Potential antitrust filing coming?

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From The Fool itself:

“On Friday, Politico reported the Justice Department is preparing a potential antitrust complaint against Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). According to the article’s source, if the DOJ decides to go through with filing its complaint, it will do so by the end of this year. Shares of Apple have fallen 2.9% so far this week, which is about a percentage point more than the S&P 500’s 1.8% drop. This suggests the market may be a little worried about the situation, but not too significantly at this point, though further development could alter the market’s level of concern.”

So the DOJ wants to file against Apple before Google and Amazon (unless I missed some news)? Really? I see an antitrust case against Google and Apple as being much stronger than against Apple. Unless the DOJ is putting their weakest case out there first to see how it flies. I guess “preparing a potential case” doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen, and we don’t yet know what it will consist of, but…where there’s smoke there might be fire?

Thoughts?

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So the DOJ wants to file against Apple before Google and Amazon (unless I missed some news)? Really? I see an antitrust case against Google and Apple [Amazon] as being much stronger than against Apple. >
I’m interested in why you might think that’s the case? They’re all likely targets, however …#

  1. Apple is an already convicted market manipulator & so potentially is a repeat offender - which could provide increased priority.
  2. Apple takes the hardest line in terms of protecting (what is perceived by Apple as) its rights to well almost all commercial activity in the ecosystem (iOS, iPadOS & potentially MacOS et al). Google & Amazon less so and so in that sense Apple also would be the higher priority (as a goal of the antitrust activity would be around establishing what constitutes ‘illegal’ behavior and what is legal also).
  3. Apple is actively - right now - upending some well establish markets - advertising for example with Apple’s 'tracking is OK for me (first party) but not for you on iOS (as an example) - while working to build out its own programmatic advertising offer. It appears at first glance as using control of market A (>50% of device sales) to muscle in to market B (advertising where Apple has previously been unsuccessful).

So given 1)-3) above it seems starting with Apple could be a logical place to start and so why would Amazon (which has already be investigated & cleared in the past) and Google (lower device market share & less attempted control) be higher priority?