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Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., center, arrives at U.S. district court in Oakland, California, on Friday, May 21, 2021.
Nina Riggio | Bloomberg | Getty Images

In the past few weeks, Apple has made several changes to its App Store rules, allowing a larger number of companies to access a lower commission rate or evade Apple’s mandatory 15% to 30% cut entirely.

But while the concessions can seem like a shift in Apple’s approach to App store policy, when examined in the history of the App Store, they are a clear continuation of strategy going back to 2008.

Apple has historically made small changes to its “guidelines,” a 13,000-word document that says what iPhone apps can and can’t do, while defending its core interests that Apple has the right to determine which software can operate on iPhones, and set its own financial terms for those developers.

Apple has also not yet changed its policy of taking 30% of in-app gaming purchases, which comprise the largest category of App Store revenue. Apple’s App Store grossed $64 billion or more in total sales in 2020, according to analysis based on Apple disclosures.

JPMorgan analyst Samik Chatterjee said in a recent note that he believed the financial impact on the company on one emailing change would be “modest” and other tweaks reducing Apple’s cut for some apps to 15% would be “minimal.”

The regulators and developers who criticize Apple’s App Store have a variety of complaints in the past decade: Its 30% cut is too high, its manual App Review process is arbitrary and powerful, the App Store depresses prices for software and teaches consumers that updates are free.

So Apple has carved out categorical exceptions to the 30% fee, allowed software makers the ability to appeal or challenge its rules, and changed single rules in response to lawsuits or media attention.

Events in the coming months may force Apple to tweak its policies again. A decision in a trial with Epic Games is expected in the coming weeks. The European Union is examining penalties and remedies after finding Apple violated antitrust laws after a Spotify complaint. South Korea recently passed a law that could force it to allow customers to use alternative billing systems.

But looking at App Store history, it’s likely that Apple will continue to push in private negotiations and public lobbying for smaller, non-structural changes to the App Store that address some complaints but does not change its control over iPhone software.

Controversial from the beginning

Apple’s App Store has faced controversy since its launch in 2008. A year after that, the FCC probed the company over its refusal to approve the Google Voice app.

Now there is more regulatory pressure from countries and developers around the world, and it is leading to more rule changes. Apple made some of the recent concessions because of settlements in a developer class action lawsuit in the United States and an agreement with Japan’s Fair Trade Commission, although Apple is applying the changes around the world.

Those tweaks essentially allow companies like Spotify and Tinder’s parent company Match Group to bypass Apple’s sometimes 30% cut of gross sales, addressing a standing complaint that dates back at least five years. Apple also reduced its take to 15% for news apps that participate in Apple News, its own news app.

Apple officials say they are meaningful changes that address key concerns from software makers.

Some of Apple’s opponents, even those that have petitioned for those changes, say that they don’t go far enough, and are part of a pattern of dividing its critics by placating some of them with one-off rule changes.

“Our goal is to restore competition once and for all, not one arbitrary, self-serving step at a time,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek tweeted this week in response to Apple’s in-app linking rule change.

“Apple’s strategy is Divide and Conquer: carve off special deals for different developer segments,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said last month in a statement to CNBC in response to Apple’s news app concession.

Epic Games is suing Apple seeking to be able to install its own app store on iPhones — which is the big change that Apple wants to fight off.

A history of Apple changing App Store rules

2009: Apple does not approve Google Voice, FCC investigates. A year after the App Store went live, the FCC started probing it over its refusal to approve the Google Voice app, which acted as a second phone number.

Apple responded to the FCC, providing many details about its app review process for the first time, and arguing that it had the right to reject entire categories of apps.

In its letter, Apple also detailed for the first time its Executive Review Board, a body headed by Apple executive Phil Schiller, which makes final decisions on “new and complex issues.”

The Google Voice app was eventually approved in late 2010.

2011: Apple requires in-app payments for digital goods, creates the “reader rule.” In-app purchases with a 30% fee were introduced in early 2009. But in February 2011, Apple significantly tightened its control over the App Store by announcing it planned to force companies to use Apple’s in-app purchase system if they offered digital subscriptions.

At first, Apple offered exceptions for products like Kindle or the New York Times, where users may have purchased e-books or digital subscriptions off-app. But companies still needed to implement in-app purchases with Apple’s cut, at the same price as their off-app subscriptions.

