The [[a:945827|House Judiciary Committee's 2019 letter demanding internal communications from Apple's top executives]] is now paying out document by document: this release shows that when an Amazon ad promoted buying Kindle books inside the iOS app, Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller moved to shut down in-app purchases of those books entirely. It sits alongside the [[a:956244|Eddy Cue emails from the same probe showing Apple weighing a 40% cut of first-year subscription revenue]] as evidence lawmakers are assembling about how Apple polices digital content sold through its devices.
First-order effects
Amazon's Kindle app on iOS loses the ability to sell e-books in-app, pushing Kindle buyers to purchase outside the iPhone ecosystem rather than pay Apple's terms.
Jobs and Schiller's decision becomes documentary evidence in the House antitrust probe, directly implicating two of Apple's most senior figures in content-gatekeeping calls.
Second-order effects
The disclosure strengthens the committee's broader file on App Store leverage — the same record later showed Apple telling [[a:1159769|Netflix that dropping its in-app purchase tests would limit co-marketing and on-store featuring]], giving regulators a repeated pattern rather than a one-off.
Third-order effects
If the probe keeps surfacing internal deliberations like these, Apple faces mounting pressure to defend content-purchase rules that treat rival platforms' storefronts as threats — the structural question being whether gatekeeper platforms can restrict a competitor's checkout inside their own walled garden.
The trend: Regulators and litigation discovery are steadily exposing the internal decisions behind App Store gatekeeping, turning decade-old executive emails into live ammunition in the antitrust fight over platform rules.
Interesting exchanges and a reminder that this is 2010 a very different moment in time for OS churn compared to today. Still, maybe the answer could have been working with Kindle to deliver a unique experience on iOS https://twitter.com/...
“Phil Schiller wrote to Jobs, internet services lead Eddy Cue, and product marketing head Greg Joswiak about how Amazon was marketing the Kindle mobile app at the time as a way to easily read Kindle books across both an iPhone and an Android device.” https://www.theverge.com/...
Not being able to buy Kindle books on iOS is one of the longest-running tech irritations going. Turns out it's because Phil Schiller didn't like an Amazon ad showing people easily switching from an iPhone to Android and Steve Jobs decided to shut it down. https://www.theverge.com…
For fun (yes really) skimmed a few docs and have discovered that Tim Cook sends those terrifying “Thoughts?” Boss Email Forwards. https://twitter.com/...
“Having Tim Cook say that everyone is treated equally when it is clearly not the case is not a good look”, providing false testimony in front of congress is a lot worse than “not a good look”. Watch the replay, watch them got sworn in under oath. https://9to5mac.com/...
This email chain shows Tim Cook offering contacts for Baidu to fast track app approvals, which doesn't line up with all app developers being treated the same. Baidu though was integrated into iOS at the time. https://twitter.com/...
One of the reasons I think yesterday's hearing was a success is that it let Congress put so much evidence like this in the record, and in front of the CEOs, who all acted stunned and unfamiliar with their own decisions. https://www.theverge.com/...
Now we know how Apple convinced Amazon to finally put Prime Video on the App Store in 2017: Apple agreed to only take 15% of revenue from Prime Video subscriptions made on iOS, versus the 30% they were taking from others. https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
But that could of course quickly change. If Big Tech defeats this round of scrutiny, they may well decide that 40% is a more apt level of tribute. Like Apple is already on the record considering! https://twitter.com/...
Telegram follows Spotify + Rakuten as it files an App Store antitrust complaint to EU. “Every quarter, Apple receives billions of dollars from third-party apps. Meanwhile, the expenses required to host and review these apps are in the tens of millions.” https://www.ft.com/...
“Eddy Cue and Jeff Bezos negotiated directly on the deal” Yesterday Bezos said he wasn't familiar with negotiations to put HBOMax on Amazon Fire. $T $AMZN https://twitter.com/...