Antitrust Report Due for Release, Reports Say

The much-awaited report over antitrust probes involving the technology industry’s biggest names is due for release early next week, reports say. The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee is in charge of the process.

In July, four of the tech world’s leading chief executives, namely Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple, were summoned before the panel.

The session was conducted amid allegations that the firms collectively leverage their dominant power to drive the market to their advantage.

For the record, the big four’s market value combined surpassed the $5 trillion ceiling mark during the early onset of the novel coronavirus outbreak as many users, including investors, flee to the safety of modern technology.

The pandemic made businesses realize the imperatives of digitization in maintaining their operations and interactions with employees after the stay-at-home regulation adopted during lockdowns.

Due to this, Apple Inc recorded its second-trillion last month, now considered the largest publicly traded firm at $2 trillion market value.

It is now ahead of the former holder of the title, Saudi Aramco, who has been experiencing successive setbacks as the oil industry remains volatile.

In relation to antitrust allegations, Epic Games sued the Cupertino, California-based firm after its popular game Fortnite was kicked out from App Store.

According to the gaming developer’s chief executive, Apple Inc’s bullish behavior “breached” the US antitrust law and urged the firm to play at level playing field with smaller technology entities like itself.

Similarly, Google came under scrutiny against the European Union after accusations of its Android mobile operating system’s abuse.

In 2018, the EU hit the search-engine firm with a $5 billion fine following a $2.7 billion worth of penalty from Google it received in 2017.

EU Drafts Data Sharing Rule Involving Technology Giants

Following the United States’ advance, the European Union concocts its rule to force technology giants to share their customer data with smaller rivals, technology news says.

The supranational association is believed to be in the early drafting stage of its Digital Services Act regulations.

According to a report released by the FT, the draft entails that modern technology frontrunners shall not use data collected on their respective platforms for their own commercial advantage.

It cites that insider data should be enjoyed and become accessible to other businesses active in the same venture.

As asserted by EU’s antitrust chief, Margarethe Vestager, they would announce strict new rules under the regulation by the end of the year.

The move aims to increase the responsibilities attributed to social media platforms and their counterparts to encourage more effective content filtering in their interface.

Similarly, the draft suggests that digital giants should be banned from pre-installing their own applications on hardware, namely laptops or mobile phones.

The regulation will also ban them from forcing other companies to exclusively pre-install their software across all platforms.

In a nutshell, this will prevent industry leaders from preferential treatment of their homegrown services like how they do at present.