U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren has accused Apple, Google, and Amazon of using their size to “snuff out competition.” In a speech delivered yesterday in Washington reported by Re/code, Warren singled out the three tech giants of using their dominant positions in the market to “lock out smaller guys and newer guys,” specifically noting that Apple “has placed conditions on its rivals that make it difficult for them to offer competitive streaming services” that compete with Apple Music.
Warren went on to acknowledge that the three companies have “created disruptive technologies that changed the world, and … they deserve to be highly profitable and successful,” but that opportunities to compete must “remain open for new entrants and smaller competitors that want their chance to change the world again.” Warren’s comments, which also included other corporate giants such as Walmart and Comcast, were directed primarily at regulators and politicians that she feels are no longer fulfilling their obligations to “restore and defend competition.”
While Apple and the other tech giants naturally declined to comment on Warren’s statements, Spotify’s communications and policy head, Jonathan Price, added his comments, stating that “Apple has long used its control of iOS to squash competition in music, driving up the prices of its competitors, inappropriately forbidding us from telling our customers about lower prices, and giving itself unfair advantages across its platform through everything from the lock screen to Siri. You know there’s something wrong when Apple makes more off a Spotify subscription than it does off an Apple Music subscription and doesn’t share any of that with the music industry.
They want to have their cake and eat everyone else’s too.”
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