Apple and Google recently warned U.S. lawmakers that bipartisan antitrust legislation that aims to curb the power of the Masters of the Universe could threaten user privacy and security.
A federal judge has ruled that the FTC can move forward with its revised antitrust case against Facebook. The judge rejected Facebook’s request to dismiss the case, writing: “Although the agency may well face a tall task down the road in proving its allegations, the court believes that it has now cleared the pleading bar and may proceed to discovery.”
The United States International Trade Commission has reportedly upheld a ruling finding that Google infringed upon five audio technology patents held by speaker company Sonos.
Amazon and Google are reportedly mobilizing the small businesses that they claim rely on their platforms to fight antitrust bills that threaten to break up the Masters of the Universe. Incredibly, some small businesses are arguing that bills designed to stop Amazon from copying their products and destroying their business by favoring the platform’s own brand would be a net negative for their companies.
A new class-action lawsuit alleges that Apple and Google have an agreement that keeps the iPhone maker out of the search engine business as long as Google pays to remain the default search option in Apple’s Safari browser. The lawsuit claims the two companies maintain their anticompetitive agreement with “regular secret meetings” between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Leaked internal documents reportedly reveal tech giant Facebook’s opinions on rival platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Mark Zuckerberg’s internet giant is plainly interested in targeting rival platforms as “inspiration” for future features, a favorite strategy of Facebook enabled by its massive power over the market.
An appeals court has put a pause on the ongoing case between Epic and Apple, placing a stay on the enforcement of an injunction issued by the lower court. Based on the ruling, Apple can maintain its current purchase system as the sole source of in-app payments on iPhones, despite previous rulings stating that the exclusive agreement was illegal.
Italy’s competition authority announced on Thursday that it has fined Amazon roughly $1.3 billion (€1.129 billion), alleging that the company “has harmed competing operators” by abusing its dominant market position and pushing third-party sellers to use Amazon’s logistics service Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
More than 200 newspapers across the U.S. have reportedly joined antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook over the past year. The lawsuits claim that Facebook and Google have monopolized the digital ads market, taking revenue that should have gone to local news outlets.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is donating $100 million to the Obama Foundation in the wake of Amazon clashing with the Biden administration over antitrust issues.
Tech giant Google has once again reported record revenue for the second quarter in a row in 2021. The Masters of the Universe enjoyed revenue growth of 41 percent for the quarter while profits soared 69 percent.
According to a recent report, e-commerce giant Amazon purposefully ranks its own products above other higher-rated competitors on its platform. According to an investigation by the Markup, “We found that knowing only whether a product was an Amazon brand or exclusive could predict in seven out of every 10 cases whether Amazon would place it first in search results.”
A recent report claims that internal Amazon documents show that the company created knockoff items and manipulated search results to promote its own product lines in India.
Former intelligence officials who warned lawmakers against an antitrust crackdown against the Big Tech Masters of the Universe have ties to those very same Big Tech companies, according to a report from Politico.
FTC Chair Lina Khan sent a memo to staff this week in which she called for the agency to focus on power imbalances and address the “structural dominance” of big companies. The memo’s mention of “next generation technologies” implies a heavy emphasis on the Big Tech Masters of the Universe.
Ohio State Rep. Douglas Swearingen (R-OH-89), Ohio Republican senate primary contender J.D. Vance, and The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence have filed an amicus brief in State of Ohio v. Google, a case filed against the tech giant by the state’s attorney general, taking aim at its allegedly anti-competitive practices.
The FTC has alleged that hundreds of deals made by tech giants like Facebook and Google were not reviewed by merger watchdogs, fueling the companies’ unchecked growth. Events like gaining voting control of rivals, buying patents, and outright buyouts of small tech companies are a key part of the arsenal used by the largest Big Tech companies to maintain their stranglehold over the internet.
A recent article from Wired outlines how tech giants including Google and Apple are finding themselves increasingly under the scrutiny of global antitrust regulators. When countries like South Korea force tech giants to change policies within the country such as easing their stranglehold over app developers, the changes often occur on a global level.
