The Antitrust Week In Review

Here are some of the developments in antitrust news this past week that we found interesting and are following.

Antitrust and Other Inquiries in Europe Target U.S. Tech Giants.  European antitrust regulators are intensifying their scrutiny of giant American tech companies.  Not only is the European Union antitrust investigation into Google heating up, but additional European countries are looking into Facebook’s privacy settings, and Apple, which already is under scrutiny for its low corporate tax arrangements in Ireland, is now facing potential antitrust questions from the European Commission about the company’s upcoming music streaming service.

StubHub is suing Ticketmaster over ticket cancellations.  StubHub, the largest ticket reseller in the U.S., filed an antitrust lawsuit against competitor Ticketmaster and the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, claiming that they worked together to cancel tickets that were resold on StubHub.  StubHub, which is represented by Constantine Cannon, stated that it “seeks to stop unfair and illegal anti-competitive business practices that prevent fans from deciding how they want to resell their tickets and which artificially drive up ticket prices.”

European Commission Asks Companies to Go Public With Google Complaints.  The European Commission has asked several companies to go public with confidential complaints they have made against Google, according to sources.  The companies that have filed submissions with the commission include Yelp and other major American technology companies, as well as leading German and French publishing groups that claim Google has too much control over how Europeans access information over the Internet.