Apr 27th, 2021 - Category: Strategy
First, two massive companies, Google and Oracle, went head to head recently in a battle of epic proportions. Very few people probably noticed or understood the topic, “Are Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) protected by copyright law.” It’s a fight that has been going on for over a decade that finally ended up in front of the US Supreme Court with Oracle seeking billions in damages from Google. The allegation was that Google copied “37 API design specifications and implementations and 11 source code files” from Oracle’s Java programming language when Google created the Android mobile operating system.
What IS an API? It’s not a new concept, dating back to the 1940s when the first computers were developed. It’s a bit of code that simplifies programmers’ lives by providing access to standardized tools so they can focus on the high level tasks. For example, there is an API for a button press on a smartphone. In iOS calling this API is as simple as: “Button(“Sign In”, action: signIn)”
If Oracle had won, there would have been the possibility that a company could have copyrighted this API and then sued other companies just for using an API named “Button” in their own software. The Wikipedia and ArsTechnica articles give the details and you can even read the entire 62 page “Opinion of the Court.” In a hypocritical twist, Oracle has done the same to other companies repeatedly including founding it’s entire business in the 1970s by copying IBM’s Structured Query Language (SQL) implementation and never paying IBM a cent in licensing fees. To hear a fun, informal conversation on API copyrights, listen to the Accidental Tech Episode 45 at the 51 minute mark where three experts explain the absurdity of the entire case.
API copyrights are a great example of something that would be ridiculous to own and damaging to the tech world. In a second example, can a company own “access” to a device that a consumer purchases? This is the question at the center of another “epic” debate, this time between a company called “Epic Games” (makers of Fortnite) and Apple. I wrote a little about this in last year’s post “Is Apple Playing With Monopoly Money,” but a lot has happened since then.
If Apple were a country its current valuation of around $2.3 trillion would be larger than the economies of South Korea, Italy, or Canada. So it is not surprising that it finds itself involved in one major issue after another, especially as a result of its ongoing campaign to protect its users’ privacy, security, and to keep its products working reliably. These three issues are core to Apple’s argument that companies like Epic should not have free / open access to iOS devices.
Yet users have open access to their Android phones and it survives (mostly) securely. Windows is also open and mostly secure despite the tempting target that its massive installed base presents to hackers. And Linux is completely open, running most of the Internet itself. Linux is especially interesting because its source code is openly available on the web.
Maybe the answer is that there’s a place for more than one philosophy. Apple’s “closed ecosystem” is attractive to some types of users and Linux’s “completely open” system works for others. Why should Epic be allowed to force Apple to operate according to what Epic thinks is “best for the world” (not to mention the billions Epic stands to make if they win). The battle has been going on for several months and it shows no sign of ending soon. Here is the full set of slides Apple and Epic presented to the court and as usual ArsTechnica has an excellent analysis that focuses more on the highlights.
Should Apple “own” access to our iPhones and iPads? Is the App Store just a monopoly in disguise printing money for Apple at the expense of developers who do all the hard work? Will Apple prevail over Epic? It’s certainly too soon to say, but as ArsTechnica quipped “Whoever wins this case will get a llama full of prizes!”
(Llamas, also known as Llama Pinatas, are the main “loot boxes” in Fortnite)