That came in a Senate hearing on Wednesday which signified the increasing agreement among Democrats, Republicans and smaller companies that the world’s biggest tech firms have become too powerful.

Amy Klobuchar, the top Senate Democrat on antitrust issues, said Apple and Google can use their power to “exclude or suppress apps that compete with their own products” and “charge excessive fees that affect competition.”

Several small companies including Tile, Spotify and Match Group criticized the two tech giants over their dominance.

While Tile said Apple boxed out its products and then copied them, Spotify testified Apple blocked it from informing customers that they could find cheaper prices outside its iPhone app and yet Match Group said that it now paid nearly $500 million a year to Apple and Google in app store fees, the company’s single largest expense.

In response to their complaints, representatives for Apple and Google said the companies need to have tight control over their stores and the associated revenue-sharing requirements in order to enforce and pay for security measures aimed at protecting consumers from harmful apps and practices.

They also said they do not copy competitors and that few apps pay their commissions.

However, both Democratic and Republican senators were skeptical of those explanations.

“Google and Apple are here to defend the patently indefensible,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. “If you presented this fact pattern in a law school antitrust exam, the students would laugh the professor out of the classroom, because it is such an obvious violation of our antitrust laws.”

In addition, explanations from Apple’s Chief Compliance Officer Kyle Andeer and Google’s Wilson White, senior director for government affairs, as to why the companies’ fees do not apply to Uber Technologies Inc, (UBER.N) and apps selling physical goods did not satisfy senators either.

“I feel like unfrozen caveman lawyer,” Senator Mike Lee said. “I’m not grasping it.”

Meanwhile, Blumenthal expressed concern about a call Match said it received late on Tuesday from its business counterpart at Google.

Match Group said one of its employees received the call from a Google account representative who raised questions about its written testimony.

Match’s Chief Legal Officer Jared Sine said Google sought to know why his planned testimony deviated from previous comments the company had made.

“It looks like a threat, it talks like a threat, it’s a threat,” Blumenthal said of the call, promising to probe Google’s action further.

Sine also said Google and Apple both exact an onerous 30% of any digital transaction, causing the prices to increase for consumers.

Match pays around $500 million in fees to the app stores per year, the company’s single largest expense, according to Sine.

The testimony came a day after Apple said it would start to sell AirTags – which can be attached to items like car keys to help users find them when they are lost – in direct competition with Tile, which has been selling a similar tracking device for over a decade.

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The figures cited in a Sunday report by the semi-official Tasnim news agency showed that Apple phone imports into Iran had amounted to $600 million in value terms in the calendar year to March 20.

The report said that some 600,000 Apple phones had been imported into Iran over the period despite the fact that country was under the harshest of economic sanctions by the United States.

Senior Iranian officials have cautioned against using hard-won foreign currency funds for imports of luxury goods at a time the country is struggling under illegal US bans.

Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has specifically mentioned Apple phones in his speeches in recent years, urging Iranians to boycott the “luxury” product to signal their discontent at US policies toward Iran.

However, an Iranian telecoms ministry official told Tasnim that Apple phone imports into Iran had been responsible for nearly 20% of the value all mobile phone shipments that arrived in the country in the year to March.

Iran spent $2.9 billion on imports of 15.6 million phones over the period, said Akbar Soltani, who added that the government should further raise a current 12% tariff on imports of phones with a price of more than $600 to prevent more losses on the country’s foreign currency resources.

The United States still maintains a raft of economic sanctions that were imposed on Iran in 2018 after a former US government pulled out of an international agreement on the country’s nuclear program.

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“Out of an abundance of caution and based on the latest advice from leading health experts, we’re closing all our corporate offices, stores, and contact centers in mainland China through February 9,” Apple said in a statement. The company said looked forward to re-opening stores “as soon as possible”, Reuters reported.

Earlier this week, Apple closed three stores in China due to concerns about the spread of the virus.

It’s joining a handful of overseas retailers, including Starbucks Corp and McDonald’s Corp to temporarily shut storefronts as a precautionary measure.

Many other companies, meanwhile, have called for employees in China to work from home and cease non-essential business travel in the first week of February.

Normally, businesses in China would be preparing to return to normal operations following the end of the week-long Lunar New Year Holiday.

Apple remains heavily reliant on China both for smartphone sales as well as for its supply chain and manufacturing. Many factories in Hubei province, including plants run by AB InBev and General Motors Co, have temporarily suspended production due to the virus.

In a recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was working out mitigation plans to deal with possible production loss from its suppliers in Wuhan. The city where the virus outbreak originated is home to several Apple suppliers.

