Alleged Ad Collusion Probe, E.U. Crypto Bill, YT Ad Bypasser Shut Down, WISPAMERICA Launches
Meta and Google face allegations that they coordinated advertising practices to lock out their competition.
Benjamin Kahn
March 14, 2022 – Regulatory officials from the European Union and United Kingdom announced Friday that they would be opening an antitrust probe into an advertising relationship between Facebook parent Meta and Google.
“Advertising is very important and because of that, it is important that there is competition on who can place ads where,” the E.U.’s Competition Chief Margrethe Vestager told the Financial Times. “What we suspect here is that there may have been an agreement between Google, and then Facebook, only to use Google services and not competing services. That’s a giant problem,” she said.
The alleged agreement is called “Jedi Blue,” and Vestegar said it was formed with the express purpose of weaking certain competitors to Google and Meta and excluding them from the market.
Last year, four members of Congress pressed the Department of Justice to dig into the allegations.
The announcement of this probe is only the latest in a slew of antitrust actions taken by European regulatory officials against Big Tech in the past couple years, including a $2.8 billion, record-breaking-fine against Google, which was upheld November of 2021.
E.U. set to finalize cryptocurrency regulatory framework
E.U. lawmakers are expected to vote on a bill Monday that includes provisions cryptocurrency advocates say would harm and even lead to a ban on some digital currencies.
Drafted in 2020, the Markets in Crypto Assets included a rule that would ban proof-of-work – or PoW – mechanisms, which are widely used by miners to validate transactions on the blockchain but use increasing levels of energy as more users engage in transactions. To curb this energy usage, early drafts of the bill included a section that would outlaw coins that utilize PoW, including Ether and Bitcoin.
Cryptocurrency advocates claimed the bill established regulations that coins could never meet and would thus effectively outlaw even major coins such as Bitcoin.
E.U. lawmakers had a vote on the bill slated for Monday and it remains unclear as to whether the section relating to PoW made it into the final draft of the bill.
YouTube Vanced shut down after legal threats by Google
An app that allowed users to bypass YouTube advertisements will discontinue service, the app developer announced in a Tweet on Sunday, after YouTube parent company Google sent a cease-and-desist letter to the company.
Vanced was a popular third-party app available on Android devices that allowed users to circumvent advertisements on YouTube videos – a feature that is a key selling point for YouTube’s paid service, YouTube premium.
In a Telegram message to its users, Vanced stated that though the application will be discontinued for new users, the current version will still be available to those who had already downloaded it.
WISPAMERICA kicks off in Louisiana
The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association’s one of its two annual trade shows, WISPAMERICA, is taking place in New Orleans, and will run from March 14 through March 17.
More than 1,000 attendees are registered to attend. There will be 120 exhibition booths and more than 50 educational sessions for attendees to visit and participate it.
“This looks to be the biggest WISPAMERICA we’ve ever had,” WISPA Chairman of the Board Todd Harpest said. “Clearly, the popularity of the event reflects our vibrant and evolving industry, which reaches millions of Americans in rural, urban and Tribal areas of the country with life-bettering connectivity.”
This will mark WISPA President and CEO Claude Aiken’s final WISPAMERICA, as he announced in February that he would leave the company at the end of April.
