A Tuesday afternoon panel of the House Judiciary Committee focused on whether it’s time for Congress to rein in these companies, which are among the largest on Earth by several measures. Central to that case is whether their business practices run afoul of century-old laws originally designed to combat railroad and oil monopolies.
The House Antitrust Subcommittee is holding the second of its two Big Tech hearings this week, hearing from the FAAG in FAANG, lacking only Netflix among the witness list and definitely meeting the criteria for the hearing’s title.
Executives from Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet’s Google will testify before a House of Representatives congressional committee next week in a hearing to discuss the tremendous market power wielded by online platforms.
The precipitating event for Silicon Valley’s regulatory reckoning? A change in our political beliefs.
The news service costs $10 a month and includes roughly 300 magazines and a handful of major newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. Missing from the announcement were other major newspaper publishers, who have reportedly been wary of Apple’s terms. Apple says advertisers won’t track readers inside the app. That distinguishes it from Facebook and Google, the other major online news hubs. The company also said it is launching a MasterCard credit card called Apple Card.
Exclusives
Nearly two years after Apple first signaled its plan to become a programming powerhouse, the tech giant is set to unveil its vision for the future of entertainment. And it’s got Hollywood on the edge of its seat.
It’s a long-awaited attempt from the iPhone maker, several years after Netflix turned “binge watching” into a worldwide phenomenon. The new video service is expected to have original TV shows and movies that reportedly cost Apple more than $1 billion — far less than Netflix and HBO spend every year.
Apple has kept a tight lid on most of the details of its upcoming service, even keeping its creative partners in the dark about how exactly their work will be distributed. What is undisputed, however, is that the tech giant with a nearly $1 trillion market cap has lined up a who’s who of high-profile talent to vault it into the increasingly crowded original-content arena. Apple is set to unveil its plans on Monday.
The tech company, about to have a showcase event on its campus, is expected to reveal details about a dozen or more programs ready to go or almost done.
Apple is targeting April to debut a new streaming product that will include original content free for Apple device owners and a platform to subscribe to other digital media services. HBO hasn’t signed on to the service due to a disagreement over revenue sharing with Apple. Netflix and Hulu aren’t expected to be a part of the “Channels” service.
Terry Wood, who’d been with Netflix for the past four years, heads back to the Winfrey-verse — having previously worked for her company in Chicago in the 1990s.
Apple is planning a subscription service for games, according to five people familiar with the matter. The service would function like Netflix for games, allowing users who pay a subscription fee to access a bundled list of titles. Apple began privately discussing a subscription service with game developers in the second half of 2018, said the people, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss unannounced plans.
Wall Street’s Take On TV’s Future
Among a NATPE panel’s predictions: four global mega-companies, digital’s growing presence and cable’s declining influence, news and sports as key to traditional media’s survival.
While Google, Facebook and Twitter face scrutiny for spreading misinformation, Apple has avoided scandal by using people to pick what news to show. Is that good for publishers?
With new attacks by President Trump, high-stakes testimony next week on Capitol Hill, and a midterm election vulnerable to online manipulation, tech’s giants are bracing themselves for two months after Labor Day that could decide whether and how much the government regulates them.
Apple is expanding the number of publishers that can serve ads into their Apple News articles using Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers after testing the option last year, according to five publisher and industry executives. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the record. The DFP move lets publishers take the direct-ads sold on their own sites and plug them into Apple’s app. That has the potential to address publishers’ Apple News monetization problems.
Apple Inc. is designing and producing its own device displays for the first time, using a secret manufacturing facility near its California headquarters to make small numbers of the screens for testing purposes, according to people familiar with the situation.
Right now, each of the players is acting smartly given its position — but all eyes are on Amazon.
The Case For Busting Up Big Tech
Four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. We love our nifty phones and just-a-click-away services, but these behemoths enjoy unfettered economic domination and hoard riches on a scale not seen since the monopolies of the gilded age.
Why Apple-Netflix Would Be Perfect Marriage
The first trillion-dollar company? There’s sound business sense behind the tech giant swinging for the fences and buying the streaming platform, according to analyst and shareholder Ben Weiss.
Apple Is Poised To Regain Momentum With TV
Apple has been under a lot of fire lately, as the company that could once do no wrong suddenly seems incapable of doing anything right. But there is one place where Apple seems to have reverted to doing everything right again. It immediately understood that television was a very different beast than technology, which meant they needed to hire people who actually understood the medium.
After missing the critical holiday shopping season, Apple Inc has jumped into the voice speaker wars with the HomePod smart speaker, a device that will use its Siri voice assistant and compete against offerings from Amazon and Google.
Analysts for Citigroup wrote in a research note they believe there’s a 40% chance Apple will buy Netflix with the money it repatriates following the passage of corporate tax reform. Apple could potentially repatriate hundreds of billions of dollars, giving it plenty of wiggle room for a major acquisition like Netflix.
Tara Sorensen, the head of Amazon kids programming, will take on a similar role at Apple as the company pushes more into developing original content. Along with Sorensen, international development executive Carina Walker and business affairs chief Tara Pietri will also depart Amazon for Apple, with Pietri leading Apple’s legal affairs division. Walker will again be an international creative executive, reporting to fellow Amazon alum Morgan Wandell.
Apple’s New TV Deals Signal Streaming Plans
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected Samsung’s appeal of court rulings that it impermissibly copied features of Apple’s iPhone. The justices on Monday left in place rulings in […]
NEW YORK (AP) — Apple is offering a nifty way to unlock its new iPhone X — just stare at it. Face ID, Apple’s name for its facial-recognition technology, replaces […]
