Apple addresses Spotify’s claims, but not its demands

Two days after Spotify announced that it had filed a suit against Apple with the European Commission over anticompetitive practices, Apple today issued its own response of sorts. In a lengthy statement on its site called “Addressing Spotify’s Claims”, Apple walks through and dismantles some of the key parts of Spotify’s accusations about how the App Store […]

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UK asks competition watchdog to put adtech market review top of its to-do list

The UK government has written to the country’s competition authority to ask the watchdog to respond to concerns about the lack of transparency in the digital advertising market and carry out a formal market study “as soon as possible”. In a letter to the Competition and Markets Authority, chancellor Philip Hammond writes that the online […]

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Competition policy must change to help startups fight ‘winner takes all’ platforms, says UK report

A independent report commissioned by the UK government to examine how competition policy needs to adapt itself for the digital age has concluded that tech giants don’t face adequate competition and the law needs updating to address what it dubs the “novel” challenges of ‘winner takes all’ platforms. The panel also recommends more policy interventions […]

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Apple isn’t safe from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to break up Big Tech

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Tim Cook, Elizabeth Warren is coming for you.

Speaking to The Verge at SXSW, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate made it ultra clear: just because she didn’t explicitly mention Apple in her policy proposal to break up the big tech companies doesn’t mean it’s safe from her scrutiny. 

Under an Elizabeth Warren administration, Apple would be broken up, too.

“Apple, you’ve got to break it apart from their App Store,” said Warren, speaking to editor-in-chief of The Verge, Nilay Patel. “It’s got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don’t get to do both at the same time.” Read more…

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FTC assembles new task force focused on the tech industry’s anti-competitive practices

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A new government task force has been assembled to monitor anti-competitive behavior in the tech industry.

On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that its Bureau of Competition is forming a Technology Task Force dedicated to monitoring competition among the U.S. technology industry.

This new task forced will investigate any anti-competitive conduct among the tech market, including online platforms, and have the authority to take enforcement action when necessary. 

“The role of technology in the economy and in our lives grows more important every day,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons in a public statement. “It makes sense for us to closely examine technology markets to ensure consumers benefit from free and fair competition.” Read more…

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Europe agrees platform rules to tackle unfair business practices

The European Union’s political institutions have reached agreement over new rules designed to boost transparency around online platform businesses and curb unfair practices to support traders and other businesses that rely on digital intermediaries for discovery and sales. The European Commission proposed a regulation for fairness and transparency in online platform trading last April. And late yesterday […]

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Google still claimed to be blocking search rivals on Android, despite Europe’s antitrust action

Mobile licensing changes made by Google this fall, when it tweaked terms for OEMs wanting to license its Android smartphone platform on devices destined for the European market, don’t appear to be offering succour to search rivals — despite being triggered by an antitrust ruling intended to reset the competitive playing field. The European Commission […]

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Seized cache of Facebook docs raise competition and consent questions

A UK parliamentary committee has published the cache of Facebook documents it dramatically seized last week. The documents were obtained by a legal discovery process by a startup that’s suing the social network in a California court in a case related to Facebook changing data access permissions back in 2014/15. The court had sealed the documents […]

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These robots have nailed bottle-flipping, proving not even internet challenges are safe from automation

In this year’s RoboCon in Japan, teams of high school students built a bunch of bottle-flipping robots that can nail the internet challenge better than most of us.  Read more…More about Robots, Mashable Video, Japan, Contest, and Competition

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Microsoft’s $7.5BN GitHub buy gets green-lit by EU regulators

Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Git-based code sharing and collaboration service, GitHub, has been given an unconditional greenlight from European Union regulators. The software giant announced its intention to bag GitHub back in June, saying it would shell out $7.5 billion in stock to do so. At the time it also pledged: “GitHub will retain its […]

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Google tweaks Android licensing terms in Europe to allow Google app unbundling — for a fee

Google has announced changes to the licensing model for its Android mobile operating system in Europe,  including introducing a fee for licensing some of its own brand apps, saying it’s doing so to comply with a major European antitrust ruling this summer. In July the region’s antitrust regulators hit Google with a recordbreaking $5BN fine for […]

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Apple’s Shazam acquisition cleared by EU regulators

European regulators have given the green light to Apple’s December 2017 acquisition of music and image recognition discovery firm Shazam. Apple Music is the second largest music streaming service in Europe, after Spotify . While Shazam offers what has been described as “a leading music recognition app” in the region (and globally). TechCrunch broke the […]

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