Competition law

The Merrick Garland-led Department of Justice published 13 new guidelines it and the FTC will use to evaluate acquisitions and mergers. Image: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)In the wake of legal turmoil that has stalled—but not prevented—a merger between Microsoft and Activision, the Biden administration has opted to revisit the guidelines that the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission will use to assess mergers and acquisitions under the lens of federal antitrust laws.Time to Tackle the Taylor Swift…

Adobe’s pending purchase of Figma, the popular online graphics editing and interface design application, is facing yet another challenge. The European Union Commission plans to begin an in-depth investigation into the acquisition, according to a report from The Financial Times, attributed to four sources familiar with the matter.Back in February, the EU Commission noted that it had received numerous requests to review the business deal. The international watchdog announced that it would need to clear the proposed merger,…

Photo: Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)Jonathan Kanter, the Department of Justice’s top antitrust enforcer, says Big Tech’s cornucopia of questionable business practices looks an awful lot like the oil industry during Standard Oil’s reign. Once a symbol of unstoppable corporate power, the John Rockefeller-owned mega-monopoly was ultimately broken up into 34 separate companies in one of the strongest antitrust enforcement efforts in American history. Like oil before it, Kanter said technology in 2023 represents the…

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Photo: Maja Hitij (Getty Images)After years of squirming, Amazon agreed to implement a raft of major business practice concessions to the European Commission to avoid paying a looming multi-billion dollar antitrust fine. Though Amazon will walk away from the skirmish without having to drain its wallet, the concessions could fan the flames for similar actions being pursued in parallel by other government regulators around the world. The deal this week puts to rest two years-long antitrust investigations that could have…

Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)On Monday, the European Commission accused Meta of going against its antitrust laws by using its Facebook Marketplace to promote ads and distort outside competition. The commission warned Meta of the breach in an official statement and said if the company is found guilty, it could receive a fine of up to 10% of its annual global turnover. In a complaint first filed last year, the commission accused Meta of using its power in the tech industry to incorporate online classified ads into its…

Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)Big tech companies have spared no expense gobbling up competitors in recent years even as lawmakers hammer out historic antitrust legislation intended to curb their most anti-competitive impulses. That’s according to a new report The Tech Oversight project shared exclusively with Gizmodo, which claims Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple combined spent at least $32 billion on acquisitions since 2019. Even if that figure sounds large, it’s almost certainly far less than the true amount tech…

California is suing Amazon, the state’s attorney general announced Wednesday in a press release. The focus of the lawsuit, filed in the state’s Superior Court in San Francisco County, is on how Amazon allegedly crushes competition and inflates prices through restrictive agreements with its third-party sellers.02:49Guess How Much Crypto's Been Stolen Lately? Part 2Today 10:45AMContracts between Amazon and its sellers effectively prevent the platform’s merchants from offering lower prices elsewhere—even though Amazon is a…

A parliamentary panel reportedly grilled Big Tech firms including Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and Uber on alleged anti-competitive practices on Tuesday. The panel discussed a legal framework to ensure fair competition in the country, according to a report. The move comes shortly after the European Union passed the Digital Markets Act, which goes into force from next year. Last month, the parliamentary panel previously questioned representatives of eight firms including Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, and…

Comedian John Oliver decided to wade into the antitrust battleground this week, and he didn’t hold back any punches.Oliver devoted 25 minutes of his most recent Last Week Tonight show to discuss general Big Tech badness and advocated in favor of a pair of historic antitrust bills currently being considered in Congress. The comedian zeroes in on claims made by advocacy groups and small businesses that giants like Google and Meta engage in anti-competitive, self-preferencing behavior that essentially cements their status as…