Ownership

The Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to block the Chinese company Huawei from US telecommunications contracts and supply chains is unconstitutional, misguided, “arbitrary and capricious,” Huawei said. The Chinese telecom giant devoted more than 100 pages to savaging the FCC proposal, which would deny money from the commission’s Universal Service Fund to companies that purchase equipment or services from companies that are deemed threats to national security. That list would include Huawei and ZTE, another Chinese telecom.

Rep Keith Ellison (D-MN) is calling on the US government to investigate Google, the latest sign that some Democratic lawmakers are ready to challenge the tech industry after befriending it in the past.  In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, Rep Ellison urged the watchdog agency to take a closer look at Google and its parent company, Alphabet, given that European regulators recently found that the search giant harmed its rivals and fined it $2.7 billion.

House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member David Cicilline (D-RI) hammered Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, following a report that the company is sharing large amounts of its users’ data with other companies. “Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have ‘complete control’ over who sees our data on Facebook," Rep Cicilline tweeted. “This needs to be investigated and the people responsible need to be held accountable,” he continued.

Microsoft will acquire the software-code repository GitHub  for $7.5 billion in stock, a move that could help the software giant convince more developers to create applications for its cloud-computing business. The deal puts GitHub, a popular service where developers share and collaborate on code, into the hands of a tech giant that is among the leaders in so-called cloud computing, where customers rent digital resources and applications on demand. Three years ago, GitHub raised $250 million from several venture capital firms, a move that valued the company at $2 billion at the time.

Justice Department Antitrust Chief Makan Delrahim, who is leading a review of the proposed $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile US with Sprint, says the elimination of one major competitor in wireless service isn’t necessarily a deal killer. The law and market economics will be the crucial factors, Delrahim said. “I don’t think there’s any magical number that I’m smart enough to glean about any single market,” he said. 

For years, Facebook has argued that it’s a platform: An unbiased technology service for all ideas, brands, media companies and people to distribute their work. That’s not really the case, argues Ben Thompson, the founder of the influential tech newsletter Stratechery. Thompson argued that Facebook and Google, two well-known “platforms,” are actually more like aggregators, an important distinction.

Forget Google versus Facebook. Forget Uber versus Lyft. Forget Amazon versus … well, everybody. The technology world’s most bruising battle for supremacy is taking place in China. And it could point to Big Tech’s future everywhere else, too.

[Commentary] In 2017, I predicted the government’s case to block the merger of AT&T and Time Warner would most likely be the antitrust case of the decade.

Randall Stephenson, AT&T's CEO, predicted that T-Mobile USA and Sprint will have a difficult time getting their merger approved because the deal would eliminate a major competitor. "I think [T-Mobile and Sprint] have a tough hill to climb, I mean, it's a classic horizontal merger where you're taking a competitor out of the marketplace," Stephenson said.

Facebook is shutting down its ill-fated "trending" news section after four years. The company claims the tool is outdated and wasn't popular. But the trending section also proved problematic in ways that would presage Facebook's later problems with fake news, political balance and the limitations of artificial intelligence in managing the messy human world.