Enlarge / A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss , which was a Facebook Watch original scripted series. (credit: Facebook )

Last April, Meta revealed that it would no longer support original shows, like Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk talk show, on Facebook Watch. Meta's streaming business that was once viewed as competition for the likes of YouTube and Netflix is effectively dead now; Facebook doesn't produce original series, and Facebook Watch is no longer available as a video-streaming app.

The streaming business' demise has seemed related to cost cuts at Meta that have also included layoffs. However, recently unsealed court documents in an antitrust suit against Meta [ PDF ] claim that Meta has squashed its streaming dreams in order to appease one of its biggest ad customers: Netflix.

Facebook allegedly gave Netflix creepy privileges

As spotted via Gizmodo , a letter was filed on April 14 in relation to a class-action antitrust suit that was filed by Meta customers, accusing Meta of anti-competitive practices that harm social media competition and consumers. The letter, made public Saturday, asks a court to have Reed Hastings, Netflix's founder and former CEO, respond to a subpoena for documents that plaintiffs claim are relevant to the case. The original complaint filed in December 2020 [ PDF ] doesn’t mention Netflix beyond stating that Facebook “secretly signed Whitelist and Data sharing agreements” with Netflix, along with “dozens” of other third-party app developers. The case is still ongoing.

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Google has reached a tentative settlement with more than 30 US states and 21 million customers who sued the tech giant for allegedly violating antitrust laws by overcharging for apps in the Google Play Store, Reuters reported .

The settlement comes approximately one week after a court revoked the lawsuit's class-action status . Details, including the amount of the settlement, were not disclosed, Reuters reported, but plaintiffs agreed in a court filing yesterday not to oppose the court's decision on the class-action certification. At one point, plaintiffs estimated that Google might owe them $4.7 billion in damages ; however, it was previously reported that losing the class-action status would significantly reduce damages for states and customers suing.

Nothing will be finalized until the settlement is approved by the State Attorneys General and Google owner Alphabet Inc’s board of directors. After that, a long-form settlement agreement must be reached before final approval by the court.

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After a yearslong Amazon probe that collected millions of documents and conducted dozens of interviews, the Federal Trade Commission next week will meet with Amazon representatives before likely filing one of the agency's biggest antitrust lawsuits yet, Politico reported .

Known as a "last-rites meeting," these discussions could serve as Amazon's last chance to dodge an FTC lawsuit that Bloomberg has described as "the Big One." No one is sure what aspects of Amazon's business the lawsuit could target, but if the FTC succeeds in court, it could result in a forced breakup or restructuring of Amazon's $1.3 trillion e-commerce operation, The Wall Street Journal reported .

There has been much speculation this year over what the FTC's complaint will cover. The agency has been investigating a wide range of concerning aspects of Amazon's business since 2019, Bloomberg reported . Everything from how Amazon bundles its services to how Amazon treats sellers has drawn FTC scrutiny, as has Amazon's advertising and cloud computing businesses. But the "main allegation," Bloomberg reported in June, "is expected to be that Amazon leverages its power to reward online merchants that use its logistics services and punish those who don’t."

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Over the weekend, a US district court judge decided to narrow the scope of the federal government's massive years-long monopoly case against Google.

In his opinion unsealed Friday, Judge Amit Mehta dismissed one of the more significant claims raised in the case brought by the Justice Department and the attorneys general from 38 states that alleges that Google rigged search results to boost its own products over those of competitors like Amazon, OpenTable, Expedia, or eBay. Mehta said that these claims were "raised only by the Colorado plaintiffs" and failed to show evidence of anticompetitive effects, relying only on the "opinion and speculation" of antitrust legal expert Jonathan Baker, who proposed a theory of anticompetitive harm.

"Simply put, there is no record evidence of anticompetitive harm in the relevant markets" resulting from Google allegedly limiting competitors' visibility in search results, Mehta said.

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European Union regulators have opened a formal investigation into claims that Microsoft is unfairly bundling its Teams video conferencing app with its popular Office software as Brussels intensifies its scrutiny of big technology groups.

The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, said on Thursday that it feared Microsoft “may be abusing and defending” its market dominance in productivity software “by restricting competition.”

It was concerned the US tech giant may grant Teams “distribution advantages by not giving customers the choice” over access to the product, the statement said.

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Last December, Call of Duty gamers sued Microsoft , seeking to block its merger with Activision, partly because they alleged that the merger would set up Microsoft to dominate industry rivals, drive up prices, and reduce consumer choice. Yesterday, a California judge, Jacqueline Corley, granted Microsoft’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying that the gamers didn’t “plausibly allege” that the merger “creates a reasonable probability of anticompetitive effects in any relevant market.”

Gamers suing don’t plan to give up this fight that easily, though. They have 20 days to amend their complaint to include more evidence that demonstrates those anticompetitive effects are likely to harm them personally.

The gamers' lawyer, Joseph Alioto, told Ars that he believes they have ample evidence to satisfy the judge in this case. He confirmed that gamers intend to file their amended complaint as soon as possible. Rather than being discouraged by the judge’s dismissal, Alioto told Ars that the gamers were pleased by Corley’s order.

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Microsoft is preparing to launch a new app store for games on iPhones and Android smartphones as soon as next year if its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is cleared by regulators, according to the head of its Xbox business.

New rules requiring Apple and Google to open up their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies are expected to come into force from March 2024 under the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

“We want to be in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play,” said Phil Spencer, chief executive of Microsoft Gaming, in an interview ahead of this week’s annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

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Brussels is set to launch a formal competition probe early next month into Nvidia’s planned $54 billion takeover of British chip designer Arm, after months of informal discussions between regulators and the US chip company.

The investigation is likely to begin after Nvidia officially notifies the European Commission of its plan to acquire Arm, with the US chipmaker planning to make its submission in the week starting September 6, according to two people with direct knowledge of the process. They added that the date might yet change, however.

Brussels’ investigation would come after the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said its initial assessment of the deal suggested there were “serious competition concerns” and that a set of remedies suggested by Nvidia would not be sufficient to address them.

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Enlarge / Fortnite on an iPhone... back when that was a thing. (credit: Savusia Konstantin | Getty Images )

Epic Games, maker of Fortnite , is loading up a new map in its ongoing fight against Apple as it files an antitrust complaint against the mobile phone maker in the European Union.

Epic alleges in its complaint that Apple uses its sole control over iOS apps to block competitors and benefit itself at developers' expense in violation of European competition law, the company said today.

"What’s at stake here is the very future of mobile platforms," Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said in a written statement. "We will not stand idly by and allow Apple to use its platform dominance to control what should be a level digital playing field. It’s bad for consumers, who are paying inflated prices due to the complete lack of competition among stores and in-app payment processing. And it’s bad for developers, whose very livelihoods often hinge on Apple’s complete discretion as to who to allow on the iOS platform, and on which terms."

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