#antitrust

#antitrust

Real estate's biggest turf war is playing out this week in a Manhattan courtroom, where a federal judge must decide if the so-called "Zillow ban" is fair. Compass, the nation's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, is fighting the ban, under which Zillow excludes home listings from its site and penalizes brokers when properties were previously listed as private "exclusives" elsewhere.

A yearslong fight between the Federal Trade Commission and Meta, which dates back to when it was still called Facebook, has ended with Meta prevailing, and a federal judge declaring that the company likely does not hold a monopoly in the social media sphere anymore.

Idealo pursued legal action against Google, claiming that the Alphabet subsidiary was "self-preferencing" its own platforms, which led to unfair market advantages that hindered competitors. The company first demanded at least 3.3 billion euros, or more than $3.8 billion, in damages in February 2025. To counter, Google said it made changes in 2017 that allowed competing shopping platforms the same opportunity as Google Shopping to display ads through Google Search.

A cancer patient might live in a town with four oncology groups, but only one accepts his insurance the one owned by his insurer. A young couple could see huge bills after their child is born, because their insurer agreed to the health system's rates in exchange for a contract with obstetricians across the country. A woman might have to pay a big sum she can't afford for basic lab tests at a hospital

If the parties fail to engage in discovery due to pending settlement negotiations, the court said that this will not be grounds for continuance of the trial date. Judge Moore's order did not specify if the trial was set to be a jury trial or a non-jury trial. The lawsuit was originally filed in late April 2024 against HomeServices of America and its subsidiaries, BHH Affiliates and HSF Affiliates.

We need to take a deep breath and understand it's like a meteor coming,

Since launching Google Play (née Android Market) in 2008, Google has never made a change to the US store that it didn't want to make-until now. Having lost the antitrust case brought by Epic Games, Google has implemented the first phase of changes mandated by the court. Developers operating in the Play Store will have more freedom to direct app users to resources outside the Google bubble. However, Google has not given up hope of reversing its loss before it's forced to make bigger changes.

Sometimes a term is so apt, its meaning so clear and so relevant to our circumstances, that it becomes more than just a useful buzzword and grows to define an entire moment," the columnist Kyle Chayka writes, in a review of Cory Doctorow's book "Enshittification.

In May 2021, Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT), a privacy feature that lets users choose whether apps can track their activity across other companies' apps and websites for advertising or data-sharing purposes. Following the rollout of the feature, cross-app and cross-site tracking declined sharply, with at least one study reporting a 54.7% drop in tracking rates in the United States alone.

Apple has abused its dominant position by charging app developers unfair commissions, a London tribunal has ruled, in a blow that could leave the United States tech company on the hook for hundreds of millions of pounds in damages. On Thursday, the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) ruled against Apple after a trial of the lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of millions of iPhone and iPad users in the United Kingdom.

"Royalty-free" is an appealing notion, especially when applied to the licensing of a patent essential to a standard. This standard is even more compelling to an implementer when every participant in the relevant standards body or proprietary consortia, including preeminent technology companies, has pledged it will grant its essential patents on a royalty-free (RF) basis. What could be better than an entire ecosystem around a standard or proprietary solution and its implementation being bound by an RF pledge?

ChatGPT prices were inflated since the service's inception, with price levels reaching an eye-popping 100 to 200 times competitors' prices on a per-token basis amidst a February 2025 price war. A secretive agreement struck between OpenAI and Microsoft early in OpenAI's development allowed Microsoft to control the supply of compute to its horizontal competitor's products. It used an exclusivity clause to restrict OpenAI's product output, and to impose a price-or, conversely, output and quality-floor on its competitor OpenAI's ChatGPT products.

If your organisation has used Windows Server on Google, Amazon or Alibaba's cloud platforms at any point since December 2018, you have likely paid too much money, " Dr Stasi said.

China's competition regulator has launched an investigation into Qualcomm's purchase of Israeli firm Autotalks, the latest salvo in the escalating tech trade war between Washington and Beijing. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) described its probe as routine, according to state-run broadcaster CGTN, yet the timing is pointed. It came as China tightened exports of rare earth metals last Thursday, ratcheting up tensions with the US.

The auction has never been the real center of power, and it will not be in the future. What will decide the fate of the open web is who controls the data that drives monetization and the artificial intelligence that determines distribution. Google holds the advantage in both, yet the proposed remedies in the ad tech antitrust trial do not address it.