Tag Archives: antitrust

A top European court has largely upheld a record fine imposed on Google by the European Commission over antitrust violations related to its Android mobile operating system. The EU charged that Google was stifling competition by using its Android dominance to forcibly require phone makers to include apps for Google services. The Alphabet-owned Google challenged …

Privacy-focused companies, including DuckDuckGo, Mozilla and Brave, sent a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday asking them to vote as soon as possible on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. The legislation would ban companies from promoting their own products on their platforms over their competitors. That means, if passed, when you search for a product on Amazon, the top results won’t …

Google will have to face the bulk of a multistate antitrust lawsuit that accuses the tech giant of reaching an illegal deal with online ad rival Facebook. The lawsuit, filed in 2020 by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and 16 states or territories, alleges that Google entered into a secret agreement, codenamed Jedi Blue, with Facebook in 2018 that would allegedly give …

Apple will facing additional antitrust charges from the European Commission in the coming weeks, according to a Monday report from Reuters. This is said to come due to a music streaming investigation triggered by a complaint from Spotify.  The extra charges come a year after the EU accused Apple of breaching competition law in the music streaming market through restrictive …

Google “explicitly and repeatedly” told employees to shield business documents from being revealed in court through the use of false requests for legal advice, the US Justice Department alleged in a court document filed Monday. The allegation, reported earlier by Axios, is part of the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, in which it accuses the tech giant of illegally holding monopolies …

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers on Wednesday asked the Justice Department to investigate Amazon over a potentially criminal obstruction of Congress, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited the politicians’ letter. The letter reportedly accuses Amazon of refusing to provide the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust group with information as it investigated the e-commerce giant’s competitive practices, in an …

The UK Competition and Markets Authority is expected to block Meta’s $315 million acquisition of Giphy in the near future, the Financial Times reported Monday. Meta, previously known as Facebook, moved to buy the online GIF platform in May 2020.  However, the UK regulator expressed concern with the deal and provisionally ruled in August that Meta should be forced to sell Giphy. The …

When Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers handed down her ruling in September saying the way Apple runs its iPhone and iPad App Store largely hadn’t violated antitrust laws, she included a caveat. The tech giant, she said in an order along with her ruling, must allow app developers to include links in their apps, steering people to alternative payment sites outside …

The UK’s competition regulator on Wednesday fined Facebook £50.5 million ($69.6 million) for failing to comply with an order imposed during an investigation into the social network’s purchase of GIF platform Giphy. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) probed the acquisition due to concerns that it would harm competition in the social media and digital advertising markets.  Facebook purchased Giphy …

The attorney general for Washington, DC, has expanded an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon to allege that the e-commerce giant locks wholesalers into anti-competitive agreements. AG Karl Racine’s initial suit, filed in May, broadly accused Amazon of having too much control over the amount outside vendors can charge for their products. The updated lawsuit, reported earlier Monday by The Washington Post, says …