Photo credit: Spotify
Apple versus Spotify is an ongoing battle, but Spotify’s head of Global Affairs Horacio Gutiérrez is stoking the fire. He calls Apple a ‘ruthless bully’ infected by a ‘monopoly worm’.
The Apple vs. Fortnite lawsuit has widespread implications for a decision that has yet to come. In fact, the decision can take months. But in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed, Horacio Gutierrez criticizes Apple. He calls the company a ruthless bully, infected by a ‘monopoly worm’. When Nilay Patel of The Verge asked Gutiérrez to explain that assessment, Gutiérrez says the company is behaving unfairly.
“It’s clear to me that when it comes to their app store policies and how they treat competing apps, but a wide variety of apps on their App Store, it’s just unfair. I think it deserves regulatory attention, and I think they are receiving regulatory attention for it, ”says Gutiérrez.
“You can love a company and at the same time be able to point out things that they should be doing differently,” he says. That comment is in response to his testimony against Apple at Senate Judiciary Antitrust Committee hearings, while visibly wearing an Apple Watch on his wrist.
Horacio Gutiérrez goes on to argue that the decision to link payments to Apple’s proprietary payment system is an “arbitrary choice.” “At first it was not part of the App Store, just as Apple’s 30% tax was not a requirement when we got to the App Store,” Gutiérrez tells Patel in the latest episode of the Decoder podcast.
“They brought it in later in the process, and in doing so, they created this environment where competing apps really have to be content with Apple’s music streaming service, as well as other competing products in what really it is not a level playing field »Gutiérrez explains.
“We want Apple to return to the situation that existed at the time we joined the App Store. We want them to unlink their proprietary payment system to the App Store and all the other anti-direction provisions, which is a fancy way of saying punishments and penalties that they have created for those people who don’t want to use their proprietary payment system « .
Horacio Gutiérrez says that Spotify has had to overcome many myths about Apple’s behavior when speaking to regulators in both the United States and Europe. He compares it to the Microsoft antitrust case of the early 2000s.
“It reminds me a bit of what happened in the Microsoft case. Where initially, the problems were with Sun Microsystems and a handful of other companies, and then at some point it became a chorus of companies that pointed out, ‘There is a fundamental problem here with the way this company behaves.’
That’s because Spotify is joined by a chorus of other companies, including Epic Games and Match Group. All three companies have subscription-dependent services and a recurring revenue model.
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