Megacorporations Watch Thread

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European Union Moves Forward in Antitrust Case Against Apple
May 2, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/european ... nst-apple/

Introduction:

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union stepped up its antitrust case against Apple on Monday, accusing the company of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to technologies allowing contactless payment.

The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, has been investigating Apple since 2020. The commission’s preliminary view is that the firm is restricting competition by preventing mobile wallet app developers from accessing the necessary hardware and software on Apple devices.

Mobile wallets rely on near-field communication, or NFC, which uses a chip in the mobile device to wirelessly communicate with a merchant’s payment terminal.

The commission said Apple Pay is by far the largest NFC-based mobile wallet on the market and accused the company of refusing others access to the popular technology.

“Apple has built a closed ecosystem around its devices and its operating system, iOS. And Apple controls the gates to this ecosystem, setting the rules of the game for anyone who wants to reach consumers using Apple devices,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “By excluding others from the game, Apple has unfairly shielded its Apple Pay wallets from competition.”

[weatheriscool]

European Union Moves Forward in Antitrust Case Against Apple
May 2, 2022

https://www.courthousenews.com/european ... nst-apple/

Introduction:

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union stepped up its antitrust case against Apple on Monday, accusing the company of abusing its dominant position by limiting access to technologies allowing contactless payment.

The 27-nation bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, has been investigating Apple since 2020. The commission’s preliminary view is that the firm is restricting competition by preventing mobile wallet app developers from accessing the necessary hardware and software on Apple devices.

Mobile wallets rely on near-field communication, or NFC, which uses a chip in the mobile device to wirelessly communicate with a merchant’s payment terminal.

The commission said Apple Pay is by far the largest NFC-based mobile wallet on the market and accused the company of refusing others access to the popular technology.

“Apple has built a closed ecosystem around its devices and its operating system, iOS. And Apple controls the gates to this ecosystem, setting the rules of the game for anyone who wants to reach consumers using Apple devices,” EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. “By excluding others from the game, Apple has unfairly shielded its Apple Pay wallets from competition.”

Now this is exiting news. We all know apple breaks every anti-trust law in the book! We'd be better off if it was broken it up like grandbell and let them compete against each other.

[caltrek]

Germany’s Antitrust Watchdog Latest to Probe Apple’s App Privacy Framework
by Natasha Lomas
June 14, 2022

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) A major privacy feature Apple launched last year, called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) — which requires third party apps to request permission from iOS users to track their digital activity for ad targeting — is facing another antitrust probe in Europe: Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO) has just announced it’s investigating the framework over concerns that Apple could be breaching competition rules by self-preferencing or creating unfair barriers for other companies.

Last year, France’s antitrust regulator declined to pre-emptively block Apple from implementing ATT — but said it would be watching how Apple operates the feature. Poland also opened probe of the feature at the end of last year.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) also set out concerns about Apple’s implementation of ATT in a deep dive mobile market study published last week. However the UK watchdog has so far deferred intervention over the feature — prioritizing other areas of Apple’s business to investigate (such as App Store rules) as it continues to wait for the government to enact a major competition reform targeting tech giants’ market power which was confirmed as incoming in November 2020 but is still pending legislation (that’s not now expected until next year at the earliest).
Germany is ahead of the curve here as its ex ante digital competition reboot came into force at the start of 2021 — targeting tech giants that are judged to have so-called “paramount significance for competition across markets” with tighter abuse controls.

Since then the FCO has been busy determining which giants the regime applies to — confirming, in a first decision in January, that Google meets the bar.

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/14/appl ... ntitrust/

[weatheriscool]

U.S. appeals court revives Roundup weedkiller cancer lawsuit
Source: Reuters

By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a lawsuit by a Georgia man claiming Bayer AG's Roundup weedkiller caused his cancer, the latest in a string of legal defeats for the company as it seeks to avoid potentially billions of dollars in damages.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Montgomery, Alabama, rejected Bayer's argument that federal law shielded it from state law claims like the one brought by John Carson, who said he was diagnosed with a type of cancer called malignant fibrous histiocytoma in 2016 after using Roundup for 30 years. Carson said the company should have warned of cancer risk on the product's label.

