Google officially charged with antitrust
The US Justice Department formally charged Alphabet Inc.’s Google with antitrust violations on Tuesday, the first major action against Big Tech for its staggering market power and valuations.
Google ‘has maintained its monopoly power through exclusionary practices that have harmed competition,’ US deputy attorney general said.
“Google is a monopolist in the general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising markets,” Market Watch quoted Justice Department’s complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday morning. “Google aggressively uses its monopoly positions, and the money that flows from them, to continuously foreclose rivals and protect its monopolies.”
Amazon extends work from home option till June
Tech giant Amazon.com on Tuesday told employees whose work can be done from home that they can do so until June, extending the timeline on a return to office due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Employees who work in a role that can effectively be done from home are welcome to do so until June 30, 2021”, an Amazon spokeswoman said in an emailed statement on Tuesday, adding the guidance is applicable globally.
Other major tech companies including Twitter, Google, Facebook have extended the work from home option for their employees with Microsoft Corp earlier this month saying it will let most employees work remotely for up to half their weekly working hours.
Netflix Q3 Earnings
Netflix Inc. released on Tuesday the company’s financial results for the third quarter of the year and failed to meet the expectations. It said 2.2 million net memberships were added during the period, significantly less than expected.
Annual revenue rose 22.9% to hit $6.436 billion while net income was up 19% to $790 million in the three months ending September 30.
“The state of the pandemic and its impact continues to make projections very uncertain, but as the world hopefully recovers in 2021, we would expect that our growth will revert back to levels similar to pre-COVID.” a report to shareholders noted.
