doj

What’s quintessential illegal monopoly behavior?

The European Commission has charged Alphabet-Google with abusing its dominance in the market for “general Internet search services,” by implementing an Android “strategy of mobile devices to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general Internet search.” The EU objects to a variety of secret Google contract conditions to manufacturer licenses to leverage the dominant (>90% share) Android OS to secretly restrict and foreclose competition in ways that ultimately harm consumer choice and innovation. The EU effectively charged that Google has already anticompetitively extended its >90% dominance in search to dominance in the >90% share of the “licensable smart mobile operating system,” and to dominance in the >90% share of the “app stores for the Android” market.

There are troubling signals that the FCC is gearing up to further increase regulation of cable — on top of the extra-legal new utility regulation the FCC already did in its 2015 Open Internet Order.

Ostensibly proposed to protect people from Internet fraud, a bill proposed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) would instead criminalize online gambling for millions of Americans and dramatically expand what was intended to be a narrowly focused law.

‘This is the single best piece of news for those favoring a nation based on laws, and not men (or women), I have heard in several years.’ — Richard Vedder

The Federal Communications Commission’s upcoming “incentive” auction of TV airwaves is already at war with itself.

Somehow the FCC imagines it can maximize the revenue necessary to incent TV broadcasters to sell their 600 MHz spectrum by minimizing actual revenue collection via dis-incenting, and even banning some wireless company bids.

From the various reports of briefings about the FCC’s planned rules for the 600 MHz incentive auction, two things appear clear. First, the FCC doesn’t trust market forces. And second, the FCC doesn’t want the highest bidders to win the spectrum.

With due credit to “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!,”® so much odd and bizarre is happening in Washington in the “name” of “U.S. wireless competition criticism” that the topic calls for its own collection of: “Believe it or Not!”® oddities.

The Obama administration has done its part fulfill the promise to “punish our enemies.” It is the only promise this president has kept, and is a grave danger to our liberty.

No longer being able to skirt most EU tax liability also could have a significant effect on Google’s EU profitability long term.

The FCC and DOJ do not want to look ridiculous applying a spectrum cap to Verizon and AT&T and not Sprint when the FCC’s own Wireless Competition report shows that Sprint controls roughly twice as many MHz per population as either Verizon or AT&T.

Three new Google antitrust developments in just the last few weeks warrant an update to Google’s ominously-growing Antitrust Rap Sheet.

The DOJ has joined the FCC in trying to pick market winners (Sprint/T-Mobile)  and losers (Verizon/AT&T) in the U.S. wireless market. Recent public filings by the DOJ and the FCC…