Dana Mattioli

SpaceX has used its position as the world’s primary rocket launcher to push rival satellite operators to share wireless airwaves, showing how the company can flex its power in one area to benefit another part of its business.

Apparently, Elon Musk has plans to around $45 million a month to a new super political-action committee backing Donald Trump's presidential run. Other backers of the group, called America PAC, include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, the Winklevoss twins, former U.S.

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 states sued Amazon, alleging the online retailer illegally wields monopoly power that keeps prices artificially high, locks sellers into its platform, and harms its rivals. The FTC and states alleged that Amazon violated antitrust laws by using anti-discounting measures that punished merchants for offering lower prices elsewhere.

House lawmakers proposed a raft of bipartisan legislation aimed at reining in the country’s biggest tech companies, including a bill that seeks to make Amazon and other large corporations effectively split in two or shed their private-label products.

The law firm Hagens Berman filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in New York alleges that a deal between Amazon and five major book publishers has led to higher e-book prices for all consumers, because it prevents rival retailers from selling any of these publishers’ e-books at a lower price than on Amazon.

Google has struck partnerships with some of the country’s largest hospital systems and most-renowned health-care providers, many of them vast in scope and few of their details previously reported. In just a few years, the company has achieved the ability to view or analyze tens of millions of patient health records in at least three-quarters of US states. In certain instances, the deals allow Google to access personally identifiable health information without the knowledge of patients or doctors.

The boards of Sprint and T-Mobile US struck a $26 billion merger that, if allowed by antitrust enforcers, would leave the US wireless market dominated by three national players. Under the terms of the deal, T-Mobile will exchange 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share. T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom will own 42% of the combined company and Sprint parent SoftBank Group will own 27%. The remaining 31% will be held by the public. Deutsche Telekom would also control voting rights over 69% of the new company and appoint nine of its 14 directors.

Investment bankers have gotten used to being asked by worried retail-industry chief executives to pitch takeover ideas aimed at fending off Amazon. Now the fear has spread to media, health care and many other sectors, where CEOs dread the breathtaking competitive advancements made by not just Amazon but also Facebook, Google and Netflix. The result is an explosion of mergers and acquisitions. So far in Nov 2017, about $200 billion of deals have been announced in the US, according to Dealogic.

During months of merger talks with T-Mobole, Sprint Chairman Masayoshi Son sought a way to merge the two wireless rivals without really having to hand over the keys. There was discussion over inserting a provision to buy the combined company back after two years. The companies explored giving the Japanese billionaire the right to increase his stake over time. He was offered the role of co-chairman.

Apple, locked in an intensifying legal fight with Qualcomm, is is designing iPhones and iPads for next year that would jettison the chipmaker’s components. Apple is considering building the devices only with modem chips from Intel and possibly MediaTek because Qualcomm has withheld software critical to testing its chips in iPhone and iPad prototypes.