Tech antitrust hearing: all the news, updates, and documents from Congress’ big moment – The Verge

Prosecutors are investigating Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers

2020-08-03T17:19:31-04:00

The New York and California attorneys general, along with the Federal Trade Commission, plan to investigate Amazon's online Marketplace platform, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. The agencies are going to interview witnesses jointly on conference calls over the next few weeks, in what Bloomberg suggests may be the beginnings of a formal antitrust enforcement action following last week's landmark Big Tech antitrust hearing.

The news comes after intense questioning over Amazon's Marketplace practices during the hearing. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) asked CEO Jeff Bezos whether its actions toward Marketplace sellers was a pattern of behavior. She …

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Vergecast: the Big Tech antitrust hearing episode

2020-07-31T11:05:20-04:00

On July 29th, the long-awaited Big Tech antitrust hearing from the House Judiciary's antitrust subcommittee was held. For several hours, four of the biggest figures in tech - Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and Google's Sundar Pichai - were grilled by lawmakers.

This week on The Vergecast, The Verge's Nilay Patel, Makena Kelly, Adi Robertson, and Casey Newson dedicated an entire episode to the important moments from the six-hour hearing, the notable emails and internal documents made available from the investigation, and how effective the panel was in laying out a case for regulating big tech companies in …

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Amazon has a Marketplace problem

2020-07-31T10:24:29-04:00

Massive tech companies may have been the focus of this week's antitrust hearing, but one of the most arresting speeches came from a much smaller outfit.

Partway through the hearing, Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) played testimony from a third-party textbook seller on Amazon, who believed the company had started blocking their store as it grew more successful. At the time of the testimony, they hadn't been able to sell a book for ten months, and despite hundreds of messages to Amazon, they couldn't get an answer as to why.

"I'm concerned this is a pattern of behavior," McBath told Bezos. "What do you have to say to the small businesses that are ta …

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The iconic Flip Video almost became Google’s first camera, emails show

2020-07-30T17:06:42-04:00

Before Android, before the iPhone, and before GoPro became a known brand, the Flip Video camcorder took the world by storm, allowing millions to shoot digital home videos one-handed and easily save, share, and upload them to a nascent YouTube, thanks to an iconic flip-out USB port.

What you probably didn't know: the Flip Video was almost a Google-branded camera, internal Google emails revealed by the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust sub-committee show. It would have been Google's first camera and perhaps the first piece of Google-branded hardware as well.

What we know

In January 2006, a year and a half before the first Flip Video went …

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Amazon bought Ring for market position, not technology, emails suggest

2020-07-30T15:29:52-04:00

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held its last hearing as part of its year-long investigation into anti-competitive behavior in the tech industry. As part of that probe, lawmakers obtained around 1.3 million documents from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google ahead of their final hearing featuring the chief executives of each of the companies. Dozens of these documents were released on Wednesday, including email threads between CEO Jeff Bezos and other Amazon employees explaining the company's decision to purchase Ring.

"Feel good about moving forward with Ring due diligence, willing to pay for market position as it's hard to catc …

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Apple was conflicted over right-to-repair stance, emails show

2020-07-30T14:57:06-04:00

Apple hasn't always known what public position to take on right-to-repair policies and legislation, according to recently published internal emails. The 2019 discussion, provided to Congress for its antitrust investigation, highlights the Apple PR team's struggle to keep public messaging cohesive amid stories covering internal repair developments that seemingly open up Apple's repair ecosystem.

The email exchanges are part of a trove of documents published by the US House Judiciary Committee surrounding its antitrust investigation into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. The committee's first hearing on the topic took place over five hours …

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Read Steve Jobs’ emails about why you can’t buy digital books in Amazon’s apps

2020-07-30T13:53:49-04:00

The House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee has just released a huge trove of internal documents from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google as part of its vast investigation into the tech industry. The documents reveal the internal machinations of companies that are typically highly secretive - and they even include a few buried emails from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, which we've shared below.

Two sets of emails discuss the decisions that, to this day, keep iPhone and iPad users from buying digital books in Amazon's apps. (You have to use a web browser as a workaround.)

In one email from November 2010, marketing chief Phil Schill …

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Emails show Mark Zuckerberg feared app startups were building faster than Facebook in 2012

2020-07-30T12:55:56-04:00

Newly released emails from April 2012 show Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives were frustrated by slow internal prototyping and weighed the benefits of quickly copying and iterating on smaller apps like Pinterest instead.

A chain of messages starts with Zuckerberg recounting a meeting with the founders of Chinese social networking app Renren. "In China there is this strong culture of cloning things quickly and building lots of different products," he wrote. "Seeing all this and the pace that new mobile apps seem to be coming out from other companies makes me think we're moving very slowly. … I wonder what we could do to move a …

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Documents show Apple gave Amazon special treatment to get Prime Video into App Store

2020-07-30T12:44:26-04:00

During a hearing before the House antitrust subcommittee on Wednesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook testified that "we apply the rules to all developers evenly" when it comes to the App Store. But documents revealed by the subcommittee's investigation show Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue offered Amazon a unique deal in 2016: Apple would only take a 15 percent fee on subscriptions that signed up through the app, compared to the standard 30 percent that most developers must hand over.

An email from Cue to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos lists the terms negotiated:

Now we know how Apple convinced Amazon to finally put Prime Video on the App Store in 2017: A …

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Amazon doesn’t sell Echo speakers at a loss, says Bezos — unless they’re on sale

2020-07-29T16:50:40-04:00

Amazon has long been accused of undercutting its rivals with its Echo smart speakers, allegedly keeping competitors like Sonos from getting a foothold in the market - but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says that at their full retail price, the company isn't taking a loss on these products.

During the big antitrust hearing today where Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are also facing down lawmaker questions, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked a pointed question about whether Amazon was pricing its Echo devices below cost. This is possibly referring to the theory of predatory pricing where a company tries to dr …

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