People sometimes characterize the EU’s tech laws as an assault on U.S. companies, and the accusation is not entirely groundless—American dominance in the field naturally means most of the big-name investigations and enforcement cases target firms from the country, and some EU lawmakers have clearly protectionist motives. However, it can’t be stressed enough that U.S. companies are very adept at using European rules to target their own national rivals.
When Google got hit with a $2.7 billion antitrust fine over its comparison-shopping practices, Microsoft—previously a prime target for EU antitrust enforcers itself—was partly responsible. That $5 billion Google fine relating to Android? The complainants included Expedia, TripAdvisor, Oracle, and Microsoft, again. Yelp has complained about Google. Slack has complained about Microsoft. And now Google is trying to wield EU law against Apple.
As I wrote about a month ago, Google has for a while been trying to shame Apple into breaking down the walls around iMessage through the adoption of the Rich Communications Services standard, so Android and iOS users can send one another messages with all the modern bells and whistles using their phones’ native messaging apps. I also noted that the European Commission is trying to establish whether the EU’s new Digital Markets Act antitrust law should apply to iMessage, which would mean forced interoperability. (The DMA already definitely applies to the App Store, and Apple just acknowledged in its 2023 10-K filing that it may have to reform app distribution on iOS.)
The Financial Times reported today that Google is actively lobbying the Commission to bring iMessage under the DMA’s purview—and it’s doing so together with EU telecoms giants Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Orange, and Telefónica.
“It is paramount that businesses can reach all their customers taking advantage of modern communications services with enriched messaging features,” Google and the telcos reportedly wrote in a joint letter to the Commission. “Through iMessage, business users are only able to send enriched messages to iOS users and must rely on traditional SMS for all the other end users.”
Google and the EU telecoms operators are strange bedfellows, given that they’ve recently been at each other’s throats over so-called “fair share” payments from Big Tech to Big Network—a failed concept, for now—but hey, that’s business.
And while we’re on the subject of Europe, we’ve just published the inaugural Fortune 500 Europe list. As Peter Vanham points out in today’s CEO Daily essay, the top pure tech firm in the list is SAP, all the way down at No. 114. That speaks volumes.
More news below. Oh and by the way, if Epic prevails in its U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Google over allegedly monopolistic practices on Android, then “Project Hug”—Google’s internal codename for those efforts—will have to go down as one of the most gloriously cynical euphemisms in tech history.
David Meyer
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NEWSWORTHY
Rivian and Amazon. Rivian has been making its commercial electric vans exclusively for Amazon since 2019, but the automaker said yesterday that it was a free agent once again. “We’ve been working on the exclusivity agreement with Amazon for a while,” Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe told investors yesterday, according to TechCrunch. “With that, we’ve been building relationships with a diverse set of commercial operators, and that’s everything from last-mile to retail.”
Google dissent. The New York Times reports there’s a toxic atmosphere within Google over the issue of the Israel-Hamas war: “Pro-Palestinian employees say the company has allowed supporters of Israel to speak freely about their opinions on the topic, while taking a heavy hand with Muslim employees who have criticized Israel’s retaliation in Gaza.” There are similar tensions at Microsoft and Meta, but, as the Times points out, many Googlers were already mad about the company’s AI and cloud contract with the Israeli military.
X and TikTok hate speech. European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova yesterday met with TikTok and X representatives to discuss their efforts against hate speech and other harmful content. Reuters reports that she said neither company was doing enough; the Commission is currently investigating X and TikTok (and Meta) over their compliance with the new Digital Services Act. According to a readout of the meeting, X global affairs chief Nick Pickles also told Jourova that X’s “intention is to provide researchers with good access to data,” perhaps in February. As reported earlier this week, over 100 research projects have been scrapped or changed due to X’s refusal to let researchers get at its data.
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES
$99
—The annual membership price that Amazon Prime subscribers can shell out to join One Medical, as opposed to the primary care business’s typical $199 annual fee. Amazon bought One Medical for $3.9 billion earlier this year and really wants to become a big health care player.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Elon Musk’s affordability problem—Tesla is fast running out of early adopters, but its cars are still too expensive for most buyers, by Christiaan Hetzner
Former Facebook contractor who emailed Zuckerberg about child safety concerns briefs Congress: ‘Meta’s executives knew the harm that teenagers were experiencing’, by the Associated Press
Waze’s traffic app will now warn you if a road has a history of crashes, by Chris Morris
Cops are falling in love with AI, and it’s much deeper than facial recognition, by Sage Lazzaro
The secret sauce behind Bill Gates’ success is optimism, says psychology expert—but don’t confuse that with blind optimism, by Orianna Rosa Royle
BEFORE YOU GO
AIs-in-training. More new entrants in the ever-wider AI race! First, Reuters reports that Amazon is training its own large language model, codenamed “Olympus”. Apparently, it’s one of the largest of its kind, with twice as many parameters as OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Meanwhile, Samsung has revealed the existence of yet another generative AI model, this time named “Gauss.” Per Bloomberg, Samsung is currently testing the LLM (named after the 19th century "prince of mathematicians" Carl Gauss) internally. It will be made available to the public soon, though.
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