Antitrust | featured news

Wednesday was a dark day for the future of books. The Department of Justice charged Apple and five large book publishers with conspiring to raise e-book prices. Three of the five publishers quickly capitulated rather than face the risk and expense of a protracted legal battle.

The U.S. government has filed an antitrust lawsuit in New York against Apple Inc. and various major book publishers. The lawsuit said the alleged conspiracy came as Apple was preparing to launch the iPad.

In everything it does, from product design to business deals, Apple strives for as much control as possible. But as the world's most valuable company sets out to define and dominate the rapidly evolving markets it created with the iPhone and the iPad, Apple is likely to face antitrust regulators who want to curb its power.

Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of cellphone maker Motorola Mobility has won approval of European antitrust regulators, moving Google one step closer to completing the biggest deal in its 13-year history.

European Union antitrust regulators on Monday approved Google’s acquisition of the U.S. cellphone maker Motorola Mobility without conditions, but added a stern warning: Play fair in markets for smartphones and tablet computers, or face tough sanctions.

Google’s recent ~$1b 3-year deal with Mozilla for Google to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox browser users, which comprise over a quarter of the global browser/search market, has much broader and more serious antitrust implications for Google’s already very tenuous antitrust situation than most everyone appreciates.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

AT&T and T-Mobile on Monday asked a federal judge to postpone an antitrust lawsuit as the companies were assessing “whether and how” to proceed with their $39 billion mega-merger. The announcement signals that the deal as originally conceived is all but dead. The two companies could still seek ways to retool the terms to address the concerns of regulators.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will request an administrative hearing on the proposed $39 billion acquisition... The decision by the chairman, Julius Genachowski, puts a second large roadblock in front of AT&T, the nation’s second-largest wireless phone company, in its effort to buy T-Mobile, the No. 4 carrier. In August, the Justice Department filed a federal antitrust lawsuit to block the merger, saying it would stifle competition.

Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the creator of WordPerfect.