This didn’t work for many publishers, who wanted to retain their direct relationship with customers. By June, Apple had backtracked on some of its more draconian guidelines, allowing companies to pass on the 30% fee to customers or to, if they chose, not offer an Apple in-app purchase at all.

Shortly afterwards, Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller started to question Apple’s 30% fee, and suggested lower revenue sharing levels, such as 20%, according to an email released as part of the Epic Games trial.

This is when Apple started to put its first restrictions on redirecting users in-app to the publisher’s website, which were reversed in recent weeks.

2016: Apple reduces cut for 2nd year of subscriptions to 15%. By 2015, Spotify had publicly challenged tested Apple’s restrictions on subscriptions, first by emailing customers to tell them it’s less expensive to subscribe directly, instead of through the App Store. This was against Apple’s guidelines, and its one of the rules that was officially clarified as part of Apple’s concessions last month.

Shortly afterwards, Spotify removed Apple in-app purchases entirely and started a process of challenging Apple’s rules with government regulators.

In 2016, Apple announced that it would alter its revenue sharing agreement, specifically for subscription apps. Apple still charged 30% for the first year of a subscription, but subscribers who lasted more than 12 months would cost the app a lower, 15% rate of gross sales. Apple also opened subscription billing to all App Store apps and introduced search ads, which let developers pay for better placement on an App Store search page.

The announcement was also months after Schiller publicly took over oversight of the App Store, replacing services head Eddy Cue, although Schiller had been involved with App Store policy since the beginning.

Although Schiller is no longer a senior vice president at Apple, he remains an Apple employee with the title “fellow,” and continues to lead App Store policy.

2019: Apple backtracks on parental control apps, introduces appeals process. By the time Apple’s annual developer conference kicked off in 2020, the App Store had received considerable antitrust attention, specifically to its ability to reject apps, especially apps that competed with Apple features, such as parental control apps which gave users the ability to set screen time limits for kids.

Apple reversed some of its policies about parental control apps in 2019 after negative media attention, allowing some of them onto the store, and creating software tools that they could use to build their apps.

But the skirmish highlighted that Apple’s App Review process was arbitrary, and sometimes held up app updates over minor details or, worse, because the app didn’t comply with in-app purchase rules.

Developer protests over App Review continued to grow through 2020, and at Apple’s annual developer’s conference, Apple said that it would implement an appeals system for developers to challenge Apple’s rules, although many app makers say it hasn’t solved their complaints with the approval process.

2020: Apple reduces cut to 15% for small companies. Last November, Apple introduced the Small Business Program, a high-profile olive branch to lawmakers and app developers.

It reduced the take from 30% to 15% for any company making less than $1 million per year through the App Store. But because apps are a winner-take-most business, it didn’t hurt Apple’s finances too badly — one estimate at the time suggested the top 1% of app publishers generate 93% of App Store revenue. But it did cut the fees for the majority of individual app developers.

Documents from a settlement in 2021 said that the creation of the Small Business Program was because of a class-action lawsuit.

2021: Apple reduces cut to 15% for news apps that participate in Apple News, allows developers to direct users to alternative payment systems. Antitrust attention on the App Store heated up in 2021. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook testified at a trial over App Store practices against Epic Games. Multiple states and the U.S. Congress saw bills introduced which could force Apple to allow alternative app stores.

In August, Apple reduced its subscription cut for any publisher from 30% to 15%, addressing a segment of developers who had fought off App Store changes back in 2011. There was a catch though — those news apps had to participate in Apple’s news aggregator.( News apps are not the main moneymaker on the App Store.)

Apple also settled a class-action lawsuit with smaller U.S. developers, paying $100 million and clarifying guidelines about apps emailing their own customers.

In September, Apple settled with the Japanese FTC and said that “reader” apps could link out to sign up customers for subscriptions on their own websites. All three of these changes addressed concerns that first popped up in 2011 when Apple created the reader rule.

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Etsy touts ‘shopping domestically’ as Trump tariffs threaten price increases for imports

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Etsy touts 'shopping domestically' as Trump tariffs threaten price increases for imports

An employee walks past a quilt displaying Etsy Inc. signage at the company’s headquarters in the Brooklyn.

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Etsy is trying to make it easier for shoppers to purchase products from local merchants and avoid the extra cost of imports as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs raise concerns about soaring prices.

