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Tag: antitrust

  • Judge denies Compass request for ‘Zillow ban’ injunction – Houston Agent Magazine

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    United States District Judge Jeannette Vargas denied Compass’ motion for a preliminary injunction in its federal antitrust lawsuit against Zillow on Feb. 6.

    “Given that consumers use multiple online home search platforms simultaneously at little or no cost, Zillow’s brand recognition and related network effect do not appear to have deterred prospective home buyers from cross-shopping amongst competitors or new entrants,” Vargas wrote in her opinion.

    She elaborated that even if Zillow possessed a 50% share or more of the market, Compass had not provided enough evidence of a monopoly to warrant a preliminary injunction. Such a court order would have prevented Zillow from enforcing its private-listing ban, which was introduced last May.

    A spokesperson from Zillow provided this statement:

    Today’s ruling is a clear victory not just for Zillow, but for consumers, agents, brokerages and the real estate industry at large. Zillow believes everyone deserves equal access to the same real estate information at the same time. Compass does the opposite — hiding listings away in its private vault, harming consumers and small businesses to benefit itself.

    Compass filed this baseless lawsuit in an attempt to force Zillow to participate in that exclusionary scheme — but today, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected their effort to reduce transparency for consumers, ruling that Compass failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits. At a time when Americans are struggling to afford a home amid a major housing shortage, hiding listings in private networks only deepens the crisis. While Compass keeps consumers in the dark, Zillow turns on the lights to help people get home.

    Compass filed its initial suit against Zillow in June, alleging the listing giant’s policies violate antitrust laws. An upcoming trial will decide the merit of Compass’ claim.

    Robert Reffkin, chairman and CEO of Compass International Holdings, maintained that Vargas’ ruling is not a loss for the behemoth brokerage, which recently finalized its acquisition of Anywhere Real Estate Inc. in January.

    “Our lawsuit continues forward,” Reffkin told Agent Publishing. “With agents being our clients, we have an obligation to protect our agents from Zillow, which explicitly stated they are trying to ‘punish the agent.’”

    Reffkin’s allegation refers to an internal Zillow strategy document that referenced a “punishment list” of agents who don’t comply with Zillow’s listing policies.

    That list would presumably be full of Compass agents, seeing as the brokerage’s “private exclusive” listing model delays listing on the broader MLS in favor of its own off-market listing network.

    Zillow did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the assertion that it will take any retribution against noncompliant agents.

    However, Compass reiterated in a statement that the lawsuit “has nothing to do with private exclusives” but with Zillow’s insistence that publicly marketing listings must be publicly available on all listing services — including, of course, Zillow.

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    Emily Marek

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  • Is it time to break up Big Tech?

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    Economic researchers Matt Stoller and Geoffrey A. Manne debate the resolution, “The U.S. government should break up large technology companies like Amazon, Meta, and Google to protect workers, suppliers, consumers, and democratic institutions.”

    Arguing in favor of the resolution is Stoller, the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and the author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.

    Taking the negative is Manne, the president and founder of the International Center for Law & Economics.

    The debate is moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

    The post Is It Time To Break Up Big Tech? appeared first on Reason.com.

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    Gene Epstein

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  • Netflix, Warner, Paramount and antitrust: Entertainment megadeal’s outcome must follow the evidence, not politics or fear of integration | Fortune

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    Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced plans to sell Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios and streaming service HBO Max to Netflix, following a bidding war that also ended with a hostile takeover bid by Paramount. The planned sale would create a mammoth streaming and production giant with intellectual property rights to beloved franchises including Batman and Harry Potter. It’s also sure to draw scrutiny from antitrust enforcers at the Department of Justice (DOJ).

    Is this a step toward more viewer-friendly competition, or toward entertainment monopolization? What about Paramount’s bid? Even President Trump is concerned about the situation. But the answers aren’t obvious.

    The merging parties argue that Netflix subscribers could benefit from an expanded content library and bundled services with HBO Max at lower prices. They also expect “at least $2-3 billion of cost savings per year by the third year” and combined resources that could foster more content and allow for bigger creative risks.

    Importantly, the deal could create a stronger competitor against other diversified media giants including Amazon and AppleTV, which are subsidized by their respective e-commerce and mobile/computing platforms. Recent antitrust verdicts recognize the importance of such scale for competitiveness in digital markets. A 2023 U.S. District Court decision approved Microsoft’s merger with gaming studio Activision Blizzard, as it allowed games to reach a wider audience while creating a stronger competitor against market leader Sony.

    Disney+ recently announced a foray into AI tools allowing users to generate and share their own content using proprietary characters and worlds. Combining Netflix’s user-targeting algorithms with WBD’s intellectual properties could create a comparable alternative. The new company may develop AI models and tools without risking the types of copyright infringement claims that have already ended in expensive settlements and licensing deals.

    Yet there are potential concerns. Netflix is known for exclusive content and disfavoring theatrical releases outside of narrow, award-show-timed windows. WBD is America’s third-largest theatrical content supplier and shares content with other streaming services. Netflix could presumably restrict content for both rival streaming services and theaters and possibly raise prices without losing customers.

    All of this is speculatory. The merger violates antitrust law if it’s likely to lead to less quality and innovation or higher prices, and if these harms to consumers won’t be offset by benefits — subject, of course, to the interpretation of enforcers and judges.

    The DOJ would find it easier to block the merger if it can persuade a court that Netflix-WBD would corner 30% of its market, making the deal presumptively anticompetitive and forcing the companies to rebut this claim.

    Expect enforcers to define a market of “video-on-demand” subscription streaming services, including Amazon, Hulu, HBO Max, Netflix, Paramount+, Disney+, Apple TV, Peacock and others. Based on recent decisions, market share will likely be measured by viewing hours. This puts Netflix (20%) and HBO Max (15%) at an estimated 35%.

    Netflix and WBD may suggest a broader entertainment market where subscription streaming, ad-supported video (like YouTube), social media and video games compete for user dollars and eyeballs, netting a much lower market share.

