WAN-IFRA Media Policy BriefingGoogle three times a monopoly; Meta also a monopoly?; EC fines Apple and Meta and investigates Google; "value of news" report not very relevant.
Are you coming to Congress in Krakow? If yes, register for the Media Policy Forum next Sunday afternoon: we are examining "The emerging shape of media policy in a new geopolitical environment". In this new, confusing landscape of big tech suddenly aligned with power, we will reflect on lessons learned and new priorities for policy professionals and enthusiasts.
The trial that sees Meta facing off with the Federal Trade Commission has started, with the FTC accusing Zuckerberg's group of resorting to “an illegal buy-or-bury scheme to maintain its dominance.” The focus of the trial are the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and Whatsapp in 2014, painted as illegal acquisitions of innovative competitors to survive existential threats. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom testified for hours on how the app's growth was constrained in the group to avoid harming Facebook. Zuckerberg allegedly offered the FTC four hundred and fifty million dollars to settle the lawsuit, while the commission had asked 30 billions.
The European Commission announced a fine of 500 million euros on Apple and 200 million euros on Meta for breaches of the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Meta was found to have illegally required users to consent to sharing their data with the company or pay for an ad-free service. Apple instead failed to comply with so-called “anti-steering” obligations preventing developers to freely inform customers of alternative offers outside its App Store. Both companies have framed the decision as unfair targeting of successful US businesses, as foreseen by Politico here. The Commission is also investigating the use of AI Overviews by Google for potential breach of the Digital Markets Act, the Copyright Directive and the European Media Freedom Act.
Several sources dispute the relevance of the Google's "value of news" study, saying that "the impact of all news on Google’s revenues cannot be inferred" from it. Among the most notable shortcomings there is the exclusion of France and Germany - representing the 43% of the EU digital ad market and the biggest press sector -, and the fact that customers were not notified of the change, a crucial point in all behavioural change studies. A study run in the UK at the beginning of the year placed the value of news to Google in the country at around 2.2 billion pounds a year. Google's study also does not account for the user trust erosion when news content is not provided. Indeed, an independent study from Fehr advice found that news content functions as a structural signal of platform quality, and a fair publisher share in the 8 countries that Google studied would range between €766 million and €1.17 billion annually.
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