In a post to Etsy’s website on Thursday, CEO Josh Silverman said the company is “surfacing new ways for buyers to discover businesses in their countries” via shopping pages and by featuring local sellers on its website and app.

“While we continue to nurture and enable cross-border trade on Etsy, we understand that people are increasingly interested in shopping domestically,” Silverman said.

Etsy operates an online marketplace that connects buyers and sellers with mostly artisanal and handcrafted goods. The site, which had 5.6 million active sellers as of the end of December, competes with e-commerce juggernaut Amazon, as well as newer entrants that have ties to China like Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop.

By highlighting local sellers, Etsy could relieve some shoppers from having to pay higher prices induced by President Trump’s widespread tariffs on trade partners. Trump has imposed tariffs on most foreign countries, with China facing a rate of 145%, and other nations facing 10% rates after he instituted a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations. Trump also signed an executive order that will end the de minimis provision, a loophole for low-value shipments often used by online businesses, on May 2.

Temu and Shein have already announced they plan to raise prices late next week in response to the tariffs. Sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, many of whom source their products from China, have said they’re considering raising prices.

Silverman said Etsy has provided guidance for its sellers to help them “run their businesses with as little disruption as possible” in the wake of tariffs and changes to the de minimis exemption.

Before Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect, Silverman said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call in late February that he expects Etsy to benefit from the tariffs and de minimis restrictions because it “has much less dependence on products coming in from China.”

“We’re doing whatever work we can do to anticipate and prepare for come what may,” Silverman said at the time. “In general, though, I think Etsy will be more resilient than many of our competitors in these situations.”

Still, American shoppers may face higher prices on Etsy as U.S. businesses that source their products or components from China pass some of those costs on to consumers.

Etsy shares are down 17% this year, slightly more than the Nasdaq.

WATCH: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says sellers will pass cost of tariffs on to consumers

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Sellers will pass increased tariff costs on to consumers

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Google hit with second antitrust blow, adding to concerns about future of ads business

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Google hit with second antitrust blow, adding to concerns about future of ads business

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Alex Wong | Getty Images

Google’s antitrust woes are continuing to mount, just as the company tries to brace for a future dominated by artificial intelligence.

On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers.

The ruling, which followed a September trial in Alexandria, Virginia, represents a second major antitrust blow for Google in under a year. In August, a judge determined the company has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search, the most-significant antitrust ruling in the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago. 

Google is in a particularly precarious spot as it tries to simultaneously defend its primary business in court while fending off an onslaught of new competition due to the emergence of generative AI, most notably OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which offers users alternative ways to search for information. Revenue growth has cooled in recent years, and Google also now faces the added potential of a slowdown in ad spending due to economic concerns from President Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs.

Parent company Alphabet reports first-quarter results next week. Alphabet’s stock price dipped more than 1% on Thursday and is now down 20% this year.

Why Google's antitrust woes endangers its AI momentum

In Thursday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said Google’s anticompetitive practices “substantially harmed” publishers and users on the web. The trial featured 39 live witnesses, depositions from an additional 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits.

Judge Brinkema ruled that Google unlawfully controls two of the three parts of the advertising technology market: the publisher ad server market and ad exchange market. Brinkema dismissed the third part of the case, determining that tools used for general display advertising can’t clearly be defined as Google’s own market. In particular, the judge cited the purchases of DoubleClick and Admeld and said the government failed to show those “acquisitions were anticompetitive.”

“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president or regulatory affairs, said in an emailed statement. “We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a press release from the DOJ that the ruling represents a “landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square.”

Potential ad disruption

If regulators force the company to divest parts of the ad-tech business, as the Justice Department has requested, it could open up opportunities for smaller players and other competitors to fill the void and snap up valuable market share. Amazon has been growing its ad business in recent years.

Meanwhile, Google is still defending itself against claims that its search has acted as a monopoly by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance. Google said in August, immediately after the search case ruling, that it would appeal, meaning the matter can play out in court for years even after the remedies are determined.

