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Author Topic: Too big to fine: How do you punish a company that can afford anything?  (Read 161 times)
HCK
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« on: March 02, 2022, 04:05:11 pm »

Too big to fine: How do you punish a company that can afford anything?

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<body><section class="wp-block-bigbite-multi-title"><div class="container"></div></section><p>Last week, the Macalope wondered how long Apple would continue to play chicken with regulators. It seems like it might be a while yet.</p>



<p>Not to go all the way back to the <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=111346X1569486&amp;url=https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/7e/44/d07e44e436aa5b9ef5c80950c8702959.png&amp;xcust=1-1-618019-1-0-0&amp;sref=https://www.macworld.com/feed" rel="nofollow">Dr. Evil[/url] well, but it&rsquo;s as if regulators set up their schedules for fines in the mid-1980s and then never updated them again. These fines might be a lot for some companies, but for today&rsquo;s gigantocorp they&rsquo;re laughably small.</p>



<p>How small? Let&rsquo;s take a look.</p>



<p><a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=111346X1569486&amp;url=https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/28/apple-defends-app-store-netherlands-plan/&amp;xcust=1-1-618019-1-0-0&amp;sref=https://www.macworld.com/feed" rel="nofollow">&ldquo;Apple Defends App Store Changes in the Netherlands as Fines Reach &euro;30 Million&rdquo;[/url]</p>



<p>Apple&rsquo;s &ldquo;solution&rdquo; to the Dutch regulatory requirement that it allow third-party payment processing in dating apps was to require developers to submit separate app binaries if they want to use payment processing other than Apple&rsquo;s. Certainly makes sense for Apple. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s make this as hard as possible for developers so they won&rsquo;t want to do it.&rdquo; Nailed it.</p>



<p>The Dutch regulatory body was, shall we say, not impressed. It says Apple is still not in compliance, hence the &euro;30 million fine, which works out to about $34 million.</p>



<p>&ldquo;$34 million?!&rdquo; you say. &ldquo;How will Apple ever manage to&hellip;&rdquo;</p>



<p>Let the Macalope just stop you there, fictional reader who the Macalope can somehow hear. He knows you&rsquo;re just a facile construct but just slow your imaginary roll. Apple made $123.9 billion in revenue last quarter. Now, the holiday quarter is always Apple&rsquo;s biggest, but let&rsquo;s just go with that and do a little math (I know, you were told there&rsquo;d be no math but sometimes there&rsquo;s math, okay?). Divide by the number of days in the quarter and then we can see how many days it&rsquo;ll take Apple to pay&hellip; uh, nope, sorry, the number is still hilariously big. We need to do more math. Sorry. Divide further by the number of hours in the day and&hellip; criminy, are you kidding? But we&rsquo;re very close! Our long math nightmare is almost over. Divide again by the number of minutes in an hour and now we have a number we can work with.</p>


<div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" src="https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?quality=50&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1200" alt="Macalope" class="wp-image-339314" srcset="https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?quality=50&amp;strip=all 1500w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 300w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 768w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1200w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?resize=1240%2C826&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1240w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/macalope-2021.jpg?resize=150%2C100&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 150w" width="1200" height="800" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG</p></div>



<p>Turns out that Apple made $34 million every 36.8 minutes during the last holiday quarter. The entirety of this penalty is like the company taking a very short lunch in November. In the building. This, in a nutshell, is why Apple feels fine thumbing its nose at regulatory requirements from South Korea, the Netherlands and freaking Narnia, if it wants to (&ldquo;Mr. Tumnus demands 12 sugar-topped cakes for every day Apple is in non-compliance!&rdquo;). It considers paying the fines cheaper than giving up total control over payment processing. And at these prices, it is. Not that Apple has <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=111346X1569486&amp;url=https://www.ped30.com/2022/02/28/apple-dutch-single-euro/&amp;xcust=1-1-618019-1-0-0&amp;sref=https://www.macworld.com/feed" rel="nofollow">actually paid[/url] any of it yet. If regulators really want Apple to change, they&rsquo;re going to have to up the ante.</p>



<p>The Macalope is not an expert at app design, nor is he an expert in payment processing. As an app user, however, and a customer of the App Store, he feels Apple should have always allowed for links to developers&rsquo; sites to allow for customers to pay outside the App Store. They can already do that so forbidding developers from letting customers know is just some wicked gaslighting campaign.</p>



<p>Apple consistently says the App Store is the place people love to shop but it always seems afraid to give them the opportunity to actually show that.</p>
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