Google is facing its second antitrust lawsuit from the Department of Justice in two years, over its dominance in the digital ads market, which has seen the tech giant operate in both the buying and selling of ads in addition to running its ad exchange.
Britain’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, has successfully forced Facebook (now known as Meta) to sell a part of its business, as global scrutiny of alleged anticompetitive practices in the tech industry continues.
Users of the Fitbit smartwatch will be required to have Google accounts next year to access some of the device’s features, following the fitness tracking company’s acquisition by Google-parent Alphabet Inc. last year.
California has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the company violated state competition law through its pricing rules.
According to recent reports, the U.S. Department of Justice is in the early stages of drafting an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
The Wall Street Journal has revealed in an exclusive report that e-commerce giant Amazon has been reducing the number of items it sells under its own brands due to poor sales in recent months. The company is also facing intense regulatory pressure over its private label business, which is accused of using sales data from other brands on the Amazon platform to hijack their customer base with an inferior copy of their products.
An Amazon vice president reportedly attempted to encourage third-party merchants to reject landmark legislation challenging the power of big tech giants but was promptly rejected by many sellers who say they support the legislation.
On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight,” Jason Furman, who served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama and on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council under President Bill Clinton
Match Group, the company behind popular dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid, is suing Google, accusing the company of holding it hostage with its monopolistic stranglehold on the Android app store. The company’s lawsuit states: “Ten years ago, Match Group was Google’s partner. We are now its hostage. Blinded by the possibility of getting an ever-greater cut of the billions of dollars users spend each year on Android apps, Google set out to monopolize the market for how users pay for their Android apps.”
The DOJ has reportedly accelerated its investigation into Google and its Maps product to determine if the Masters of the Universe illegally stifle competition by bundling Maps with other Google software.
The Big Tech Masters of the Universe are facing renewed pushback as the European Union Council and European Parliament have reached a provisional political agreement on the Digital Markets Acts (DMA). The DMA will attempt to tame the anti-competitive power of tech companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook, which the act labels as “gatekeepers.”
The Department of Justice has accused tech giant Google of training employees to hide business communications from legal review “by using false requests for legal advice.” The DOJ has informed a judge overseeing an antitrust case against the Masters of the Universe that the company trains employees to add lawyers to written communications and seek legal advice even when not required so it could invoke attorney-client privilege when documents are requested as part of an investigation.
Tech giant Google is facing another antitrust complaint filed in the EU related to the company’s digital advertising business. The European Publishers Council compares Google’s stranglehold on the digital advertising business and its built-in conflicts of interest as both ads buyer and seller to “Goldman or Citibank owning the New York Stock Exchange.”
Tech giant Google is facing yet another antitrust lawsuit, this time a suit in Europe potentially worth $2.4 billion over its online shopping service unfairly favoring the tech giant’s own offerings by “abusing its dominant position.”
35 states have commented on their support for Epic Games in its ongoing legal battle with tech giant Apple. A letter signed by dozens of state attorneys general to a California appeals court reads: Apple’s conduct has harmed and is harming mobile app-developers and millions of citizens.”
Amazon has reportedly shut down its “Sold by Amazon” program following an investigation from Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson which found that the program violated antitrust laws. The program involved Amazon setting minimum prices for certain sellers’ products and the Masters of the Universe taking a cut of anything sold at prices above the minimum. One Amazon seller commented on the program, “Almost everyone I talked to said this doesn’t seem right. Normally, when you let the foxes run the hen house, the hens get eaten.”
Epic Games has filed an opening brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals aiming to overturn a previous ruling that Apple’s ownership of the iOS App Store does not constitute a monopoly. According to the Fortnite developer, “Apple’s conduct is precisely what the antitrust laws prohibit.”
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.