Apple has been ordered to ease its tight restrictions on app developers by a judge’s ruling in the trial between Fortnite developer Epic Games and the Masters of the Universe.
According to a recent report, the DOJ is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against internet giant Google over the company’s advertising technology business.
Google will reportedly pay Apple as much as $15 billion in 2021 to remain the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac according to a new report from analysts. Apple could enjoy payments of up to $20 billion from the search monopoly in 2022.
The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly filed another antitrust complaint against Facebook, alleging that the social media giant is an illegal monopoly. A federal judged dismissed the agency’s previous complaint against Mark Zuckerberg and the Masters of the Universe.
In a recent article, Wired outlines how recent rulings from French regulators have had a significant impact on Google’s ad business and what other countries could learn from the rulings.
An antitrust lawsuit filed by 36 states and Washington DC alleges that Google used anticompetitive practices in an attempt to “preemptively quash” Samsung’s Galaxy Store as it worried it could become a viable competitor in the app marketplace to Google’s own Play Store.
36 states and Washington D.C. have reportedly sued Google alleging that the company illegally abused its power over developers that distribute apps through the Google Play store on mobile devices.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has officially stepped down from his role as CEO of the e-commerce giant, being replaced by the company’s former web services CEO Andy Jassy. Bezos will continue with the company in the role of Executive Chair. The leadership handover is occurring just weeks before Bezos will fly into space with his brother.
After a federal judge overturned a Florida law that attempted to rein in the Big Tech Masters of the Universe, State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R) says Big Tech companies should be regulated like common carriers in the Sunshine State, a categorization that would be difficult to shoot down in court.
With their brands in tatters and public trust declining, the Big Tech Masters of the Universe are using small businesses to push their agenda in Washington DC, according to a new report from a left-wing think tank.
Facebook is reportedly altering its popular photo-sharing service Instagram to more closely resemble the megapopular Chinese app TikTok.
A recent report from the Wall Street Journal claims that the e-commerce giant Amazon is telling suppliers that want to win Amazon as a client that they must give the e-commerce Masters of the Universe the right to buy large stakes in their firms at steep discounts.
Continuing its ongoing efforts to clone every single other digital service available, Facebook announced on Tuesday that it would be rolling out its own version of a newsletter subscription service called Bulletin. The new Facebook offering is an attempt to crush the popular newsletter service Substack.
A D.C. federal court dismissed two antitrust cases brought against Facebook last year in a huge setback for federal and state regulators. The company’s total stock value soared past $1 trillion after the ruling.
The European Commission announced its fourth large-scale antitrust investigation into Google, and it appears that the video-sharing platform YouTube is being heavily focused on.
Big Tech companies including Amazon, Apple, and Google are waging a massive lobbying offensive in Washington DC to halt the passage of major antitrust legislation.
The American Choice and Innovation Online Act and the Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act passed the committee stage yesterday night, with a vote of 24 to 20 in the House Judiciary Committee. The Big Tech bills are now cleared to proceed to a floor vote.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who has taken a critical line against Democrat-led efforts to regulate Silicon Valley tech giants, notably the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, said he would draft his own bill aimed at curbing the excessive power of Big Tech.
A key point of contention for Apple in recent months has been pressure on the company to allow users to “sideload” apps onto their iOS devices, a process that completely avoids the Apple App Store, which the company continues to argue is both unsafe and unfair to users. Incredibly, the company claims that the freedom to choose different methods of loading apps “eliminates choice” for the consumer.
The new Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an agency with the power to threaten corporations with costly antitrust fines among other regulatory burdens, once co-authored a paper with a progressive scholar who advocates the use of antitrust law to solve “structural racism.”
The European Commission has opened a formal investigation into Google over whether the search giant unfairly favors its own online advertising technology over competitors.
Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Microsoft president Brad Smith today, seeking answers on the company’s attitude towards conservatives, and on whether the company will be impacted by proposed new regulations on antitrust.
