The new head of Japan’s antitrust watchdog said on Monday that the country will join forces with the United States and Europe to take on any market abuses by the four Big Tech companies, dubbed “GAFA” – Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.
Leika Kihara and Takahiko Wada for Reuters:
Kazuyuki Furuya, chairman of Japan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC), also said Tokyo could open a probe into any merger or business tie-up involving fitness tracker maker Fitbit if the size of such deals are big enough.
EU antitrust regulators in August launched an investigation into a $2.1 billion deal by Alphabet unit Google’s bid to buy Fitbit that aimed to take on Apple… Multi-national companies like GAFA have similar business practices across the globe, which makes global coordination crucial, Furuya said. “We’ll work closely with our U.S. and European counterparts, and respond if to any moves that hamper competition,” he said.
Furuya, who assumed the post in September, also said the FTC would conduct research into Japan’s mobile phone market to see whether there is any room for improvement to spur competition.
MacDailyNews Take: Lumping Apple in with the likes of Alphabet/Google and Facebook is an insult, not only to Apple, but to logic: Apple does not hold a monopoly position – far from it – in any market in which they compete.
The big 4 includes Apple, but not M$/Intel. Why?
Because Apple has given some if not all of them sweet heart default positions (DEALS) on iOS, the only access they should have within iOS by a web address on Safari and nothing else all the other smaller developers be better off.