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The Apple users have access to apps through App Store, which is not applicable for Iranian developer during past years due to U.S. sanctions, he explained.

Another method, which is used frequently in Iran, was an enterprise program, the app developers provide the iOS version on their website for Apple users, he said.

Apple blocks the enterprise programs due to copyright infringe and violating privacy policy.

The app develops in Iran are seeking for another method to provide Apple users with Iranian applications, he said.

However, it is believed that the Apple enterprise program block in Iran is the result of the essay by Nariman Gharib the presenter at the UK-based Manoto TV channel, which is officially viewed as an enemy of the Islamic Revolution.

In his essay, which appeared on February 1, 2019 on medium.com, he provides a list of Iranian banks, which use the iOS developer enterprise certificate program in Iran.

Apple does not have an App Store in Iran, but Iranian developers have created several apps for sale in other domestically developed App Stores, and iPhones are routinely smuggled into the country, despite an official ban on their sale.

However, Information and Telecommunication Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi announced in August 2017 that Apple holds 11 percent share of the Iranian cellphone market.

Apple removed Snapp, a ride-hailing app similar to Uber that is popular in Iran, from its app stores in August 2017. That followed the removal of apps for food delivery, shopping and other services.

In a message to Iranian developers whose apps were affected by the ban, Apple said, “Under the U.S. sanctions regulations, the App Store cannot host, distribute or do business with apps or developers connected to certain U.S. embargoed countries.”

The takedown appears to be an expansion of efforts to restrict Iranian titles that offer in-app transactions, AppleInsider, the news website for Apple products published.

According to the AppleInsider, the company has in the past banned certain apps created by Iranian developers in reaction to U.S. sanctions against that country; this most recently happened in August 2017. Those sanctions forbid Apple from selling hardware or distributing software in Iran.

 Apple bans Google internal iOS apps

According to The Verge, Apple shut down Google’s ability to distribute its internal iOS apps on January 31, 2019. A person familiar with the situation told The Verge that early versions of Google Maps, Hangouts, Gmail, and other pre-release beta apps stopped working alongside employee-only apps like a Gbus app for transportation and Google’s internal cafe app.

The block came after Google was found to be in violation of Apple’s app distribution policy, and followed a similar shutdown that was issued to Facebook in late January.

Apple is clearly sticking to its rules and applying them equally to Facebook, Google, and likely many other companies that get caught breaking Apple’s rules in the future.

There’s growing evidence that a number of companies are using Apple’s enterprise program to distribute apps to consumers. iOS developer Alex Fajkowski has discovered that Amazon, DoorDash, and Sonos all distribute beta versions of their apps to non-employees. Apple may be forced to take action against these apps or to even revamp its entire enterprise program in the future.

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The offending “Fitness Balance app” and “Calories Tracker app” promised to calculate body mass index, monitor calorie intake, and provide other health-related services. With no advanced warning, according to Reddit posts here and here, the apps charged users fees of $99.99, $119, or 139 Euros, depending on the country of the user. Users who had a credit or debit card connected to their Apple account were immediately billed.

The scam worked by displaying a message as soon as the app was opened. It told users to scan their fingerprint to view a calorie tracker or receive another personal service. When users complied, the apps displayed a popup window that said they had been charged a fee. Less than two seconds later, the popup disappeared, but by then it was too late for many users. Anyone with a card linked to their Apple account was already charged, Ars Technica reported.

“So what it does is ask you to keep your finger at the fingerprint, and then the popup for paying for the app shows up,” a Reddit user with the handle kristikoroveshi94 reported. “Since you have already your finger there, the payment continues. And damn what a price this shitty app has. Luckily I don’t have a linked card or paying account.”

Apple removed both apps over the weekend, shortly after the Reddit posters reported them. People who had been charged reported that their requests for refunds were being processed and were expected to be completed in the next 30 days. Company representatives didn’t respond to a request for comment for this post.

The apps carried rave reviews that were most likely written by people connected to the scam. Fitness Balance app had an average rating of 4.3 stars out of a total of five possible. While Apple responded quickly and all indications are that scammed users will receive refunds, the incident is a reminder that the App Store isn’t immune to scams and malicious apps. iOS users should remember to read a wide selection of reviews before installing unfamiliar apps.

Lukas Stefanko, a researcher with antivirus provider Eset, says here that iPhone X users can protect themselves against these types of scams by making use of a feature called “Double Click to Pay,” which requires a double-click of the side button to verify a payment.

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