Microsoft Corp. v. Commission is a case brought by the European Commission of the European Union (EU) against Microsoft for abuse of its dominant position in the market. It started as a complaint from Sun Microsystems over Microsoft's licensing practices in 1993, and eventually resulted in the EU ordering Microsoft to divulge certain information about its server products and release a version of Microsoft Windows without Windows Media Player. The European Commission especially focused on the interoperability issue.
Criticism of Google includes concern for tax avoidance, misuse and manipulation of search results, its use of others' intellectual property, concerns that its compilation of data may violate people's privacy and collaboration with the US military on Google Earth to spy on users, censorship of search results and content, and the energy consumption of its servers as well as concerns over traditional business issues such as monopoly, restraint of trade, antitrust, patent infringement, indexing and presenting false information and propaganda in search results, and being an "Ideological Echo Chamber".
Politico Europe is the European edition of the German-owned news organization Politico reporting on political affairs of the European Union. Its headquarters are located in Brussels with additional offices in London, Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, and Frankfurt.
Burson Cohn & Wolfe is a multinational public relations and communications firm, headquartered in New York City. In February 2018, parent WPP Group PLC announced that it had merged its subsidiaries Cohn & Wolfe with Burson-Marsteller. The combined agency is now known as Burson Cohn & Wolfe.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) is an international non-profit association founded in 1989 in order to promote interoperability and market conditions in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector allowing vigorous competition on the merits and a diversity of consumer choice. ECIS has represented its members on many issues related to interoperability and competition before European, national and international bodies, including the European Union institutions and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). ECIS members include large and smaller information and communications technology hardware and software providers as Adobe Systems, Corel Corporation, IBM, Linspire, Nokia, Opera Software, Oracle Corporation, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is an international non-profit advocacy organization based in Washington, DC, United States which represents the information and communications technology industries. According to their site, CCIA "promotes open markets, open systems, open networks, and full, fair, and open competition." Established in 1972, CCIA was active in antitrust cases involving IBM, AT&T and Microsoft, and lobbied for net neutrality, copyright and patent reform and against internet censorship and policies, mergers or other situations that would reduce competition. CCIA released a study it commissioned by an MIT professor, which analyzed the cost of patent trolls to the economy., a study on the economic benefits of Fair Use and has testified before the Senate on limiting government surveillance and on internet censorship as a trade issue.
Search neutrality is a principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance. This means that when a user types in a search engine query, the engine should return the most relevant results found in the provider's domain, without manipulating the order of the results, excluding results, or in any other way manipulating the results to a certain bias.
The Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace or ICOMP is a lobbying organisation and based in London with a membership including various publishing and software companies. It exists to lobby legislators to take measures to increase competition in online advertising, to regulate the collection of information about online users and protect the rights of authors and publishers.
Deutscher Konsumentenbund is a European consumer advocacy group based in Kassel. It is a non-profit organization and registered with the European Commission to be a consumer rights lobby group with claimed 2,500 members. It submits stakeholder opinions to European Commission and appeared before the State government of Hesse in stakeholder hearing and Hessian antitrust state authority.
The smartphone wars or smartphone patents licensing and litigation refers to commercial struggles among smartphone manufacturers including Sony Mobile, Google, Apple Inc., Samsung, Microsoft, Nokia, Motorola, Huawei, LG Electronics, ZTE and HTC, by patent litigation and other means. The conflict is part of the wider "patent wars" between technology and software corporations.
Liam Gavin Grant is a British public relations professional and from January 2012 to 25 February 2014 was Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Grant is a former UK Chairman of PR firm Burson-Marsteller.
The European Privacy Association (EPA) is a Brussels-based lobbying group, founded in 2009. Its stated goal is "to enhance data protection and Internet freedom as fundamental principles of democracy." As of 2013, Karin Riis-Jørgensen is chairwoman of the EPA. Former EP member Pat Cox is among its founders.
Google Mobile Services (GMS) is a collection of proprietary applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) services from Google that are typically pre-installed on Android devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs. GMS is not a part of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which means an Android manufacturer needs to obtain a license from Google in order to legally pre-install GMS on an Android device. This license is provided by Google without any licensing fees except in the EU.
Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy, advertising, intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in the first five years of business, and by 2014 had grown to around 400 lawyers. Google's Chief Legal Officer is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond.
Campaign for Accountability (CfA) is a liberal 501(c)(3) non-profit ethics watchdog group headquartered in Washington, D.C. CfA was co-founded in May 2015 by Anne Weismann, former legal counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Louis Mayberg, former chairman of CREW. CfA group states that it "uses research, litigation and aggressive communications to expose misconduct and malfeasance in public life."
Since 2010, the European Union has investigated several antitrust complaints against Google alleging abuses of its dominant position in breach of the EU's competition laws. Three complaints have resulted in formal charges against Google: those relating to Google Shopping, the Android operating system and to Google AdSense. Google has been found guilty of antitrust breaches in the three cases and has been fined over €8 billion. In 2020, the European Union has also launched a full investigation of Google's proposed acquisition of the fitness tracker and wearable health company Fitbit, under the EU Merger Regulation. The operation was eventually cleared on 17 December 2020 subject to conditions.
The Digital Services Act is a Regulation in EU law to update the Electronic Commerce Directive 2000 regarding illegal content, transparent advertising, and disinformation.
Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, commonly referred to as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy fairer and more contestable. The regulation proposed by the European Commission in December 2020 was signed into law by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU in September 2022. It entered into force on 1 November 2022 and will become applicable, for the most part, on 2 May 2023. After this, the gatekeepers will be identified and they will have to comply by 6 March 2024 at the latest.
Umar Javeed, Sukarma Thapar, Aaqib Javeed vs. Google LLC and Ors. is a 2019 court case in which Google and Google India Private Limited were accused of abuse of dominance in the Android operating system in India. The Competition Commission of India found that Google abused its dominant position by requiring device manufacturers wishing to pre-install apps to adhere to a compatibility standard on Android.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on October 20, 2020. The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 through anti-competitive behavior in the search engine and search advertising markets.
