In the Financial Times, Tom Braithwaite reports on how lawsuits and a changing climate in Washington D.C. are affecting Big Tech's interest in acquisitions. He writes: Today’s tech giants were built on innovation — just not always their own. At key moments in their history, Google and Facebook made savvy acquisitions of smaller companies that supercharged their growth or snuffed out future competition. Now that strategy has big obstacles. The latest sign came this month when the US Department of Justice sued to halt Visa’s $5.3bn acquisition of fintech group Plaid. The deal “must be … [Read more...]
Will Work PCs Become a Thing of the Past?
ComputerWorld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols outlines the future of PCs as he sees it, writing: Ready or not, here comes Windows as a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) for all users in the forthcoming Microsoft Cloud PC offering. I've been predicting that many of us would soon be using Desktop-as-a-Service for a long time now. I can give you an approximate date now. By May 2021, most of you will be able to run Windows from Microsoft's Azure cloud using Cloud PC. Of course, you've long been able to run Windows remotely. Citrix Systems , after all, starting back in 1989 made a multi-billion dollar … [Read more...]
Apple Bows to Regulatory Pressure to Cut Services Business Fees
Apple is cutting fees at its app store in half for most developers. Developers who produce up to $1 million in revenue from their apps will be charged 15% instead of 30%. This is likely to be the first of the fee cuts at Apple and Google. EU regulators are likely to crack down on what is clearly monopolistic behavior by Apple. As one app developer puts it, “If you’re a developer making $1m, Apple is STILL asking to be paid $150,000, just to process payments on the monopoly computing platform in the US. That’s obscene!” Without a stable source of revenue from services, Apple’s inflated … [Read more...]
EU Turns the Screws on Amazon
The European Union is getting tough on Amazon's big data collection practices. Valentina Pop and Sam Schechner report for The Wall Street Journal: Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -3.41% faces fresh legal battles with the European Union after the bloc charged the online retailer with violating competition law in a new salvo in its scrutiny of U.S. tech corporations. The European Commission—the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer—issued a charge sheet against Amazon alleging that the company uses nonpublic data it gathers from third-party sellers to unfairly compete against them. In addition, the EU is … [Read more...]
Is Google Unfairly Competing Against Travel Businesses?
Sam Schechner reports in The Wall Street Journal on the travel industry's concerns over Google's tactics. He writes: Google has long been one of the biggest drivers of new business for travel websites like Expedia and Tripadvisor. Some of them say the Alphabet Inc. GOOG -0.43% unit is also a big competitive threat. Berlin-based HomeToGo GmbH is an example of the bind facing many travel businesses. The vacation-rental website depends in part on Google to direct people to its service, but it says business has been affected by the search company’s placing a box of listings from third-party … [Read more...]
The Government is Coming for Facebook
The FTC is preparing a possible antitrust suit against Facebook report Brent Kendall, John D. McKinnon, and Ryan Tracy at The Wall Street Journal. They write: WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission is gearing up to file a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook Inc. FB -1.09% by year-end, according to people familiar with the matter, in a case that would challenge the company’s dominant position in social media. The case preparations come after the FTC has spent more than a year investigating concerns that Facebook has been using its powerful market position to stifle competition, … [Read more...]
Apple Built Itself on Simplicity. Now it Is Confusing Customers.
What are Apple customers' best options? They can't tell. That's the problem facing Tim Cook and the Apple team. Nicole Nguyen reports in The Wall Street Journal: Apple AAPL -1.20% made three significant product announcements Tuesday—the Apple Watch Series 6, the redesigned iPad Air and the new Apple One service bundles—and managed to create more confusion about the best way for its customers to spend their money. When it comes to Apple Watch and iPad, the choice is no longer simply “Should I upgrade?” Apple, in trying to prove that its gadgets and services are for everybody, now offers a … [Read more...]
Local Broadcasters Hit Back at Streaming
Local broadcasters are fighting back against the streaming trend that has hurt their business. Lillian Rizzo reports in The Wall Street Journal: A new streaming service featuring more than 200 TV stations launched Tuesday, part of an effort by local-TV groups to make their content more broadly available and generate additional advertising revenue. VUit, pronounced “View It,” lets people stream all of Gray Television Inc.’s GTN -1.35% TV stations in 93 markets and some of Meredith Corp. MDP -1.86% ’s 17 stations, as well as dozens of closely held stations. The service, which was created by … [Read more...]
Market Concentration in FANG Stocks is Breaking Active Mutual Funds
At Bloomberg, John Authers explains how Apple and other FANG+ stocks are breaking the way active mutual fund managers work. He writes: The FANG phenomenon is adding to the torture for active investment managers, as the latest report into U.S. mutual funds’ holdings from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. illustrates. It is only possible to beat a narrow market like this if you grab on to a few of the big winning growth stocks and hold them. This is a problem, because the Russell 1000 Growth index, popular as a benchmark for mutual fund managers, is reaching record levels of concentration: You can … [Read more...]
Is This Time Different for Tech?
Apple is now worth more than $2 trillion, yes trillion. Apple is worth more than the sum of every company in the Russell 2000 index of small companies. Looking at this in terms of employees, there are almost 7 million people employed by the ~2,000 companies that make up the Russell 2000 index. Apple employs a mere 137,000 by comparison. That’s some pig! Exuberance in tech and mega-cap tech shares looks obvious to us. We recently questioned how Apple can be worth more than 3X what it was in 2015 when the company only makes about 6% more than it did in 2015. But Apple isn’t the only … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- …
- 37
- Next Page »