ReportWire

Tag: Antitrust laws

  • China says NVIDIA’s Mellanox acquisition violated antitrust law

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    A regulator has accused NVIDIA of violating China’s antitrust laws over its acquisition of chipmaker Mellanox. In its preliminary findings of an investigation it commenced , the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) claimed that the company breached both national regulations and the conditional terms China outlined when it rubberstamped the $6.9 billion takeover. The SAMR hasn’t announced any penalties yet, as the investigation will continue.

    The SAMR is said to have determined its preliminary findings several weeks ago. According to sources, the regulator held off from releasing its statement until now, as trade talks with the US take place in Madrid, with the idea of giving Chinese officials more leverage. (Those talks have so far resulted in .)

    NVIDIA and Mellanox back in 2019. China approved it in April the following year on the condition that NVIDIA continued to supply GPUs and interconnect products to the country and adhere to “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory principles,” per the .

    Last month, it was reported that China was discouraging companies in the country from buying NVIDIA’s H20 chips pending a national security review. Officials were said to have taken offense at remarks from Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary. After the US allowed NVIDIA to start offering chips to China again in July following a , Lutnick said the company wasn’t going to be selling its most cutting-edge tech there.

    “We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best. The fourth one down, we want to keep China using it,” he told CNBC. “The idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own. You want to keep one step ahead of what they can build, so they keep buying our chips. You want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack.”

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    Kris Holt

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  • EU fines Google $3.5 billion over adtech antitrust violations

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    The European Commission has announced that it will fine Google €2.95 billion, or around $3.5 billion, for violating European Union antitrust laws and “distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.” The decision follows from earlier in 2025, where a US federal judge concluded that Google maintains a monopoly in online advertising technology.

    Google displays ads in search results, but it also has a dominant position as a software provider for online advertisers and publishers looking to sell ad space and place ads. The Commission’s main issue is with the way Google’s ad buying tools (Google Ads and DV 360) interact with its ad exchange software (AdX) and ad publisher servers (DFP) in seemingly preferential ways. Google appears to favor its AdX ad exchange by “informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction,” according to the Commission. It also found that “Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX,” maintaining the dominance of Google’s ad exchange even if an alternative is a better option for advertisers.

    The Commission is giving Google 60 days to share how it plans to address those issues or face an “appropriate remedy” for violating antitrust law. That could just be the fine, but might also include a forced sale of some or all of Google’s adtech business.

    Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Global Head of Regulatory Affairs, shared that the company will appeal the decision in the following statement provided to Engadget:

    “The European Commission’s decision about our ad tech services is wrong and we will appeal. It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money. There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”

    $3.5 billion is a staggering amount of money, but it’s not technically the most Google’s been charged for violating EU laws. In 2018, the company was for forcing mobile network operators to pre-install Google apps on phones. Though Google has been under an increasing amount of scrutiny in the last decade for its business practices, it so far hasn’t faced many structural remedies for what has been called anticompetitive behavior.

    For example, a US court found Google was in 2024, but a judge that the company wouldn’t have to sell off Chrome or stop paying Apple to make Google the iPhone’s default search engine. EU regulators have historically been more persistent than their US counterparts, and the European Commission is for at least one other advertising-related issue, but it remains to be seen if there’s any punishment that will actually faze the company.

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    Ian Carlos Campbell

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  • NFL is liable for $4,707,259,944.64 in ‘Sunday Ticket’ case

    NFL is liable for $4,707,259,944.64 in ‘Sunday Ticket’ case

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — The damages a federal jury has ordered the NFL to pay for violating antitrust laws in distributing out-of-market Sunday afternoon games on a premium subscription service is $4,707,259,944.64.

    The figures from the June 27 judgment against the NFL were listed on the verdict form, which was posted on the case docket Tuesday.

    The lawsuit covered 2.4 million residential subscribers and 48,000 businesses in the United States who paid for the package on DirecTV of out-of-market games from the 2011 through 2022 seasons. The lawsuit claimed the league broke antitrust laws by selling the package at an inflated price. The subscribers also say the league restricted competition by offering “Sunday Ticket” only on a satellite provider.

    The jury of five men and three women found the NFL liable for $4,610,331,671.74 in damages to the residential class (home subscribers) and $96,928,272.90 in damages to the commercial class (business subscribers).

    Since damages can be tripled under federal antitrust laws, the NFL could end up being liable for $14,121,779,833.92.

    Damages would be spread equally among the 32 teams, meaning each team could owe $441.3 million.

    During deliberations, the jury requested data on the number of subscribers each year of the class action as well as the cost of each type of “Sunday Ticket” subscription.

    The jury also asked for the reports that four economists who testified on behalf of the plaintiffs and the NFL produced, but those were not admitted as evidence.

    Judge Philip S. Gutierrez is scheduled to hear post-trial motions on July 31, including the NFL’s request to have him rule in favor of the league by determining the plaintiffs did not prove their case.

    The NFL has said it would appeal the verdict. That appeal would go to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then possibly the Supreme Court.

    Payment of damages, any changes to the “Sunday Ticket” package and/or the ways the NFL carries its Sunday afternoon games would be stayed until all appeals have been concluded.

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    Associated Press

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