Apple's 30% tax: The long view

Another look at the company's in-app subscription rules, this time from 5,000 feet

Source: Apple, Google Earth

One of the things that made John Siracusa's analysis this week of Apple's (AAPL) App Store subscription policy so interesting is what he chose not to write about.

His essay, "The Apple Strategy Tax," which he posted Wednesday on Ars Technica, neatly sidesteps the emotionally charged tar pits in which so many commentators get mired. As he explained Friday at the end of his Hypercritical podcast with Dan Benjamin, he wanted to take the long view:

"I was not interested," he said, "in writing about whether it was mean of Apple to change its rules about in-app purchases. Whether it was right, morally right. Whether they're a big stinker, or even whether they're hurting their developers or helping people or hurting publishers or helping publishers or eliminating middlemen or becoming a middleman or any of those things that make people angry. I felt that that's well covered, and I didn't have anything to add to that topic"

What did interest Siracusa was the big picture -- the effect Apple's policy changes might have on the company in the long run. And from his perspective, Apple is starting to look a lot like Microsoft (MSFT) in the '90s.

But probably not in the way you think.

More

Posted in: App Store, Apple, Ars Technica, Dan Benjamin, Internet Explorer, iPad, John Siracusa, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Tablets

• Chrome browser now comfortably past 10% of market

  The Google browser showed a strong uptick over the holidays and into January.

  The latest numbers from NetApplications show that Google's (GOOG) Chrome continues to gain market share against Microsoft's (MSFT) Internet Explorer, whose share fell to 56% of the browser market.  Firefox, the number two browser, remained steady at over 22%. And Apple's (AAPL) Safari continues to grow steadily, crossing the 6% barrier for the first time, landing at 6.3%.

  Chrome and Safari are MORE

  Seth Weintraub - Feb 1, 2011 10:19 AM ET
  Posted in: Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Net Applications, Safari

• Chrome Crankshaft Javascript engine scores fluctuate

  How fast is fast?

  Google (GOOG) advertised its new Crankshaft Javascript rendering engine as 50% faster than the current version of its browser yesterday.  Computerworld did some testing and found out that Google was right...when tested on their own V8 testing platform.

  Chrome's "canary" build -- the least stable and most advanced version of the browser -- was 40.5% faster than the "dev" edition and 43.5% faster than the current "stable" version.

  It also MORE

  Seth Weintraub - Dec 8, 2010 6:03 PM ET
  Posted in: Chrome, Google, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Javascript, Sunspider, V8, Webkit

• Google: Chrome Browser has 120M active users

  The browser's adoption growth is exceeding all other browsers.

  We're following Google Chrome event live at YouTube.  Starting things off, Sundar Pichai, VP, Product Management at Google is giving us market share numbers.  Google (GOOG) announced 70 million users at Google I/O in May.  Today they are almost double that, at 120 million active users (which they say is conservative).  That comes out to 300% growth since January of this year.

  NetApplications has shown MORE

  Seth Weintraub - Dec 7, 2010 1:41 PM ET
  Posted in: browsers, Crankshaft, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Javascript

• Today in Tech: News around the Web

  A round-up of the companies, deals, and trends that made headlines.

  Every day, the Fortune staff spends hours poring over tech stories, posts, and reviews from all over the Web to keep tabs on the companies that matter. We've assembled the day's most newsworthy bits below.

  Dozens of online stores -- including Toys 'R' Us, Barnes & Noble (BKS), and Radio Shack (RSH) -- have teamed up to launch a counter-offensive to Yahoo's MORE
  JP Mangalindan, Writer - Oct 6, 2010 6:45 AM ET
  Posted in: Barnes & Noble, Blippy, EA, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Foursquare, Internet Explorer, mint.com, Motorola, Oracle, Radio Shack, Samsung, ShopRunner, Toys R Us, web browser

• Today in Tech: News around the Web

  A round-up of the companies, deals, and trends that made headlines.

  Every day, the Fortune staff spends hours poring over tech stories, posts, and reviews from all over the Web to keep tabs on the companies that matter. We've assembled the morning's most newsworthy bits below.

  Microsoft (MSFT) and Facebook are in talks to expand their search partnership, which could give Bing access to anonymized data from consumer usage of the social network's MORE
  JP Mangalindan, Writer - Sep 16, 2010 8:18 AM ET
  Posted in: Chrome, Facebook, Financial, Greystripe, Halo, HP, IBM, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mobile, Safari, Steve Jobs, WebOS, Xbox 360, Yahoo

• Bing's team answers Google Instant with tricks of their own

  Competition has accelerated innovation in the search space, with Bing and Google leapfrogging each other with new technologies.

  Google went live last week with Google Instant, changing the search page forever. Microsoft isn't sitting still, however, and they've introduced some pretty interesting innovations of their own.

  Microsoft (MSFT) introduced some of those features today in San Francisco at the IE 9 launch event. Conveniently, a lot of Bing's upcoming features rely on HTML5and MORE

  Seth Weintraub - Sep 15, 2010 9:41 PM ET
  Posted in: Bing, Google Instant, HTML5, Internet Explorer, Microsoft

• Microsoft vs. Europe: Possible truce, with Windows 7

  By Peter Gumbel

  Microsoft's titanic struggle with Europe's trust busters appears to be finally drawing to a close -- thanks in part to Windows 7, the new operating system the U.S. software giant is releasing worldwide this week.

  The two sides have been at loggerheads for a decade over the European Union's allegations that Microsoft has abused its dominant market position to push its own products such as Windows Media Player and MORE

  Oct 21, 2009 11:05 AM ET
  Posted in: Antitrust, European Union, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Windows 7

• Is IE8 the Vista of Web browsers?

  UPDATE: Microsoft's own tests find IE8 faster than Firefox. See links to pdfs here. Independent reports treat the company's tests somewhat skeptically. See here and here.

  - - -

  I have not tested Internet Explorer 8 -- the new version of Microsoft's (MSFT) industry-leading Web browser, which was released here on Thursday. And since Microsoft has made it clear that it has no intention of writing a version for the Apple (AAPL) MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 19, 2009 11:47 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Firefox, IE8, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Safari, Vista

• Google's Chrome-plated strategy

  By Michal Lev-Ram

  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - If Google's new Chrome Web browser succeeds, going online will be an all-Google experience.

  "The Web has evolved pretty dramatically, but the underlying browser architecture is still very similar to the original Netscape browser," Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management, said at a press conference Tuesday at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters.

  Google (GOOG) says Chrome was designed to be "streamlined and simple." The MORE

  Michal Lev-Ram, writer - Sep 2, 2008 1:39 PM ET
  Posted in: Advertising, Firebox, Google Chrome, Internet, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla