Multiple U.S. states are investigating Apple Inc for potentially deceiving consumers, according to a March document obtained by a tech watchdog group. The Texas attorney general may sue Apple for violating the state’s deceptive trade practices law in connection with the multi-state investigation, according to the document, which was obtained by the Tech Transparency Project.

Apple would rather pay a maximum of €50 million in fines than address concerns brought forward by the Dutch competition authority regarding developer access to third-party payment methods on the App Store, the EU's head of digital policy, Margrethe Vestager, has said.

The Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) said the revised conditions that Apple has imposed on dating-app providers are unreasonable, and create an unnecessary barrier.

Epic Games may have largely lost its major lawsuit against Apple, but it’s not going out without a fight — and it has some major support in its corner. Soon after the Epic Games v. Apple ruling was issued, Epic appealed, and on January 27th, a large number of organizations filed amicus briefs in support of Epic’s battle, including a coalition of 35 state attorneys general, Microsoft, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

A federal judge has thrown out an attempt by Facebook to block a Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit against the company. Judge James Boasberg ruled on Tuesday that the FTC can proceed with a bid to force Facebook, now Meta, to sell its subsidiaries WhatsApp and Instagram.

British antitrust regulators are opening an investigation into Microsoft’s $16 billion acquisition of speech recognition company Nuance in the latest sign they’re tightening scrutiny of big technology deals.

On Friday, the Northern California judge handling the closely watched Epic Games v. Apple court case turned in a ruling that, in many ways, works out in Apple's favor—but with one massive, App Store-changing exception. The ruling from US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers includes a single-page permanent injunction demanding that Apple open up payment options for any software sellers on the App Store. In other words, Epic Games' effort to add Epic-specific payment links inside the free-to-play game Fortnite, and thus duck out of paying Apple's 30 percent fee on in-app transactions, can now happen.

Apple has announced the settlement of an anti-trust case brought by a group of developers, and while Cupertino has made concessions the result will not be huge changes in the way the App Store operates or the company's practices. The case that Apple proposes to settle is Cameron et al v. Apple Inc. [PDF], which was filed in 2019 and sought to challenge Apple's App Store monopoly. The plaintiffs were Donald R. Cameron, who developed an app called "Lil' Baby Names", and Pure Sweat Basketball, Inc, which created the "Pure Sweat Basketball Workout" app.

Chinese government agents, including the antitrust watchdog, the cyber police, and tax authorities paid surprise visits to multiple domestic internet companies, including Didi Chuxing Technology Co, to check on possible antitrust violations, the Wall Street Journal reported.

It's no secret that Rupert Murdoch is an extreme hypocrite. He spent decades railing against any kind of regulatory powers to hold back companies, but as soon as his own attempts to build an internet empire flopped dramatically, he's come...

Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival,” Peter Thiel wrote in his bestselling 2014 book, Zero to One. That one thing, Thiel stated outright, is “monopoly profits.”

Telegram, the messaging app, has become the latest company to file a formal antitrust complaint to the EU over Apple’s App Store. In a complaint to EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, Telegram, which has more than 400 million users, said Apple must “allow users to have the opportunity of downloading software outside of the App Store.”

Microsoft has thrown its weight behind calls for an antitrust investigation into App Store monopolies, piling yet more pressure on Apple as the iPhone maker prepares for its annual developer conference on Monday. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, criticised the 30% cut that app stores take from developers this month, and argued that the policy is a far higher burden on fair competition than the issues that led to Microsoft’s antitrust case in the early 2000s.

Sen. Josh Hawley on Tuesday called for a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon's reported use of third-party sellers' data to benefit its private label brands. In a letter to Attorney General William Barr, Hawley said Amazon "has engaged in predatory and exclusionary data practices to build and maintain a monopoly," citing a Wall Street Journal report that said the company uses data from third-party sellers to inform decisions on pricing or features to copy in products by its private label brands, such as Amazon Basics.

Facebook, Amazon and Google all weathered many critiques, while Apple got less attention.

Allowing any person or company this sort of control is absolute insanity. By Michael Krieger.

The case is still at an "early stage"

When the Defense Department flunked its first-ever fiscal review, one of our government’s greatest mysteries was exposed: Where does the DoD’s $700 billion annual budget go? By Matt Taibbi.

How many ad blocks could an ad slinger block if an ad slinger could block blocks? By Thomas Claburn.

When people die from lack of access to medicine, health care profiteers should expect resistance. By Mike Ludwig.