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Musk Drops Apple From Antitrust Suit

Did dropping Apple expose a flimsy antitrust crusade or is the iOS-ChatGPT deal exactly what the Sherman Act exists to stop?

6 hours ago·Updated 1 hour ago

Story

Above: Elon Musk at a meeting in Beijing, China on May 14. Image credit: Johannes Neudecker/picture alliance/Getty Images

The Spin

Narrative A

Dropping Apple from the case says everything about how flimsy this antitrust crusade always was. Grok itself topped the App Store charts, as did DeepSeek and Perplexity, which shreds the whole preferential treatment theory. The OpenAI fight looks just as shaky, with his earlier lawsuit getting thrown out this May. Lawfare is exactly the right word for Musk's strategy

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Narrative B

A smartphone gatekeeper with 65% market share cutting an exclusive deal with the chatbot leader holding over 80% is exactly the kind of arrangement the Sherman Act exists to stop. Baking ChatGPT into iOS hands one company billions of Siri prompts while rivals starve for data. Self-preferencing sank Google Shopping in Europe, and the same logic applies here.

JURIST

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