

France threatens EU action over Apple App Store ban - recoiledsnake
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/11/apple-france-appstore-idUSL5N0CY42J20130411/

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joshguthrie
Last time Fleur Pellerin decided to put her nose into an American company's
policies, France almost ended up forced to use Bing.fr. Guess some politics
just won't learn.

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jusben1369
"With much power comes much responsibility!" I think that's the piece Apple is
missing here. They need to work a little harder before shutting down a $10
million company. It sounds like it was handled unilaterally and at a junior
level from what I read - but maybe more will come out in their favor.

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mikecane
From what I understand, this app had 12M users. Is that correct? So for people
here to claim it was at all spammy, explain to me why it never had 12M
uninstalls and zero users. There must have been value users got from it.

EDIT to kill a typo.

Second edit to add more:

I get a daily email from a service called BookBub. AFAIK, it's basically a
similar model to AppGratis. It's pay for placement. Yet every email I discover
a legitimately free Kindle book I can download. I understand it's pay-to-
place. I don't find it spammy. Do I want to see _everything_ be pay-to-place?
Hell no. But to say I can't have BookBub or something else of my own free will
-- well, something is just wrong with that thinking.

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idunno246
The problem isnt the app itself, or that it's pay to place within the app, or
spammy to the users of the app. The problem is that the top apps is heavily
based on # downloads, and this app gets lots of downloads. Therefore, it's
gaming the top apps.

The app gratis users are cheap, crappy users that provide little value to the
advertiser cause they don't spend money. It's all just to chart and get good
users from the apple's placement.

And since everyone is doing this, the only way to get in the top apps is to
buy one of these services. The minute you stop paying, you drop from the top
charts. Really apple needs to fix the app store, or offer sponsored slots
there.

[I worked at a company that used app gratis]

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jusben1369
Here was my comment on the story 5 days ago. A couple of folks down voted me
initially!

"It's all fun and games until an American technology company leverages their
market share and business model to decimate a European technology company. A
couple more of these and the EU will start dragging them in front of
committees with little need to be concerned about a backlash."

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519922>

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mikecane
I remember that Comment. I upvoted it then and now too.

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jusben1369
Thanks for indulging me my rather public chest beating moment too.

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seivan
So those scam artists, have some friends at high places to put pressure on
Apple?

I hope Apple doesn't give up that easily. It's not that the dumb ministers (as
dumb politicians come) understand what kind of bullshit they're protecting. If
it was 9m revenue from viagra spam, would they do the same thing - probably.

I honestly don't get why some politician would care. Don't they have other
things to worry about? It's weird that they feel like they should take this
on. It's not that the economy in EU (and by proxy, France) fucked up and
requires attention.

If your business relies on Apple allowing you to charge people money - to spam
other people (through push notifications) then my friend, you probably failed
your MBA classes... or did really well, honestly I don't know.

~~~
kevingadd
So Apple has a track record of unilaterally making poor or wholly irrational
decisions about what's allowed to be on their store and what isn't, and you
decide that because the one example case being used is a vaguely shady app,
obviously the politicians are just bought off by bribes and they're going
after Apple because they have friends in high places?

You don't think that it's VAGUELY possible that perhaps Apple exerting their
influence to silence speech (in the forms of games, comics, books, etc) and
other forms of expression, not to mention outright crushing businesses because
they decide they don't like them or because they decide they don't want
competition, has upset politicians? You don't think it's VAGUELY possible that
perhaps it is actually illegal?

Yeah, sure. Bribery. Got it. Most logical explanation!

P.S. I don't know why you would choose Viagra spam as a point of comparison
for an app that people _chose_ to install on their phones. Yes, AppGratis was
scummy SEO, almost certainly - but Apple was OK with it being on their store,
and approved updates, up until days before it was pulled, and they continue to
allow similar apps to operate on their store. They also allow stuff on their
store that is BLATANTLY exploitative (IAP-laden games aimed at kids, for
example).

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kostya-kow
I am not an Apple fanboy, but I fully support Apple's decision to remove
AppGratis from the store.

It is pointless to argue if it was bribery that caused Pellerin to do this,
but it is obvious that she is mistaken.

>but Apple was OK with it being on their store, and approved updates, up until
days before it was pulled, and they continue to allow similar apps to operate
on their store.

Allowing it in the App Store in the first place is a bad decision, but there
is no reason they should have not removed it now. They also removed similar
apps several months ago.

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seivan
Researching apps take time. Either they let developers wait months in order to
get them onboard or conduct more thorough research retroactively.

