eastunder
1 month ago
Apple, Google and Meta at risk of ‘heavy’ fines as Europe launches new probes
CNN Business· Yves Herman/Reuters
Olesya Dmitracova, CNN
Mon, Mar 25, 2024, 7:54 AM MDT3 min read
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-google-meta-risk-heavy-114530507.html
The European Union has launched investigations into Apple, Google and Facebook parent Meta on suspicion that they are failing to comply with a new landmark European law designed to promote competition in digital services.
The European Commission said it “suspects” that various practices by all three companies “fall short of effective compliance” with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which went into effect earlier this month. If the probes find a “lack of full compliance,” they could face “heavy fines,” said European Commissioner Thierry Breton.
The DMA requires dominant online platforms to give users more choices and rivals more opportunities to compete. It currently applies to the three tech giants under investigation, as well as Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) and ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok.
By mid-May, the list could also include Elon Musk’s X and Booking.com, the EU has said.
Violations of the new law can lead to stiff penalties, including fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue and up to 20% for repeat offenses. For most of the regulated companies, that would translate to tens of billions of dollars.
The practices the European Commission is investigating include what it calls Meta’s “pay or consent” approach. Last October, Meta (META) launched a subscription service, called “Subscription for no ads,” allowing European users of Facebook and Instagram to pay up to €12.99 ($14) a month for ad-free versions.
“The Commission is concerned that the binary choice imposed by Meta’s ‘pay or consent’ model may not provide a real alternative in case users do not consent, thereby not achieving the objective of preventing the accumulation of personal data by (large companies),” the body said in a statement.
A Meta spokesperson responded: “Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries, and we designed ‘Subscription for no ads’ to address several overlapping regulatory obligations, including the DMA. We will continue to engage constructively with the Commission.”
The EU is also looking into app stores operated by Apple (AAPL) and Google. The DMA states that large digital platforms — so-called gatekeepers — must allow app developers to “steer” consumers to offers outside the two dominant stores, free of charge.
Among other concerns, the EU suspects that Apple and Google’s parent Alphabet (GOOGL) constrain developers’ ability “to freely communicate (with end-users) and promote offers and directly conclude contracts, including by imposing various charges,” the Commission said.
“We are concerned Alphabet, Apple & Meta & are not meeting their obligations, e.g.: Apple & Alphabet still charge recurring fees to app developers,” European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager wrote on X Monday.
Apple’s “choice screen” for Safari is also under scrutiny, the European Commission said. Under the DMA, Apple must prompt users with “choice screens which must effectively and easily allow them to select an alternative default service, such as a browser or search engine on their iPhones,” it noted.
Apple told CNN in a statement: “We’re confident our plan complies with the DMA, and we’ll continue to constructively engage with the European Commission as they conduct their investigations.”
Another of the Commission’s concerns pertains to Google Search. Alphabet may not have done enough to ensure that third-party services appearing in search results are treated in “a fair and non-discriminatory manner” compared with Alphabet’s own services, such as Google Shopping and Google Flights.
Oliver Bethell, a competition executive at Google, said in a statement: “To comply with the Digital Markets Act, we have made significant changes to the way our services operate in Europe.
“We have engaged with the European Commission, stakeholders and third parties in dozens of events over the past year to receive and respond to feedback, and to balance conflicting needs within the ecosystem. We will continue to defend our approach in the coming months.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
DiscoverGold
1 month ago
Massive changes coming to Google Chrome threaten to reshape the modern internet
By: Yahoo | March 24, 2024
Later this year Google (GOOG, GOOGL), through its Chrome browser, will end the use of third-party cookies, technology that can track people across websites to target them with personalized advertising. The transition won't come without pain.
While Google's initiative is meant to shield the privacy of users, many of the sites they rely upon and cherish could hang in the balance as a result. The move represents a profound remaking of the advertising world and user experience on the internet.
"The open web is going to suffer," said Anthony Katsur, chief executive of the IAB Tech Lab, an ad-tech industry group. "The long tail of the web, the mid-sized and smaller publishers, are going to be very impacted."
Many people are hyper-aware that the internet they experience is based on what various providers think they want to see. For marketers and businesses, that ability to infer what a user might want generates value. As targeting gets more precise, advertising can become more relevant to the audience.
Without the third-party cookie, however, businesses have less of an idea of who their audience is. That can degrade their ability to make money from advertising, making it harder to publish content for free without forcing users to hand over their emails or phone numbers.
Chrome, which commands 60% of global internet traffic, is the last major browser to allow third-party cookies. For years Apple's (AAPL) Safari and Mozilla's Firefox have blocked third-party cookies by default. But their share of the market is dwarfed by Google's. And while additional ad dollars flowed to Chrome after Safari and Mozilla enabled greater privacy protections, there will not be another browser for the ad market to fall back on once Chrome says farewell to the cookie.
