I think a free market has to be free -- that practices that stifle competition hurt consumers immediately.

I think Apple's locking out of Google is very similar to Microsoft's locking out of Netscape. It's reasonable tobring the samre monopolies law to bear, I think.

I agree in principle, but it's a difficult line to draw. There is no clear distinction between contracts that stifle competition and contracts that are legitimate means of competing.

There are all sorts of exclusivity arrangements or vendors selling only their own branded wares or that of their partners in their own store. It's not like Apple invented this scheme. For a very long time telcos selected every single application that was allowed to run on their network.

Consumers have their own means of defending against such practices. They can simply stop buying iPhones for instance. It's not like there were no alternatives. As a consumer, in this case, I have to say don't need the government.

It's not really comparable, sizewise Microsoft was much bigger than netscape at the time, and the only route to the desktop was through microsoft. The iphone is not a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination, even though the 'hip' people all seem to have them.

(hm, the implicit conclusion is that I'm not hip...)

Not the same size, but vastly more controlling. On a windows machine you could always install netscape. On an iPhone you have to download apps only from apple-approved sources.

I suppose the question is whether the concerns of one marketplace (handsets) should override theneed of another (apps). As someone who hasalready bought an iPhone for what is a considerable amount of money, I don't like the turn towards crippling a product I thought was mine.

It would be less if an issue if the iPhone weren't so popular and AT&T weren't involved. But the iPhone takes a nearly dominant share of the smart-phone market right now, and AT&T has even been convicted as a monopolist in the past. The two-year service contracts and shortage of decent competitors probably contribute, too.

It was cute when Apple locked down its operating systems, because there was no serious threat to the market -- but with two big companies involved in flagrantly anti-competitive behavior, in a market the government understands better, there's a higher standard for fair play here.

There's a pretty large number of credible competitors in the smart-phone market - RIM, Palm, Nokia, Google, Microsoft and probably a few others. Also, there are other carriers than just AT&T.

So at this point I fail to see what's the issue other than some disappointed iPhone users. Maybe there's a legal problem. We will see.