Epic also won against Apple, though not as thoroughly as it had with Google, because Apple had the commonsense not to get up to the kind of shenanigans that make federal judges very, very mad. In the Google case, the court found that Google had acted as a monopolist and ordered it to open up the payment system in Google Play, a direct blow to the Android app tax.

6/

In the Apple case, the judge did *not* find that Google had acted as a monopolist, but did rule that the App Store's payment processing racket violated the law, and ordered Apple to end its own app tax:

techcrunch.com/2025/04/30/epic…

That's where things get gnarly. Apple is addicted to corrupt sources of income - like the tens of billions it illegally receives every year in bribes from Google make it the default search:

apnews.com/article/google-anti…

7/

Epic Games just scored a major win against Apple | TechCrunch

Epic Games has notched a win in an ongoing legal dispute with Apple, as a result of which Fortnite could return to the U.S. iOS App Store as early as next

^{Kirsten Korosec (TechCrunch)}

And it really, really *loves* the app tax. When the EU ordered Apple to allow third-party app stores (as a way of killing the app tax), the company cooked up a malicious compliance plan that was *comically* corrupt:

pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spo…

So, the mere fact that a federal judge had ordered Apple to open up its app store to competing payment processors was not going convince Apple to actually *do* it.

8/

Instead, Apple cooked up a set of rules for third-party payment processing that would make it *more* costly to use someone else's payments, piling up a mountain of junk fees and using scare screens and other deceptive warnings to discourage users from making payments through a rival system:

thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-r…

9/

Judge Rules Apple Executive Lied Under Oath, Makes Criminal Contempt Referral

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rebuked the phone giant, opened the app store, and made a criminal contempt referral to an Apple executive for lying under oath. Plus, a bad antitrust bill goes down.

^{Matt Stoller (BIG by Matt Stoller)}

That's the kind of thing that is apt to make a federal judge angry - and, as noted, angry federal judges can make life very hard for tech monopolists, a lesson Google learned when it destroyed key evidence in its Epic case. But Apple didn't just flout the court order - they *lied about it* to cover it up, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is *furious*.

10/

She held that Alex Roman, Apple's Vice-President of Finance, "outright lied under oath," and she has raised the possibility of *criminal* contempt penalties for Apple:

regmedia.co.uk/2025/05/01/pace…

The judge further wrote:

> This is an injunction, not a negotiation. There are no do-overs once a party willfully disregards a court order. Time is of the essence. The Court will not tolerate further delays.

11/

> As previously ordered, Apple will not impede competition. The Court enjoins Apple from implementing its new anticompetitive acts to avoid compliance with the Injunction. Effective immediately Apple will no longer impede developers’ ability to communicate with users nor will they levy or impose a new commission on off-app purchases

In other words, *any* junk fees, *any* impediments to opening up third party payments, will be switfly and harshly dealt with.

12/

As of *right now* developers can start to build third-party payments into their apps and Apple *cannot* block them. It's the end of the app tax, a source of about $100b/year for Apple:

theregister.com/2025/05/01/app…

The world is on fire and everything is terrible, but we are also living through the most consequential season in the history of the war on corporate tech power.

13/

Cook'd: Judge says Apple lied to court in Epic case, asks Feds to mull criminal charges

: CEO, senior execs ‘at every turn chose the most anti-competitive option’

^{Simon Sharwood (The Register)}

Google has been convicted *three times* of being a monopolist and is almost certainly going to have to sell off Chrome, most of its ad-tech stack, and possibly Android. Meta just put up a *pathetic* showing in an equally serious antitrust case that could see it forced to sell off Instagram and Whatsapp:

pluralistic.net/2025/04/11/it-…

14/

Countries around the world have passed big, sweeping, muscular antitrust laws specifically aimed at smashing corporate tech power, like the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act:

eff.org/pages/adoption-dsadma-…

Most importantly, all of this is happening from the bottom up. There is no dark money campaign to fuck up the tech companies.

15/

DSA/DMA Adoption: Our Analysis

The DSA and the DMA have important tools to make the internet a fairer place, but there are implementation challenges aheadThe European Union has reached another milestone when the EU Parliament approved the “Digital Services Act package” in July 202…

^{Electronic Frontier Foundation}

The politicians and enforcers who are taking on Big Tech are being shoved from behind by billions of everyday people who are furious and refuse to take it any longer:

pluralistic.net/2025/04/10/sol…

I am deeply grateful for the public servants who have championed this cause, but I also know that these people are the *effect* of our movement, not the *cause*.

16/

When Kier Starmer fires Britain's brilliant and effective top competition enforcer and replaces him with the former head of Amazon UK, that does *nothing* to tamp down the political outrage that Britons feel towards America's tech giants:

pluralistic.net/2025/01/22/aut…

All over the world, countries that passed IP laws to protect US tech interests in exchange for tariff-free access to US markets are grappling with the end of free trade with America.

17/

This represents a generational opportunity to pass laws that enable local technologists to jailbreak US tech exports and liberate their people from the extractive practices of Big Tech forever:

archive.is/CiBIz

There is nothing harder to stop than an idea whose time has come to pass.

18/

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel *Picks and Shovels*.

Catch me in #NEWZEALAND at UNITY BOOKS in #AUCKLAND TODAY (May 2, 6PM):

eventbrite.co.nz/e/an-evening-…

and #WELLINGTON TOMORROW (May 3, 3PM):

unitybooks.co.nz/news-and-even…

More tour dates (PDX, Pittsburgh, London, Manchester) here:

martinhench.com

19/

Image:
Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

CC BY 2.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

--

Hubertl (modified)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

CC BY-SA 4.0
creativecommons.org/licenses/b…

eof/

File:Annelid worm, Atlantic forest, northern littoral of Bahia, Brazil (16107326533).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

^{commons.wikimedia.org}