Category: Director’s Take
These days, mainstream journalists are taking aim at Big Tech. The Wall Street Journal conducted investigations critical of Alphabet, Amazon, and Facebook. Politico obtained leaked internal Federal Trade Commission (FTC) memos and published criticisms of the FTC’s decision to not prosecute Google. The House Judiciary Committee’s majority staff report arguing for regulations and breakups of [...]
Net neutrality is an idea whose time has passed. Well actually, that’s not quite correct: Its time never came, because the potpourri of policy ideas referred to as “net neutrality” (e.g., all bits should be treated the same — no fast lanes — and companies may not pay for customers’ data use — no zero [...]
Some members of Congress, the White House, most federal and state antitrust regulators, and a number of pundits are pushing a narrative that Big Tech is five abusive monopolies — Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook (now Meta), and Microsoft — that need to be reined in. As I have written before, they are wrong: There [...]
This will be interesting: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is about to launch a rulemaking to ramp up regulation of Big Tech’s collection and use of user data. FTC Chair Lina Khan says this is keeping with the agency’s missions of consumer protection and promotion of competition. But there [...]
Alphabet Inc. recently announced its YouTube video-sharing service would leave the streaming platform Roku on December 9 after a long public dispute between the two tech leaders. Some members of Congress have noticed and are using it as an opportunity to promote their Big Tech antitrust legislation, claiming Alphabet’s move is proof of market power. [...]