Latest in antitrust

The Justice Department and a group of states have filed an antitrust suit against Google, claiming the internet giant has used its “stranglehold” over digital tools to quash threats to its dominance in the ad market. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Jonathan Kanter, the chief of the Antitrust…

A major publishing deal is officially dead in the water as Paramount Global scrapped its sale of Simon & Schuster to Bertelsmann's Penguin Random House, declining to pursue an appeal after the Department of Justice sued to block the merger and a federal judge upheld the government’s position. The…

Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, is the focus of an antitrust investigation that predates the Taylor Swift ticket snafu this week, according to a report. The investigation, according to The New York Times, is focusing on whether the company has abused its market power in…

UPDATE: Penguin Random House’s proposed merger with Simon & Schuster will not drive down author advances and they will “continue to go up,” the attorney for the publisher said in opening arguments on Monday. Dan Petrocelli, representing Penguin Random House, attacked the entire premise of the…

The Writers Guild of America West and a coalition of unions launched another salvo against Amazon-MGM, urging antitrust watchdog, the Federal Trade Commission, to contest the deal even though it officially closed last week. Their letter to the FTC today focused in part on Amazon's acquiring MGM-owned Epix, taking out…

Apple has been found to “hide critical information from consumers and illegally stifle consumer choice,” a judge ruled in the company’s legal battle with Epic Games, but the mixed decision will leave App Store fees in place. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers did not find that Apple fully fit the legal…

Thirty-four groups from the Writers Guild of America West to Public Citizen to Demand Progress have appealed to the Federal Trade Commission to block Amazon's proposed acquisition of MGM, which they say reflects the e-commerce giant's growing dominance. The $8.45 billion deal announced in May – which hands Amazon…

Google is facing another antitrust lawsuit from a coalition of attorneys general as the government officials target the tech giant for its business practices, claiming that it is trying to gain an unfair advantage for its own streaming services via its app store. The lawsuit is the second filed by the coalition, after…

UPDATED, with comments from the FTC and Facebook: A federal judge today tossed out the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, concluding that the government failed to establish that the tech platform had a monopoly on social media networks. The judge, James E. Boasberg, still left open the…

UPDATE, 12:03 PM PT, Thursday, updated with WGAW comment: The House Judiciary Committee narrowly advanced a sixth and final piece of legislation that has been dubbed the “break up” bill, on the notion that it ultimately could lead to tech giants shedding assets or splitting in two. The bill, the Ending Platform…

UPDATED, with Klobuchar comment: Amazon’s planned $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM got a chilly reception from some Capitol Hill lawmakers, but there may not be much that they can do to stop it. The opposition largely centers on Amazon, already with a market cap of more than $1.6 trillion, getting even bigger. But…

UPDATED, with additional comments: Makan Delrahim, who as the Justice Department’s antitrust chief during Donald Trump’s administration challenged AT&T’s combination with Time Warner, has a different view of the planned spinoff of WarnerMedia. “I wish both companies and Mr. Zaslav and Mr. Stankey the best,” Delrahim…