alt Hacker NewsGatekeeping - 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.
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> 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?".
IANAL, but I don't believe either of these things is a recognized concept in US antitrust law.
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.