New reports are revealing some aggressive lobbying by one of the biggest tech companies on the planet.
Emily Birnbaum, writing for Politico, digs into Apple’s current practices in influencing state governments around America, as critics of big tech firms look at their antitrust and privacy bona fides.
Much of this, Birnbaum points out, is aimed at control of the company’s app store, but could theoretically extend to other issues where states are considering legislation that Apple doesn’t like.
It’s an uneven fight in some ways – Apple is a company with a market cap of $2.42 trillion, a number bigger than a lot of national economies.
State governments, on the other hand, are, as Birnbaum puts it, “poorly resourced.”
Then there’s pressure on local politicians to stay business-friendly.
“They’ve thrown those dollars around, people have seen that and I think legislators are running a little scared and saying, ‘I’m not touching this, I’m not going to put my fingers in this because it could be a negative impact on me in the future,” said Republican Arizona State Rep. Regina Cobb, who pioneered a related bill that failed to pass in her state.
It wasn’t too long ago that we were reporting on Apple practices described as shady by some in Europe, where Apple allegedly used Irish tax laws to decrease its tax burden strategically.
Now it seems that the company is also benefiting from arbitrage related to different U.S. states wanting to give businesses incentive to move to their jurisdictions.
Apple is by no means the first company to do this, but the full picture shows that its power and prestige gives the company an upper hand
“Apple used its power to not only deprive American consumers of greater innovation and options, but also to silence critics and prevent the debate of these critical issues from even happening,” Meghan DiMuzio, executive director of the Coalition for App Fairness, told Birnbaum, highlighting some of the strongest criticism of the post-Jobs regime.
Look for the impact of Apple policy on future stock prices.