Bayer said it disagreed with the ruling and would consider its options. It said any cancer warning would be inconsistent with the label approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"Bayer continues to stand fully behind its Roundup products," said the company, which acquired the weedkiller line with its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018.

Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-appeal ... 14941.html

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Google Faces Fresh Antitrust Probe in Italy After Data Portability Complaint
by Natasha Lomas
July 14, 2022

Introduction:

(Techcrunch) Italy’s competition watchdog has opened an investigation into Google over concerns it has abused a dominant position by hindering data portability rights which are afforded to individuals under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The procedure follows a complaint made to the authority by the operator of a direct marketing platform called Weople.

The Weople app, which is operated by a company called Hoda, encourages web users to link third party accounts (such as Gmail and other Google accounts) to port their personal data into a “digital vault” — where the free service claims their data will be “masked and anonymized” in order that it can be used to target them with personalized offers, i.e. without their actual information being shared with advertisers/third parties since the app acts as an intermediary.

Weople users are apparently able to generate virtual currency or other rewards (some of which are distributed by prize draw), and potentially earn actual money, in exchange for authorizing use of their “masked” data for marketing purposes.

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/14/goo ... mplaint/

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Amazon, Facing ‘Unfavorable Regulatory Environment’ in India, Struggles to Expand
by Manish Singh
August 30, 2022

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Amazon is lagging its chief rival Flipkart in India on several key metrics and struggling to make inroads in smaller Indian cities and towns, according to a report by investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein.

The American e-commerce giant’s 2021 gross merchandise value in the country, where it has deployed over $6.5 billion, stood between $18 billion to $20 billion, lagging Flipkart’s $23 billion, the analysts said in a report to clients Tuesday that was obtained by TechCrunch. The company’s recent spendings for growth in India has also made profitability “elusive,” the report added.

India is a key overseas market for Amazon, where it competes with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, Walmart-owned Flipkart and social commerce startups SoftBank-backed Meesho and Tiger Global-backed DealShare. Amazon has so far offered “a weaker proposition in ‘new’ commerce” in the country, the report added.

At stake is one of the world’s last great growth markets. The e-commerce spending in India is expected to double in size to over $130 billion by 2025.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/30/amaz ... o-expand/

[wjfox]

3 Companies That Could Be Worth $1 Trillion by 2032

By John Ballard - Aug 14, 2022 at 8:05AM

At the time of writing, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon are the only four U.S. companies with a market capitalization of $1 trillion or greater. Tesla is not far behind, with a market cap of $907 million.

These are elite businesses that have earned shareholders tremendous gains. It goes without saying that these companies all had much smaller market caps not too long ago. Amazon's market cap was $105 billion exactly 10 years ago.

Generally, a good place to look for the next home-run stocks are growing companies with a market cap between $100 billion to $500 billion. But in this case, let's first look at Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A -1.50%) (BRK.B -1.69%), which has a higher market cap but could be a timely buy right now.

For higher return prospects, you'll want to consider Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -2.54%) and Salesforce (CRM 0.10%). These are solid growth stories that still have years to play out.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/08/ ... n-by-2032/

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Senator Klobuchar says Big Tech Money Hasn’t Stopped Her Antitrust Push ... Yet
by Sara Morrison
September 6, 2022

Introduction:

(Vox) Amy Klobuchar’s antitrust push is not dead, the Democratic senator told Kara Swisher at the Code Conference on Tuesday.
“Never count us out when the cause is right and it’s something we need to tackle,” she said.

