“Conspiracy in restraint of trade” would fit perfectly what Apple/Google are doing.

The average American spends some what, 4-5 hours a day on their phone? Is there any even remotely comparable precedent for a company to control all trade through everything? The best I can think of is cable, imagine if there were only two cable companies and they not only had unilateral ability to control which channels appear, but also charged 30% to every channels profit.

Further, how many different commercial activities do people do every single day on their devices? This is a far, far bigger thing than any platform before it. And it’s dominated by only two companies with a history of collusion. These platforms are nothing at all like “a market” and trying to argue from narrow historical frames is poor form.

They are far bigger things. It’s more akin to a world, people use them for literally every part of their lives. I don’t think narrow precedent should ever rule our thinking and especially when it’s clear there is no historical precedent here. We need to be “courageous” enough to use moral and logical thinking and not legalistic weaseling, we need to legislate them as new types of markets far bigger and more important to every persons life than any that’s ever existed.

> “Conspiracy in restraint of trade” would fit perfectly what Apple/Google are doing.

Proving a conspiracy claim requires two parties to knowingly participate in the conspiracy. While you may believe Apple and Google are conspiring together there is a reason Epic's lawsuit does not make any conspiracy claims - their lawyers know they'd never be able to win such a claim.

At any rate that is irrelevant to my point: Epic made several claims in their lawsuit that will require proof of monopoly power.

You shifted from arguing from a purely theoretical view (if Epic had a market should they be regulated) to now arguing a very narrow view local to this case. I’m arguing the big picture, so feel free to engage there or not.

Sure, Epics specific case may be the only strategy they can take - they won’t find any documented collusion when there’s only two players, that’s obvious. They already colluded to suppress wages. We can all see what’s happening. You’re arguing semantics on one side then arguing generalities on the other. But let’s call a spade a spade: theres no smoking gun, but they are colluding, it’s just a silent “don’t lower yours and I won’t lower mine” nod.

Edit: further, with the amount of lock in they each have, there’s not much pressure anyway. It’s just not comparable to anything really that has existed beyond Windows/Mac which were/are entirely open. And it goes even further. Mobile phones are on people at all times. They do way way more. You have accounts with hundreds of apps, services. It’s just not a comparable thing, it’s a world with big lock-in.

I mean, you changed the topic to whether antitrust cases require monopoly power, which I acknowledged wasn't required for certain types of violations such as price fixing, but is required for the original topic being discussed in this thread, which is Epic and their lawsuit against Apple.