Net neutrality won’t go down without a fight, Amazon offers Google an olive branch, and Spotify reaches out to the EU to curb Apple’s power.
Trending all over social media this weekend was backlash against the US Federal Communications Commission voting 3-2 on Thursday to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality protections. The changes will take time to be implemented, but they’re already being met with a flurry of lawsuits from states accusing the FCC of choosing “corporate profits over consumers”. 17 states have filed suits within 24 hours of the decision being announced and it’s also very likely that more will join the fray. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was the first to step up, and the state of Washington has gone even further, pledging to enforce its own version of net neutrality within its borders and penalize Internet Service Providers that restrict access, block content, or charge varying rates.
From LinkedIn, two European digital music-streaming platforms are asking European Union regulators to control how dominant US tech firms like Apple and Amazon are in the region. Spotify and Deezer say that these big companies are exercising unfair dominance. For example, according to Spotify, Apple Music gets a boost from its app store and the fact that Apple trims 30 per cent from profits of other music services operating on the platform gives them an unfair advantage. The complaint comes as the EU is in the process of writing and refining competition guidelines and interestingly, as Spotify prepares to go public. The company has been valued at $19 billion, according to a Business Insider report.
And last but not least from Reddit, Amazon is finally being the bigger company and offering Google and Apple an olive branch. The e-commerce giant will start selling Google’s Chromecast and Apple TV on its website again after removing both devices from its website in 2015 because they were competition to its own products, which prompted Google to block YouTube from Amazon’s Echo and Fire TV devices. Apple finally said last week that it would allow Amazon Prime Video to come to Apple TV, which may have caused Amazon to soften its stance.