Italian Competition Authority Fines Apple $115M for Abusing Dominant Position
en.agcm.it94 points by amarcheschi 6 hours ago
94 points by amarcheschi 6 hours ago
Surprised by the negative comments here. Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store. Now a government fines them for it and some people are upset?
It is a nationalistic thing. When foreign governments fine "American" companies, they get all up in arms, while constantly asking the US Government to provide better consumer protections and promote competition.
This position commonly ignores that these fines are against these companies position within the market for which they're fined. Meaning that the EU will look at the EU profits and fine relative to those, so they aren't fining the "American" side/profits of the company but rather their "EU" (or Italian in this case) balance sheet.
This whole procedure started after Meta (that meta) reported apple to the authority, it's not even an investigation that was started by the authority of its own volition
Meta reported that they had to ask users for permission before being allowed to track what users were doing on their device.
The EU moved to fining on the basis of global revenues a long time ago to avoid companies using accounting to hide local revenues and avoid fines.
Then again, it could be seen as a tit for tat move regarding how the US applied its laws extraterritorialy using the dollar as a medium so it's bit harsh to complain about the EU when the US started the whole thing.
I think people would sympathize more if it was something like "Apple makes choosing a different default browser or email client unnecessarily cumbersome" --
instead of "Apple makes you double-opt-in to sharing your private data with even more advertisers"
But that's not the story here. I hate ads as much as anyone, but this action is a matter of market competition, not privacy. They're completely different fights and intelligent people ought to be able to distinguish between the two. Anti-competitive behavior by Google, Apple, Meta, etc. is what got us into this mess with tracking and privacy violations in the first place.
It's the market for privacy violations. I'd go so far as to say that improving competitiveness in this market probably makes the world worse, by making privacy violations more profitable. If they had fined them for not allowing sideloading, or not allowing third-party payments, it would be a different story. Those are markets I want to see grow and thrive.
They received a complaint, they investigated and issued a fine. You're asking them to selectively enforce laws based on their subjective opinion of some industry, which would be highly illegal.
The entire advertising industry needs to die and I'll support every fight in pursuit of that goal, but this isn't about that. You don't dismantle an industry by picking a winner and letting them get away with crime.
And yes, there needs to be an EU-wide action over all of those other issues you mentioned too but that has nothing to do with this particular case.
> this action is a matter of market competition, not privacy
Nope.
This is literally about apps having to ask the user for permission before they can track them.
You shouldn't be surprised. Almost every single story involving the EU and Apple that I've seen over the past few years was full of low effort responses and generic rants about the EU by people who clearly haven't read past the title, especially when it comes to fines.
Take your pick: "EU is fining us to finance itself", "EU can't innovate", "I can't believe that EU is fining Apple for [gross misunderstanding of the situation]"
Ok, but can you give me an example of even ONE specific commenter who has made inconsistent comments on this topic in different threads?
“HN” is lots of different people with lots of different opinions. Different threads select for different commentators. This is not unusual (nor has it been the other thousand times people have commented on the inconsistency of HN).
These posts should really have a poll on HN, so we know what HN thinks about the case.
Why does it matter what others on HN think? Either you find a comment insightful, read it, upvote and move on. Or it isn't, or maybe it's outright wrong, and you try to correct it. Or you found some question in your head, so you ask that.
Not once have I wondered what "HN at large thinks" because it simply doesn't matter. What HN-the-collective thinks about things-in-general just isn't interesting, people's individual thoughts and opinions though, is so much more valuable to read and interesting.
I don’t think it’s surprising. The ideal setup for many people here is an OS that gives them control over what they run and over their data.
An App Store that restrict us from running the application we want is bad. An App Store that prevents applications from tracking us is good. The former restricts our freedom, the latter restricts the freedom of developers who want to take advantage of our data.
It wasnt until recently that we could even have emulators to play old video games we grew up with, instead of having to buy "clones" one by one for $5/piece. The only thing that was protecting was Apple's profits
> Usually HN univocally complains about Apple‘s dominant App Store.
There is a strong population on HN that dislikes walled gardens. In my experience there are also plenty of people who disagree. There's also a large population that doesn't like EU tech regulations.
The ratio between different parts of the HN population can change significantly depending of stuff like time of day and headline draw. I don't find it particularly surprising, it isn't like HN is a monolith with internally consistent views across the entire population.
It's almost like the stories on HN always attract more nay-sayers/detractors/negative nancies than positive ones, so if you just go by "general vibe of the comment section by submission theme", it'll always look like HN has split personality disorder, while in reality HN is composed of a wide range of diverse individuals :)
> privacy rules imposed by Apple for iOS devices, as of April 2021, on third-party developers of apps distributed through the App Store. In particular, third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt
Wait, so they are punishing Apple because Apple makes it harder to spy on users.
