Antitrust Probing Team Battles Biggest Online Tech Players
On Thursday, the Justice Department boosted its online platform investigation team. It is including Ryan Shores, a former partner with an international law firm.
The probing is to help supervise the systems of Alphabet’s Google, Facebook, and other big tech firms. Shores comes from the law firm Shearman & Sterling LLP. In addition, he was on call to join the Office of the Deputy Attorney General.
According to the firm, that department oversees the Antitrust Division, among others.
At the Shearman office, Shores stated he is attentive to the antitrust and other complex litigation in federal and state courts.
Shores is also the one who was employed for the Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. In July, the department said it was launching an investigation for the big high-tech firms about whether or not they are breaking antitrust law.
The department refused to name the companies but indicated that the examination would consider matters raised about “search, social media, and some retail services online.”
This is also an apparent remark to Google, Amazon, Facebook, and potentially Apple Inc.
In a statement, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen said, “The addition of Associate Deputy Attorney General Ryan A. Shores for this vital role reflects the significance of the Department’s review of competitive conditions among online platforms.”
He also added, “His years of high-stakes antitrust and litigation expertise will bring invaluable experience to the review as he works closely with our Antitrust Division.” The formal title of Shores’ will be associate deputy attorney general and senior advisor for technology industries.
Tech Giant’s Further Antitrust Investigation
On the other side of the news, the tech giant antitrust investigation is a wide-ranging one. It is a common thread on large tech businesses abusing their leading position in the marketplace to distort competition.
Apple is under attack for allegedly doing so with the App Store.
There is no way to sell iOS apps to customers other than through Apple’s own store. This is where the firm takes a cut of both app sales and in-app purchases.
Moreover, Apple’s app endorsement over third party ones is on an accusation. In addition, it is giving an unfair benefit to Apple Music over Spotify.
The latter claim is due to people making use of a paid subscription to Apple’s own streaming music service within the app. Meanwhile, it is not probable to do this with Spotify without Apple taking a cut, which would eliminate most of Spotify’s own share of the revenue.
The revenues are some bulk of the outflows. This is for the streaming music services that were passed on to the labels.
Accusations were similarly given to Google. This is because its own products have an aggressive advantage over third party ones. On the flip side, Facebook is under investigation for both its dominant position in social media and privacy concerns.
Europe has already taken several actions versus the tech giants, most notably passing the strictest privacy defense law in the world, GDPR.
Apple had to strengthen some of its privacy policies to conform. This is because the said law is so strict. Meanwhile, a long-running public radio program hosted a debate. In addition, it has been discovered that most listeners believe that the US must implement similar protections.
