2) The Epic App Developer Battle Against Apple and Google

Legal and regulatory battles pitting large app developers against Apple and Google was a breakout story in 2020 and shot to #2 in PEI reports in 2021. The biggest story was Epic Games’ private antitrust lawsuit in US federal court against Apple, with the trial, decision and appeals filling the news. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers made it clear that she’s no fan of Apple’s business model and suspects anticompetitive motivations, but her 185-page ruling rejected Epic’s complaint that Apple was illegal monopolist and should be forced to allow apps to use alternative payments systems. This was a huge result as far as US federal law goes on big tech antitrust, at least where market shares are not overwhelming. The appeals, and Epic’s suit targeting Google, all move to 2022. Google was front and center in the biggest secondary drama, with South Korea enacting landmark legislation requiring the mobile giants to permit alternative payments systems for in-app payments. The chief takeaway is that Google announced that while they will allow payments alternatives, but they will still collect their fees directly, and using a non-Google payment service will save just 4% of the fee. Apple eventually indicated that they would do something similar if they were forced to open up payments. The truth is, fighting over in-app “payments” is a phony debate. App developers want much lower fees. Dreams of fee regulation is the real fight for 2022.