Antitrust

The antitrust case against Google

The Senate hearings scheduled for Wednesday will only scratch the surface

Apple (AAPL) is conspicuously absent from the witness list for Wednesday's hearing on "The Power of Google" before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition and Consumer Rights. Yelp! and Nextag will be represented, but Google (GOOG) has stepped on a lot more toes than theirs to maintain and extend its dominance of the Internet's sustaining source of revenue -- advertising MORE

Judge orders Steve Jobs to appear

Apple's CEO will have to answer questions in a six-year-old iTunes monopoly suit

In Nov. 2010, plaintiffs in the long-running "Apple iPod iTunes Anti-Trust Litigation" class-action lawsuit asked the presiding judge for permission to depose Steve Jobs. Apple's (AAPL) lawyers promptly filed for a protective order preventing the deposition.

What happened next is a little hard to follow, since so many of the relevant court documents are either redacted or sealed. But MORE

The iPhone as Barbie Doll

The New York Times reaches for new metaphors to illuminate the power of Apple's platform

The U.S. interstate highway system is a "platform," writes Steve Lohr in Sunday's New York Times business section. "The more that people traveled it, the more opportunity it created for businesses and towns linked to its transportation network — and the larger the market for Detroit automakers."

A Barbie doll, one of his sources suggests MORE

EU opens formal investigation into Google

Questions whether the Google has abused its dominance in online search.

The European Commission launched an investigation today to discern whether Google (GOOG) "imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools," it said in a statement this morning.

Microsoft Corp. service Ciao, price comparison site MORE

Probing the Apple antitrust probes

Apple is likely to duck these bullets, say two analysts, but every case increases its risk

Absent a "smoking gun," neither the Federal Trade Commission nor the Department of Justice is likely to take Apple (AAPL) to court for antitrust violations, according to a note to clients issued Friday by Stifel Nicolas's Rebecca Arbogast and George Askew.

Apple has credible justifications, they write, for both complaints that have been lodged against it: MORE

Feds eye Apple-Google ad war

A dispute that broke out Monday has already caught the eye of antitrust regulators

That didn't take long.

On Monday, Apple (AAPL) changed the rules that govern its new iAd mobile advertising platform to exclude competitors like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).

On Wednesday, Google took the matter public, blasting Apple for setting "artificial barriers to competition [that] hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress."

On Thursday, the Financial MORE

U.S. vs. Apple: Who would win?

Shades of the United States vs. Microsoft, an antitrust case that the government lost

A report in Monday's New York Post that two government agencies -- the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice -- are each considering launching an antitrust investigation against Apple (AAPL) puts me in mind of the case the DOJ and 20 states brought against Microsoft (MSFT) nearly a dozen years ago.

To many observers -- including MORE

Watchdog calls for federal inquiry into Google

Consumer group wants Justice Department to break Google up or convert it into a public utility

Today the consumer advocacy group Consumer  Watchdog called for a broad Department of Justice investigation into Google and significant punishments against the Mountain View, CA-based company.

The complaint paints Google's search engine monopoly, which is currently at 70% of the U.S. market, as a way to invade other businesses.  "How it tweaks its proprietary search algorithms MORE

Connected: Interview with Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang

In the latest installment of Connected, Fortune Senior Editor-at-Large Adam Lashinsky talks with Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jen-Hsun Huang about his company's strategy for tablets and smartphones, and its ongoing legal battle with Intel (INTC).

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Microsoft vs. Europe: Possible truce, with Windows 7

By Peter Gumbel

Microsoft's titanic struggle with Europe's trust busters appears to be finally drawing to a close -- thanks in part to Windows 7, the new operating system the U.S. software giant is releasing worldwide this week.

The two sides have been at loggerheads for a decade over the European Union's allegations that Microsoft has abused its dominant market position to push its own products such as Windows Media Player and MORE