I'd love to see these kinds of comments eventually start evolving into more substantive discussion on HN. Sometimes its nice to see select quotes form the article which helps me decide whether to click through and read it. But a lot of the time, like this one, it doesn't add any clarity and I have no idea what 'latexr is actually thinking regarding the topic.

Personally, I've always felt that 30% was far, far too high for an app store. It's clearly a case of captive markets. I remember being just as annoyed 17 years ago in high school; upperclassmen were allowed to leave school during lunch and go to Little Caesars and get a whole pepperoni pizza for $5. Lowerclassmen were not allowed to leave school for lunch and had to buy food in the cafeteria where a single slice of pizza was $4.50 --- it was clearly predatory pricing. I personally went out, got a $5 large pizza with 8 slices, sold 4 slices at $1 each to classmates and enjoyed my half pizza for $1 every day. But it was a pretty infuriating situation to me, as the students themselves had no choice or control over the market, despite deploying a huge amount of economic purchasing power every day.

I don't think the app store itself is adding that much value (30%). I believe Apple's practices are probably currently legal (at least according to my lay interpretation of monopoly practices) - Apple simply doesn't have a monopoly on the market of phone apps when you consider that consumers can choose to switch to Android. Hey! can access 120 million Americans through android and/or 100 million Americans through iOS. If apple cuts them out of 45% of the market, they still have 55% remaining to access. They can even still just have their users go to their website to read email via the Safari browser.

Obviously the U.S. Government (various branches) occasionally change how they feel about things even without any substantive changes in statutory or constitutional law. So I make no predictions at all as to what happens in the next 5 years.

However, I can say what I'd like to see to improve innovation in Silicon Valley (and I would LOVE feedback on this idea, to improve it and help to make the idea better)

Primarily I'd like to see any internal API's that are used between business segments to be granted the same access at the same cost to third parties. For example:

- Google's "Popular Times" feature comes from Google Places (I think) and is used by Google Maps. However, third parties still have no access to this.

- iOS messaging could be accessible by XMPP or similar open protocols, same with Discord, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, etc.

- Instagram live broadcasts could be searched and accessed by API

etc etc.

I don't personally think there's a legal basis for compelling this right now, but statutory changes that promote something LIKE it would really be amazing for innovation. Letting _small companies_ compete with _small pieces_ of large companies would give consumers access to high quality alternatives for every service they need. I think it would also make the web more "hackable" (extensible) by teens and hobbyists, and likely propel our field forward immensely.

The walled gardens can be great options for convenient security (Apple's doing fairly well here honestly, even if not fantastically). But I'd like consumers to be able to access the data however is most convenient for them.