    Based on the recent FTC v. Meta decision, the court could opt for something in between. Meta successfully argued that consumers readily switch and substitute between apps like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and Tiktok for video content. But some services are more likely than others to be seen as substitutes for Netflix and HBO Max content.

    Regardless, courts must still consider the merger’s effect on competition. Netflix-WBD could try settling with the DOJ by making contractual assurances, such as committing to theatrically release future WBD content. These agreements can be costly to monitor and can lead to future disputes over firms keeping their commitments, as the 2010 Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger demonstrates. But they can also preserve competitive benefits, mitigate potential harms and save the DOJ the trouble and costs of uncertain litigation.

    Alternatively, WBD’s shareholders may yet consider Paramount’s offer for their entire business at a higher share price. Backed by the president’s son-in-law, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it would raise some political controversy. But this combined entity’s lower market share (26%) and Paramount’s historical support for theatrical releases may smooth some antitrust hurdles.

    In the end, consumers will win if courts and enforcers act based on evidence. If consumer behavior and other economic and real-world data show that a merger will limit vigorous competition and result in higher prices and less quality or innovation, the government is entitled to act. If not, enforcers should acknowledge that in rapidly evolving digital media markets, scale means being able to stay competitive and make bold investments that herald the next generation of entertainment innovation.

    In more ways than one, we’ll be watching.

    The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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    Satya Marar

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  • Judge rules Google can keep Chrome, but must share some search engine data with rivals

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    A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google’s search engine in a crackdown aimed at curbing the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly while rebuffing the U.S. government’s attempt to break up the company and impose other restraints.

    The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence — including conversational “answer engines” as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google’s long-held position as the internet’s main gateway.

    The innovations and competition being unleashed by generative artificial intelligence, or “GenAI,” have reshaped the judge’s approach to remedies in the nearly five-year-old antitrust case.

    “Unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte,” Mehta wrote.

    Investors seemed to interpret the ruling as a relatively light slap on the wrist for Google, as the stock price of its corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., surged nearly 3% in extended trading.

    The judge is trying to rein in Google by prohibiting some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services.

    But Mehta stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers and other devices. Those deals, involving payments of more than $26 billion annually, were one of the main issues that prompted the judge to conclude Google’s search engine was an illegal monopoly, but he decided banning them in the future would do more harm than good.

    Partially because he is allowing the default deals to continue, Mehta is ordering Google to give its current and would-be rivals access to some of its search engine’s secret sauce — the data stockpiled from trillions of queries that it used to help improve the quality of its search results.

    The judge also rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s effort to force Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, concluding it was an unwarranted step that “would be incredibly messy and highly risky.”

    “Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals,” Google said in a statement provided to CBS News following the ruling. “We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely. The Court did recognize that divesting Chrome and Android would have gone beyond the case’s focus on search distribution, and would have harmed consumers and our partners.”

    “We proved in court that competition had been frozen in place for two decades in internet search,” Abigail Slater, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, wrote in a social media post. “Google’s tactics have excluded competition, harming consumers and slowing innovation. Today’s remedy order agreed with the need to restore competition to the long-monopolized search market, and we are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough in serving that goal.”

    Allowing the default search deals to continue is more than just a victory for Google. It’s also something that Apple, which receives more than $20 billion annually from Google, and the beneficiaries of the payments urged Mehta to maintain.

    In hearings earlier this year, Apple warned the judge that banning the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own innovative research. The Cupertino, California, company also cautioned that the ban could have the unintended consequence of making Google even more powerful by pocketing the money it had been spending on deals while most consumers will still end up flocking to Google’s search engine anyway.

    Others, such as the owners of the Firefox search engine, asserted that losing the Google contracts would threaten their future survival by depriving them of essential revenue.

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  • Google avoids break up, but has to give up exclusive search deals in antitrust trial | TechCrunch

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    Google will not be forced to break up its search business, but a federal judge has tentatively ordered other changes to the tech giant’s business practices to keep it from further anticompetitive behavior.

    U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta outlined remedies on Tuesday that would bar Google from entering or maintaining exclusive deals that tie the distribution of Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini to other apps or revenue arrangements. For example, Google wouldn’t be able to condition Play Store licensing on the distribution of certain apps, or tie revenue-share payments to keeping certain apps.

    Google will also have to share certain search index and user-interaction data with “qualified competitors” to prevent exclusionary behavior, and it must offer search and search ad syndication services to competitors at standard rates so they can deliver quality results while building their own technology.

    Mehta has not yet issued a final judgment. Instead, he ordered Google and the Department of Justice to “meet and confer” and submit a revised final judgment by September 10 that aligns with his opinion.

    The behavioral remedies come a year after Mehta ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. A technical committee will be established to help enforce the final judgment, which will last six years and go into effect 60 days after entry.

    The DOJ, which filed its antitrust suit against Google in 2020, had advocated for stronger penalties. It wanted to force Google to divest its Chrome browser and possibly Android, which resulted in some unsolicited acquisition bids, and end its agreements with Apple, Samsung, and other partners in which the tech giant paid those companies billions to make its search engine appear as the default choice on their devices and web browsers.

    Apple stock popped after-hours on the news that it could continue its lucrative agreement with Google. Google spent more than $26 billion in 2021 alone to secure default search placements on devices, and about $18 billion of that spend went solely to Apple, with whom Google shares 36% of its search ad revenue from Safari. The next year, Google paid Apple more than $20 billion, per the terms of its distribution agreement.

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    During the trial, the judge emphasized that because most users stick with the default, those placements are “extremely valuable real estate” that effectively locked rivals out and knee-capped their ability to challenge Google’s monopoly.

    The DOJ also called on Judge Mehta to force Google to share its search index, user-side data, synthetic queries, and ads data with competitors under privacy-protected terms.

    Google, which has maintained roughly a 90% market share over the traditional search market for the last decade, has argued that the government’s proposals would stifle innovation, jeopardize user privacy, and undercut the company’s ability to invest in R&D. CEO Sundar Pichai said during the remedies hearing in April that forced data-sharing would act as “de facto divestiture” for Google Search. 

