[Aldo_MX]

Oh yeah, forbidding developers from telling their customers that they can buy a subscription for less money in their website is definitely not illegal.

The fact that Apple is now regulated is definitely not a symptom of the illegality of their terms. Definitely not.

[dwaite]

Google and Facebook are among others now regulated as well.

The European Economic Zone sets regulations around economic policy. Their creation of the DMA was that while the markets did not have monopolistic abuse, that there were areas that still did not have _enough_ competition.

Now I would argue the DMA is misguided, because they are basically trying to regulate in a counter to the network effect. The problem is (for example) that even with barriers lowered, an upstart messaging app cannot compete with WhatsApp because they still cannot grow by the network effects the way WhatsApp did, because WhatsApp already exists and is popular. An upstart will still have to already be on target to become larger than WhatsApp in order to supplant them.

Alternative Marketplaces have been possible on Android for years and really haven't succeeded except in markets where Google Play is unavailable. Why would developers put time and effort into being where nobody is? How does anything in the DMA change their minds - better transaction fees on no sales?

The DMA does give companies an opportunity to innovate, such as how MacPaw is going to have a SetApp Marketplace which is a subscription service for mostly utility apps (similar to Apple Arcade as a first-party marketplace for games). But I would argue there is no way SetApp will be as popular as the App Store - it is a business opportunity, not market competition. I would say this is akin to F-Droid - it is an alternative marketplace on Android, but not one that really competes with Play.