Japan has followed the United States, Australia, and numerous countries around the world in preparing to heavily regulate big tech companies, including Apple, due to antitrust disputes and fears about market control (via Reuters).
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Japan is reportedly "laying the groundwork" to regulate big tech companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Kazuyuki Furuya, chairman of Japan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC), said that Tokyo will join global efforts to regulate digital platform operators.
"If the size of any merger or business-tie up is big, we can launch an anti-monopoly investigation into the buyer's process of acquiring a start-up," Furuya told Reuters. "We're closely watching developments including in Europe."
Furuya expressed the need for global coordination when regulating large technology companies, particularly since they tend to have similar business practices across the globe.
We'll work closely with our U.S. and European counterparts, and respond if to any moves that hamper competition.
If digital platform providers are found to be abusing their dominant market positions against the interests of consumers, the FTC says that it is ready to act decisively with probes that will "push through aggressively." The FTC will also investigate the Japanese smartphone market and determine if there can be improvements made to encourage competition.
Major antitrust inquiries have now been undertaken in the United States, the European Union, Italy, Australia, Russia, and South Korea.
In particular, the European Union is preparing forceful regulations for big tech, including compiling a "hit-list" of companies and a wide-reaching Digital Services Act that could ban tech companies from pre-installing apps and force them to share data with their competitors.
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Top Rated Comments
Thanks to the recent hearings they are doing that. Scrutiny does that.
When companies become so monopolized that they stifle innovation, expression, and the free exchange of ideas, that's the point where it is acceptable to endure the entry of government regulation into the arena.
To be honest, the tipping point occurred for me the past few weeks. Regardless of your leanings on US politics, when Twitter and Facebook felt they had the right to censor the free exchange of information by one of the most largely circulated newspapers in the country, and do so with impunity, they pierced the veil of protection provided by Section 230.
They decided they were the editor, and not simply a re publisher of third party content.
These platforms that were once considered de facto monopolies are now prima facia monopolies with agenda driving filtering of content no different than other mass media like radio and TV, and quite simply should be regulated in the same fashion.
As far as Amazon, Apple, and Google? IMHO they're a different animal from the above listed social media platforms. Amazon, like Apple will eventually get too big for it's britches and fall down. Even Jeff Bezos has said he expects some disruptive technology to come along and bankrupt Amazon some day. Some shark will come along and eat the pieces and leave the chum for the rest. It will continue to exist in some form, but not the form it does now.
Apple will have the same sort of "short pantsing" that MSFT did. They will have to agree to some fines and concessions on their app store and access to software platforms, but like MSFT will continue to be a mega company much as they are today.
Google, I don't know. It's just so huge with so many subsets. I don't know what happens to it. I just have to admit I'm at a loss on that one and move on.
But I DO believe we are beyond AT&T territory here. Beyond ALCOA. Beyond DuPont/GM.
Given the legal precedent, it's only a matter of time before the government takes action as they have in the past. And often, the results were positive. Particularly in the breakup of AT&T....
Crapfest by who’s standard? Yours?