    During the remedies hearing in April, Judge Mehta suggested he would consider Europe’s Digital Markets Act as a reference point. The DMA requires Google to share certain click and query data with third parties. Mehta’s order, by contrast, is narrower and temporary, unlike the DMA’s ongoing obligations. It’s also much more limited than the sweeping access the DOJ requested, which potentially included source code, full search ranking algorithms, and broader infrastructure elements, which Google has said would essentially give away its entire intellectual property. 

    “This has inspired a big debate about whether Europeans with the Digital Markets Act have it right,” William Kovacic, a global competition law professor at George Washington University and former Federal Trade Commission commissioner, told TechCrunch. “That is, do you need descriptive rules, or do you rely on the technical case by case adjudication?” 

    Put another way: “Does the European experience tell us something about feasibility and implementation here. Does it tell us something about what Google can live with?”

    That same question around how far regulators should go in reshaping Google’s business will also loom large in the tech giant’s other antitrust battles.

    Judge Mehta’s decision may also affect the outcome of a separate antitrust trial Google is currently engaged in in relation to its advertising technology business. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google illegally monopolized ad-tech markets. The remedies trial is scheduled for late September and will focus on the DOJ’s proposed divestitures and other measures. 

    “We’ve never had a circumstance in which the Department of Justice has had two largely parallel cases involving major elements of alleged misconduct against the same dominant firm with two parallel remedy processes going ahead,” Kovacic said.

    Kovacic added that even though Mehta has released his much-anticipated remedies, “there are many acts to this play to go” in the form of Google’s appeal and potential escalation to the Supreme Court. “It won’t be over until late 2027 or early 2028,” he said.

    This story is developing. Check back in for updates.

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    Rebecca Bellan

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  • I’m a CEO who bid for Google’s Chrome browser. Even if we don’t win, here’s why this is a fork in the road for digital capitalism 

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    Judge Amit Mehta’s landmark ruling against Google is more than just another antitrust case. It is a once-in-a-generation moment to reshape the internet itself. For the first time, regulators are prying open the monopolies that have defined the digital age. 

    What happens next will determine whether that effort produces lasting change — or simply recycles monopoly power from one tech giant to another.

    At the heart of the case is Chrome, the world’s most popular browser. For billions of people, it is the on-ramp to the internet: the tool that shapes how we search, shop, communicate, and learn. Whoever controls Chrome controls not only enormous advertising revenues, but also the flow of information across the web. 

    There is a high probability that Chrome could become the leading platform for AI Assistants and agentic browsing. Ideally this would be open for all AI players — even smaller ones — and not controlled by Big Tech.

    That is why the stakes of this ruling could not be higher.

    The risk of recycling monopolies

    The simplest path forward for Google, if forced to by Judge Mehta’s upcoming ruling, would be to sell Chrome to another deep-pocketed player. Names like OpenAI and rival Big Tech firms are already circling. But this would be a grave mistake. 

    Transferring Chrome from one monopoly to the next would entrench the very dynamics the court has just sought to dismantle. It would concentrate power further in the hands of a small club of companies, reinforce surveillance-driven business models, and keep regulators chasing their tails a decade from now.

    A new model: stewardship

    There is another way. Instead of handing Chrome over to the highest bidder, we should use this ruling to test a different model of governance: stewardship.

    Stewardship means running a critical digital platform for the benefit of users and society, not just shareholders. It means putting long-term stability, openness, and accountability ahead of quarterly returns. And it means using the extraordinary profits generated by assets like Chrome to invest in the public interest – whether that is climate action, safeguarding open infrastructure, or supporting democratic resilience online.

    How it could work

    This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. My own organisation, Ecosia, has proposed a stewardship arrangement for Chrome: separating the browser into a foundation, with operational responsibility entrusted to a mission-driven custodian for a fixed term. 

    Profits would be reinvested in climate action, while Google would still be compensated handsomely. At the end of the term, a transparent process would appoint the next steward.

    But the broader point is not about Ecosia. It is about creating a pathway where values-driven tech organisations — other impact tech firms, for example — can step up with their own visions for how Chrome could be run in the public interest. Each might emphasise different priorities: user privacy, the open web, climate sustainability. The crucial thing is that stewardship, not monopoly transfer, becomes the governing principle.

    The bigger prize

    Think of it as a fork in the road for capitalism in the digital era. 

    Chrome is a trillion-dollar asset. Channelled into shareholder returns, it deepens inequality and consolidates corporate power. Channelled into stewardship, it becomes one of the most powerful tools humanity has ever had to address shared challenges — from protecting cities from flooding and wildfires  to powering the clean-energy transition. 

    We are facing large-scale ecosystem destruction, mass extinction, billions of refugees and possibly the end of society as we know it. At Ecosia, we have developed a science-led plan on how to avert this. 

    The cost of this is enormous, but, via a stewardship of Chrome for the planet — there is still ample room to return huge profits to Google — much more in the long run than an acquisition would bring. 

    Regulators rarely get opportunities of this scale. In most antitrust cases, assets are too fragmented, too niche, or too diminished to fundamentally shift the system. Chrome is different. It is the central infrastructure. If even a fraction of its profits are redirected from private monopoly to public good, we would set a precedent that technology can be governed for people and the planet, not just for profit.

    The choice ahead

    This also matters for democracy. Trust in the internet has eroded as a handful of companies have come to dominate online life. 

    Moving Chrome into a steward-run structure would send a powerful signal: that regulators are not simply tinkering at the margins, but serious about creating a healthier digital ecosystem where competition, fairness, and accountability can thrive. The alternative is to miss this opportunity – and look back in ten years on another wasted antitrust ruling, wondering why concentration deepened, innovation withered, and our collective challenges grew worse.

    Judge Mehta has opened the door. Now regulators, policymakers, and the wider tech community must walk through it. They must resist the easy option of a quick sale to the highest bidder, and instead invite proposals from organisations committed to the public interest.

