Elizabeth Warren has become a champion of the left, known for flying in the face of conservatism and saying things that the internet loves. Also, she did that really great tag-team with Hillary the other day. Anyway, most recently she’s turned her attention to Apple, Amazon, and Google, who she criticied for providing platforms for services, and then using those platforms to bleed those services of money.
Warren’s comments came in a speech in D.C. yesterday, which was focused on reigniting competition in the economy. She begins the speech saying, “I love markets!” and then goes on: “Today, in America, competition is dying.” It didn’t get any peppier from there. She named names. “Google, Apple, and Amazon provide platforms that lots of other companies depend on for survival. But Google, Apple, and Amazon also, in many cases, compete with those same small companies, so that the platform can become a tool to snuff out competition.”
She specifically discusses Apple’s “conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer competitive streaming services.” As Billboard points out, she’s talking about things like Apple taking a cut from purchases made in the app store, meaning that if you subscribe to Spotify in the Apple Store it will cost you $12.99, but through Spotify’s website it’s $9.99. Obviously, if the price for Spotify is higher than Apple Music, due to the costs incurred because of Apple’s fees, the casual listener will go with Apple Music. Spotify also recently said that Apple is blocking a new version of its app because it doesn’t want competition for Apple Music, which can’t be proven but, if true, is definitely shady.
Warren also attacked Amazon, who “extracts larger and larger shares of book profits from publishers, which discourages publishing houses from publishing risker books or books written by lesser-known authors.” She also talks at length about Walmart and the difficulties faced, generally, by small business in America. Really, the whole thing is worth reading. Shame she most likely won’t be in the White House anytime soon, though — or will she!?