Free Republic

Casey Stengel would have spotted this bogus play, the so-called Google congressional hearing, from the cheap seats. "Can't anybody here play this game?" the famous baseball manager would have asked the Republicans hemming and hawing and ignoring their way through the biggest existential threat to conservatives ever. Apparently not, Casey. The scene was the House Judiciary Committee. Waiting to testify was the CEO of Google, where for at least the last five years, conservatives have been attacked, marginalized, removed, defamed, harassed, and demonetized – all to the sounds of glee if not ecstasy from purple-haired Google engineers. At least the...

Facebook has hired one of the top antitrust lawyers in Silicon Valley in a sign that the company could be preparing for war with Donald Trump's administration. Kate Patchen, the chief of the Department of Justice's antitrust division in San Francisco, has joined Facebook as director and associate general counsel of litigation. Patchen's hire comes during the same month that US President Donald Trump said his administration was "looking at" antitrust proceedings against tech giants Google, Amazon, and Facebook.

....Author, entrepreneur and NYU business professor Scott Galloway has emerged as one of Amazon’s fiercest critics. At last month’s Recode Code Commerce, Galloway gave a 45-minute talk on the future of retail that savaged Amazon and warned of the threats the company poses not just economically but philosophically and morally. “I believe our society is effectively going through this very uncomfortable transition that is bad for our youth, bad for America and bad for the planet where we no longer worship at the altar of character and kindness,” he said. “We worship at the altar of innovators and billionaires.” In...

The president of Germany’s antitrust authority on Monday said that he’s “very optimistic” that his group will pursue an enforcement action on Facebook this year for allegedly abusing its dominant market position. “We are currently evaluating Facebook’s opinion on our preliminary assessment and I’m very optimistic that we are going to take further steps, even this year, whatever this would mean,” Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt said during a conference on competition law in Berlin, according to Reuters. The Federal Cartel Office is deliberating on action against Facebook over its data collection practices, in regard to its market dominance....

Representatives from thirteen states and Washington, D.C., are converging in Washington for a meeting about a possible antitrust lawsuit against top tech companies over alleged bias against conservatives, according to BuzzFeed News. BuzzFeed reported that the meeting is set to take place Tuesday at 10 a.m. between top Department of Justice officials and the attorneys general from Alabama, California, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, Tennessee, Utah and D.C. Representatives from Arkansas, Arizona, Missouri, Texas, and Washington state are also expected to attend, according to BuzzFeed. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who will attend with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, originally invited 24...

The White House is drafting an executive order to look into the business practices of top tech companies like Google and Facebook, Bloomberg reported Saturday. A copy of the draft order obtained by Bloomberg directs federal antitrust and law enforcement officials to “thoroughly investigate whether any online platform has acted in violation of the antitrust laws.” Other government agencies are then asked to provide recommendations on how to “protect competition among online platforms and address online platform bias.” Bloomberg noted that no companies are explicitly named in the order, but that it would apply to tech giants like Google, Twitter...

DONALD TRUMP will be left without his secret campaign weapon in the 2020 presidential election, as Facebook has announced it will not offer the same support to US President as it did in 2016. The tech-giant declared its change in policy claiming that it will focus on providing support and information to all politicians and campaigns on its website politics.fb.com rather than visiting campaign headquarters. The company’s decision comes after more than a year of controversy over its role in the Trump campaign, with many alleging Facebook gave the American firebrand preferential treatment. In an interview with CBS News' 60...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has scheduled a meeting with state attorneys general in September to discuss a “growing concern” that tech companies may be “intentionally stifling” the free flow of ideas on their platforms. In a statement issued right after executives from Facebook and Twitter finished testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Department of Justice also suggested that the platforms were running afoul of antitrust laws. “The Attorney General has convened a meeting with a number of state attorneys general this month to discuss a growing concern that these companies may be hurting competition and intentionally stifling the free...

Social Media and search giants are being hit with a class-action lawsuit from a pro-Trump group who claims that they conspired against Conservatives. Freedom Watch, which promotes right to privacy among other causes, claims that Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple violated antitrust laws. “Our YouTube account on Google never gets above 49 thousand,” said Larry Klayman, the group’s founder, during an interview on FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” on Tuesday. “It goes up, it goes down. That’s been going on for about six months,” he claimed while adding that other conservative groups and interests are also experiencing the same issues....