    This is a rare chance to prove that digital infrastructure can be run differently — that stewardship, not monopoly, is the model fit for the 21st century. Let’s not squander it.

    The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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    Christian Kroll

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  • As FTC Chair Lina Khan’s Term Expires, Democrats Are Torn Between Donors and Their Base

    As FTC Chair Lina Khan’s Term Expires, Democrats Are Torn Between Donors and Their Base

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    For months, speculation has raged in Washington over the future of Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair and face of the Biden administration’s crusade against monopoly power. Overturning decades of antitrust norms, charged by Khan with failing to curb extreme concentrations of corporate power, the administration has routinely scrutinized major acquisitions traditionally ignored by Khan’s predecessors, forcing companies like Lockheed Martin and Nvidia to abandon multibillion-dollar deals in court.

    Opponents of Khan—who is often described as a legal “wunderkind” or “prodigy,” though invariably as “young”—include a number of powerful investors and CEOs known as prominent backers of the Democratic Party; billionaires with ties to businesses long under the FTC’s microscope.

    The donors, which include LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and media mogul Barry Diller, have openly urged Kamala Harris to replace Khan in the event she wins in November, a move that would likely spell disaster for president Joe Biden’s antitrust revolution.

    Diller, for his part, laid into Khan publicly in July, calling her a “dope” on national television, a remark that he later walked back, calling her “smart,” but “disrupting sensible business combinations.” To the ire of many of Khan’s supporters, the Harris campaign has remained silent on her future.

    Neither the Harris campaign nor the FTC responded to a request for comment. Diller did not immediately respond. Hoffman declined to comment.

    Roughly 80 percent of Democrats feel that the government should be doing more to take on corporate monopolies, compared to only 3 percent who say it should be doing less, according to new polling. Nearly 90 percent of Democrats, meanwhile, feel that lobbyists and corporate executives hold too much power over the government.

    The same poll, commissioned by the Tech Oversight Project, found that more than three-fourths of Democrats feel Big Tech wields monopoly power in ways that harm consumers and small businesses. Only 7 percent said the companies should face no repercussions, since they have continued to innovate.

    “Democratic voters want to build on the Biden-Harris administration’s record of protecting competition, holding monopolies accountable for breaking the law, and lowering the cost of living for everyday families,” says Sacha Haworth, the project’s executive director, who favors Khan as the “natural favorite” to carry on this campaign.

    Due perhaps in part to polling like this, there are strong indications that the billionaires are wasting their breath when it comes to the ousting of Khan. Last month, the Democratic Party adopted a platform that celebrated Khan’s crackdown on “corporate greed,” while calling for further investigations into the “potentially harmful effects of corporate consolidation” in Big Pharma and across the media industry. While Khan gave no speeches at the convention, the party’s promise to rid America of “monopolies that crush workers and small businesses and startups” was delivered—perhaps even more potently—by Biden’s secretary of commerce, Gina Raimondo, a consummate corporate advocate.

    Khan supporters, alarmed that Harris has yet to rally to the legal star’s side, erected a mock website this month, labeling her “Bad for Billionaires,” while satirizing some of the Democrats’ biggest donors, Hoffman and Diller among them. “Lina Khan must be fired,” the page declares, “so we can continue our untrammeled profiteering!”

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    Dell Cameron

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  • Google’s Next Antitrust Trial Could Make Online Ads Less Annoying

    Google’s Next Antitrust Trial Could Make Online Ads Less Annoying

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    Google argues that it faces fierce competition from Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and others. It further contends that customers benefited from each of the acquisitions, contracts, and features that the government is challenging. “Google has designed a set of products that work efficiently with each other and attract a valuable customer base,” the company’s attorneys wrote in a 359-page rebuttal.

    For years, Google publically has maintained that its ad tech projects wouldn’t harm clients or competition. “We will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate more revenue, which will fuel the creation of even more rich and diverse content on the internet,” Drummond testified in 2007 to US senators concerned about the DoubleClick deal’s impact on competition and privacy. US antitrust regulators at the time cleared the purchase. But at least one of them, in hindsight, has said he should have blocked it.

    Deep Control

    The Justice Department alleges that acquiring DoubleClick gave Google “a pool of captive publishers that now had fewer alternatives and faced substantial switching costs associated with changing to another publisher ad server.” The global market share of Google’s tool for publishers is now 91 percent, according to court papers. The company holds similar control over ad exchanges that broker deals (around 70 percent) and tools used by advertisers (85 percent), the court filings say.

    Google’s dominance, the government argues, has “impaired the ability of publishers and advertisers to choose the ad tech tools they would prefer to use and diminished the number and quality of viable options available to them.”

    The government alleges that Google staff spoke internally about how they have been earning an unfair portion of what advertisers spend on advertising, to the tune of over a third of every $1 spent in some cases.

    Some of Google’s competitors want the tech giant to be broken up into multiple independent companies, so each of its advertising services competes on its own merits without the benefit of one pumping up another. The rivals also support rules that would bar Google from preferencing its own services. “What all in the industry are looking for is fair competition,” Viant’s Vanderhook says.

    If Google ad tech alternatives win more business, not everyone is so sure that the users will notice a difference. “We’re talking about moving from the NYSE to Nasdaq,” Ari Paparo, a former DoubleClick and Google executive who now runs the media company Marketecture, tells WIRED. The technology behind the scenes may shift, but the experience for investors—or in this case, internet surfers—doesn’t.

    Some advertising experts predict that if Google is broken up, users’ experiences would get even worse. Andrey Meshkov, chief technology officer of ad-block developer AdGuard, expects increasingly invasive tracking as competition intensifies. Products also may cost more because companies need to not only hire additional help to run ads but also buy more ads to achieve the same goals. “So the ad clutter is going to get worse,” Beth Egan, an ad executive turned Syracuse University associate professor, told reporters in a recent call arranged by a Google-funded advocacy group.