What happens if Apple just exits the Italian market? They can create their own Apple competitor, I guess.
> Wait, so they are punishing Apple because Apple makes it harder to spy on users.
Sorry but where did you read that?
No, they are punishing because the ATT pop-up is not enough to comply with privacy rules, requiring 3rd party apps to have a secondary pop-up to be compliant (which Apple's own apps wouldn't need since they don't use ATT).
So it's more that Apple's ATT is not compliant with stricter privacy rules, not the opposite...
The "stricter" privacy rules of "Accept all" banners that send your data to 1000+ companies? Or "Accept all", but to Refuse you must tap a small grey link and manually uncheck dozens of boxes? Or worse, banners that force you to choose between accepting all tracking or paying a monthly subscription, blatantly illegal in the EU but ubiquitous in Italy even among large companies and news sites?
Meanwhile ATT blocks access to IDFA (instead of making it a pinky promise), and if apps were honest and were denied ATT it should disable other tracking too. The user has already indicated lack of consent.
> The "stricter" privacy rules of "Accept all" banners that send your data to 1000+ companies? Or "Accept all", but to Refuse you must tap a small grey link and manually uncheck dozens of boxes? Or worse, banners that force you to choose between accepting all tracking or paying a monthly subscription, blatantly illegal in the EU but ubiquitous in Italy even among large companies and news sites?
I don't know, I just stated what is in the decision: Apple makes 3rd party developers have to go through a process their own apps do not have to, hence creating an imbalance in competition since they are also the owners and controllers of the distribution channel.
The blatantly illegal pop-ups also annoy me a lot, it's clear it's not even malicious compliance but a targeted attack against the regulations to make it seem the law is requiring them to make it as annoying as possible. It seems to work since you got incensed by it.
I'm not "incensed" by the law at all, only by the companies gleefully violating it.
But Apple doesn't track you in the way ATT prevents, see my other comment; the narrative that they do was pushed by the adtech industry who wants ATT gone, and the courts (French, Italian) just never bothered checking if that was true. Check the decision yourself, they take it for granted and never look into how it works.
As far as I can understand, the fine is for having a prompt for 3rd party apps, but not apple's own apps. Then I'm not sure because even to me, the wording used by the authority is not entirely clear, but the issue would lie in a different treatment reserved for 3rd parties compared to 1st party apps
Yes, precisely, take a look at the summary document [1] at the bottom of the article.
> xii. As a matter of fact, revenues from App Store services increased, in terms of higher commissions collected from developers through the platform; likewise, Apple’s advertising division, which is not subject to the same stringent rules, ultimately benefited from increased revenues and higher volumes of intermediated ads
> xiii. Therefore, considering that Apple holds an absolute dominant position in the market for the supply to developers of platforms for the online distribution of apps to users of the iOS operating system, the Authority established that Apple’s conduct amounts to an exploitative abuse, in breach of Article 102 TFEU, that started in April 2021 and is still ongoing.
[1] https://en.agcm.it/dotcmsdoc/pressrelease/A561_SUMMARY.pdf
ATT isn't about a vendor tracking you across their apps (Facebook can still log you into all their apps at once). It's about using data collected by third-parties or sending data to third party trackers, which Apple doesn't do for their own ads.
> What happens if Apple just exits the Italian market? They can create their own Apple competitor, I guess.
My guess is that if they want to do that, they'd also need to leave the European market as a whole, as many countries share similar laws and regulations, besides the ones that applied across the entire European Union. And since Europe seems to represent ~25% total revenue in 2025 for Apple, that feels like a highly unlikely choice for them to do, considering they're a public company and have obligations to the shareholders.
> What happens if Apple just exits the Italian market?
They can’t.
If they did, the company (and thus shareholders) would lose money. Shareholders would vote out the board, and the new board would appoint a CEO who would promptly re-enter the Italian market.
This is why corporations get slapped around by regulators everywhere, even though on the surface, the regulators need the company far more than the other way round.
This looks like it's targeted at the relationship between Apple and Italian developers. I guess this means Apple could also comply by kicking Italian developers out of the iOS developer program?
Unlikely because services in the EU have to be offered without barriers to everyone across all member states.
Which EU law say that exact thing?
Because now I live in an EU country that had (and has) foreign products and services, typically of US origin, that are not officially available in my home EU country, like for example Xbox GamePass for console. Was same with Nextflix till a few years ago. Same with AMEX cards.
