Tag Archives: monopolies

WSJ: Feds Planning Antitrust Suit Against Amazon

The Wall Street Journal reports: The Federal Trade Commission is preparing a potential antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that in the coming months could challenge an array of the tech giant’s business practices as anticompetitive, according to people familiar with the matter. The commission in recent years has been examining Amazon practices including whether it favors its own products over competitors’ …

Read More »

Trump Blasts EU For Fining “Great Company” Google

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump said Thursday that the European Union’s antitrust ruling against Google is proof that it is taking “advantage of the U.S.” On Wednesday, the EU hit Google with a $5 billion fine, alleging the company had violated antitrust laws by bundling its apps like Chrome and Google Play with its Android operating system. Google has 90 …

Read More »

EU Smacks Google With Record $5B Antitrust Fine

The New York Times reports: Google was hit with a $5.1 billion fine by European antitrust officials on Wednesday for abusing its power in the smartphone market, in the region’s latest move to rein in the clout of American tech companies. The penalty of 4.34 billion euros was a record, and far larger than the €2.4 billion, or about $2.8 …

Read More »

Extremist Site Files Anti-Trust Suit Against Google

The Washington Post reports: The social media site Gab.ai is accusing Google of violating federal antitrust laws when the tech giant booted Gab from the Google Play Store, according to lawsuit filed Thursday. The legal action is the latest salvo in an escalating battle between right-leaning technologists and leaders against Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook and Google. Gab alleges …

Read More »

Staples To Merge With Office Depot

Via the New York Times: In planning a $6.3 billion merger, Staples and Office Depot are betting that 18 years was long enough for government regulators to change their minds about how consumers buy office supplies. The deal, announced on Wednesday, is expected to be closely evaluated by antitrust authorities, given that it will shrink the world of office supply …

Read More »

Argh II: The Suckening

Eighteen hours into the TWC outage and according to their perkily apologetic Twitter feed, service will be restored to the Upper East Side sometime between Friday and five minutes ago. Meanwhile 150,000 UES residents are overloading the TWC phone system and swarming the coffee shops and McDonald’s that have other providers. At the moment I’m in a midtown Starbucks below …

Read More »

Sam Seder On Net Neutrality

What do we have to fear from Google and Verizon?

Read More »

Air Google

Google will buy travel software company ITA for $700M. While they claim to have no plan to establish themselves as resellers of airline tickets, the takeover is raising concerns of anti-trust violations. “What we’re going to do is build new flight search tools that focus on end-users,” Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts …

Read More »

Ticketmaster To Merge With Live Nation

The country’s biggest ticket seller and biggest concert promoter have been granted permission to merge and create a single company that will run pretty much every bit of your concert experience. Once the merged is officially closed, the combined company will be called Live Nation Entertainment — a combination that would have control of nearly all aspects of the music …

Read More »

Please Pay Comcast Negative Five Cents

My loyal companion Aaron notes from his self-exile in Portland that Comcast wants the immediate payment of negative five cents for his many months-ago discontinued Jersey City account. If he doesn’t negative pay them at once, they’ll disconnect him even more and send him to negative collections. Or something.

Read More »

Daily Grumble

Realizing that complaining about one’s cable provider is as fruitless as complaining about the weather, I still must vent about Time-Warner’s “paperless” billing system. In addition to providing your 87 digit account number, to pay online one must also enter a “customer code,” which, hello, is only available on the paper bills. And of course, to get your customer code …

Read More »