Javier Espinoza

Apple will allow iPhone apps to be downloaded directly from their developers’ websites for the first time, a major concession to European regulators that marks the third time this year the big tech group has been forced to change its plan to comply with landmark EU rules. The move to allow so-called sideloading in Europe, which will come into effect later this spring, comes after pressure from developers to be able to distribute their software outside the App Store and threatens a core component of Apple’s $85 billion-a-year global services business. As part of the changes, developers launc

Europe’s biggest telecommunications companies have called on the European Union to compel Big Tech to pay a “fair” contribution for using their networks, the latest stage in a battle for payments that has pitched the sector against companies such as Netflix and Google. Technology companies that “benefit most” from telecommunications infrastructure and drive traffic growth should contribute more to costs, according to the chief executives of 20 groups including BT, Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica.

Regulators in Europe and the UK have opened an antitrust probe into a deal between Google and Meta/Facebook on online advertising, in the latest effort to tackle the market power of the world’s biggest technology companies. The move follows US antitrust investigators who are also probing an agreement informally known as “Jedi Blue.” Google and Facebook have been accused of working together to carve up advertising profits, acting together to buttress their businesses.

EU lawmakers have reached a breakthrough on how to target tech companies, including Apple and Google, as part of moves by Brussels to curb anti-competitive practices in the digital economy. The European Parliament’s main political parties agreed to a deal that would apply to companies with a market capitalisation of at least €80 billion and offering at least one internet service, such as online search. It means the rules would draw more companies than thought into the EU’s planned Digital Markets Act (DMA), a wide-ranging effort to rein in Big Tech.

Multimillion-euro fines can force Big Tech companies to change their behaviour despite their deep pockets, according to French Competition Authority President Isabelle de Silva. She does not believe sanctions could be played down as merely “the cost of doing business,” breaking away from the consensus in the European Union, where competition officials have struggled for years to contain the market power of Big Tech despite levying billions of euros of penalties. Since June 2021, her office has hit Google with €720 million in fines in two separate cases.

European Union judges have quashed a European Commission order for Apple to pay back €14.3 billion in taxes to Ireland in a landmark ruling that deals a big blow to Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s efforts to crack down on low-tax regimes in the bloc.  The ruling hands a big legal victory to Apple and reduces the prospect of opening up other low-tax arrangements for multinationals around the EU to state aid scrutiny by Brussels.  The EU’s second-highest court said that Brussels did not succeed in “showing to the requisite legal standard” that the tech giant had received an ille