Ownership

While many agree the government does have a legitimate antitrust case against the megamerger between AT&T and Time Warner — the combined, vertically integrated company could potentially freeze out competitors, withhold or increase the price of premium content, and in turn harm consumers — President Donald Trump's ongoing public battle with Time Warner’s CNN has cast a heavy political shadow over the deal and the government’s objection to it. I reached out to eight experts on antitrust matters and megamergers to find out whether they think Trump’s public comments, specifically when it co

Our present panics tend to arrive just as new parts of our economy, culture and politics are reconstituted within platform marketplaces — shifts that have turned out to be bigger than anyone anticipated. Aggravation about “fake news” followed the realization that the business and consumption of online news had been substantially captured by Facebook, which had strenuously resisted categorization as a media company. Children’s entertainment has migrated to new and unexpected venues faster and more completely than either parents or YouTube expected or accounted for.

The Federal Communications Commission’s anticipated decision on net neutrality has (rightfully) garnered a lot of publicity and scrutiny. The FCC’s repeal of different regulations earlier this fall, however, could reshape a news source often left out of predictions of the industry’s future: local TV newsrooms.

[Commentary] A few weeks ago, representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter came to town to testify before Congress. But let’s look beyond the narrow scope of those hearings and explore a broader conceptual issue, a massive and thorny topic: the role and responsibility of technology companies that began as platforms and transformed, I believe, into publishers. These are two very different things, with different roles in society. Are they merely platforms and tech companies, or are they publishers with social and legal responsibility for what they publish?

A tiny cable operator is taking on AT&T over the price of regional sports, raising issues of access to programming and anticompetitive conduct. The suit comes days after the Justice Department filed suit to block the Time Warner merger over just those concerns.

While fear that big tech can wield excessive influence in our democracy may reflect broader misgivings outside the realm of antitrust law and enforcement, some political concerns about big tech appropriately fall under the purview of antitrust regulation. As Sally Hubbard, a Senior Editor at the Capitol Forum who covers monopolization issues, recently stated in an interview with Vox’s Sean Illing, “Companies like Facebook and Google have had an outsize effect on political discourse because of the ways their algorithms help to promote and spread fake news and propaganda.

Technology companies are facing growing international obstacles affecting how their most valuable asset — data — flows across borders. New trade agreements and laws are affecting how companies share and store their troves of data around the world. For decades, trade talks centered around tangible goods such as oil, agriculture and cars.

Google said it is pulling YouTube from some Amazon.com Inc. devices in retaliation for Amazon refusing to sell many Google products, escalating a battle between two tech titans as their businesses increasingly overlap. Google said Amazon’s retail website doesn’t sell competing products like the Google Home smart speaker or Google’s Chromecast streaming device. Google also claimed that Amazon’s Prime Video lineup of shows and movies isn’t available via the Chromecast.

Reps Keith Ellison (D-MN), David Cicilline (D-RI), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Rick Nolan (D-MN), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) introduced the Merger Retrospective Act to curb the harmful effects of corporate monopolization on working people.