    But Dina Srinivasan, a former ad executive who as an antitrust scholar wrote a Stanford Technology Law Review paper on Google’s dominance, says advertisers would end up paying lower fees, and the savings would be passed on to their customers. That future would mark an end to the spell Google allegedly cast with its DoubleClick deal. And it could happen even if Google wins in Virginia. A trial in a similar lawsuit filed by Texas, 15 other states, and Puerto Rico is scheduled for March.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • DOJ Sues RealPage, Alleges Harm to Millions of Renters | Entrepreneur

    DOJ Sues RealPage, Alleges Harm to Millions of Renters | Entrepreneur

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    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued RealPage on Friday after a two-year investigation that included an unannounced FBI raid of a national corporate landlord. The DOJ alleged that Richardson, Texas-based RealPage, which sells real estate software, decreased competition among landlords and artificially inflated rents for millions of tenants across the country.

    “We allege that RealPage’s pricing algorithm enables landlords to share confidential, competitively sensitive information and align their rents,” attorney general Merrick B. Garland stated in a press release.

    The DOJ filed the 115-page complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina on Friday. The antitrust lawsuit details how RealPage signed contracts with landlords who would otherwise be competitors and collected sensitive, detailed information about rent prices, lease terms, amenities and occupancy rates.

    RealPage then allegedly fed the information to its AI-driven algorithm, which gave landlords recommendations on how to price rentals and set terms for rental agreements. The DOJ also accused the company of ensuring landlords accepted its recommendations by sending out pricing advisors to meet with them for “accountability conversations” and adding an “auto accept” feature so landlords would automatically approve price increases.

    In 2020, RealPage said its software collected data on 16 million rental units of the 22 million investment-grade apartment units in the U.S., indicating its broad reach.

    U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (C), U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco (L) and U.S. Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer (R). Photo Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

    “As Americans struggle to afford housing, RealPage is making it easier for landlords to coordinate to increase rents,” assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division stated, adding that “competition – not RealPage – should determine what Americans pay to rent their homes.”

    The DOJ filed the lawsuit with the attorneys general of North Carolina, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. State attorneys general for Arizona and Washington, D.C., have already taken legal action against RealPage this year.

    Related: State Attorneys General Sue RealPage, Landlords Over ‘Astronomical’ Rent Hikes: ‘This Was Not A Fair Market At Work’

    In a statement, RealPage said the DOJ’s claims were “devoid of merit” and “will do nothing to make housing more affordable.” The lawsuit “seeks to scapegoat pro-competitive technology,” the company claimed.

    The non-partisan nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) took a different stance. In an emailed statement to Entrepreneur, AELP senior legal counsel Lee Hepner pointed to RealPage’s own marketing, highlighted by the DOJ, which stated that the company took “every possible opportunity” to raise prices.

    “Working people have enough problems affording daily necessities without RealPage bragging that it seizes ‘every possible opportunity’ to increase rents,” Hepner stated.

    Related: This Simple Money Formula Helped Me Escape My 9-5 and Find Financial Freedom

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    Sherin Shibu

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  • Latest line: A good week for London Breed, a bad week for SunPower

    Latest line: A good week for London Breed, a bad week for SunPower

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    London Breed

    San Francisco mayor, facing a difficult re-election after years of homeless problems and retail stores closing, pulls to the lead in a new poll as she increases efforts to cut crime and remove encampments.

     

     

     

    SunPower

    Richmond-based solar company once worth $10 billion files for bankruptcy as inflation, high interest rates and state PUC regulators cutting incentives for property owners reduces demand for solar projects.

     

     

     

    Google

    A federal judge rules the Mountain View tech giant illegally monopolized online search and ad markets over the past decade. But we won’t know the penalty until a second trial plays out next year.

     

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    Bay Area News Group

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  • Good Luck Selling Your AI Startup

    Good Luck Selling Your AI Startup

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    There is no wilder time than the present to build a company around artificial intelligence. The server bills are astronomical, for one. Also the market for talent is red hot, and you’ll end up paying through the nose for good people. Even if you do get funding, staff up, get the product off the ground, and start making headway in a crowded field, there’s the specter of Big Tech looming overhead. The hypercarnivorous raptors of Silicon Valley—Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta—will fix their steely eyes on the plump prey of your best employees and your intellectual property.

    But they can’t just buy you. Not anymore; outright acquisitions could draw the attention of regulators in the US and Europe, where governments are ramping up their antitrust efforts. Now instead of gobbling you up, a big tech company will license your tech and bring your top talent into their offices to collaborate with their employees. This maneuver—not an acquisition, more like an acquihire with some partnerships included—is something we’ve seen a few times in recent months. And we can expect more.

    This week, we welcome WIRED senior writer Paresh Dave back onto the show to discuss the current trend of partnerships between small AI companies and the tech giants. We also talk about how regulators are really cracking down on Google in particular.

    Show Notes

    Read about the US court ruling that found Google engaged in monopolistic practices to increase its search engine’s dominance. Read more about Character AI, Meta, and customizable chatbots. Read all of WIRED’s antitrust coverage.

    Recommendations

    Paresh recommends playing games on Netflix, like Triviaverse. Mike recommends the new documentary Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa, which is also on Netflix. Lauren recommends “Inside the Secret Negotiations to Free Evan Gershkovich” from The Wall Street Journal.

    Paresh Dave can be found on social media @peard33. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

    How to Listen

    You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how:

    If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here’s the RSS feed.

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    Lauren Goode, Michael Calore

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  • A US Judge Ruled Google an Illegal Monopolist. Here’s What Might Come Next

    A US Judge Ruled Google an Illegal Monopolist. Here’s What Might Come Next

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    But if Mehta pursues the approach, he should make some improvements on the EU’s rules, says Kamyl Bazbaz, senior vice president of public affairs at DuckDuckGo. Users should be prompted with the choice screen periodically, not just once, Bazbaz says. They shouldn’t have to deal with popups from Google urging them to switch the default to Google, he adds. And when users first interact with a competing search app, there should be an easy way to set it as the default app.

    With these added measures, some searchers could find themselves more reliably ditching Google. Others could be frustrated by the recurring requests.

