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Matt Stoller Profile picture
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Feb 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The Senate markup on the bill to break app store monopoly power is on deck right now.
California Senator Dianne Feinstein opposes the bill because it targets "three California companies," Apple, Google, and Microsoft.
And now California Senator Alex Padilla is up. He's mostly just trying to avoid getting cross-wise with either big tech, or with labor, which doesn't like big tech.
Padilla submits a letter opposing the app store bill on hate speech from a group of nonprofits, which was organized by Free Press.

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More from @matthewstoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture
Feb 4
1. There is a major change afoot among antitrust regulators. The FTC's Lina Khan and the Antitrust Division's Jonathan Kanter are not screwing around, and are about to take on all the money and power in the world.

Let's talk merger policy. mattstoller.substack.com/p/mergers-ruin… Image
2. As anyone who's been through one knows, mergers suck. A few weeks ago, @adamconover described why his show - Adam Ruins Everything - was canceled. The show was popular, but that didn't matter.

AT&T bought Time Warner, and wrecked it.
3. In 2016, AT&T breathlessly announced it would buy Time Warner. We have phones, they have TV shows. What if... people watched TV shows on their phones?!?! Someone forgot to mention that people already did that. But whatever. about.att.com/story/att_to_a…
Read 23 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Feb 4
1. Apple chose to shoot Facebook in the head and move Facebook's ad revenue to Google, because Apple shares in Google's profits.
2. Apple's decision to block tracking on mobile devices significantly harmed Facebook's ad business, which is good. But Apple did not apply the same provisions to Google's mobile services. So ad money moved from FB to Google. Why did Apple do this?
3. It's simple. Google pays Apple something like $15B a year for Google search to be the default on the iPhone's Safari browser. That's at the heart of the DOJ antitrust suit against Google filed in 2020. Image
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Feb 2
I think the most surprising thing I've learned over the last couple of years is just how insane elite liberal institutions have become. I don't really know what to do about it.
The assertive lunacy of most American elite institutions is a widely held opinion within the elites, but unstated publicly because the retribution isn't worth it. I happen to care less about social sanction than most of my peers.
I keep going back to this thread from @AlecMacGillis. In a set of increasingly bizarre moral panics, American liberals have decided to overlook the costs of destroying society.
Read 4 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 28
"Antitrust is the main concern for merger-arbitrage funds, according to a Bloomberg News survey this month of 12 U.S.-based fund managers, analysts, and brokers."

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
"He added that the flurry of legal challenges was a primary reason that many of the deals announced last year involved $10 billion or less." - Peter Orszag, the C.E.O. of Lazard’s financial advisory business
"Mega takeovers in the US — deals north of $25bn or $50bn — plummeted in 2021, according to data from Refinitiv, as companies particularly in pharma and tech have shied away from taking regulatory risks." - Financial Times ft.com/content/03a2df…
Read 5 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 27
"On the basis of his antitrust record, he is an unjust man. Breyer is the candidate of big business and monopoly in America.”

I look back at the legacy of Stephen Breyer, perhaps the most important ally of monopoly power over the last forty years.
mattstoller.substack.com/p/stephen-brey…
According to former FTC official Charles Mueller, Breyer straight-up lied during his confirmation hearing, telling Senator Metzenbaum that antitrust plaintiffs sometimes won and sometimes lost in his court. In fact they always lost. mattstoller.substack.com/p/stephen-brey… Image
"When his retirement announcement came, I was watching an event on antitrust at the Mercatus center, a libertarian forum sponsored by firms like Google. The big law partners, upon learning the news, immediately turned from bashing Lina Khan to lamenting Breyer’s retirement."
Read 6 tweets
Matt Stoller Profile picture
Jan 20
Senate Judiciary committee passes big tech antitrust bill on nondiscrimination. 16-6.
Big tech probably spent tens of millions opposing this bill alone. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were calling Senators personally. A bipartisan thrashing is not the outcome they wanted.
As this bill moves, remember that it's just as possible for the bill to get stronger on the floor as weaker. Far more importantly than this bill, the Senate Judiciary just opened the floodgates. Now everyone knows there's an overwhelming majority to address big tech power.
Read 4 tweets

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