New antitrust complaint against Facebook 🤦
New antitrust complaint against Facebook 🤦
Friday, 20th August 2021 by Gotrade
Hey Gotraders,
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has renewed its antitrust complaint against Facebook (FB) on Thursday after a judge dismissed its initial claims in June. Oh no, not again….
What was the first complaint about? The FTC filed a complaint against Facebook saying that Facebook holds monopoly power in the U.S. personal social networking market with its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram. It also alleges that Facebook has a tendency to use market power to quash potential competitors before they could turn into true rivals. The FTC was referring to Facebook’s previous attempts to buy Twitter (TWTR) and Snap (SNAP).
What was the outcome of the first complaint? The judge dismissed the complaint, saying that the FTC failed to define a plausible market that Facebook monopolized and suggested too loose of a percentage of market share it owned. In addition, the judge mentioned that the FTC lacked authority under its chosen statute to bring charges against Facebook for how it implemented an old policy preventing rivals from accessing its platform seven years ago.
What is different about the second complaint being filed? The new complaint is sort of the new & improved version of the original complaint. It is now 80 pages long, compared to 53 in the original version. It maintains the core arguments of the original complaint, including allegations that Facebook used anticompetitive acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp to further its monopoly power and that it also unfairly blocked rivals from accessing its application programming interface, or API. The new complaint also addresses some of the judge’s criticisms and tries to provide more evidence to support its claim of Facebook’s dominance in the relevant market.
Facebook has until the 4th of October to respond to the FTC’s amended complaint.
Why is this important? Facebook maintains its stance that the FTC’s complaint continues to be “meritless” and that it would “continue to vigorously defend our company.”
Well, if they won the case once, maybe they can win it again?!
Shares of Facebook closed slightly in the red, down 0.093%, at $355.12.
📉 Palantir now accepts Bitcoin payments 🤨
Palantir (PLTR) has announced that they now accept Bitcoin payments. It looks like the company is exploring crypto, and following in the footsteps of Tesla (TSLA). Palantir’s CFO Dave Glazer is “thinking about” investing in Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset. This news was welcomed by the crypto community of course with Bitcoin Magazine posting on Twitter (TWTR) about it.
Shares of Palantir closed at $24.16, down 4.43% for the day.
📉 Toyota will cut global production by 40% ⏬
The global chip shortage continues to intensify and impact companies. Companies such as Toyota (TM) have been forced to scale back on global production by up to 40%. The world's biggest carmaker had planned to make almost 900,000 cars next month, but this has now been reduced 540,000. Yikes!
Interesting to note that Intel’s (INTC) CEO, Pat Gelsinger, thinks that the worst of the global chip crisis has yet to come. He also thinks that it might take a couple of years before supply returns to normal. Uh-oh…
Shares of Toyota closed at $168.55, down 4.09% for the day.
Top movers & shakers 🎢
What else is making headline news 📰
Oil's losing streak hits six days, benchmarks touch May lows.
Nvidia (NVDA) admits bid for Arm likely to stretch beyond 18-month deal timeframe.
Cathie Wood says stocks are not in a bubble, thinks investors betting against her fund are off base.
Amazon (AMZN) is reportedly planning to open department stores, its latest experiment in physical retail.
J&J (JNJ) names Joaquin Duato as CEO effective January 3, replacing Alex Gorsky.
Tesla (TSLA) unveils chip to train A.I. models inside its data centers.
China passes major data protection law as regulatory scrutiny on tech sector intensifies.
Adobe (ADBE) says it will acquire video-collaboration software company Frame.io for $1.275 billion.
Popular companies releasing earnings this week 💰
Friday: Applied Materials (AMAT), John Deere (DE)
A company’s market value may fluctuate considerably around the time that the earnings report is expected to be published. Stock prices may rise or fall according to analysts' speculative estimates, released prior to the actual earnings announcement.
The earnings season can be a time of great opportunity since better-than-expected figures could cause a company’s stock to greatly increase in value. Worse-than-expected results could have the opposite effect.
That’s all from us for now.
Signing out,
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The legal stuff 🤓
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