As a result, websites that rely on advertising on the open internet may struggle to exist. And users may be confronted with even more ads that they are less interested in as sites try to make up for the loss in value by churning out more ad volume.
Karsten Weide, the chief analyst at W Media Research, said some publishers could suffer revenue losses of 20% to 40% as the deprecation of third-party cookies diminishes the effectiveness of ads. "In a general sense, all sorts of websites will shut down or will be diminished in what they can provide," he said. "Ironically, although this is designed to protect users, at the end of the day this will be worse for users."
The end of third-party cookies could also in some ways worsen consumer privacy, experts contend, by further normalizing granular data collection. As more businesses steer people to log in to replace the data gathering that the cookie enabled, user profiles will become more detailed and centralized, essentially trading one paradigm of monitoring for another.
Part of the change, which Google expects to happen in the second half of 2024, will bring new privacy-preserving technologies to give websites alternative ways of delivering relevant ads. Google told Yahoo Finance that the company is confident its new tools will enable developers to recover a substantial portion of the loss that might otherwise occur without third-party cookies. One of the new targeting methods groups people into a larger cohort based on their web browsing activity. The technology does not individually identify users, but instead places them into a crowd with others who likely have similar interests.
In response to criticism that the tools won't work as well as third-party cookies, Google said that the privacy initiative was never intended to replace all the features that the market has built on top of third-party cookies. Google also touted that the privacy initiative is a collaboration with other ad industry players, regulators, and consumer advocates. "No other browser has even attempted to provide such an array of solutions for the industry, let alone offered public consultation with stakeholders before making changes," the company said.
But the changes will come.
Many of the web's largest players will be better equipped to cope with the overhaul. The tech giants like Meta (META), Apple, and Amazon (AMZN) have erected their own walled gardens, giving them deep insight into the wants and behaviors of their users. And some major media companies and publishers with sizable followings can lean on subscriptions and an ecosystem of apps. They've forged direct relationships with their users through emails and logins, allowing them to generate revenue directly from their audiences and keep tabs on richer streams of data without the use of cookies.
For a great many others, striking a different balance on user privacy could trigger an extinction event. That's especially true for websites already strained by falling traffic, economic volatility, and the looming threat of an AI-led transformation. The perception that ad dollars are better spent with the trillion-dollar tech companies will likely intensify as the death of the cookie spawns a void and a scramble for what comes next.
"Advertisers tend to balk when there are uncertainties," said Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, a senior analyst at eMarketer. “Ad spending won't go down, it’s a matter of where it goes.”
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DiscoverGold
1 month ago
Options Bulls Resume Blitz on Alphabet (GOOGL) Stock
By: Schaeffer's Investment Research | March 18, 2024
• Alphabet options had been seeing a slight uptick in bearish bets lately
• GOOGL is executing a V-shaped rally on the charts
The class A shares of Google-parent Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) are 6.1% higher to trade at $149.83, after a Bloomberg report revealed that Apple (AAPL) is talking over licensing Google's Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) engine for future iPhones.
GOOGL is a consistent member of Schaeffer's Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White's list of stocks that attracted the highest weekly options volume during the previous 10 days. Per White's data, 2,667,198 calls exchanged over this period, compared to 1,414,617 puts. The most popular contract during this time was the March 140 call.
Despite the obvious call bias, bearish bets on Alphabet stock have grown lately. At the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), the equity sports a 50-day put/call volume ratio that ranks in the 72nd percentile of its annual range.
Today, the skew tilts back toward the bulls. Over 700,000 contracts have changed hands, with calls representing roughly 510,000 of that figure. The weekly 3/22 155- and 152.50-strike calls are popular, with new positions being bought to open.
Despite the recent tech sector pullback, Alphabet stock is still up 6.5% in 2024, testing and bouncing off its 200-day moving average earlier this month. GOOGL is now on track for its seventh win in eight sessions, and is once more nearing its Jan. 29 record high of $153.78.
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DiscoverGold
1 month ago
Alphabet Shares Rise Premarket After Report of AI Talks with Apple
By: Market Talk | March 18, 2024
Shares of Google parent, Alphabet, are on the rise in Monday premarket trading after Bloomberg reported that the company is in talks with Apple to incorporate Google's artificial intelligence architecture into iPhones. The two companies are negotiating licensing agreements to build Google's generative AI engine, known as Gemini, into iPhones, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources. Alphabet shares are up 4% at $146.76. Apple shares are up 0.4% at $173.37. (mauro.orru@wsj.com)
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