31 posts tagged ‘Antitrust’
Beeper and the Centurion Lounge
mjtsai,
John Gruber: Here’s the analogy I’ve been thinking best applies. American Express operates Centurion Lounges at a few dozen airports around the world, exclusively for the use of their Platinum Card holders. Other premium credit cards offer similar access to other lounges. If you have an American Express Platinum Card, you just show up, show […]
Beeper’s Final Fixes and Government Investigations
Juli Clover: On Reddit, the Beeper Mini team says that the Mac-based fix coming on December 20 stabilizes iMessage for Beeper Cloud and Mini, and it “works well” and “is very reliable.”[…]Beeper has been using its own Mac servers to provide that information to Apple, but that resulted in thousands of Beeper users having the […]
Adobe Abandons Figma Acquisition
Paul Kunert (Hacker News): Adobe’s $20 billion buy of web-first design collaboration start-up Figma will harm software developers if it goes ahead as proposed, according to a provisional ruling on the merger by Britain’s competition regulator.[…]The CMA adds in its report: “The inquiry group also provisionally concluded that Adobe abandoned development of new product design […]
Epic Wins Antitrust Case With Google
Kyle Orland: The jury unanimously answered “yes” to all 11 questions on the verdict form, indicating that Epic had proven those monopolies existed in every worldwide market except for China. Google “engaged in anticompetitive conduct” to establish or maintain the monopoly and illegally tied the Google Play store to the use of Google Play billing, […]
Google Pays to Be Default on Samsung Phones
Adamya Sharma: The ongoing Google vs. Epic trial has brought out another interesting piece of information. As per testimony presented by Epic Games (via Bloomberg), Google paid Samsung $8 billion over a period of four years to keep Search, Assistant, and Play Store as default services on Samsung phones.[…]One internal document also shows how Google […]
Apple Asked Amazon to Block Rival Ads
Eugene Kim (via Hacker News): Apple’s latest products directly sold by Amazon have a much cleaner page layout on Amazon with no ads or recommendations until the very bottom of the page, an Insider review of the e-commerce site shows. Most other brands don’t get this special treatment, according to people familiar with the matter, […]
Spotify’s Google Play Store Deal
Adi Robertson and Sean Hollister (Hacker News): Music streaming service Spotify struck a seemingly unique and highly generous deal with Google for Android-based payments, according to new testimony in the Epic v. Google trial. On the stand, Google head of global partnerships Don Harrison confirmed Spotify paid a 0 percent commission when users chose to […]
Rep. Joaquin Castro asks Justice Dept. to review Warner Bros.' practice of permanently shelving movies for tax breaks
Boing Boing,
In the past couple of years, Warner Bros. Discovery has withheld completed movies from release in order to get tax breaks. "Batgirl" and "Scoob! Holiday Haunt" were fully completed and intended to be released on the streamer Max, but permanently shelved so the studio could cut losses and get tax breaks. — Read the rest