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Google's anti-competitive behavior costs it another $177 million
It's South Korea's turn to dish out an antitrust fine this time around
Only a couple of weeks after the South Korean government passed a bill that will force Google (and Apple) to allow app developers to receive payments via third-party systems, the country's regulator has dealt another huge blow to the Mountain View company. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) has announced that it's fining Google's parent company Alphabet the modest sum of $177 million for abusing its dominance in the smartphone OS market.
FCC reportedly fining AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon at least $200 million for selling location data
Real-time data was brokered to car dealers and bounty hunters
The nation's big four carriers felt free to broker their customers' cellphone location data to third parties for years in order to make an easy secondhand buck off of the people who already pay them to deliver expensive wireless internet to their expensive devices. Turns out that the FCC isn't happy with their behavior and, according to Reuters's sources, may be prepared to levy an eight-digit fine against the networks.
The European Commission has just issued a fine of €242 million to Qualcomm for allegedly anti-competitive actions made by the company circa 2009-2011. The commission claims that Qualcomm abused its market position by using predatory pricing to push out competitors, selling some of its chipsets at a loss to Huawei and ZTE.
In the wake of the $5 billion antitrust fine it received from the European Commission last year, Google laid out plans to prompt Android users in Europe to choose a different default search or browser app. In a new blog post, Product Management Director Paul Gennai introduces the changes that will come as part of an imminent Google Play Store update.
Google just can't catch a break in Europe. The US company has been fined $7.6 billion in the last few years over Android and Search practices, and now the EU is preparing a new penalty regarding what it views as anticompetitive AdSense contracts.
Alphabet's second-quarter results were just released to investors, and although revenues are up 25% compared to Q2 2017, reaching $32.65 billion—comparing favorably to last quarter's results, too—it isn't all good news. Taking into account the effects of the recent $5 billion antitrust fine by the EU, net income is actually down significantly to ~$3.2 billion, a loss of 9.3% compared to Google's fine-extrapolated numbers for Q1 2017. That doesn't seem to have investors too worried, though, as the pre-fine numbers beat expectations by a large margin, driving up Alphabet's stock price in after-hours trading by 5%.
This morning, Google was hit with an enormous $5.06 billion fine for what the European Commission considers to be anti-competitive practices — specifically, those that push users toward Google's own apps and services. CEO Sundar Pichai has penned a response that outlines where the company disagrees, pointing out the ease with which users can install alternatives to Google's pre-loaded apps, and making clear that the company plans to appeal the Commission's decision.
The amount Google must pay the European Commission for its latest antitrust fine has now been revealed as a record 4.34 billion euros ($5.06 billion). That figure dwarfs the $2.7 billion fine Google previously received for giving preferential treatment to its own shopping comparison tools in searches.
Last year, the European Union issued Google a $2.7 billion fine after the company was found guilty prioritizing its own shopping results over those from competitors. According to Reuters, Google is in hot water yet again, as the company is expected to be hit with another major EU fine.
After the U.S. Department of Commerce banned ZTE from importing US-made components, due to the company violating an agreement it made in 2017, ZTE shut down most operations while it fought to lift the ban. Earlier this month, Trump announced he wanted to help ZTE, as part of negotiating a trade deal with China.
The new GDPR rules have barely been in effect for more than a few hours, but Google and Facebook are already being hit with a complaint for failing to comply with the regulation's requirements. According to privacy group noyb.eu, both companies are engaging in so-called "forced consent," which is the practice of bundling consent into an all-or-nothing package instead of the granular approach to consent required by the GDPR.
Ever got one of those annoying robocalls, but the number looked local or even familiar? Well, those of us that have might have some modicum of vindication. Yesterday, the FCC issued a $120 million fine to Adrian Abramovich, who was found to have made almost 100 million spoofed phone calls about a timeshare or other travel-related things.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI), that country's antitrust watchdog, has imposed a 1.36 billion-rupee ($21.17 million) fine on Google for what the organization is calling "search bias." The fine is the end result of a probe that began in 2012, spurred by complaints filed by matchmaking service Bharat Matrimony and the non-profit Consumer Unity and Trust Society.
The European Commission has fined chipmaker Qualcomm €997 million ($1.24 billion) for abusing its market dominance in LTE baseband chipsets. The decision comes as the result of an investigation covering the period from 2011 to 2016, during which Qualcomm paid Apple to exclusively use its LTE chips in iPhones and iPads.
Yesterday the Taiwan FTC (Fair Trade Commission) fined Qualcomm an incredible $773 million (TWD 23 billion) for allegedly violating antitrust rules in the country over the last seven years. In a press release posted yesterday, Qualcomm says that it disagrees with the decision and intends to seek a stay while appealing. This is after both the Korean FTC imposed a fine of $854 million and the US FTC leveraged its own charges against the chipset manufacturer earlier this year.
Looks like Vizio is pulling itself out of some hot water. The popular television manufacturer (among other products) has been fined $2.2 million, payable to the FTC and the State of New Jersey, for some pretty serious privacy violations. Starting in 2014, Vizio has sold Internet-connected TVs that track what the customers watch and send that data back to its servers.
There's no such thing as real unlimited anymore. T-Mobile's "unlimited data" marketing isn't all that quick to point out that it comes with some built-in limits - specifically, throttling the top three percent of unlimited data users along with more general users who exceeded 17GB a month. The Federal Communications Commission took exception to some of those commercials and advertisements after several consumer complaints. T-Mobile's settlement with the Commission means they'll have to pay up, to the tune of several million dollars.
It's been almost eight months since the Federal Communications Commission opened its lawsuit against AT&T for misleading statements on its "unlimited" data plans. Today the Commission announced its intention (PDF link) to fine the wireless company $100 million for failing to notify its customers that going over unspecified data limits on an "unlimited" plan would result in severely reduced or "throttled" speed, well below advertised speeds, violating the 2010 Open Internet Transparency Rule. "Unlimited means Unlimited," said FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc.
If you're an American wireless provider founded in 1978, here's your horoscope for today: avoid US regulatory agencies, customers whom you've charged for text messages without asking, and burly-looking men with open burlap sacks and insistent expressions. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Communications Commission intends to fine Sprint 5 million in punishment for sending unwanted text messages to its customers, then sticking them with the bill.
Update, 9-4-13: a Verizon Wireless spokesman reached out to say that the wireless provider hasn't been fined by the FCC, and that the landline services provider (providers of home Internet and cable services) is the one being fined. Verizon and Verizon Wireless are technically separate companies. The headline and story text have been altered to reflect this.