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In the classic Akira Kurosawa movie Rashomon, four witnesses to a murder describe the event in four conflicting ways. Watching that movie would have been good preparation for the contradictory narratives that greeted Apples seemingly momentous news today about changes to its app policies in Europe.

Apple outlined those changes in a news release and a long set of posts for developers. It will make the shifts in March to comply with the EUs Digital Markets Act. The biggest of them will enable sideloading of apps in the EU through alternative app marketplaces for the iPhone, which will in theory shatter Apples stranglehold over the distribution of software on its smartphones and other devices. Apple also slashed developer fees in its own EU App Store to a 17% cut of transactions for digital goods and services (plus a 3% payment processing fee), from their current level of 30%.

But Apples new policies were thick with figurative fine print that made it difficult to figure out exactly how theyll affect developers, along with a passive-aggressive tone about potential security and privacy risks from the changes that make it clear Apple is not excited about complying with the DMA. The complexity of those changes may explain why some figures in the tech world, including longtime Apple critics like Basecamps David Heinemeier Hansson, praised the changes, while others, such as Epic Games Tim Sweeney, decried them as an anticompetitive scheme rife with new Junk Fees.

Sweeneys dig was an apparent reference to a new Apple core technology fee of 0.50 euros that the company will charge EU developers for the first installation of their apps per year, starting after the first million installations of the app. The policy, which applies to both the Apple App Store and alternative app marketplaces, will partially offset the savings developers see from Apples lower commissions in the EU. Still, Apple reassured developers that less than 1% of developers will pay the fee on their EU apps, presumably due to the 1 million install threshold.

But that could be a bit misleading, at least when it comes to alternative app marketplaces. Thats because Apple also plans to charge those marketplaces the annual fee for the first installation of every app a user gets through those marketplaces, regardless of the number of app installations. Or so it seems: Apples language in its new policy isnt clear about whether the fee applies to apps users install through other marketplaces, or to the app that contains the marketplace itself (an Apple spokesperson didnt clarify the ambiguity). If its the former case, its a fair bet that most alternative app marketplaces in the EU wont be able to eat the new Apple fee themselves and will simply pass that cost on to developers through their own marketplace fees. While Apples changes seem big on the surface, its too early to tell how much impact theyll have.

The FTC Moves on AI Deals

Its amazing to think this was the second most important tech policy story of the day, as its a big one: The Federal Trade Commission revealed that it has started demanding information from three big tech companiesMicrosoft, Amazon and Alphabetand the two high-profile generative artificial intelligence startups each company has invested in and partnered with, OpenAI (for Microsoft) and Anthropic (for Amazon and Alphabet).

For the FTC, the information requests are a sign that the agencys chair, Lina Khan, doesnt intend to limit her policing of big tech to the acquisitionsbig and smallthat have become increasingly difficult for those companies to pull off. At the same time, the agencys probe seems a bitsoft. Khan, in a statement, referred to it as a study that will examine whether the AI deals by dominant companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition.

I asked Mark Lemley, a law professor at Stanford University, to translate what the FTC is up to. Among the agencys concerns, he said, is a general risk that dominant tech firms are co-opting disruptive innovation by partnering with the startups who might otherwise be well positioned to compete with or even displace them.

In other words, are Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet doing these AI deals because they want to prevent OpenAI and Anthropic from replacing them in enterprise software, online shopping and search? It will be fascinating to see if the FTCs study has enough substance to uncover some real dirt, if any, behind their motivations.

In Other News

• Microsoft is laying off 1,900 people in the companys gaming division, which will include cutting staff at recently acquired Activision Blizzard and also Microsofts Xbox unit (more here).
• BuzzFeed is trying to sell First We Feast and Tasty, two of the media companys food websites, The Wall Street Journal reported, while Vice Media is trying to sell Refinery29, a lifestyle content website (more here).
• JPMorgan Chase shuffled some of its highest ranking investment banking and consumer executives, setting the stage for who might succeed CEO Jamie Dimon (more here).

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