Growing tensions between Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft, lie behind the death of the Internet Association (IA), the nine-year-old lobby group that was Big Tech’s voice in Washington, Ars Technica reports, citing “insiders and industry observers.”
The Washington-based group, which dubbed itself the “unified” voice of the internet industry, will shut at the end of the year after both Microsoft and Uber, among others, pulled their financial support, leaving an insurmountable funding gap.
The closure is a sign of the increasingly different policy objectives of its Big Tech members, said observers, with Microsoft in particular looking to distance itself from its Silicon Valley peers.
“Microsoft has realised that it doesn’t want to be associated with Google, Facebook and Amazon,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly campaign group. “It’s really, really simple.”
MacDailyNews Take: Really, does anybody not collecting a paycheck from them (and many who do), really want to be associated with Google or, even worse, Facebook?
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