In that case yes, apple is abusing its dominant position and is competing unfairly with other companies. And they must be fined for that.
Apple does advertising too: https://ads.apple.com
> xii. As a matter of fact, revenues from App Store services increased, in terms of higher commissions collected from developers through the platform; likewise, Apple’s advertising division, which is not subject to the same stringent rules, ultimately benefited from increased revenues and higher volumes of intermediated ads
[1] https://en.agcm.it/dotcmsdoc/pressrelease/A561_SUMMARY.pdf
1)apple was reported to the authority by meta, the authority then started investigating (and this is honestly extremely funny)
2)apple says that att prompt is enough to work as a gdpr consent form, meta didn't agree with this. The authority after a long investigation found apple was in wrongdoing because the att prompt breaks some rules on I don't understand what and so is not gdpr compliant - the only thing I understood is that it doesn't provide enough informations to the end user
3)authority also notes that this prompt was imposed by Apple without input from third parties, thus distorting the market because the same prompt is not required for apple's own apps
But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now? Something that's used by more than just a couple of people? Or is EU just trying to milk rich USA tech giants (I think I know the answer).
Yikes, Google results are bad these days! They seem to focus on Mac applications, not iOS app store alternatives.
> But are there any real 3rd-party AppStores for iOS now?
Yes, the main one I am familiar with is AltStore: https://altstore.io
However, according to Apple's docs, they only allow alternative app stores in the EU and Japan, so you have to be using an iOS account with the region set to one of those two places and be physically located there in order to install the app store. Not something that's easy to experiment with for people in the USA to see how the other half lives.
> Or is EU just trying to milk rich USA tech giants (I think I know the answer).
I don't really see an angle for the EU to do much milking here. Actually I think the AltStore founders are Americans? So they seem to be reaping the benefits of EU and Japanese legislation, remotely.
"Always has been": Setapp. Very interesting model.
Readily recommend devs subscribing to this collection, but non-devs as well if you're into "there's an app for that" and fatigued with IAP.
Wait, so they are punishing Apple because Apple makes it harder to spy on users.
What happens if Apple just exits the Italian market? They can create their own Apple competitor, I guess.
> xii. As a matter of fact, revenues from App Store services increased, in terms of higher commissions collected from developers through the platform; likewise, Apple’s advertising division, which is not subject to the same stringent rules, ultimately benefited from increased revenues and higher volumes of intermediated ads
> xiii. Therefore, considering that Apple holds an absolute dominant position in the market for the supply to developers of platforms for the online distribution of apps to users of the iOS operating system, the Authority established that Apple’s conduct amounts to an exploitative abuse, in breach of Article 102 TFEU, that started in April 2021 and is still ongoing.
[1] https://en.agcm.it/dotcmsdoc/pressrelease/A561_SUMMARY.pdf
So it's more that Apple's ATT is not compliant with stricter privacy rules, not the opposite...
Meanwhile ATT blocks access to IDFA (instead of making it a pinky promise), and if apps were honest and were denied ATT it should disable other tracking too. The user has already indicated lack of consent.
I don't know, I just stated what is in the decision: Apple makes 3rd party developers have to go through a process their own apps do not have to, hence creating an imbalance in competition since they are also the owners and controllers of the distribution channel.
The blatantly illegal pop-ups also annoy me a lot, it's clear it's not even malicious compliance but a targeted attack against the regulations to make it seem the law is requiring them to make it as annoying as possible. It seems to work since you got incensed by it.
But Apple doesn't track you in the way ATT prevents, see my other comment; the narrative that they do was pushed by the adtech industry who wants ATT gone, and the courts (French, Italian) just never bothered checking if that was true. Check the decision yourself, they take it for granted and never look into how it works.
They can’t.
If they did, the company (and thus shareholders) would lose money. Shareholders would vote out the board, and the new board would appoint a CEO who would promptly re-enter the Italian market.
This is why corporations get slapped around by regulators everywhere, even though on the surface, the regulators need the company far more than the other way round.
My guess is that if they want to do that, they'd also need to leave the European market as a whole, as many countries share similar laws and regulations, besides the ones that applied across the entire European Union. And since Europe seems to represent ~25% total revenue in 2025, that feels like a highly unlikely choice for them to do, considering they're a public company and have obligations to the shareholders.
> In particular, third-party app developers are required to obtain specific consent for the collection and linking of data for advertising purposes through Apple’s ATT prompt. However, such prompt does not meet privacy legislation requirements, forcing developers to double the consent request for the same purpose.
> The Authority established that the terms of the ATT policy are imposed unilaterally and harm the interests of Apple’s commercial partners. The terms were also found to be disproportionate to the achievement of the company’s stated data protection objectives.
They must think we're fucking stupid.
The goal was not in any way to protect privacy, but rather to extract rent from American tech companies.
Sure. Let's look at the main site: https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en
Big cookie banner. Wait. What's that. It's not a modal? And a big "Accept only essential cookies" button with the same visual weight as the "Accept all cookies" button? Surely everybody does it this way because it's literally what EU law requires - surely nobody would try to trick people into clicking "accept all" by hiding the alternative behind multiple layers of opaque options and checkboxes.
So let's look at what data they are harvesting: https://european-union.europa.eu/cookies_en
Technical cookies... functional cookies... boring - most of these are just for handling logins and preferences. Ooh, analytics! But what's Europa Analytics? Let's check: https://european-union.europa.eu/europa-analytics_en
Oh, they are not only opt-in, they even respect DNT headers. And they're masking the IP addresses before processing them further. Damn, they must really want that data just as bad as "everybody else".
Because I live in an EU country that had and has foreign products and services, usually US originals, not officially available in my home EU country like for example Xbox GamePass for console. Was same with Nextflix till a few years ago. Same with AMEX cards.
So NO, you can definitely provide your services only to specific EU member states if that's what you wish, they can't force you to sell in all countries.
When did they change their minds, can you provide a link to a previous regulatory decision which approved this behavior?
If you are an amoral profit maximizer, like the average publicly traded company, it's often rational to take risks by entering the gray zone. Sometimes nobody cares that you do that. Sometimes you manage to get a favorable court ruling. And sometimes the expected gains outweigh the eventual fines.
It's almost always easy to comply with the laws by playing it safe. But shareholders don't like that.
Yes, Europe is a laggard in tech, but I don't see any relationship here. Even if they wouldn't fine these companies, EU would still lag, and now that they are fining them, EU companies are not at an advantage, nor growing faster.
But they won't because the EU is a huge market and money speaks, while that happens they need to comply with the laws. Stop breaking the laws and you stop being fined, it's pretty simple for multi-billion/low-trillion market cap companies, innit?
So far only China has managed alternatives - and only thanks to govt exclusion. US behemoths just eat everyone else up - even in the global South.
So apple Ireland sells services and devices to apple italy on which the profit is all in Ireland.
the 'Guardia di Finanza' has a long standing tradition of trying to extort money without regards to actual laws. its not long ago that they told all companies 'if you pay X% more than your tax report says you own then we won't destroy your company'. more recently they went after the Agnelli family trying to extort money without having an actual case.
its not the rule of law, its simply Might makes Right or modern robber knights...
I've been assured by people in this thread and others that, for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them.
Yeah, maybe that floats the people's boat wherever you live, but in other countries where people's health and well-being go above corporate interests, it is not common for companies to break the law.
> for example, if you "don't spy on users", you don't need cookie banners, and yet official EU sites have them.
Which is true, and you can understand that yourself by not relying on others, but reading the regulation yourself. It's actually pretty simple, and I think even someone who don't like regulations would be able to get through it if you apply yourself.
And yeah, even official EU sites could avoid it if they'd chose to not use tracking cookies. Not sure what the gotcha is supposed to be here? There is no inconsistency here.
This doesn't belong on HN.
Since you apparently know, how large would a 100M EUR injection into the Italian budget for 2026 actually be, relatively to the other things?
You're saying they're doing this because they need money, but wouldn't changing the tax rates be more effective at this? 100M feels like a piss in the ocean, when you talk about a country's budget, but since you seem to imply Italy is doing this survive, would be nice to know what ratio this fine represents of their budget, which I'm guessing you have in front of you already?
https://www.rgs.mef.gov.it/VERSIONE-I/attivita_istituzionali...
So yeah, whoever talks about these fines as a strategy for fixing the budget knows nothing about the actual budget of a G7 state, these fines are completely immaterial to Italian fiscal policy.
For perspective, that's roughly equivalent to someone with a €50,000 annual income finding €7 on the street and someone claiming they're doing it "to survive."
> In 2024 EU fined US tech companies €3.8B meanwhile public internet tech companies paid only €3.2B in income tax
Is certainly a leverage in Apple’s third-party research.
instead of "Apple makes you double-opt-in to sharing your private data with even more advertisers"
This position commonly ignores that these fines are against these companies position within the market for which they're fined. Meaning that the EU will look at the EU profits and fine relative to those, so they aren't fining the "American" side/profits of the company but rather their "EU" (or Italian in this case) balance sheet.
Then again, it could be seen as a tit for tat move regarding how the US applied its laws extraterritorialy using the dollar as a medium so it's bit harsh to complain about the EU when the US started the whole thing.
Take your pick: "EU is fining us to finance itself", "EU can't innovate", "I can't believe that EU is fining Apple for [gross misunderstanding of the situation]"
An App Store that restrict us from running the application we want is bad. An App Store that prevents applications from tracking us is good. The former restricts our freedom, the latter restricts the freedom of developers who want to take advantage of our data.
So this is nothing to them.
Relative amounts don’t make it right or wrong.
lioeters•2h ago
Lapel2742•48m ago
Google is probably next (Antitrust case(s)). AFAIK the EU is currently probing a case.
And before the Nationalists get mad again: If I sell in the US I'm naturally obliged to follow US rules and regulations. I wouldn't even think twice about this. The same is true in other markets. So for the Single Market: If you play on European turf, you play by European rules.