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Opinion

Powers: Congress should do more, pass the Open App Markets Act

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I was happily surprised to open the Daily Independent and see that President Biden had signed the CHIPS Act.

It is nice to see Congress working to get important bipartisan bills passed.

Another great step our Congress could do is to pass the Open App Markets Act, another great bipartisan bill that would strengthen our digital economy by creating a level playing field for small and medium sized app developers.

Currently the big tech platforms, namely Apple and Google, run their marketplaces in a very unfair way. They require all in app purchases to go through their platform and then charge up to a 30% fee off the top to do so.

Just getting an app approved for their platform can be very difficult. The have often capricious standards for getting an app approved and developers often find themselves jumping through hoops, especially if the platform feels the app may compete with one of their own.

I hope this bill continues to move through both houses to pass this year. It would be a huge win for all of us.