Representatives of Apple and Google have been questioned in today’s antitrust hearing in the US Senate on their third-party app protections or have a “firewall”.
They were asked whether there are procedures in place to prevent them leveraging data from third-parties on their app store and using it to create their own products, according to a report from TechCrunch.
Senator Richard Blumenthal stated the practice was common enough to earn a nickname in Apple’s developer community of Sherlocking.
The term stems from the early 2000s, when Apple improved its search engine software with the same functionality that was being provided by a third-party app named Watson. This essentially made Watson redundant, the article said.
This is reportedly the first in a number of similar situations where Apple has released tools that were offered by third-party apps on their store.
Apple chief compliance officer Kyle Andeer claimed there are controls in place. Andeer also pointed out Apple has only released a handful of application and services, and there are multiple alternatives to its products on the Apple Store, of which, many are more popular than Apple’s.
However, Blumenthal interpreted the answer as to whether they have a “firewall” to prevent access to third-party services data as a no.
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