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A group of four US senators and representatives from both parties asked the Justice Department whether Apple violated antitrust laws by shutting down an app that enables Android devices to send text messages to iPhone users via iMessage.
The lawmakers’ letter — signed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), along with Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Ken Buck (R-Colorado) — argued that “the actions taken by… Apple’s recent disabling of the Beeper Mini’s competition hurts, removes choices for consumers and will discourage future innovation and investment in interoperable messaging services.
Klobuchar and Lee are leaders of the Senate Judiciary’s Antitrust Subcommittee.
“We also fear that these types of tactics will discourage future investment more broadly,” the memo, which was sent to the Justice Department’s top antitrust official Jonathan Kanter on Sunday, said in a screenshot shared on Instagram’s Threads.
“Therefore, we are referring this matter to the Antitrust Division to investigate whether this potential anticompetitive conduct by Apple violates the antitrust laws.”
The story began on December 8, a few days after the launch of Beeper Mini, when outages started affecting the app.
A week later, the outage continued, at which point the Beeper Mini confirmed in a message Share X That Apple “intentionally blocked the delivery of iMessages” to about 5% of its users.
As of December 17, Beeper Mini CEO Eric Migicowski said about 60% of users were blocked from sending iMessages, which are typically only operable between two Apple products, according to The Verge.
Beeper Mini said it was able to bring the encrypted messenger to Android by reverse engineering the iMessage protocol.
Migicowski told TechCrunch earlier this month that Beeper Mini’s technology allows Android users — whose texts poorly appear in a green bubble to iPhone users — to send blue-bubbled texts to Apple devices.
The company told TechCrunch that Beeper cannot access the contents of users’ messages. It only supports iPhone-only features like high-resolution photos and videos as well as read receipts, group chats, emoji reactions, editing and unsending messages, among others.
An Apple spokesperson insisted to The Verge that the Beeper Mini poses a security risk to Apple, leading to its ban.
“We have taken steps to protect our users by blocking technologies that exploit fake credentials in order to access iMessage,” Nadine Higa, Apple’s senior director of public relations, told the outlet.
“These technologies pose significant risks to user security and privacy, including the potential for metadata exposure and enabling spam and phishing attacks,” they added.
However, lawmakers pointed to a Commerce Department report Apple released earlier this year that described Apple as a “gatekeeper” with “monopolistic status,” arguing that the Cupertino, California-based tech giant would engage in a transaction Anticompetitive to “lock users into Apple’s ecosystem of devices and services.”
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They also cited Migicowski’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December 2021, when he said that “dominant messaging services will use their position to impose barriers to interoperability” and block companies like Beeper from offering certain services.
“Given Apple’s recent actions, this concern is clear,” they wrote.
A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed receipt of the letter to The Post, but declined to speak further on the matter.
Apple representatives did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Apple has long been under pressure to make its iMessage network as compatible with conversations between Android devices and iPhones as it is between two iPhones.
News outlet 9to5Mac reports that Apple may implement a Rich Communications Service to make messaging between Android and iPhone users a less terrible experience, as photos and videos won’t be so blurry and all the bubbles will be blue.
However, Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn’t seem too concerned about the bubble color dispute, and didn’t offer much insight into how the company plans to make it easier for iPhone owners to text Android users.
The current solution is available, he said during Vox Media’s Code 2022 conference last August: “Buy your mom an iPhone.”
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In recent news, lawmakers have raised concerns about Apple’s decision to shut down its iMessage app on Android, prompting calls for an investigation by the Justice Department. This bold move by Apple has sparked a debate about competition and antitrust within the tech industry, with lawmakers questioning whether the decision was made in an effort to stifle competition and maintain a monopoly over messaging apps. As the debate continues to unfold, the Justice Department is being urged to take action and examine the implications of Apple’s actions on the broader tech ecosystem.