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      “We’re not ‘gatekeepers,’” Apple and Microsoft tell European Union

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 5 September, 2023 - 13:47

    Apple and Microsoft have argued with Brussels that some of their services are insufficiently popular to be designated as “gatekeepers” under new landmark EU legislation designed to curb the power of Big Tech.

    Brussels’ battle with the two US companies over Apple’s iMessage chat app and Microsoft’s Bing search engine comes ahead of Wednesday’s publication of the first list of services to be regulated by the Digital Markets Act.

    The legislation imposes new responsibilities on tech companies, including sharing data, linking to competitors, and making their services interoperable with rival apps.

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      Silicon Valley Bank shut down by US banking regulators

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 10 March, 2023 - 18:13

    Signage outside Silicon Valley Bank headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Thursday, March 9, 2023. SVB Financial Group bonds are plunging alongside its shares after the company moved to shore up capital after losses on its securities portfolio and a slowdown in funding. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Enlarge / Signage outside Silicon Valley Bank headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Thursday, March 9, 2023. SVB Financial Group bonds are plunging alongside its shares after the company moved to shore up capital after losses on its securities portfolio and a slowdown in funding. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images )

    Silicon Valley Bank was shuttered by US regulators on Friday after a rush of deposit outflows and a failed effort to raise new capital called into question the future of the tech-focused lender.

    With about $209 billion in assets, SVB has become the second-largest bank failure in US history after the 2008 collapse of Washington Mutual, and marks a swift fall from grace for a lender that was valued at more than $44 billion less than 18 months ago.

    The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the US regulator that guarantees bank deposits of up to $250,000, said it was closing SVB and that insured depositors would have access to their funds by Monday.

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      Big Tech opens wallet for publishers as Australian news code looms

      Financial Times · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 17 February, 2021 - 14:44

    Close-up photography

    Enlarge / Close-up photography (credit: John Lamb | Getty Images)

    Google and Facebook are rushing to agree deals with Australian publishers, offering them the most generous licensing terms in the world in an attempt to persuade Canberra not to apply rules forcing tech groups to pay for news.

    MPs began debating legislation on Wednesday to enact the news media bargaining code, which the EU, UK and Canada are considering as a model for similar regulations to support publishers in their own jurisdictions.

    While Google has multi-million-dollar licensing deals with publishers in almost a dozen countries, people involved in negotiations told the Financial Times the sums now under discussion in Australia were “multiple times” the size of those agreements.

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      Antitrust 101: Why everyone is probing Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google

      Kate Cox · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 5 November, 2019 - 12:00 · 1 minute

    Maybe this textbook is from the Ma Bell era? <a class=#ThanksStockGettyImages" src="https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/GettyImages-1054012146-800x533.jpg" />

    Enlarge / Maybe this textbook is from the Ma Bell era? #ThanksStockGettyImages (credit: designer491 / Getty Images)

    Once upon a time, there was a phone company—or rather, the phone company. AT&T Corp., the venerable "Ma Bell," provided nearly all telephone service to nearly all Americans for decades... until it didn't. The company infamously broke up on New Year's Day in 1984, splitting into the seven "Baby Bells," regional carriers that could compete with other long-distance providers for consumer dollars.

    The split wasn't just for funsies. The baby Bells were the ultimate result of a settlement between AT&T and the Justice Department, the culmination of an antitrust case that began nearly a decade earlier. It was the first time the feds broke up a communications company for antitrust reasons—and 35 years later, it retains the dubious distinction of being the last.

    The decades of deregulation since the Reagan administration have brought us to a whole new era of massive corporate consolidation and the rise of a new wave of conglomerates in sectors that didn't even exist 40 years ago. The growth at the top in tech has been particularly stratospheric: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and a handful of others that have risen since the turn of the century now dominate our economy and our communications in a powerful way.

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