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      Meta Fined $840 Million in Europe for Boosting Marketplace Unfairly

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      Meta said it would appeal the decision by the European Union, which said the company had abused its dominance in social networking to strengthen its shopping and classified ads service.​The European Union on Thursday fined Meta roughly $840 million for breaking competition laws with Facebook Marketplace, its shopping and classified ads platform, the latest action by regulators trying to limit the ability of tech giants to expand into new product areas.In issuing the 800 million euro fine, European regulators said Meta had given itself an unfair advantage over rival services by bundling Marketplace into Facebook’s wider social network, providing it with immediate access to millions of potential users. They added that Meta had abused its dominance in online advertising to impose unfair business terms on rival shopping services, allowing it to collect data that could be used to strengthen Marketplace.European regulators, led by Margrethe Vestager, the E.U. competition chief, have for years sought to limit the ability of tech companies to use their power in one area, like social networking, to gain a foothold in new markets such as shopping. Authorities in Europe have also accused Apple of using its dominance in smartphones to bolster music and payment services.In linking Marketplace to Facebook’s social network, the company gave itself “advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match,” Ms. Vestager said in a statement. “This is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. Meta must now stop this behavior.”The company said it would appeal the decision, setting up a legal battle that could drag out for years. Meta said Marketplace, introduced in 2016, was created in response to consumer demand and had not hindered competition from companies such as eBay and Vinted.On Marketplace, people buy, sell and trade items with others, including furniture, clothing, sports equipment, cars and home goods.“Facebook users can choose whether or not to engage with Marketplace, and many don’t,” the company said in a statement. “The reality is that people use Facebook Marketplace because they want to, not because they have to.”Meta has been a target of efforts on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to crimp the power of the largest technology companies. Last year, the company was fined 1.2 billion euros, or about $1.26 billion, for violating regional data protection rules. In the United States, the company is being sued by the Federal Trade Commission for antitrust violations.Whether the United States and Europe will stay aligned on tech regulation with President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to office is an open question. Some of his supporters, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, have raised concerns about the power of Silicon Valley firms like Meta and Google, while others have pushed for less regulation.The European Union started the Marketplace investigation in 2019. In 2023, the company reached a settlement with British regulators on a similar case, but was unable to find an agreement with E.U. authorities. More

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      How FTC Chair Lina Khan Became an Election Hot Topic

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      The Federal Trade Commission chair drew increasing political vitriol as the presidential vote neared. Her political future hangs in the balance.In the run-up to the election, Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, was called a dope, partisan and unhelpful by Democrats and Republicans. Democratic donors including the billionaires Reid Hoffman, Barry Diller and Mark Cuban called for her ouster from the agency. Last week, a report from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee accused her of having a far-left agenda and weaponizing the agency.Ms. Khan “will be fired soon,” Elon Musk, the owner of X and a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, wrote on his platform on Thursday.Few government officials elicited such intense bipartisan attention ahead of the election, making speculation regarding the future of Ms. Khan — nominated in 2021 by President Biden — one of the most avid parlor games in Washington.The fixation on Ms. Khan, 35, is uncommon for a leader at the long-under-the-radar F.T.C., which regulates companies that subvert competition and deceive consumers. It reflects the high stakes of the Biden administration’s wide-ranging program to dampen the power of America’s biggest corporations — which either presidential candidate could reverse if victorious.Scrutiny from the F.T.C. and the Justice Department has led to the collapse of billions of dollars in recent corporate deals. Lawsuits filed by the agencies could break up big American brands like Google, Amazon and the parent company of Ticketmaster. Ms. Khan has argued to regulate artificial intelligence, ordered companies to make it easier to cancel online subscriptions and banned noncompete agreements, which stop workers from taking a job with a rival employer.The backlash from the business world and its Washington allies has been fierce — and it ramped up before the vote.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Outlines Google Search Changes It’s Weighing in Antitrust Case

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      They include making Google’s data available to rivals and forcing it to break off parts of the company, the Justice Department said in a court filing.The Justice Department said Tuesday night that it was considering asking a federal court to force Google to break off parts of the company or change its practices in order to eliminate its monopoly in search, moves that could redefine the $2 trillion company’s core business.In a filing, the government said it could ask the court to require Google to make the underlying data that powers its search engine available to competitors.It said it was considering asking for “structural” changes to Google to stop the company from leveraging the power of its Chrome browser, Android operating system or Play app store to benefit its search business. But it stopped short of identifying what those changes could be.“Google’s anticompetitive conduct resulted in interlocking and pernicious harms that present unprecedented complexities in a highly evolving set of markets,” the government said in its filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “These markets are indispensable to the lives of all Americans, whether as individuals or as business owners, and the importance of effectively unfettering these markets and restoring competition cannot be overstated.”Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a blog post in response to the filing that the company was concerned the Justice Department was “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”In a landmark ruling in August, a judge on that court, Amit P. Mehta, said Google “is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” It crossed a line when it paid companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to be the automatic search engine in web browsers and on smartphones, Judge Mehta ruled in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can Lina Khan Hold On?

