The antitrust subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives has just released a large treasure trove of internal documents from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google as part of its vast investigation into the technology industry. The documents reveal the internal machinations of the companies that are generally very secret, and even include some buried emails from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, which we have shared below.
Two sets of emails discuss decisions that, to this day, prevent iPhone and iPad users from buying digital books in Amazon apps. (You must use a web browser as an alternative solution).
In a November 2010 email, Chief Marketing Officer Phil Schiller wrote to Jobs, Internet Services Leader Eddy Cue, and Chief Product Marketing Officer Greg Joswiak about how Amazon was marketing the Kindle mobile app at the time as a way to easily read Kindle books on both an iPhone and an Android device. Jobs said: “[i]It’s time for Amazon to decide to use our payment mechanism or withdraw [of the App Store]”And followed with”[a]and I think it’s time to start applying this evenly, except for existing subscriptions (but applying it for new ones). “
In another conversation, Cue presented a draft of new subscription policies for apps on the App Store on February 6, 2011, days before Apple officially announced the new policies.
Jobs said: “I think this is all pretty simple: iBooks will be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to keep our heads up. One can read books bought elsewhere, just don’t buy / rent / subscribe from iOS without paying us, what that we recognize is prohibitive for many things. “
Amazon and other book sellers would then remove the link to the Kindle Store in the iOS app to comply with the new App Store subscription rules. You can’t buy Kindle books in the iOS app yet.
In another conversation in April 2010, former Facebook employee Joe Hewitt, who built the first versions of the Facebook iOS app, complained about the changes to the iOS 4.0 developer agreement for Apple’s developer relations leader, Ron Okamoto and with the press. Okamoto shared an update on the situation with Jobs, Schiller, and former chief software officer Scott Forstall.
Jobs replied, “I would suggest we cut Joe from now on.”
Other documents revealed that Apple gave Amazon a special deal to get Prime Video on the App Store, which you can read here. And if you missed the hearing yesterday, here is our summary of the whole thing.
