Spain's antitrust regulator fines Amazon and Apple for regulatory breaches

Our top story is that Spain’s competition regulator has fined Amazon and Apple a total of $218mn for colluding to reduce competition on the retail platform. The regulatory breach related to contracts agreed between the two companies in October 2018 which included clauses unlawfully restricting the mobile device market in Spain. The CNMC found that this clause resulted in more than 90% of the retailers in Spain who were previously selling Apple devices on Amazon’s marketplace being prevented from doing so. This led to the regulator's decision to fine Apple $161mn and Amazon $57mn. Spokespeople for Amazon and Apple have said that the companies will appeal the decision.

In the wider tech landscape, Meta yesterday announced the launch of Llama 2, an open-source AI platform that is free for commercial use. The first version of this language model was released to researchers earlier in the year and will be made available alongside the latest edition. Llama 2 will be available through the cloud computing platform Azure run by Microsoft which is described in the announcement as Meta’s “preferred partner" to host the AI software. In a statement, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that "open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology".

Read more below for a round-up of the other major tech policy stories currently shaping the industry.

An Indian court has ruled that Google cannot remove the Disney+ streaming service from its app store. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in India’s Tamil Nadu state in which Disney challenged Google’s new service fee system alleging that Google had threatened removal from its Play Store if the system was challenged. The most recent billing system was introduced in October after India’s antitrust regulator ordered the company to cease restrictions on third-party billing services. However, many companies argued that the new billing system was not substantively different with a lawsuit filed in April by the Alliance of Digital India Foundation, separate from Disney’s lawsuit, alleging that Google charged startups commissions of between 11-26% on in-app purchases. The Tamil Nadu court ruled on Tuesday that Google could not charge more than 4% to Disney in commission and could not remove their app from the Play Store.

Indian mining company Vedanta has stated that they are awaiting government approval to proceed with their semiconductor project in Gujarat. The planned Gujarat semiconductor plant was initially going to be undertaken as part of a $19.5bn initiative in partnership with Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn. When Foxconn withdrew from the partnership last week Vedanta announced that it would continue with the project with new partners. According to a statement yesterday by Akarsh Hebbar, a top executive at Vedanta, the company has submitted an adapted proposal for the project with new commercial partners that is currently awaiting approval.

A lawsuit was filed against Twitter alleging unpaid severance and bias in layoffs the company made in October 2022. The proposed class action lawsuit, filed in Delaware federal court, has alleged that Twitter owes over $500mn in unpaid severance to workers who were laid off following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform in 2022. The lawsuit also claims that older employees were targeted in the layoffs, the first lawsuit making this claim against the company in relation to the October layoffs. The $500mn unpaid severance figure was also quoted in a separate employment lawsuit filed in California federal court Twitter earlier this month although Twitter maintains that any severance payments that were owed have been paid in full.

The United Nations Security Council held their first meeting yesterday on the risks of AI. The New York meeting, chaired by the UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly involved a discussion of the opportunities and risks surrounding the emerging technology and included contributions from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as well as a number of industry experts. Guterres has earlier called for the UN to form an intergovernmental regulatory body to monitor the sector citing organisations such as The International Atomic Energy Agency and The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as model examples.

Reporting by Nick Scott. For a further read:

In technology we trust based on a panel discussion at RAID Digital on 4 May 2022

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Cover photo by Jérémy-Günther-Heinz J?hnick licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.