Facebook considering suing Apple
SA N FR A NCISCO» Facebook has considered filing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, two people familiar with the deliberations said, a move that could escalate tensions between two of the world’s most powerful technology companies.
Facebook executives discussed accusing Apple of anti-competitive actions in its App Store, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity becausetheywerenotauthorized to speak publicly. The social network planned to say in a lawsuit that Apple gave preferential treatment to its own apps while forcing restrictive rules onto third-party app developers like itself, the people said.
Facebook discussed filing the lawsuit as recently as December, the people said. It is unclear if the company will move forward with any legal action. The social network declined to comment on a potential lawsuit. “We believe Apple is behaving anti-competitively by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of app developers and small businesses,” a spokesperson said.
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment. Technology website The Information reported the possibility of a lawsuit.
Tensions between Apple and Facebook have been growing for months, rooted in how the companies are diametrically opposed on how they make money. Apple, which has madeprivacyakeytenet, prefers that consumers pay for their internet experience, leaving less need for advertisers. In contrast, Facebook relies on data about its users to fuel its digital advertising business.
Over time, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg increasingly have taken thinly veiled shots at each other to underline their distaste for the other’s philosophies on advertising, targeting and privacy.
Last year Apple said it would clamp down on some data collection practices by developers and that it would allow iPhone owners to choose whether to allow companies to track them across different apps. That likely would hurt Facebook’s ability to collect user data to target ads.
Apple also began requiring developers to include privacy labels detailing information collection practices of their apps in the App Store. In an analysis, The New York Times found the privacy label for Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging app showed that it gathered far more information from people than another messaging app, Signal.
In December, Facebook created a website that slammed Apple’s moves as potentially harmful to small businesses. (It did not mention that the changes could hurt itself.)
Facebook’s line of attack against Apple echoes that of other companies. Apple wields near absolute power over its App Store, deciding which apps make the cut and which don’t, and taking a 30% cut of their sales. In 2019, Spotify, a streaming music company, filed a complaint with European regulators, accusing Apple of using its App Store to squash companies that compete with its services.