antitrust - Page 7

A recent report claims that a group of at least 40 states led by New York is set to file an antitrust lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook as early as next week.

Tech giants Facebook and Google are reportedly facing further legal issues as federal and state antitrust authorities prepare to file new lawsuits against the companies in the coming weeks.

While rivals have warned of Google’s privacy problems and market dominance through monopoly power, many are reportedly hesitant to pursue antitrust measures due to their reliance on the tech giant’s money. In the case of Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser to rival Google’s Chrome, the vast majority of its revenue comes from an agreement to make Google the browser’s default search option.

A group of state attorneys general, led by the New York Attorney General Letitia James, is reportedly on track to file antitrust charges against tech giant Facebook in early December with a focus on the company’s acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram.

A recent report from the New York Times states that the Justice Department is targeting a secretive partnership between Apple and Google worth billions of dollars as part of its landmark antitrust case. The deal, which cemented Google’s control of internet search, is described as “one of the most lucrative business deals in history” by the Times.

Tech giant Google reportedly keeps user data from YouTube and Google.com even after users of its Google Chrome web browser request that the browser purge all website cookies and site data. The Internet giant claims it isn’t another flex of its monopoly power, but rather, a “bug in Chrome.”

At a recent virtual conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal, former Google Chairman and Clinton lackey Eric Schmidt stated that he doesn’t believe that the tech giant is a monopoly as it doesn’t have 100 percent market share.

An additional seven states may join the Department of Justice’s landmark antitrust lawsuit filed against Alphabet Inc.’s Google in the coming weeks, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced Tuesday.

The Justice Department has filed its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging that the Big Tech Masters of the Universe engaged in anticompetitive practices to preserve its monopoly power and crush competitors to its search and advertising businesses. The Wall Street Journal first broke the story on Tuesday morning that the lawsuit would finally be filed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is expected to file a lawsuit Tuesday alleging that Google has been abusing its online dominance in online search to stifle competition and harm consumers, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

A recent report from the Wall Street Journal outlines how travel sites that previously benefited from Google’s search engine rankings are now finding themselves being limited by the company’s algorithms as Google creates its own products in direct competition with them. Travel is yet another web niche that is feeling the might of Google’s monopoly power.

A recent report alleges that the Justice Department plans to charge Google with violating antitrust laws this week in the largest action taken against a U.S. tech firm in two decades.

A recent report from the New York Times alleges that employees at the tech giant Google are encouraged to speak freely within the company, but one topic is forbidden — the internet giant’s antitrust behavior and crushing competitors using monopoly power.

In the latest update on the legal battle between Fortnite developer Epic Games and Apple, a judge has ruled that Apple cannot be forced to put the popular video game back in its App Store and criticized Epic Games for what she called deceitful practices and intentional breach of contract.

Tech giant Apple reportedly forced the privacy-focused email app ProtonMail to add in-app purchases to its iPhone app despite the service being free for years. Apple’s treatment of the popular privacy-centric email service is another example of Tim Cook’s company flexing its monopoly power. ProtonMail CEO Andy Yen likened Apple’s app store policies to “mafia extortion.”

A trade association of theater owners and producers announced there would be no ticket sales through May 2021. That may not be legal.

In a recent House antitrust report, former Apple App Store Director Phil Shoemaker states that Apple uses its App Store rules as a “weapon” against competitors. His testimony is just more evidence that the Big Tech Masters of the Universe use monopoly power to crush the competition.

A recent report from top Democratic Congressional lawmakers has determined that tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google engage in anti-competitive behavior. According to the report, “To put it simply, companies that once were scrappy, underdog startups that challenged the status quo have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons.”

Facebook’s lawyers claimed in a recent document reviewed by the  Wall Street Journal that a government breakup of Facebook from Instagram and WhatsApp would defy the law, cost billions of dollars, and harm consumers. According to the report, the document states: “A ‘breakup’ of Facebook is thus a complete nonstarter.”

Speaking at the Atlantic Festival recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed the antitrust issues that the tech giant is facing amongst a number of other topics.

In a recent court filing, tech giant Apple has accused  Epic Games of “starting a fire and pouring gasoline on it” by breaking Apple’s App Store rules.

In a recent interview with NPR, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company created the megapopular game Fortnite explained why he chose to launch a legal campaign against tech giants Apple and Google. According to Sweeney, the Big Tech Masters of the Universe “exploit” developers with the singular interest of furthering their “monopoly.”

Tech giant Apple is now seeking damages against Epic Games, the developers behind the wildly popular game Fortnite, which sued Apple alleging that the company took part in monopolistic practices in relation to its App Store.

The New York Times claims in a new report that the Department of Justice has plans to file antitrust charges against Google within the coming weeks.

The legal battle between Oracle and Google, which stands accused of stealing technology owned by Oracle for use in Android smartphones, entered its tenth year last week.

Facebook recently complained to Reuters that tech giant Apple rejected its attempt to explain to users that Tim Cook’s company would take a 30 percent cut of sales from its new online events feature, forcing Facebook to remove the message in order to implement the feature in its iOS app. Apple cited a policy against showing “irrelevant” information in updates to explain the decision. 

The CEO of the popular restaurant review app Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman, appeared on a podcast recently to discuss the growing monopoly power of the Big Tech Masters of the Universe.  According to Stoppelman, Google doesn’t like to compete on a level playing field because, “when they tried to, they were losing.”

In a recent article, MarketWatch questions whether video games could actually be Google and Apple’s weakness in antitrust cases. One venture capitalist commented, “These closed gardens feel like extortion. You need to pay to survive. It harkens to Microsoft and the Department of Justice investigation, and AT&T before that. With Apple and Google, it comes down to what is the ‘right’ take for the platforms? Thirty percent? 10%?”

Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple is now well underway with the game developer scoring a partial win in the first ruling on the case. The court granted the developer a temporary restraining order against Apple following the tech giant’s threat to remove Epic’s Unreal Engine from multiple Apple platforms — an act of retaliation against the Fortnite company that would have impacted thousands of developers working on their own games and entertainment projects.

The creator of the megapopular Fortnite video game, Epic Games, has reportedly announced a new tournament taking place on August 23 where players will compete win anti-Apple prizes as the game developer continues its legal battle with tech giant Apple.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appeared with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily to discuss Google and Big Tech. Gingrich decried Google’s ability to “pick and choose who they want to enable to communicate in the world.”

In a recent article, the New York Times outlines how a shrinking economy and the world in turmoil due to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic has actually helped Silicon Valley tech giants to further amass their wealth and influence.

Tech giant Apple has reportedly threatened to remove Epic Games’ access to all the development tools necessary to create software for Apple’s platforms including the Unreal Engine Epic offers to third-party developers, a move the game developer calls an “existential threat.” The threat of retaliation ratchets up the ongoing dispute between the companies sparked by the removal of Fortnite from the Apple app store.

Epic Games, the company behind the massively popular game Fortnite, filed a lawsuit against Apple on Thursday after the Silicon Valley giant removed the game from its App Store, preventing players from accessing the games on iPhone and iPad devices. Epic released an ad after the banning which claims: “Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices. Join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming ‘1984’”

Privacy-based search engine DuckDuckGo released a study on Monday which found that allowing smartphone users to choose their default search engine could result in Google losing 20 percent of its search market.

A recent report from NBC outlines what a huge number of emails from tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google could mean for possible antitrust cases against the companies.