Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Internal emails revealed during the Epic Games v. Apple lawsuit show that employees at Apple were considering giving Netflix special treatment to convince the streaming service to not abandon in-app purchases. In the run up to Netflix removing its subscription offering to avoid Apple’s fees, a presentation circulated within Apple proposed to advertise Netflix in its retail stores, use a portion of its cut of App Store commission fees to pay for search ads, and even bundle Netflix with other Apple services.
The emails, spotted by 9to5Mac, start with an explanation of a test Netflix wanted to run to study the impact of disabling in-app purchases on iOS. Netflix’s main concern, as Director of App Store Business Management Carson Oliver…