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      Ms. Khan’s term as the chair of the Federal Trade Commission ended Wednesday. In a wide-ranging interview, she discussed her aggressive approach to antitrust and its critics.From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, everyone wants to know what’s next for Lina Khan.On Wednesday, the youngest-ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission reached the end of her three-year term, during which she helped to overhaul the government’s approach to antitrust enforcement and brought a slew of lawsuits against major corporations.Ms. Khan, 35, can remain in her seat indefinitely, unless she is replaced. There are factions rooting loudly for each of those outcomes.Under her leadership, the F.T.C. has brought antitrust cases against the tech giants Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, sometimes employing ambitious legal arguments. The agency has tried to ban almost all noncompete clauses and blocked Lockheed Martin and Nvidia from making multibillion-dollar deals.A powerful bipartisan cohort believes the F.T.C. chair is stretching the scope of antitrust law past its legitimate limits, rashly working to redefine the bounds of key concepts such as monopolization.Ms. Khan, her staff and her allies essentially contend the opposite: that her leadership is restoring the role of robust, active antitrust enforcement in a legal and economic system that for too long has let those regulatory muscles atrophy to the detriment of consumers and healthier market competition. Consumer watchdogs and some conservatives have cheered on Ms. Khan, defending her populist moves, like the agency’s recent warning to makers of inhalers that their aggressive use of patent loopholes may violate federal law.Some Democratic donors connected to finance and tech, however, have publicly campaigned for Vice President Kamala Harris to remove Ms. Khan as chair of the F.T.C., if she wins the presidential election in November. Her campaign declined to comment on whether she would support Ms. Khan’s staying in the position.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Google Defended Itself in the Ad Tech Antitrust Trial

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      The tech giant, which wrapped up its arguments in the federal monopoly trial, simply says it has the best product.Over the past week, Google has called more than a dozen witnesses to defend itself against claims by the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general that it has a monopoly in advertising software that places ads on web pages, part of a second major federal antitrust trial against the tech giant.Google’s lawyers wrapped up their arguments in the case on Friday, and the government will now offer a rebuttal. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is presiding over the nonjury trial, is expected to deliver a ruling by the end of the year, after both sides summarize their cases in writing and deliver closing arguments.The government last week concluded its main arguments in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google, which was filed last year and accuses Google of building a monopoly over the technology that places ads on websites around the internet.The company’s defense has centered on how its actions were justified and how it helped publishers, advertisers and competition. Here are Google’s main arguments.How Google claims its actions were justifiedThe Justice Department and a group of states have accused the tech company of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law, in part through its 2008 acquisition of the advertising software company DoubleClick. Google has pushed up ad prices and harmed publishers by taking a big cut of each sale, the government argued.But Google’s lawyers countered that the ad tech industry was intensely competitive. They also accused the Justice Department of ignoring rivals like Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon to make its case sound more compelling.Visa, Google, JetBlue: A Guide to a New Era of Antitrust ActionBelow are 15 major cases brought by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission since late 2020, as President Biden’s top antitrust enforcers have promised to sue monopolies and block big mergers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Harris’s Debate Tutor: a Lawyer Unafraid of Telling Politicians Hard Truths

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      Karen Dunn, who is preparing the vice president for next week’s clash, has trained Democrats for debates in every election since 2008. Her approach, as Hillary Clinton put it, is “tough love.”Vice President Kamala Harris has never met or spoken with former President Donald J. Trump, but the woman running her debate preparations has spent a lot of time thinking about how to respond to what Republican nominees say during an onstage clash.That outside Harris adviser, Karen L. Dunn, a high-powered Washington lawyer, has trained Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates for debates in every election since 2008.She is described by candidates she has coached and other people who have worked with her as a skilled handler of high-ego politicians. By all accounts, she possesses the rare ability to tell them what they are doing wrong and how to fix it — and how to inject humor and humanity to sell themselves to voters watching the debate.“It’s a combination of tough love,” Hillary Clinton, whom Ms. Dunn helped prepare for presidential debates in 2008 and 2016, said in an interview on Thursday. “She’s unafraid to say, ‘That’s not going to work’ or ‘That doesn’t make sense’ or ‘You can do better.’ But she also offers encouragement, like, ‘Look, I think you’re on the right track here’ and ‘You just need to do more of that.’”The emergence of Ms. Dunn as the leader of Ms. Harris’s debate team comes at a critical moment in both the presidential race and Ms. Dunn’s professional life.When she is not preparing top Democrats for debates — in addition to her four previous cycles of involvement at the presidential and vice-presidential level, she has worked with Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Cory Booker of New Jersey — Ms. Dunn is a top lawyer for some of America’s leading technology firms.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Rejects Key Part of N.C.A.A. Settlement of Antitrust Suit With Athletes

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      The concern over restrictions on some payments raises uncertainty on whether a landmark agreement on compensating athletes can be reached and approved.A federal judge on Thursday rejected a key element of a proposed $2.8 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against the N.C.A.A. and the major athletic conferences, throwing into uncertainty an agreement that had been largely seen as ushering in a new era in college sports.The judge, Claudia A. Wilken, said in a hearing that she was troubled by a provision that would restrict payments to athletes from booster-run collectives, groups of donors that funnel millions of dollars to athletes at schools they support. Although the proposed agreement would allow schools to pay their athletes up to about $20 million per year, she thought some athletes would make less money under the new deal.“Some people getting large amounts will no longer be able to get them,” she told lawyers for the N.C.A.A. and the plaintiffs, essentially a group of thousands of athletes, who had come to an agreement in the lawsuit House v. N.C.A.A. “That’s my concern.”But Rakesh Kilaru, the N.C.A.A. lawyer, said there would be no deal without a provision that allowed the N.C.A.A. to prohibit third-party payments that they saw as pay-for-play compensation under the guise of fair-market endorsement deals.“For us, it’s an essential part of the deal,” he said.Judge Wilken also expressed reservations about another key component of the deal: capping the amount that schools could pay athletes. She also told Mr. Kilaru and the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Jeffrey Kessler and Steve Berman, to report back to her in three weeks with a revised agreement. If they could not, she would be prepared to set a trial date in the case, which charges that the N.C.A.A. and the five major conferences withheld name, image and license revenue.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More