As more Americans are vaccinated for COVID-19 and lockdown restrictions are lifted, movie theater chain Regal Cinemas is seeking to reopen while striking a major deal with Warner Brothers studios. Regal is set to reopen roughly 500 locations on April 2 at a limited capacity of between 25 and 50%. The theater chain is the second largest in the [...]
Hospitals are required by federal law to disclose previously confidential prices to consumers, but companies are taking steps to hide that information from search engines. During the Trump administration, a new federal health care rule was issued that required hospitals to publicly post prices for every service they offer and break down those prices by [...]
The battle between Google and the United States government continues as the Department of Justice (DOJ) took further legal action against Google, accusing the tech giant of being uncooperative and slow to fulfill requests. In a joint filing from Thursday, March 19, 2021, the DOJ accused Alphabet’s Google of deliberately dragging its feet in providing documents needed [...]
Google is set to make major investments in 2021 as the company increases its spending following the COVID-19 pandemic. Google has announced it will spend more than $7 billion on real estate across the U.S. in 2021. The real estate will be used to expand Google office spaces and data centers across 19 different states. With the [...]
Apple is being sued yet again over its monopoly power and App Store practices that have drawn increasing scrutiny over the last year. IOS developer Kosta Eleftheriou is suing Apple after he publicly called out the company earlier in 2021 for its lack of integrity in how it runs its App Store. “It’s surprising more [...]
Changes are coming to the popular social media app Tik Tok as the company is set to start offering personalized ads to users, whether they want them or not. Currently, Tik Tok has a setting that allows its users to choose if they want generic ads or ads targeted at the user based on their activity on [...]
Visa and Mastercard are postponing the credit-card fee increases they had planned for this year after the fee increases drew criticism from lawmakers. The credit card companies cited the continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses as the reason for the delay. The higher interchange fees for merchants are now delayed until next April. [...]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced the launch of a new working group to update the agency's approach to analyzing the effects of pharmaceutical mergers. The update to the agency's approach signals that the FTC may now have an eye toward taking a more aggressive stance against drug company deals that may be harmful to [...]
A judge in California has decided that Google must face a class-action lawsuit over its collection of user data. The lawsuit was initially filed in June 2020 and claims that Google tracks and collects consumer browsing history, among other activities, even when Chrome's privacy-based "Incognito" mode is in use. Specifically, the complaint alleged that when a user visits a [...]
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights held a hearing on March 11 to address the need for antitrust law reform entitled "Competition Policy for the Twenty-First Century: The Case for Antitrust Reform." The hearing featured five antitrust experts: George Slover, Senior Policy Counsel at Consumer Reports; Ashley Baker, Director Of [...]
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