Microsoft says some app stores are creating a far higher barrier to fair competition than Microsoft did when found guilty of antitrust violations 20 years ago
- Developers put at a disadvantage by unfair rules, Smith says — European Commission this week launched investigation of Apple
Context & Ripple Effects
Brad Smith's intervention is a former antitrust target siding with the enforcers: Microsoft, which spent the early 2000s under its own competition case, argues today's app-store rules disadvantage developers more than anything it did two decades ago. The timing matters because the European Commission was preparing charges against Apple over its developer rules the same week, making Microsoft's framing ammunition for regulators rather than a neutral observation.
The arc since then has vindicated the framing: UK authorities opened their own App Store abuse investigation, the CMA extended scrutiny to cloud-gaming restrictions and browser power, and by 2024 the EU's preliminary DMA findings held Apple's anti-steering rules to be breaches — each step treating app-store terms as a competition question rather than a private-contract one.
First-order effects
- Apple faces the European Commission's investigation into its App Store practices immediately, with Smith publicly arguing its developer terms exceed the severity of Microsoft's own convicted conduct.
- Developers constrained by app-store rules gain a high-profile corporate ally whose antitrust history lends the 'unfair rules' argument credibility with regulators.
Second-order effects
- Google is pulled into the same net — the UK CMA's market investigation explicitly paired Apple and Google's mobile-browser and cloud-gaming power, so any precedent set against Apple applies across both app ecosystems.
- Microsoft's position as a reformed gatekeeper sharpens competitive contrast: as it pushes services onto rival platforms, pressure on Apple's store economics lowers distribution friction for Microsoft's own software.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, app-store commission structures and developer-terms design shift from unilateral gatekeeper decisions to regulated conduct — the direction the EU's DMA findings against Apple already confirm.
- The industry norm flips from 'the platform sets the rules' toward 'regulators set the floor,' with every major jurisdiction (EU, UK) now maintaining standing investigations into store governance.
The trend: App-store governance is moving from private platform discretion to contested regulatory territory, with ex-targets like Microsoft legitimizing the enforcement wave.