From Emily Birnbaum’s “How the Apple lobbying machine took on Georgia, and won” posted Friday by Politico:
When Apple wanted to kill off two bills in Georgia this year, it rushed lobbyists to the state legislature, threatened to abandon key economic projects and persuaded the state attorney general to push for an Apple-friendly amendment.
Two months later, the bill that had appeared to have the most momentum stalled in the Georgia House Judiciary Committee. The committee chair did not bring the legislation to a vote during this year’s legislative session, effectively killing it in the lower chamber.
Apple’s aggressive lobbying efforts in Georgia, the extent of which were previously unreported, highlight a pattern that has played out with little national attention across the country this year: State lawmakers introduce bills that would force Apple and its fellow tech giant Google to give up some control over their mobile phone app stores. Then Apple, in particular, exerts intense pressure on lawmakers with promises of economic investment or threats to pull its money, and the legislation stalls.
“Apple has been able to intimidate and use a lot of money” to kill legislation, said Rep. Regina Cobb, a Republican state lawmaker in Arizona who championed an app store bill that didn’t pass her state’s Senate. Cobb said she has been closely following Apple’s playbook in other states. “They do it in different ways in each state, but it all comes down to strong-arming the legislature.”
My take: Not a good look for the owner of the great walled garden, but sometimes the moat needs shoring up.
Of course, we rarely read about lobbying efforts by companies like Epic or even Facebook.
Blumenthal’s comments were filled with baseless accusations and inflammatory adjectives. No proof.
IANAL, but a state-by-state patchwork of regulation would create confusion, challenges on constitutional issues, and put oversight of the regulation into hands of unqualified people.
“Poppycock!” This has little to do with Apple flexing its legislative influence prowess and everything to do with a spirit of edification on the part of good Georgian citizens recognizing poignantly that there is no public outcry relative to an alleged Apple’s abuse of its App store policies. We will see similar outcomes across State Legislatures in the coming months and years and also in the nation’s Capital.
Exactly. You’ll know when the public is fed up, you’ll see it in the firm’s revenue, satisfaction numbers, and retention rate. Nobody has better stats than Apple.
I have no doubt various proposed state laws attempting to attack App Store policies/policing were the result of those lobbyists pushing legislators to craft such laws. Were that many eligible voters really writing letters about Fortnite purchase restrictions? Tim Cook knows that and places his chess pieces on the board to thwart his opponent’s well-funded strategy.
In other places the same combatants work together. Apple and other tech firms joined together years ago to lobbying for patent law reform. That effort is likely to be ongoing along with new efforts for AEV modifications to specific state and federal DOT regulations. That’s business as usual.
“Apple’s hard-charging tactics attracted national attention in Arizona and North Dakota, but the approach has also been effective in smaller states such as Louisiana and Georgia.”
Smaller States? Georgia and Louisiana
Really who is editing this? Using Size instead of population as the criteria. What a hoot.
A Quick search By Population Georgia is 9th ,Arizona 16th, Louisiana 25th , North Dakota is 48th
By physical Size Arizona 6, North Dakota 19th, Georgia 24, Louisiana 31,
Emily should ask herself: Is the problem that entities seek to influence legislatures, that APPLE may have sought to influence a legislature, or is it that your clicks have dropped below your paycheck requirement?
The reason I enjoy being part of the protected Apple ecosystem is that anytime I want to dump an App, it’s done! We all remember trying to get ahold of customer service for any internet provider and cancel a subscription service back in the day. They never provided a 800 number that had an actual live person, or their email was a straight dead drop with no response ever being received.
Never a problem with Apple leading the way as getting service through them is faster than a Sandy Koufax or Nolan Ryan fastball!
As for these “lobbying efforts”, Epic and probably their stalking horse were the purveyors of extremely miscast State Bills that run afoul of the US Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Which explains why they were kicked to the curb in the first place. Any action needed ought to be brought by a State’s AG.
We’ll see how the multi-state actions against Google by various State AG’s ends up being played out. My hunch is a settlement will be extracted which just exposes all of this as a Money grab shakedown lawsuit from the inception. The playbook derived from Vestager and the EU.
I just had that problem with a firm called 3BSC (credit reporting firm). At the end of the free trial, I tried to cancel my subscription. Three months later (and 3 auto-billings) I went to my bank with a first full of cancellation screenshots and emails to their customer “service” email address. My bank stopped the auto-pay and got 2 of my auto payments refunded.
Plus Apple, like any company, should be able to advocate for it business segments. The App Store has many many similar business precedents that it is based upon, both in tech and many other retail industries as we have pointed out on PED 3.0. Most of those existing parallels are still quietly in place today, with matching or higher costs to those who wish to use them – Apple has not decided bring these parallels out lest they be pointed out as the big company who disrupted someone else’s business arrangements that seem mutually beneficial AND agreed upon (grocery store products, shelf placement, exclusives, car dealerships with exclusive, regional business maps to the exclusion of competing same source/brand dealers, etc., etc.
All of these App Store critics want to use Apple’s created platform without paying the freight. They have the alternative of using Android, creating their own hardware platform and building that user base to exclusively serve and monetize or work with PC operating systems and create apps for them, there lots of alternatives. But if you want access to everything that Apple has taken 14 years to create, nurture, build trust, security, and safety by its policies and management, then pay the dues and work together. Don’t want to pay the dues, then go elsewhere and good luck. Companies all over the world decline to work with others all the time.