Italy’s antitrust agency AGCM said on Thursday it had opened a probe into U.S. In the same month, France also announced its own investigation.Ī new report says that the French Competition Authority has found evidence of anticompetitive behavior by Apple in regard to app tracking.Īnd Reuters reports that today Italy has done the same. Progress has been slow, so far concluding only that Apple is sufficiently powerful to be subjected to closer regulation. In particular, Apple’s rules have raised the initial suspicion of self-preferencing and/or impediment of other companies. The Bundeskartellamt has initiated a proceeding against the technology company Apple to review under competition law its tracking rules and the App Tracking Transparency Framework. The German investigation began in June of last year. Apple antitrust probe extends to Italyīoth France and Germany have already opened antitrust investigations into this. In particular, Apple is accused of hurting rival ad platforms in order to boost business for its own App Store ad offers. In particular, it objects to the fact that Apple’s own apps don’t have to ask permission for tracking, enabling the iPhone maker to gather valuable data that is not available to third-party developers. If you say no (as most people do), then the apps are not allowed to use that system.įacebook and Instagram owner Meta was especially upset by this, predicting that the change in policy would cost it billions of dollars per year. Now, app developers must ask you if you want to allow that tracking. This changed with the introduction of App Tracking Transparency. This enabled developers to sell personalized ads within their apps, which bring in more revenue than generic ads. Previously, Apple was happy to allow apps to freely use anonymized tracking IDs to link ad delivery to website visits. This latest investigation may be new, but its topic is not: Italy is the third country to question the legality of Apple setting tougher privacy requirements for third-party apps than it does for its own apps … Apple exempt from App Tracking Transparency rules Just yesterday we learned that the European Union was ramping up its investigation into Apple Pay, and today Italy’s competition watchdog has announced an investigation into the company’s App Store privacy policies. Another day, another Apple antitrust probe.
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