So NO, you can definitely provide your services only to specific EU member states if that's what you wish, they can't force you to sell in all countries.
no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money, they just hit another one without care whether actual laws were violated. the amount they take has no correlation to what has been blamed, only to how much the companies can afford to pay without threatening to leave the country.
the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to extort money without regards to actual laws. its not long ago that they told all companies 'if you pay X% more than your tax report says you own then we won't destroy your company'. more recently they went after the Agnelli family trying to extort money without having an actual case.
its not the rule of law, its simply Might makes Right or modern robber knights...
> no year goes by without Italy imposing random >100m€ fines for 2-3 american tech companies. whenever they need money
Since you apparently know, how large would a 100M EUR injection into the Italian budget for 2026 actually be, relatively to the other things?
You're saying they're doing this because they need money, but wouldn't changing the tax rates be more effective at this? 100M feels like a piss in the ocean, when you talk about a country's budget, but since you seem to imply Italy is doing this survive, would be nice to know what ratio this fine represents of their budget, which I'm guessing you have in front of you already?
Italy's unconsolidated budget for 2025 is projected to be around 700 billion euros in revenue and 900 billion in expenditures:
https://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/attivita_istituzionali...
So yeah, whoever talks about these fines as a strategy for fixing the budget knows nothing about the actual budget of a G7 state, these fines are completely immaterial to Italian fiscal policy.
For perspective, that's roughly equivalent to someone with a €50,000 annual income finding €7 on the street and someone claiming they're doing it "to survive."
From a post I saw on reddit:
> In 2024 EU fined US tech companies €3.8B meanwhile public internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax
How is it not a major budget contribution to have fines on American companies bigger than revenue from your entire tech industry?
That is a de facto tax, particularly when they announce these new fines monthly like clockwork.
Income tax paid by public internet tech companies is not the same as “revenues from the entire tech industry”
This report is indicating around 800B in value for the sector (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...)
While other reports have significant higher numbers https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/tech-europe-is-worth-4000-bil...
The relevant comparison is fines vs. actual budget, not fines vs. some cherry-picked industry segment. EU general government spending (across 27 nations) in 2023 was around €8.4 trillion. €3.8B in fines is 0.045% of that, again, completely immaterial.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1379290/government-expen...
> fines on American companies bigger than revenue from your entire tech industry?
1. As someone already mentioned, taxes != revenue
2. On top of that, "public internet companies" != "entire tech industry"
3. On top of that, tax evasion and creative accounting by "public internet companies" companies is well known, documented, and is subject to additional fines (not as often or as much as they deserve)
4. On top of that "announce these new fines monthly like clockwork" speaks volumes about the state of the "public internet companies" and there continuous disregard for the law.
This, I think, is the real answer why this is happening. The motivation behind these huge fines on large U.S. tech companies by EU countries is actually "we need revenue", not "we must protect our users". I would expect this to become another source of strain between the EU and the US as the EU economy continues to atrophy. Especially so if the U.S. economy weakens, too.
European companies are fined all the time as well, you just don't see the news about it, there definitely no ill-intent vs american companies as you are trying to imply
[flagged]
This comment isn’t helpful and adds nothing to the conversation.
When someone makes an argument regarding ‘x’, the correct response is a rebuttal to the argument on its merits. Not “why are you defending x?”
Because if Apple can't defend itself even with the lawyers they can afford, it means that they really are breaking the law.
It's the EU way. The only area where they produce world-leading innovation is regulatory regimes, so gotta use it to hit up American tech companies like an ATM.
Just an idea - how about not breaking the law?
Oh please. "The law" is a Kafkaesque patchwork that delegates authority to local officials and has enough complexity and wiggle room to make anything possible. We're not talking about a speed limit sign here. Show me the [company], I'll show you the crime.
I've been assured by people in this thread and others that, for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them.
> Show me the [company], I'll show you the crime.
Yeah, maybe that floats the people's boat wherever you live, but in other countries where people's health and well-being go above corporate interests, it is not common for companies to break the law.
> for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them.
Which is true, and you can understand that yourself by not relying on others, but reading the regulation yourself. It's actually pretty simple, and I think even someone who don't like regulations would be able to get through it if you apply yourself.
And yeah, even official EU sites could avoid it if they'd chose to not use tracking cookies. Not sure what the gotcha is supposed to be here? There is no inconsistency here.
> I think even an American would be able to get through it if you apply yourself.
This doesn't belong on HN.
True, and I see now it could be read in a way I didn't intended it to, fixed it by making it clearer what I meant. Thanks :)
They can always chose not to sell their products and services in the EU if they don't want to comply with the laws here.
