The Department of Justice (DOJ) is carrying out at least a preliminary antitrust investigation into Apple blocking Beeper, the unofficial app which gave Android users access to iMessage. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also appears to be “evaluating” Apple’s actions.
Today’s report follows a call for a DOJ investigation by a bipartisan group of senators, and Bleeper’s announcement that it has now given up any hope of keeping the app working …
Apple blocking Beeper
Apple has consistently declined to make iMessage available on Android devices, viewing it as a key selling point for iPhone. There have been various attempts by third-parties to find workarounds for this, often with horrendous privacy implications. This included a sketchy approach by a previous version of Beeper back in 2021.
Fast-forward to this month, and Beeper Mini was announced. Of particular note, it didn’t require users to have an Apple ID – they could instead simply link their phone number to the service.
Apple quickly closed the loophole used by the app, and effectively said that it would take any further action needed.
Beeper fought back, with an update which worked, albeit now requiring users to create an Apple ID. Apple quickly killed that one too. The cat-and-mouse games continued, with the iPhone maker successfully blocking more than 60% of Beeper Mini users.
Beeper’s next attempts got a lot less practical for Android users, as they required access to a Mac or – even more absurdly – a jailbroken iPhone.
Finally, the company yesterday announced that Apple had beaten it, admitting that the fight was unsustainable.
Department of Justice investigating
Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers asked the DOJ to investigate whether Apple was breaching antitrust laws. We noted at the time that this was a real stretch, given that all the iPhone maker was doing was taking action to secure its servers after vulnerabilities were identified.
But while nothing has been officially announced, The New York Times today says that the DOJ is indeed looking into the matter.
The Justice Department has taken interest in the case. Beeper Mini met with the department’s antitrust lawyers on Dec. 12, two people familiar with the meeting said. Eric Migicovsky, a co-founder of the app’s parent company, Beeper, declined to comment on the meeting, but the department is in the middle of a four-year-old investigation into Apple’s anticompetitive behavior.
Given the timings, it’s unclear whether this was in response to concerns raised by senators before the open letter was sent, or whether Beeper made an earlier complaint.
The FTC may be getting involved too
The paper also suggests that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting involved. It notes that an FTC blog post yesterday appeared to be very much on-point for this issue.
In the face of concerns about anticompetitive conduct, companies may claim privacy and security reasons as justifications for refusing to have their products and services interoperate with other companies’ products and services. As an agency that enforces both competition and consumer protection laws, the Commission is uniquely situated to evaluate claims of privacy and data security that implicate competition.
The agency said back in 2021 that security claims by companies “should be rejected if found to be a mere pretext for anticompetitive conduct.”
9to5Mac’s Take
These latest developments up the ante here, for sure, especially the FTC reiterating its own view of security measures.
All the same, I still can’t see Apple being found guilty of an antitrust violation simply by taking action to secure its servers against what is undeniably unauthorized access, and the RCS U-turn is almost certainly enough to satisfy messaging interoperability requirements, even in Europe.
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