Report from The Verge In Brief – After years of effort to end the use of third-party cookies for tracking and targeted advertising in its Chrome browser, Google is shelving the plan and maintaining its current treatment of the tracking technology....
Trade War May Hit Big Tech as EU Considers Services Retaliation
Report from DW In Brief – Facing an increasingly aggressive and sizeable collection of tariff increases being imposed by the Trump Administration and searching for the right mix of retaliatory responses, the European Commission is considering trade penalties against...
European Tech Groups Call for “Buy European” Digital Procurement Policy
Report from CNBC In Brief – Nearly 100 European companies and lobbying groups, many representing smaller EU-based tech firms, have signed an open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and digital chief Henna Virkkunen calling for “radical...
EU Parliamentarians Tell Commission Not to Water Down AI Act Duties
Report from the Financial Times In Brief – European Members of Parliament (MEPs) who played leading roles crafting the EU’s AI Act are urging the European Commission to reject attempts to reduce the mandates imposed on the developers of the largest general AI systems....
Brazil Steps Back from Digital Services Tax in Face of Trump Tariff Threats
Report from Reuters In Brief – The Brazilian government has shelved the plan it announced last September to enact a new tax on big tech firms in 2025. The measure, which was expected to mostly impact US-based digital giants like Amazon, Google, and Meta, was expected...
Meta’s Zuckerberg Lobbying President Trump to Settle FTC Antitrust Case
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently met with President Trump in the White House and discussed settling the federal antitrust lawsuit that aims to break up the company by forcing Meta to spin out Instagram and WhatsApp. The...
Arkansas Social Media Age Limit Fully Blocked by Federal Judge
Report from the Arkansas Advocate In Brief – A federal judge has blocked Arkansas from enforcing its 2023 law that requires teenagers under age 18 to have parental consent to create accounts on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat....
Google Offers Play Store In-App Payments Alternative in the UK
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Google has announced that it is offering app developers in the UK the ability to use other billing services for in-app payments in their Android apps besides Google’s own payments system. The company’s “user choice billing” program...
Trump “Reciprocal” Tariff Pause Leads EU to Reciprocate on Retaliation
Report from the Washington Post In Brief – Following an announcement from US President Donald Trump that new “reciprocal” tariffs would be paused for 90 days for all countries other than China, the EU announced a similar delay in the 25% tariffs it had announced in...
Trial Finally Begins in Meta Antitrust Lawsuit Filed by Trump FTC in 2020
Report from the Washington Post In Brief – The bench trial pitting the FTC against Meta before US District Judge James Boasberg is finally underway in a lawsuit initiated in 2020 by the first Trump Administration. The regulator’s antitrust complaint alleges that...
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Amazon Sanctioned for Anticompetitive Price Fixing in Germany
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Germany’s competition authority has ordered Amazon to stop enforcing retailer price controls on its German marketplace and has penalized the company €59 million, which it argues is excess profits it earned from its anticompetitive...
EU High Court Legal Advisor Rules Publishers Not Liable for VPN Use
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – A senior EU legal adviser to Europe’s top court has issued an advisory opinion that online publishers do not violate national copyright laws simply because users can bypass geographic restrictions using tools like VPNs. Advocate...
Court Overturns Brazilian Regulator’s Block on WhatsApp’s Chatbot Ban
Report from Reuters In Brief – In a surprising and possibly temporary turnabout, a Brazilian court has suspended a recent order imposed by Brazil’s antitrust regulator CADE that blocked Meta from restricting third-party AI chatbots from operating over WhatsApp using...
Supreme Court to Hear Video Privacy Case Bedeviling Online Advertising
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could clarify how a federal privacy law enacted in 1988 applies to modern online video services. The dispute centers on the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which was enacted after a...
French National Assembly Supports 15-Year-Old Social Media Age Threshold
Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s National Assembly has approved legislation to ban children under 15 from accessing social media. Lawmakers voted 116–23 in favor of the bill, which is strongly backed by President Emmanuel Macron, and prohibits under-15s from...
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