“France will take Google and Apple to court over contractual terms imposed by the tech giants on startups and developers, said Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire,” Laurence Frost and Julie Carriat report for Reuters.
“Speaking on RTL radio, Le Maire said on Wednesday he had become aware that Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. unilaterally imposed prices and other contractual terms on software developers.,” Frost and Carriat report. “‘I will therefore be taking Google and Apple to the Paris commercial court for abusive trade practices,’ Le Maire said. ‘As powerful as they are, Google and Apple should not be able to treat our startups and our developers the way they currently do.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple and Google own their stores. They have the right to set terms as they see fit. If the terms were too onerous, developers would not participate in them. This is not the case; quite the opposite, in fact.
For Le Maire in particular and France in general, the question is obvious:
Why don’t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough. ― Frédéric Bastiat