On the Euro, Maastricht Treaty circa. ratified in 1992.
Is certainly a leverage in Apple’s third-party research.
Apple's consent requirement isn't good enough for legal consent so third-parties have to ask twice, which "harms advertisers" trying to get at that juicy personal data.
OK now slap the wrists of Alphabet and Meta.
> OK now slap the wrists of Alphabet and Meta.
Google is probably next (Antitrust case(s)). AFAIK the EU is currently probing a case.
And before the Nationalists get mad again: If I sell in the US I'm naturally obliged to follow US rules and regulations. I wouldn't even think twice about this. The same is true in other markets. So for the Single Market: If you play on European turf, you play by European rules.
Of all issues they chose "poor advertisers can't get their hands on user data"
money laundering? a bribe? someone ink and track every single one of those dollars!
The government is everywhere prone to becoming the mafia.
> The Authority found the App Tracking Transparency (“ATT”) policy to restrict competition. [...]
> In particular, third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt. However, such prompt does not meet privacy legislation requirements, forcing developers to double the consent request for the same purpose.
> The Authority established that the terms of the ATT policy are imposed unilaterally and harm the interests of Apple’s commercial partners. The terms were also found to be disproportionate to the achievement of the company’s stated data protection objectives.
They must think we're fucking stupid.
EU privacy regulations and the GDPR are a complete farce. You'll notice that the EU's own government websites are littered with cookie banners. They want the data just as bad as everybody else.
The goal was not in any way to protect privacy, but rather to extract rent from American tech companies.
> They want the data just as bad as everybody else.
Sure. Let's look at the main site: https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en
Big cookie banner. Wait. What's that. It's not a modal? And a big "Accept only essential cookies" button with the same visual weight as the "Accept all cookies" button? Surely everybody does it this way because it's literally what EU law requires - surely nobody would try to trick people into clicking "accept all" by hiding the alternative behind multiple layers of opaque options and checkboxes.
So let's look at what data they are harvesting: https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en
Technical cookies... functional cookies... boring - most of these are just for handling logins and preferences. Ooh, analytics! But what's Europa Analytics? Let's check: https://european-union.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en
Oh, they are not only opt-in, they even respect DNT headers. And they're masking the IP addresses before processing them further. Damn, they must really want that data just as bad as "everybody else".
Apple makes, what, $1 billion (with a B) in profit every day.
So this is nothing to them.
What about profit in Italy?
Relative amounts don’t make it right or wrong.
I'm so glad they're protecting us from Apple (checking document) making it too hard to collect personal data for advertising. Thanks, Italy
It really depends if apple is making it hard to collect data that apple itself can collect with blanket permissions from users.
In that case yes, apple is abusing its dominant position and is competing unfairly with other companies. And they must be fined for that.
Apple does advertising too: https://ads.apple.com
Apple is allowed to share data among its apps. Third-party app developers are allowed to share data within their apps. If third-party developers want to share data with _other_ third-party developers (aka the advertising ID), then they need the explicitly request permission. It is fairly straightforward.
Nothing about unfair competition is mentioned in the press release, so I can only assume this wasn't a significant factor in the competition authority's decision. Unfortunately, I can't read Italian, so I'm not sure if this is brought up in the 199-page full text of the order.
The press release is.. not great. The summary document linked at the bottom of the page is written in English and makes it clear that the fine was issued due to their double standards:
> xii. As a matter of fact, revenues from App Store services increased, in terms of higher commissions collected from developers through the platform; likewise, Apple’s advertising division, which is not subject to the same stringent rules, ultimately benefited from increased revenues and higher volumes of intermediated ads
[1] https://en.agcm.it/dotcmsdoc/pressrelease/A561_SUMMARY.pdf
It's way too long for me, but just skimping I read that
1)apple was reported to the authority by meta, the authority then started investigating (and this is honestly extremely funny)
2)apple says that att prompt is enough to work as a gdpr consent form, meta didn't agree with this. The authority after a long investigation found apple was in wrongdoing because the att prompt breaks some rules on I don't understand what and so is not gdpr compliant - the only thing I understood is that it doesn't provide enough informations to the end user
3)authority also notes that this prompt was imposed by Apple without input from third parties, thus distorting the market because the same prompt is not required for apple's own apps
I wonder where this narrative came from. It's simply not true. Third-party apps with ATT denied have the same data access as Apple does.
I don't necessarily disagree with this ruling, but it's sad that EU governments now take in more revenue from fining US tech companies than from taxing local tech companies. An entire continent is on the path of becoming parasites instead of builders. Will they ever adopt a growth and abundance agenda again?
