Apple buying Google ads for high-value subscription apps
It&#x27;s actually an interesting question how nefarious or harmful this actually is.<p>We obviously know why Apple is doing it and why the apps in question don&#x27;t like it.<p>But a couple things occurred to me:<p>You could view this like Amazon giving away your book or android app in a promotion. As I understand it, they still pay the author as if it were a sale, so the author seemingly has nothong to complain about. Even that still seems wrong to me but that&#x27;s the argument Amazon uses. That is essentially, no, litterally, Amazon advertizing your product for their own purposes.<p>Another argument Apple and Apple devotees and general &quot;invisible hand&quot; worshippers may try to use is: Any sales generated by the ads would not have existed without the ad, and so it&#x27;s not taking anything from the app developer.<p>I don&#x27;t really buy either theory, but it does take some thinking to describe a mechanism by which they cause harm and should be considered invalid.<p>They hold enough water to convince a lot of people who want to be convinced, and the arguments against just sound kind of weak and whiny.