The chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel said on Friday that he expects to have a final report on its probe of big technology companies and their potential breaches of antitrust law, by the “first part” of next year.
The committee has received tens of thousands of documents from Facebook Inc, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc and is expecting more material in the coming weeks, Representative David Cicilline told reporters.
“Our hope is to conclude our evidence collection end of this year, beginning of next year with the idea that we will have a final report, instead of recommendations in the first part of next year,” said Cicilline, a Democrat…
Once lauded as engines of economic growth, these companies have increasingly been on the defensive over their outsized market influence. Politicians including President Donald Trump, consumers, other firms and regulators have criticized that power.
MacDailyNews Take: Again, the real problems where too much power is concentrated and the potential for abuse of their market power is greatest is clearly Google and Facebook, not Apple.
Since Apple does not have a monopoly in any market in which they participate, there is no legal basis for action against Apple Inc.
In the case of Apple, there is no monopoly (which is legal by the way), much less monopoly abuse (which is explicitly impossible given the nonexistence of a monopoly). You cannot abuse a monopoly when you do not have a monopoly to begin with.
Worldwide smartphone OS market share, September 2019:
• Android: 76.24%
• iOS: 22.48%
It’s enough to drive us to drink (doesn’t take much) and, luckily for us, we have interns who know how to expertly TTK! Prost, everyone!