> EU governments now take in more revenue from fining US tech companies than from taxing local tech companies
Do you have a source for that, or did you just make it up?
Maybe companies that break eu/local rules could respect the law
Hard to respect vague laws. Apple can't read the regulators' minds and figure out their interpretations, or instantly pivot when regulators change their minds.
You don't need to read minds to know that abusing your dominant market position in one market to disadvantage your competitors in a different market (advertising) has a very high likelihood of breaking competition rules. That's a textbook example of anti-competitive behavior.
When did they change their minds, can you provide a link to a previous regulatory decision which approved this behavior?
All laws are inherently vague. Some actions are clearly legal and some are clearly illegal. Between them, there is a gray zone, where it can be impossible to say in advance what's legal and what isn't.
If you are an amoral profit maximizer, like the average publicly traded company, it's often rational to take risks by entering the gray zone. Sometimes nobody cares that you do that. Sometimes you manage to get a favorable court ruling. And sometimes the expected gains outweigh the eventual fines.
It's almost always easy to comply with the laws by playing it safe. But shareholders don't like that.
If the US tech companies stop behaving this way, maybe.
Sure. I'm not here to defend bad behavior by US tech companies. Just pointing out the sad contrast in terms of lack of growth and innovation by EU tech companies.
How is the EU tech company lack of growth related to fining companies for not obeying the law?
Yes, Europe is a laggard in tech, but I don't see any relationship here. Even if they wouldn't fine these companies, EU would still lag, and now that they are fining them, EU companies are not at an advantage, nor growing faster.
The US is in the middle of a recession if you exclude the AI bubble. Even if you include the AI bubble it's barely avoiding stagflation. I'm not sure "growth and innovation" accurately serves as a contrast between the US and EU tech companies right now.
Or the US tech companies could abandon EU markets
They could, it could be a blessing for competitors in the EU.
But they won't because the EU is a huge market and money speaks, while that happens they need to comply with the laws. Stop breaking the laws and you stop being fined, it's pretty simple for multi-billion/low-trillion market cap companies, innit?
It would be terrific if this happens. Can give room for alternatives to grow in the EU. Even the rest of the world would love it.
So far only China has managed alternatives - and only thanks to govt exclusion. US behemoths just eat everyone else up - even in the global South.
I’m sorry to disappoint you but the EU is unable to create any usable alternatives to US tech chiefly due to lack of SWE talent (among other things). Anyone remotely competent sees the 40k senior SWE salaries offered by European tech companies and immediately crawls through glass just to work at a mid-tier company in the Northern California area of the United States.
Once they pay "modern" US health insurance (esp after a layoff) and also need to raise a family, the vast majority will crawl back through lava.
Still no - PPP (that’s after expenses such as food, healthcare, housing, etc) is significantly higher in the United States.
You must believe that US companies are trying to enter and stay in hostile markets out of the sheer kindness of their hearts. Have you considered that not being present in the second biggest market by GDP may actually be a massive liability by creating a massive opportunity for competitors that will be far better adapted to stricter regulatory conditions? You could just as well advise US car manufacturers to stick to building cars like the Cybertruck and ignore markets that consider it unsafe.
US tech companies already avoid paying jackshit by moving to Ireland.
So apple Ireland sells services and devices to apple italy on which the profit is all in Ireland.
I don't download any apps anymore, so not very informed on the state of alternative app stores in EU. I decided to Google where I can find those. One of the first links is leading to MacPaw's website. It's a company with questionable ethics and business practices that tries to sell you "antivirus" and "decluttering" app. So I'll pass.
But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now? Something that's used by more than just a couple of people? Or is EU just trying to milk rich USA tech giants (I think I know the answer).
> are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now
"Always has been": Setapp. Very interesting model.
Readily recommend devs subscribing to this collection, but non-devs as well if you're into "there's an app for that" and fatigued with IAP.
> One of the first links is leading to MacPaw's website.
Yikes, Google results are bad these days! They seem to focus on Mac applications, not iOS app store alternatives.
> But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now?
Yes, the main one I am familiar with is AltStore: https://altstore.io
However, according to Apple's docs, they only allow alternative app stores in the EU and Japan, so you have to be using an iOS account with the region set to one of those two places and be physically located there in order to install the app store. Not something that's easy to experiment with for people in the USA to see how the other half lives.
> Or is EU just trying to milk rich USA tech giants (I think I know the answer).
I don't really see an angle for the EU to do much milking here. Actually I think the AltStore founders are Americans? So they seem to be reaping the benefits of EU and Japanese legislation, remotely.