    Order a Divestiture

    Contract bans and choice screens are examples of conduct remedies. But the Justice Department in recent years has expressed a preference for what are known as structural remedies, or breaking off parts of a company.

    Most famous is the breakup of telephone giant Bell in the 1980s, creating a variety of independent companies, including AT&T. But courts aren’t always on board. When Microsoft lost an antitrust battle in the 1990s, a federal appeals panel rejected an order to break up the company, and Microsoft eventually settled on a range of conduct changes.

    A one-time sale is preferred by regulators in part because it doesn’t require them to invest in monitoring the ongoing compliance of companies in terms of conduct remedies. It’s a much cleaner break, and some antitrust experts contend that structural remedies are more effective.

    The challenge is figuring out what parts of a company need to be separated. John Kwoka, an economics professor at Northeastern University who recently served as an adviser to FTC chair Lina Khan, says the key is identifying businesses in which ownership by Google are “distorting its incentives.” He says that, for instance, breaking off search could open the door to Google’s Android partnering with a different search engine.

    But Hovenkamp doubts the potential of a search sell-off to increase competition because the service would remain popular. “Selling Google Search would just transfer the dominance to another firm,” he says. “I don’t know what sort of breakup would work.”

    Some financial analysts who study Google parent Alphabet are also skeptical. “Alphabet’s scale, continued strong execution, and financial strength mitigate this legal risk and the possible ensuing financial and business model ramifications,” Emile El Nems, vice president for Moody’s Ratings, said in a press statement.

    Other legal experts envision a future in which search results would come from Google and the ads in the experience from another company that’s spun off from Google. It’s unclear how that remedy would affect users, but it’s possible ads could end up being less relevant and more intrusive.

    Force Google to Share

    Mehta found in his judgment that Google provides users a superior experience because it receives billions of more queries than any other search engine, and that data fuels improvements to the algorithms that decide which results to show for a particular query.

    Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a law professor at Vanderbilt University following the Google case, says one of the most aggressive remedies would be requiring Google to share data or algorithms with its search competition so they too could improve. “Courts do not like to force sharing between rivals like that, but on the other hand, the judge seemed very concerned about how Google’s conduct has deprived its rivals of what they really need to compete—scale in search data,” she says. “Forcing data sharing would directly address that concern.”

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    Paresh Dave

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  • Google Search Is an Illegal Monopoly, US Judge Rules

    Google Search Is an Illegal Monopoly, US Judge Rules

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    Google is now 0 for 2 in antitrust trials. United States District judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday that Google has unlawfully maintained its dominance in search by using anticompetitive deals to keep rivals from gaining traction. And without fear of pressure from competitors, Google has been able to charge whatever it wants for search ads, he said.

    “The trial evidence firmly established that Google’s monopoly power, maintained by the exclusive distribution agreements, has enabled Google to increase text ads prices without any meaningful competitive constraint,” Mehta wrote in a 286-page ruling. “Unconstrained price increases have fueled Google’s dramatic revenue growth and allowed it to maintain high and remarkably stable operating profits.”

    His findings are arguably the most comprehensive modern examination of Google’s search business, which over the past 26 years has become a $175 billion annual revenue behemoth that accounts for much of parent company Alphabet’s profits. Google will appeal, as it risks losing its prominent placement on iPhones and other gateways to the web.

    Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said in a statement that the company would fight the ruling because it “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”

    United States Attorney General Merrick Garland called the decision “an historic win.” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said it “paves the path for innovation for generations to come.”

    The ruling follows a weeks-long trial in Mehta’s courtroom last year in Washington, DC, in which the US Department of Justice alleged that Google had become the world’s most used search engine by paying partners such as Apple and Samsung to promote it on their devices and software. Google had attributed its success to providing the best service and argued that it faced significant competition from the likes of Microsoft and others.

    Mehta sided with Google on some issues but rejected its overall argument that the company held no illegal monopoly whatsoever. Last year, a jury in federal court in San Francisco ruled Google’s Play app store an illegal monopolist.

    The ways in which Google will have to adjust its business in light of the judgments in San Francisco and Washington are yet to be determined. Mehta will hold a separate trial to determine remedies in the search case, and a judge is mulling proposed penalties in the Play litigation. But some changes Google has made in response to antitrust scrutiny in recent years have been costly.

    First Trial

    The case before Mehta traced back to the increased oversight of the tech industry under then president Donald Trump. The Justice Department sued Google in 2020 before Trump left office, and the lawsuit became the first of several against Big Tech companies to go to trial.

    Mehta ruled that Google, with about 90 percent market share, has monopoly power in both general search and general search text ads. He found that Google’s deals with partners harm competition and that Google hadn’t shown otherwise.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • Judge Hints at Plans to Rein In Google’s Illegal Play Store Monopoly

    Judge Hints at Plans to Rein In Google’s Illegal Play Store Monopoly

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    A jury in December found that Google broke US antitrust laws through deals and billing rules that gave an unfair boost to its Google Play app store. On Thursday, a judge began laying out how Google could be forced to change its business as a penalty. The remedies under consideration could drive the most consequential shakeup ever to Google’s dominance over the Android universe.

    Fortnite video game developer Epic Games, which beat Google in the trial that saw a jury declare the Play store an illegal monopoly, is demanding that federal judge James Donato ban Google from contracts that deter competition. Epic also wants Google to be forced to help competing stores list more apps, giving them a competitive boost. The changes could enable Epic to realize its long-held plan to increase revenue by processing in-game purchases in Fortnite and other titles without using Google’s payment system, and marketing games via its own app store.

    Google contends that Epic’s demands would threaten its users’ security and impair the businesses of partners, including Android device makers and app developers. The search company is appealing the jury’s verdict, which could delay the rollout of any penalties for many years—or void them altogether. But Google over the past few years already has had to make some costly changes in Europe and Asia due to court losses and new laws affecting the Play store, and a trial with Epic is currently underway in Australia.

    “I want to be clear: Google as an illegal monopolist will have to pay some penalties,” Donato told Epic and Google at a hearing in San Francisco on Thursday. He explained that Google’s loss requires him to pry open the company’s grip on the Android ecosystem in a way that ends Google’s illegal monopoly and also removes its ill-gotten gains from years of unfair dominance.

