On August 9th, Open Markets Institute joined Public Justice and the American Association for Justice in filing an amicus brief in support of the consumer antitrust action against Qualcomm.
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In this piece for The Atlantic, Nathan Schneider and Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan argue that tougher regulation will help to fight monopoly, but workers and small businesses also need the ability to join forces against corporate power. "Collective power—that is, allowing independent workers and small businesses to collaborate to negotiate better treatment from megacorporations, or to start enterprises of their own—should be a pillar of creating an equitable economy," they assert.
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Public Justice, the American Association for Justice, and Open Markets Institute filed an amicus brief on August 9 to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in support of a consumer antitrust class action lawsuit against Qualcomm.
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The Verge reports on the FBI's plans to build a dragnet on Facebook demonstrating the incoherence of the government's approach to Facebook. "On one hand, it fines Facebook $5 billion for violating users’ privacy; on the other, it outlines a plan to potentially store all Americans’ public posts in a database for monitoring purposes." The Verge also reviews other Facebook news and cites Open Markets Senior Fellow Matt Stoller in regards to Facebook's ad network crashes: "How much of a monopoly do you have to be to literally not care if your cash register breaks? Oh I can’t take your money nvm I’ll get it later.”
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Open Markets Opposes Megamergers Throughout Economy – What an Ongoing Lawsuit Says About Google's Power over Online Travel
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On July 16, Google representative Adam Cohen argued to the House antitrust subcommittee that the tech giant was an afterthought when people start planning for travel. "When [people] are searching for places to travel, hotels and airlines, they start with dedicated specialist competitors,” Cohen said. Actually, they don’t. A full sixty percent of all travel searches today begin on Google and the corporation’s dominance - and its profits from this business - are growing fast.
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Joel Winston writes a story for Fast Company about how Google is collecting your transaction data directly from your Gmail inbox and other Google services you use. He cites Open Markets Senior Fellow Matt Stoller's op-ed on The New York Times on Facebook's Calibra project raising the specter of big tech's ability to discriminate on pricing to consumers.
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The Verge's Nick Statt speaks with Open Markets Director of Enforcement Strategy Sally Hubbard about Amazon's deal with Apple to bring direct iPhone sales to its platform for the first time. Hubbard believes the Amazon-Apple deal could be a violation of antitrust laws that deal with anti-competitive conduct like price-fixing and illegal market allocation.
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"Do farmers truly own their tractors if they aren’t allowed to fix them?" writes Open Markets Food & Power reporter Claire Kelloway. "That’s the question posed by the growing Right to Repair campaign." Read her latest piece on the Federal Trade Commission's Right to Repair workshop that brought together small business owners, state lawmakers, trade group representatives, and advocates to explain the different ways manufacturers prevent buyers from fixing their products, and whether or not they are justified.
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Open Markets Institute calls on U.S. anti-monopoly enforcers to block EssilorLuxottica’s nearly $8 billion acquisition of GrandVision. The deal would mean even higher prices for glasses - which are already far too expensive - and would further limit real choice over where Americans can get their eyewear.
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Open Markets makes "Quote of the Week" on the Chronicle of Higher Education highlighting its letter to the Department of Justice calling for the Antitrust Division to block the merger of textbook giants, Cengage and McGraw-Hill. “The textbook industry, once a robust market with a multitude of competing publishers, is now dominated by a handful of giants.”
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The Open Markets Institute led a coalition of public interest groups and academics in demanding the Department of Justice block the proposed merger of Cengage and McGraw Hill.
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Today, the Open Markets Institute calls on the Federal Trade Commission to block the just-announced merger of Mylan and Pfizer’s Upjohn unit, which recently headquartered in China.
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The Open Markets Institute led a coalition of public interest groups and academics in demanding the Department of Justice block the proposed merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill. If approved, the merger would create the second-largest U.S. provider of textbooks and higher-education materials after Pearson, with $3.16 billion in annual revenue.
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Fast Company reporter Ainsley Harris tells the story of Senator Mark Warner, a former telecom investor and entrepreneur, sounding the alarm on China’s advancement—and Big Tech’s misconduct. She speaks with Open Markets Senior Fellow Matt Stoller as part of the feature, describing Stoller as "another voice agitating for policy makers to address Silicon Valley’s 'concentrations of capital' and perverse incentives."
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Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we highlight a powerful dissent in the Federal Trade Commission’s settlement with Facebook, discuss why the Trump Administration’s new hospital pricing rule won’t fix American healthcare, and identify three key takeaways from last week's House subcommittee hearing on Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.
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The Open Markets Institute condemns the Department of Justice Antitrust Division for approving T-Mobile's plan to acquire its wireless competitor Sprint.
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