The US Department of Justice is reportedly preparing an antitrust investigation into Google. But that doesn’t mean Google is headed for a breakup and, at least for now, there are way more questions than answers. Which parts of Google’s sprawling business will the DOJ look into? Will it delve beyond Google’s search practices, which have […]
The programmatic advertising ecosystem is a mess – even its main architect agrees. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Brian O’Kelley, founder and former CEO of AT&T-owned AppNexus, shared a three-pronged proposal for how he’d start to fix the tangled web he helped weave. First, give consumers control and transparency over their data. […]
Big Tech can’t catch a break in DC … actually, scratch that. If Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is elected to the White House in 2020, she’s got a plan to break up Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple. And her proposal specifically targets Google’s ad platform business. On Friday, the Democratic presidential candidate laid out how her […]
Facebook’s plan to integrate the backend infrastructure of its messaging platforms isn’t sitting well with privacy advocates, security experts, European regulators or US lawmakers. Alarm bells are ringing all over the place. The Irish Data Protection Authority says it’s going to be “very closely scrutinizing” the situation, particularly where it might involve the sharing and […]
Federal Trade Commission Chair Joseph Simons is in favor of a national privacy regime – but beware the potential unintended consequences, he said. “Depending on how you do privacy legislation, you could have an adverse impact on competition, potentially by entrenching the major digital platforms,” Simons told lawmakers during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on antitrust […]
With a divided Congress, don’t expect 2019 to usher in federal privacy legislation a la GDPR… or to see a breakup of big tech. Even if the midterms hadn’t shaken out as expected – with Republicans keeping the Senate and Democrats securing a majority in the House – the chance for congressional action on either […]
What’s a good, succinct way to describe the current US system of data security and privacy regulation? “It’s a mess,” said Daniel Solove, a professor of law at George Washington University. That’s why the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a series of hearings from mid-September through November to help it rethink its approach to […]
The trial that will resolve the US Justice Department’s challenge to AT&T’s $85 billion proposed acquisition of Time Warner will begin on Wednesday. The case, the first major US media merger to go to trial in decades, will indicate how the government may oversee telco and media consolidation going forward. If successful, the DOJ’s challenge […]
The European Union’s antitrust commission on Thursday added two formal charges to Google’s ever-growing pile of regulatory burdens. The first charge substantiates a previous objection claiming Google favors its own comparison shopping service in search results. “It means consumers may not see the most relevant results to their search queries,” wrote European Commissioner for Competition […]