The remedies trial, which will lay out the consequences, begins next week. The Justice Department is aiming for a break up of Google’s Chrome browser and eliminating exclusive agreements, like its deal with Apple for search on iPhones. The judge is expected to make the ruling by August.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai (L) and Apple CEO Tim Cook (R) listen as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a roundtable with American and Indian business leaders in the East Room of the White House on June 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

After the ad market ruling on Thursday, Gartner’s Andrew Frank said Google’s “conflicts of interest” are apparent by how the market runs.

“The structure has been decades in the making,” Frank said, adding that “untangling that would be a significant challenge, particularly since lawyers don’t tend to be system architects.”

However, the uncertainty that comes with a potentially years-long appeals process means many publishers and advertisers will be waiting to see how things shake out before making any big decisions given how much they rely on Google’s technology.

“Google will have incentives to encourage more competition possibly by loosening certain restrictions on certain media it controls, YouTube being one of them,” Frank said. “Those kind of incentives may create opportunities for other publishers or ad tech players.”

A date for the remedies trial hasn’t been set.

Damian Rollison, senior director of market insights for marketing platform Soci, said the revenue hit from the ad market case could be more dramatic than the impact from the search case.

“The company stands to lose a lot more in material terms if its ad business, long its main source of revenue, is broken up,” Rollison said in an email. “Whereas divisions like Chrome are more strategically important.”

WATCH: U.S. judge finds Google holds illegal online ad-tech monopolies

U.S. judge finds Google holds illegal online ad tech monopolies

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Discord sued by New Jersey over child safety features

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Discord sued by New Jersey over child safety features

Jason Citron, CEO of Discord in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2024.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images

The New Jersey attorney general sued Discord on Thursday, alleging that the company misled consumers about child safety features on the gaming-centric social messaging app.

The lawsuit, filed in the New Jersey Superior Court by Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state’s division of consumer affairs, alleges that Discord violated the state’s consumer fraud laws.

Discord did so, the complaint said, by allegedly “misleading children and parents from New Jersey” about safety features, “obscuring” the risks children face on the platform and failing to enforce its minimum age requirement.

“Discord’s strategy of employing difficult to navigate and ambiguous safety settings to lull parents and children into a false sense of safety, when Discord knew well that children on the Application were being targeted and exploited, are unconscionable and/or abusive commercial acts or practices,” lawyers wrote in the legal filing.

They alleged that Discord’s acts and practices were “offensive to public policy.”

A Discord spokesperson said in a statement that the company disputes the allegations and that it is “proud of our continuous efforts and investments in features and tools that help make Discord safer.”

“Given our engagement with the Attorney General’s office, we are surprised by the announcement that New Jersey has filed an action against Discord today,” the spokesperson said.

One of the lawsuit’s allegations centers around Discord’s age-verification process, which the plaintiffs believe is flawed, writing that children under thirteen can easily lie about their age to bypass the app’s minimum age requirement.

The lawsuit also alleges that Discord misled parents to believe that its so-called Safe Direct Messaging feature “was designed to automatically scan and delete all private messages containing explicit media content.” The lawyers claim that Discord misrepresented the efficacy of that safety tool.

“By default, direct messages between ‘friends’ were not scanned at all,” the complaint stated. “But even when Safe Direct Messaging filters were enabled, children were still exposed to child sexual abuse material, videos depicting violence or terror, and other harmful content.”

The New Jersey attorney general is seeking unspecified civil penalties against Discord, according to the complaint.

The filing marks the latest lawsuit brought by various state attorneys general around the country against social media companies.

In 2023, a bipartisan coalition of over 40 state attorneys general sued Meta over allegations that the company knowingly implemented addictive features across apps like Facebook and Instagram that harm the mental well being of children and young adults.

The New Mexico attorney general sued Snap in Sep. 2024 over allegations that Snapchat’s design features have made it easy for predators to easily target children through sextortion schemes.

The following month, a bipartisan group of over a dozen state attorneys general filed lawsuits against TikTok over allegations that the app misleads consumers that its safe for children. In one particular lawsuit filed by the District of Columbia’s attorney general, lawyers allege that the ByteDance-owned app maintains a virtual currency that “substantially harms children” and a  livestreaming feature that “exploits them financially.”

In January 2024, executives from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X were grilled by lawmakers during a senate hearing over allegations that the companies failed to protect children on their respective social media platforms.

WATCH: The FTC has an uphill battle in its antitrust case against Meta.

The FTC has an uphill battle in its antitrust case against Meta: Former Facebook general counsel

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