Klobuchar has been at the forefront of the antitrust push in Congress, sponsoring several bipartisan and bicameral bills aimed at Big Tech that would better regulate them and curb their immense power. Despite auspicious beginnings and what seemed to be a lot of bipartisan interest in passing at least some of those bills, they seem to have stalled out. Some haven’t made any progress at all; others are waiting for a floor vote that never seems to come.

“You need some kind of rules in place where you don’t have the gatekeepers also controlling who wins in the marketplace,” she said.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICO) is one of those bills, and it’s the one Klobuchar has arguably championed the most aggressively.
It would ban dominant digital companies from giving their own products preference over those made by others on the platforms they own. So Amazon wouldn’t be allowed to put its own products higher up in search results in its Marketplace unless those products organically earned that spot, and Google wouldn’t be allowed to put its own maps or reviews above those offered by other companies in Google search results unless its maps and reviews earned that spot.

Read more here: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/6/23 ... code-2022

[wjfox]

Microsoft responds to FTC case seeking to block Activision Blizzard deal, saying it wouldn’t hurt competition

Published Thu, Dec 22 20228:32 PM ESTUpdated Thu, Dec 22 202210:45 PM EST

Microsoft on Thursday filed its response to U.S. regulators’ antitrust case attempting to block the software maker from buying video-game publisher Activision Blizzard, saying that the deal will not harm competition.

The Federal Trade Commission’s challenge to the proposed $68.7 billion acquisition stands out as the biggest government pushback Microsoft has dealt with on home turf since facing off against the Justice Department two decades ago over the dominance of Windows in the operating system market.

Under President Donald Trump, Google’s umbrella company Alphabet, Apple, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta all faced inquiries from U.S. competition officials. That left Microsoft to go about its business and continue expanding with acquisitions through the election of President Joe Biden, even after Biden’s appointee, technology critic Lina Khan, took over at the FTC. But then Microsoft revealed its plan to buy Activision Blizzard. On Dec. 8 the FTC argued that the transaction would violate federal law.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/22/microso ... -deal.html

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Koch Network Spending Big to Torpedo Big Tech Anti-Trust Reforms
by Mike Lux
April 13, 2023

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) In the past couple of months, Americans have suffered disastrous consequences from deregulation initiated during the Trump administration: in transit, the East Palestine derailment threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands; in banking, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank that are still roiling financial markets.

The good news is that despite the overall deregulatory bent of the last administration, the Biden administration has been strengthening antitrust enforcement, plus there have been bipartisan efforts, led in the House by David Cicilline (D-RI) and Ken Buck (R-CO), to strengthen antitrust protections and curb the growing power of Big Tech.

Those bipartisan efforts were stymied thanks to intense lobbying from libertarian-leaning tech companies, think tanks, and advocates, with Big Money funding from the donor network of libertarian oil billionaire Charles Koch, whose influence over antitrust legislation goes back decades. As the new GOP-helmed Congress contemplates reforms, it’s already clear that party leaders like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and libertarian Thomas Massie (R-KY) — who are recipients of Koch cash themselves — are planning to do Big Tech’s bidding and delay or kill regulation and let the companies continue accumulating market power.

From privacy concerns around consumer data to predatory pricing locking out small businesses to the flood of disinformation on social media, Americans have become aware of how much market concentration the big four technology companies have achieved. Americans of all political parties agree that Big Tech companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google have too much power and need to be reined in. President Biden has made promoting competition and ending monopolies a cornerstone of his economic agenda, but he can only do so much facing Republican obstructionism in the House. While congressional action has stalled, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are working to fully enforce existing antitrust laws.

The tech companies, think tanks, advocates, and Koch network continue to fight these efforts. A far-right founder of the notoriously obstructionist House Freedom Caucus, Jim Jordan is now chair of the powerful Judiciary Committee which oversees antitrust policy. In January, he named Thomas Massie as chairman of the Antitrust Subcommittee, ignoring precedent and bypassing the more senior Ken Buck, whom many had presumed would lead it.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/k ... t-reforms