Comment by benoau

Comment by benoau a day ago

9 replies

View on Hacker News

Gatekeeping - nobody else can be the default voice assistant or power Siri, so where does this leave eg OpenAI? The reason this is important is their DOJ antitrust case, about to start trial, has made this kind of conduct a cornerstone of their allegations that Apple is a monopoly.

It also lends credence to the DOJ's allegation that Apple is insulated from competition - the result of failing to produce their own winning AI service is an exclusive deal to use Google while all competing services are disadvantaged, which is probably not the outcome a healthy and competitive playing field would produce.

its_ethan a day ago

So because Apple chose not to spend money to develop it's own AI, it must be punished for then choosing to use another companies model? And the reason that this is an issue is because both companies are large?

This feels a little squishy... At what size of each company does this stop being an antitrust issue? It always just feels like a vibe check, people cite market cap or marketshare numbers but there's no hard criteria (at least that I've seen) that actually defines it (legally, not just someones opinion).

The result of that is that it's sort of just up to whoever happens to be in charge of the governing body overseeing the case, and that's just a bad system for anyone (or any company) to be subjected to. It's bad when actual monopolistic abuse is happening and the governing body decides to let it slide, and it's bad when the governing body has a vendetta or directive to just hinder certain companies/industries regardless of actual monopolistic abuse.

Reply View 6 replies
  • benoau a day ago

    > So because Apple chose not to spend money to develop it's own AI, it must be punished for then choosing to use another companies model? And the reason that this is an issue is because both companies are large?

    No they were already being sued for antitrust violations, it just mirrors what they are accused of doing to exploit their platform.

    https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.njd.544...

    Reply View 4 replies
    • its_ethan a day ago

      So if it mirrors something they were already accused of (like you're saying), my questioning should be pretty easy to map onto that issue as well?

      It's the line of thinking that I'm trying to dig into more, not the specifics of this case. Now it feels like you're saying "this is anti-trust because someone accused them of anti-trust before".

      If that case was prosecuted and Apple was found guilty, I suppose you can point to it as precedent. But again, does it only serve as precedent when it's a deal between Apple and Google? Is it only a precedent when there's a case between two "large" companies?

      Again this is all really squishy, if companies aren't allowed to outsource development of another feature once they pass some sense of "large", when does it apply? What about the $1T pharmaceutical company that wants to use AI modeling? They're a large technically component company, if Eli Lily partnered with Gemini would you be sitting here saying that they also are abusing a monopolistic position that prevents competition in the AI model space?

      Reply View 3 replies
      • benoau a day ago

        > Now it feels like you're saying "this is anti-trust because someone accused them of anti-trust before".

        No it's antitrust because they have a failed product, but purely by virtue of shutting out competitors from their platform they have been able to turn three years of flailing around into a win-by-outsourcing. What would Siri's position be like today if they hadn't blocked default voice assistants? Would they be able to recover from their plight to dominate the market just by adopting Google's technology? How would that measure against OpenAI, Anthropic or just using Google directly? This is why it's an antitrust issue.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • its_ethan a day ago

          No other thoughts on my actual questions? You're just addressing one-off sentences from my responses.

          "it's antitrust because they have a failed product" is objectively hilarious

          > What would Siri's position be like today if they hadn't blocked default voice assistants?

          Probably pretty much the same. What would Gemini's position be like today if they hadn't blocked out default voice assistants? You only get Gemini when you use Gemini, just like you only got Siri when you use Siri (up until this deal takes effect). Also Siri has used ChatGPT already, so I'm not even convinced this is a valid criticism. They already didn't block OpenAI from being part of Siri.

          > Would they be able to recover from their plight to dominate the market just by adopting Google's technology?

          This is relevant how?

          > How would that measure against OpenAI, Anthropic or just using Google directly?

          How would what measure against other ai models? How would their ability to recover from a lack of investing in a better "homemade" AI model differ if they used OpenAI instead of Gemini? How does that have anything to do with antitrust? That's a business case study type of question. Also, shouldn't they be allowed to recover from their own lack of developing a model by using the best tool available to them?

          Reply View 0 replies
  • thayne a day ago

    > it must be punished for then choosing to use another companies model

    The problem isn't that they used another company's model. It's that they are using a model made by the only company competing with them in the market of mobile OS.

    Reply View 0 replies
KerrAvon 20 hours ago

IANAL, but I don't believe either of these things is a recognized concept in US antitrust law.

Reply View 0 replies
qnpnpmqppnp 21 hours ago

> Gatekeeping - nobody else can be the default voice assistant or power Siri, so where does this leave eg OpenAI?

Sorry if I'm missing the point but if Apple had picked OpenAI, couldn't you have made the same comment? "nobody else can be the default voice assistant or power Siri, so where does this leave eg Gemini/Claude?".

Reply View 0 replies