    That would mean major changes for the industry that has built up around Google’s Android operating system—and potentially more choices for consumers. It could require Google investing cash into new projects to make things right, Donato said.

    Donato expressed frustration with Google’s claims that any changes would be bad for consumers and other businesses. “To jump up and down and say the new way is going to be a world no one wants to live in, it’s unfounded,” he said. But he also spent hours in the hearing quizzing two economists, one appearing on behalf of each company, about how to craft penalties for Google without being unreasonable.

    Among Epic’s requests is that Google be barred from striking deals that prevent or discourage companies from working with alternatives to its app store. In the past the company has required hardware companies that want to offer Google Play on their devices to agree not to work with or promote alternative app stores. That prevented most consumers from ever seeing other app stores, since most device makers want to offer Google’s app store, because it is the largest.

    Rival app stores such as those from Amazon and Samsung also have struggled to persuade developers to list their apps outside of Google Play, because maintaining apps in multiple stores takes extra work. To even the playing field, Epic proposes that Google be required for six years to provide rival stores a way to list apps that are hosted on Google Play. That would allow people to browse alternative stores without feeling they are missing out on popular apps, giving the store a better chance of success in the long term.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • Ticketmaster, Live Nation sued by DOJ over alleged monopoly

    Ticketmaster, Live Nation sued by DOJ over alleged monopoly

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    Ticketmaster, Live Nation sued by DOJ over alleged monopoly – CBS News


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    Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation. The Justice Department is accusing them of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry to the detriment of concertgoers and artists alike.

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  • Would You Still Use Google if It Didn’t Pay Apple $20 Billion to Get on Your iPhone?

    Would You Still Use Google if It Didn’t Pay Apple $20 Billion to Get on Your iPhone?

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    Microsoft has poured over $100 billion into developing its Bing search engine over the past two decades but has little market share to show for it. About nine out of every 10 web searches in the US are made through Google, with Bing splitting the remaining queries with a long list of small competitors.

    On Thursday the US government asked a federal judge in Washington, DC, to rule that Google maintains that lead illegally, by unfairly manipulating users to keep Microsoft and other competitors down.

    Google’s dominance drove the US Department of Justice to sue the company in 2020 alleging that it had violated antitrust law by using exclusionary contracts to maintain a monopoly. The two sides went into a secretive trial at the end of last year before breaking for nearly five months for US Judge Amit Mehta to digest the evidence.

    Mehta heard closing arguments on Thursday, with government attorneys arguing that without his intervention Google’s dominance would remain in years to come—despite nascent threats from AI chatbots like ChatGPT. “The search engine industry has been impervious to any competitor entering,” attorney Kenneth Dintzer said.

    The case is the first to go to trial out of a handful of lawsuits the government has brought against the biggest tech companies since stepping up antitrust scrutiny of the industry in 2019 under then-President Donald Trump. The Biden administration hasn’t let off the gas.

    Central to the government’s case against Google is the over $20 billion it says that Google pays Apple annually to be the default search engine on iPhones and the Safari browser across much of the world. Google pays an additional more than $1.5 billion a year to wireless carriers and device makers, and more than $150 million to browsers, for similar defaults in the US, according to the government. Google can afford to pay those sums and still enjoy enormous profits because it has the US market for search and search ads cornered, the government alleges.

    Google’s attorneys counter that companies such as Apple choose Google as the default because it offers a better experience to users, not just because they are getting payouts. When browsers such as Mozilla have opted for alternatives to Google, they have lost users because of the change, the search company argues. “Google lawfully acquired monopoly power and scale,” attorney John Schmidtlein told Mehta. “Microsoft missed the boat.”

    Before Mehta now is the question of whether Google unfairly earned its popularity.

    Profit Boost

    Google’s deals with Apple date to 2002, when the Safari developer first gained the option to integrate Google search into the browser, according to court papers. The payments started after Google cofounder Sergey Brin in 2005 raised the idea of sharing a slice of the company’s blossoming search revenue or “helping Apple out in other ways,” Brin wrote, according to court papers.

    But in a deal struck that year, Google got something in exchange for agreeing to pay Apple half of its sales: Google search would be required to be the default in Safari. The requirement has spread to more Apple services in the years since, while the revenue share and related incentive fees have fluctuated.

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    Paresh Dave

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  • Google asks court to reject the DOJ’s lawsuit that accuses it of monopolizing ad tech

    Google asks court to reject the DOJ’s lawsuit that accuses it of monopolizing ad tech

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    Google filed a motion on Friday in a Virginia federal court asking for the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against it to be thrown away. The in January 2023, accusing the company of monopolizing digital advertising technologies through “anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct.” Per , Google is now seeking summary judgment to avoid the case going to trial in September as planned.

    Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said at the time the lawsuit was first announced that Google “has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies.” The lawsuit alleges that Google controls digital advertising tools to such an extent that it “pockets on average more than 30 percent of the advertising dollars that flow through its digital advertising technology products,” according to a press release from the agency last year.

    Google now argues that that the DOJ hasn’t shown that the company controls at least 70 percent of the market, which some previous cases have used as the threshold for qualifying as a monopoly, and that the agency “made up markets specifically for this case,” according to Bloomberg, excluding its major competitors like social media platforms. The company also claims the DOJ’s case goes “beyond the boundaries of antitrust law,” Reuters reports.

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    Cheyenne MacDonald

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  • The EU Targets Apple, Meta, and Alphabet for Investigations Under New Tech Law

    The EU Targets Apple, Meta, and Alphabet for Investigations Under New Tech Law

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    Apple is among three tech giants being investigated for failing to comply with the European Union’s new competition rules, in another blow to the embattled smartphone maker.

    Apple was the primary focus of an EU press conference on Monday morning. But authorities also opened formal investigations into Meta and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The trio are the first to be subject to formal probes under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s landmark competition law, which took effect on March 7.

