[appstorelottery]

I think it's as simple as "if you have a platform - be it OS, marketplace or search engine" - it should be illegal to compete with your platform participants.

For example, this law would have played out with Microsoft not being able to create Word (look at the history of what they did to the Windows version of WordPerfect). Amazon would not be able to introduce their own products and compete with their platform sellers. Apple wouldn't be able to take great independent app ideas and assimilate them into their OS. Google wouldn't be able to make a coin tossing app when its core business was successfully creating discovery for mine.

Perhaps a law like this would have prevented the formation of the mega-tech corporates that we see now? It's so easy to compete if you own the platform.

[shadowgovt]

Companies frequently aren't trying to build a platform. They're just trying to build products people will buy.

I think trying to carve up the world of possible creations into marketplaces like that is sacrificing progress on the altar of capitalism.

If Microsoft added a coin flip to the start menu, are they also competing with your app? If somebody makes a keyboard that has a button on it and when you push it It lights one of two LEDs, are they also competing and should the law stop them? Am I competing if I'm carrying a quarter in my pocket? At some point, there's no compelling societal interest to protect your app from more convenient solutions to the end user.

In general, protection against monopolies in the United States hinges on harm to the consumer. It's real hard to argue that things are worse for the consumer when Google makes the process of digitally flipping a coin easier than installing an app.

[appstorelottery]

I see your point. From the user's immediate perspective, getting a coin flip without an extra click is undeniably easier. But that's zooming in so close that you miss the entire picture.

The real question is what happens when that logic is applied to everything. First, it's a coin toss. Then it's the weather. Then a calculator. Then flight prices. Then hotel bookings. Then product reviews.

Step by step, the platform that was built to be a portal to a rich and diverse ecosystem of creators becomes a wall that primarily shows you its own products. The "progress" you're describing is the progress of a single entity consuming the ecosystem that once fed it.

The ultimate harm to the consumer isn't a slightly less convenient coin toss; it's the eventual death of that vibrant, competitive ecosystem. My tiny app was simply the first course in the platform's long meal of consuming its own creators.