdom was that the Apple CEO had made it easy. He was joined by Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, and each seemed to have more to worry about. With Google’s impending arraignment and Facebook’s terrifying history of election meddling, who could really care about the policies of the App Store?
But after Epic’s dramatic attack on those same App Store policies, the questions to Cook seem a bit more pointed – with one exchange, in particular, standing out. About an hour after the hearing began, Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) began questioning Cook about App Store policies, particularly the decision in April to let Amazon Prime video rentals bypass the commission.
“Is this reduced commission, like the one Amazon Prime gets, available to other app developers?” Johnson asked.
“It’s available to anyone who qualifies, yes,” Cook replied, an elegant dodge.
Johnson went back and forth with Cook, focusing specifically on the company’s payment processing requirements – a point that was raised in Epic Games’ antitrust lawsuit.
Johnson closed with a question that now seems almost prophetic: “Has Apple ever fought back or disadvantaged a developer who made public their frustrations with the App Store?”
“Sir, we don’t hit back or harass people,” Cook said emphatically. “It’s strongly against our corporate culture.”
Last week put that culture to the test. Since Epic’s lawsuit was filed Thursday, Apple has threatened to cut Epic’s ability to distribute developer tools, according to a recent court request. The fight has escalated far beyond the issue of in-app purchase fees, and it’s hard to see it as anything other than retaliation for the lawsuit.
It shows just how intense the fight on the App Store has become in a matter of days, and how ready Apple is to defend its commission system. This 30% commission is built into the heart of Apple’s business. Epic’s plan to roll it out is a major antitrust venture, which Cook will fight every step of the way.
But Epic won’t fight alone. The tech antitrust hearing covered many of the same points as the Epic lawsuit – some in the exact same language. This is not proof of collusion, exactly. (These ideas have been circulating in tech critic circles for years.) But it’s a sign of the support these ideas have in Washington, and the likelihood that regulators will step in on Epic’s side.
It’s a major test of the ideas we heard in the tech antitrust hearing – and there are plenty of other challenges ahead if Epic is successful. Yelp has been trying to stage a similar moment with Google for a solid decade, and many companies would like to take on Amazon in the same way. Apple was the first target, and the simplest, but it won’t be the last.
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