    Under the new rules, six of the world’s largest tech companies, known in the EU as “gatekeepers,” were asked to provide evidence that they were not harming competition. “We are not convinced that the solutions by Alphabet, Apple, and Meta respect their obligations for a fairer and more open digital space for European citizens and businesses,” said Thierry Breton, EU industry chief, in a statement on Monday. “Should our investigation conclude that there is lack of full compliance with the DMA, gatekeepers could face heavy fines.” Under the Digital Markets Act, officials can levy fines of up to 10 percent of tech giants’ global revenue or 20 percent for repeat violations.

    Following weeks of criticism directed at Apple by developers, the EU’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said a formal investigation would focus on two elements of the smartphone maker’s business: the limits Apple places on developers trying to link from the App Store to their own websites, and how hard Apple makes it to replace default, native apps like Photos or iCloud with third-party alternatives.

    “Gatekeepers have an obligation to enable easy uninstallation of apps and easy change of default settings,” Vestager said in the press conference. “Apple’s compliance model does not seem to meet the objective of this obligation.”

    EU officials are also considering another formal investigation into whether Apple’s rules for alternative app stores—allowing users to download apps from places other than the official App Store—comply with the Digital Markets Act rules. Apple is confident its business is compliant, company spokesperson Rob Saunders told WIRED. “Teams across Apple have created a wide range of new developer capabilities, features, and tools to comply with the regulation,” he said in a statement. “At the same time, we’ve introduced protections to help reduce new risks to the privacy, quality, and security of our EU users’ experience.”

    Apple has emerged as a focal point for competition officials in both the EU and the US. The EU announcement on Monday follows a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice last week that claimed the smartphone maker had established an iPhone monopoly that was suppressing competition and harming consumers.

    The lawsuit cited four internal Apple emails that, the DOJ claimed, illustrate how executives knowingly restrict users and developers in unfair ways. In one exchange from 2010, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs and an unnamed Apple executive discussed how a new ad for Amazon’s Kindle gave the impression that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. “Not fun to watch,” the executive wrote.

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    Morgan Meaker

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  • The Case Against Apple Weaponizes the Cult of Cupertino

    The Case Against Apple Weaponizes the Cult of Cupertino

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    Back in 2022 at the annual Code Conference, where tech luminaries submit to on-stage interviews, an audience member asked Apple CEO Tim Cook for some tech support. “I can’t send my mom certain videos,” he said, because she used an Android device incompatible with Apple’s iMessage. Cook’s now-infamous response was, “Buy your mom an iPhone.”

    Cook’s remark and Apple’s recent decision to block a third-party app from bridging the Android-to-iMessage interoperability chasm are two of the many examples of allegedly monopolistic behavior cited in the US government’s antitrust suit against Apple. Central to the case is Apple’s practice of “locking in” iPhone customers, by undermining competing apps, using its proprietary messaging protocol as glue, and generally making it challenging for people to switch to other phones.

    Those accusations are backed up by lawyerly references to the Sherman Act. But the complaint also shows the Department of Justice crafting a cultural narrative, trying to tell a technology tale with a clear message—like an episode of crime drama Dragnet, says antitrust expert William Kovacic, who teaches at George Washington University and King’s College, London.

    The lawsuit, filed Thursday by the DOJ and more than a dozen state attorneys general, claims that in addition to degrading the quality of third-party apps, Apple “affirmatively undermines the quality of rival smartphones.” Because messages sent between iPhones via Apple’s proprietary network appear in blue bubbles, but those from Android phones appear in green and are excluded from many iMessage features, Apple has signaled to consumers that rival phones are of less quality, the suit alleges.

    The suit includes references to the negative cultural and emotional impact of the restrictiveness of some Apple products. It ranges beyond the typical antitrust case, in which investigators might focus on supracompetitive pricing or the conditions of corporate deals that restrict competition. The core of US antitrust cases has long been proving consumers paid higher prices as a result of anticompetitive practices. But a few key paragraphs within the 88-page filing mention the exclusion and social shaming of non-iPhone users confined inside green chat bubbles, distinguishing this case from some of the more recondite explanations of tech market competition in recent years.

    “Many non-iPhone users also experience social stigma, exclusion, and blame for ‘breaking’ chats where other participants use iPhones,” the suit reads. It goes on to note that this is particularly powerful for certain demographics, like teenagers, who the Wall Street Journal reported two years ago “dread the ostracism” that comes with having an Android phone.

    The DOJ argues that all of this reinforces the switching costs that Apple has baked into its phones. Apple is so dominant in the smartphone market not because its phones are necessarily better, the suit alleges, but because it has made communicating on other smartphones worse, thereby making it harder for consumers to give up their iPhones.

    Legal experts say this social stigma argument will need much stronger support to hold up in court, because it doesn’t fit with traditional definitions of antitrust. “What is Apple actually precluding here? It’s almost like a coolness factor when a company successfully creates a network effect for itself, and I’ve never seen that integrated into an antitrust claim before,” says Paul Swanson, a litigation partner at Holland & Hart LLP in Denver, Colorado, who focuses on technology and antitrust. “This is going to be an interesting case for antitrust law.”

    Regardless, the DOJ’s complaint builds a powerful message from the cacophony of consumer voices that have vented frustrations with iMessage’s lack of interoperability in recent years. And it’s part of a broader, democratizing theme introduced by Jonathan Kanter, the Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, says Kovacic, who previously served as chair of the Federal Trade Commission. “Kanter basically said, ‘We’re trying to make this body of law accessible to ordinary human beings and take it away from the technicians,” Kovacic says. “Storytelling is overstated in some ways, but my sense is that a lot of work went into this filing.”

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    Lauren Goode

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  • DOJ targets Apple in antitrust lawsuit, alleging monopoly practices

    DOJ targets Apple in antitrust lawsuit, alleging monopoly practices

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    DOJ targets Apple in antitrust lawsuit, alleging monopoly practices – CBS News


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    The U.S. Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple that accuses the company of monopolizing the smartphone market. This landmark case could have significant implications for both iPhone and Android users.

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