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Microsoft’s latest move in its war against Apple’s App Store rules is a list of 10 principles outlining what the Redmond company will and will not do to developers who publish apps for Windows 10 and distribute them on the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft says it won’t block competing app stores on Windows and won’t block apps due to a developer’s business model, such as if an app’s content is installed on a device or streamed from the cloud.
Microsoft published the 10 principles a day after Congress released a damning report on anti-competitive practices at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The EU opened its investigation into Apple’s App Store rules in June.
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“Apple’s monopoly power over the distribution of software to iOS devices has resulted in harm to competitors and competition, reducing quality and innovation among application developers and increasing prices and reducing options for consumers,” he wrote the Subcommittee on Defense of Judicial Competition of the US House of Representatives.
In establishing the new principles, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Rima Alaily recognized the importance of app stores for software developers.
“We and others have raised questions and at times expressed concerns about app stores on other digital platforms. However, we recognize that we must practice what we preach,” he said.
Microsoft’s second principle regarding content streaming is central to its complaints about Apple’s rules for Microsoft’s Xbox xCloud game streaming service.
After banning game streaming, Apple last month changed its App Store rules to allow services like Sony PlayStation, Google Stadia, and Nvidia GeForce Now. But Apple requires these services to submit an app for each game rather than just examining the game streaming service’s app. Microsoft has opposed that rule.
Microsoft also says that it “will not block a Windows application based on the developer’s choice of which payment system to use to process purchases made in their application.”
Google is stepping up enforcement of a Play Store policy that requires companies that sell digital products, such as content subscriptions, to use its billing system. Google is giving companies like Netflix and Spotify until September 31, 2021 to switch to its in-app billing system, but will also apply the same rules to its own apps.
While Google Android allows users to install apps from third-party app stores, iOS users don’t have that option. The highest-profile fight over in-app payments is between Apple and Epic Games, which launched their own in-app payment system for Fortnite.
Nor will Microsoft “force a developer to sell anything they don’t want to sell within their application.”
This point touches on some of the complaints that iOS developers told members of Congress for their report on whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are violating antitrust law.
Andy Yen, CEO of encrypted email service ProtonMail, told The Verge that in 2018 Apple “out of the blue” required ProtonMail to add an in-app purchase option to remain in the App Store.
According to Yen, Apple found that ProtonMail offered paid plans on its own website and then required it to implement in-app purchases. ProtonMail hadn’t created its own in-app payment system like Epic had for Fortnite. Apple also prevented ProtonMail from updating its app until it was compliant, it said.
“There is nothing you can say to that. They are judge, jury and executioner on their platform, and you can take it or leave it,” Yen said.
“You can’t get any kind of fair hearing to determine if it’s justifiable or not, everything they say goes. We just delivered to save our business.”
The ProtonMail case is similar to Apple’s recent demand for WordPress to implement in-app purchases to sell domains or block its app update. Apple eventually retracted its lawsuit, admitting it was wrong.
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Microsoft is committed not to prevent developers from communicating directly with their users through the application for legitimate business purposes, to apply the same standards to its own applications as competing applications, and to be transparent about its policies.
Microsoft’s 10 Principles are based on ideas from the recently launched Coalition for App Fairness, whose founding members include Epic Games, Spotify, ProtonMail, Tile, and Basecamp, the maker of the Hey email app. Basecamp fell out with Apple after it was prevented from updating its app until it added in-app purchases.
However, Microsoft will not apply the same principles to the Xbox store.
“Game consoles are specialized devices optimized for particular use. Although highly appreciated by their fans, they are outnumbered in the market by PCs and phones,” said Microsoft’s Alaily.
“And the business model for game consoles is very different from the ecosystem that surrounds PCs or phones. Console manufacturers like Microsoft invest significantly in the development of dedicated console hardware, but sell it below cost or with very low margins to create a market that game developers and publishers can benefit from. ”