Attorney Josh Smith discusses his proposal for a legislative fix for the social media censorship problem. An image of his working paper that summarizes the act can be seen here: https://twitter.com/HalenIndus/status/1027328349176180736 (The text is in a JPEG image. For reasons unknown, FR cannot display it.)

In what has now become a tiresome routine, European Union "Competition Commissioner" Margrethe Vestager has once again slapped an American company with a massive fine for the heinous crime of out-competing EU companies. The EU complains about U.S. tariffs, but this move to punish Google with a $5 billion antitrust fine is straight up protectionism. "Stop this behavior," Vestager told the firm. What behavior is that? Giving consumers ever-more options for their tablets, phones and computers at a lower price? The fine, after all, is for "abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system." The argument is that by...

Europe is very good at regulating.  Less so at creating.  That's why Europe has fined Google five billion dollars for allegedly monopolistic behavior related to Google's Android operating system on phones and tablet devices while failing to produce continental alternatives of its own. European authorities fined Google a record $5.1 billion on Wednesday for abusing its power in the mobile phone market and ordered the company to alter its practices, in one of the most aggressive regulatory actions against American technology giants and one that may force lasting changes to smartphones. The European Union's antitrust fine of 4.34 billion euros was almost double...

All there is is the headline.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and against China on Thursday on a disputed aspect of their fraught trade relationship, throwing out a lower court ruling that had allowed two Chinese vitamin C makers to escape $148 million in damages for violating American antitrust law. In a case that brought the trade conflict between the world’s two largest economies before the top U.S. court, the justices ruled 9-0 that the lower court gave too much deference to Chinese government filings explaining China’s regulatory policy. The justices sent the case back for reconsideration by the New...

AT&T announced that it was buying Time Warner for $85.4 billion in October 2016. The Justice Department sued last year to block the merger, citing concerns that AT&T, owner of satellite television provider DirecTV, could charge rival distributors more for Time Warner content, resulting in higher prices for consumers. The outcome of the trial could have implications for future deals in the telecom and media industries, as well as vertical mergers, where companies combine with their suppliers. A federal judge said Tuesday that AT&T's $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner is legal, clearing the path for a deal that gives...

The Department of Justice on Wednesday filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting Apple's fight against a class action suit alleging that the company violates antitrust laws in regards to how it assesses app store fees, and how it decides what is hosted on the App Store. The class suing believe Apple has engaged in anti-competitive behaviors in taking a cut from developers sale proceeds. Also at issue is whether companies like Apple can be sued under antitrust law over App Stores, with the plaintiffs potentially awarded treble damages because of the behavior. The Ninth Circuit Court of...

At Business Insider's IGNITION conference, Scott Galloway gave a blistering presentation on why "The Big Four" — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google — should be broken up. Galloway is a professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google."

Trump Administration Preemptively Blocks $177 Billion Qualcomm-Broadcom Deal The Trump administration has blocked the biggest tech deal in history earlier this week. The proposed deal would see Broadcom acquiring Qualcomm for a whopping $117 billion. In the unprecedented move by the White House, they expressed concerns about giving China a technological advantage over the United States through this deal and said that blocking the deal was “necessary to protect the national security of the United States.” For some background, Qualcomm is an industry leader for manufacturing wireless chips for LTE networks. They are an American company that will be at...

When President Trump made his startling comment during bipartisan televised White House gun discussions about taking guns first and due process later, I suspected he was doing the same thing he had done during similar immigration discussions a few weeks earlier. He likes to toss out ideas and let them be debated. He heartens his opponents, and because they are so emotionally driven, they overreach, and he comes across looking reasonable while they look extreme. His proposal for a deal, when it comes, seems reasonable to the public. This is "unpresidential" behavior because in the previously existing culture of politics,...

Having been one of the early targets of social media censorship on Facebook, YouTube et al, I have advocated for anti-trust action against these bullying behemoths. It is good to see establishment outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and National Review coming to the same conclusion, or at least asking the same questions. Just this week, Facebook launched its latest of many attacks on my news site, the Geller Report. It labeled my site as "spam" and removed every Geller Report post -- thousands upon thousands of them, going back years – from Facebook. It also blocked any Facebook...