Interactive Media & Services

Poland's antitrust watchdog said Monday it suspects Alphabet's Google of abusing its dominant position in negotiations over content payments with local media publishers. The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, known by its Polish abbreviation UOKiK, said the charges relate to how Google negotiates remuneration for displaying articles and snippets in its search results, Google News and Discover services. UOKiK alleges Google failed to provide publishers with the necessary data to properly assess offers, leading to an information imbalance that prevented fair negotiations on payment for content. "Big tech companies cannot place themselves above the law," UOKiK President Tomasz Chrostny said in the statement, adding the lack of data led to negotiations becoming illusory and tending towards Google imposing terms. The maximum fine for abusing a dominant market position may amount to 10% of a company's turnover, the regulator said.

Zhidemai disclosed on the evening of September 30 that Liu Feng, a shareholder holding more than 5% of the company as well as a director and senior executive, sold a cumulative 1.5242 million shares over the two days of September 28 to September 29 through centralized bidding and block trades, accounting for 0.77% of the company's total share capital. After this equity change, Liu Feng's shareholding decreased from 15.3161 million shares to 13.7919 million shares, and his stake fell from 7.70% to 6.94%, touching a 1% integer multiple. According to the pre-disclosure announcement released by the company on August 27, 2026, Liu Feng planned to sell no more than 3.7782 million shares within the following three months, representing 1.90% of total share capital. This sale falls within the disclosed reduction plan, and as of the announcement date, the plan had not yet been fully implemented. This is not Liu Feng's first share sale to cash out. According to the 2025 annual report, he sold 2.8082 million shares during the reporting period, reducing his holdings from 18.1243 million shares at the beginning of the period to 15.3161 million shares at the end. His 2025 annual salary was 1.3448 million yuan, up about 49,800 yuan from 1.295 million yuan the previous year. In the first half of 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of 619 million yuan, up 6.43% year on year, but net profit attributable to the parent company was only 9.0241 million yuan, down 28.90% year on year. Non-GAAP net profit was 5.9093 million yuan, down 44.56% year on year, and net cash flow from operating activities was negative 67.8916 million yuan, swinging sharply from positive 6.7023 million yuan in the same period last year, a decline of as much as 1112.96%. As of September 30, Zhidemai closed at 36.22 yuan per share, with a cumulative decline of about 17% for the year and a total market value of about 7.2 billion yuan.

Google has raised the price of its seven-month-old Pixel 10a smartphone by $100 to $599 for the 128GB model, another sign of how rising memory costs are pushing up prices across the consumer electronics industry. The Pixel 10a launched in March at $499 for the 128GB model and $599 for the 256GB version, and Google's U.S. website now lists the phones at $599 and $699, respectively. The increase was first spotted on Google's online store in Japan and later appeared on its U.S. website, according to 9to5Google. The move comes amid a persistent memory-chip shortage that has pushed up costs across the consumer electronics industry, with Samsung this week raising prices on most of its Galaxy S26 smartphones by $100, while Apple raised prices on its iPhone 18 lineup and also increased prices on some older models. Google had already raised prices across its Pixel 11 lineup by $100 when it introduced the phones in August, according to Bloomberg, offsetting some of the higher starting prices by including more storage in the base configurations. The Pixel 10a had been discounted to $424 last month, and Walmart still appeared to be selling the phone for $499, although supplies were limited.

A US federal court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the education technology company Chegg and Penske Media, the publisher of Rolling Stone and other US magazines, over Google's unauthorized use of their content in its artificial intelligence summary feature. In a ruling on September 30, the court said the two companies' claims that Google's business practices violate antitrust law do not hold up as a legal claim in the first place. In the lawsuit filed last year, the two companies argued that Google forces publishers to allow their content to be used in AI Overviews as a condition for continuing to appear in search results, in violation of antitrust law, and said they lost revenue as traffic to their own sites declined. The court said the plaintiffs are merely asserting that they had an expectation that if they provided content for free, Google would direct users to their sites through search, adding that an expectation is not an agreement. The court said it does not lack sympathy for the situation of publishers and online creators whose content is being repurposed by Google without payment, but that addressing the economic losses brought about by technological innovation is the prerogative of the legislature, and antitrust law does not take its place.

The state of New Mexico filed a motion in court on Thursday asking a judge to order Meta Platforms to pay a fine of between 35 billion and 40 billion dollars, after a jury found the company misled consumers about data privacy on Facebook in a case that began with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the British political consulting firm that once worked for Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign collected the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users through third-party applications without their consent. The jury returned its verdict on September 25, considering 29 statements by the company and its leaders and finding that 26 of them were misleading, amounting to more than 43 million violations of New Mexico's consumer protection law. Judge Francis Matthew, who presided over the trial in Santa Fe, will determine the amount of the fine. State attorney Randy McGinn said the figure of 35 billion to 40 billion dollars represents roughly 20% of the total penalties possible under state law, while Meta attorney Matt Nicholson urged that the fine be capped at no more than 3.45 billion dollars. The judge is expected to issue a ruling by the end of this month.

New Mexico asked a judge on Thursday to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35B and $40B in penalties after a jury found the company misled consumers about the privacy of their Facebook data. Attorneys for the state made the request at a hearing in a lawsuit stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the British political consulting firm harvested personal data from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent. The jury returned its verdict on September 25, and Judge Francis Mathew, who oversaw the trial in Santa Fe, will decide how much Meta must pay. At the hearing, attorneys for Meta and New Mexico clashed over the appropriate amount, with Meta arguing the penalties the state seeks do not match the conduct the state focused its case on at trial. "Well, when the parties go to trial, they roll the dice," Mathew said. "They have to accept the consequences of their decision to go to trial, do they not?"

New Mexico has asked a judge to order Meta Platforms to pay between $35 billion and $40 billion after a jury found the Facebook parent misled users about data privacy, access and content policies. The request, reported by Reuters, follows a September jury verdict that found the company violated state consumer protection laws more than 43 million times. The lawsuit, filed in 2021, stemmed from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the political consulting firm obtained personal information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a third-party app without their consent; jurors reviewed 29 statements made by Meta and its executives and found 26 misleading. New Mexico law allows penalties of up to $5,000 per violation, and state attorney Randi McGinn said the requested $35 billion to $40 billion would provide a meaningful penalty while avoiding due-process concerns. Meta attorney Matt Nicholson called the request an astronomical penalty and urged the judge to cap damages at $3.45 billion, arguing the state did not prove consumers were actually misled and that Meta does not sell user data. Judge Francis Mathew, who presided over the trial in Santa Fe, will determine the final amount and said he expects to issue a ruling later this month.

Alphabet Inc. has challenged two European Union orders that would require Google to give AI companies access to its services and search competitors access to its search data, according to a Reuters report on September 29. Google argues the measures would undermine user privacy and security. The orders fall under the Digital Markets Act, and the changes they require are due to take effect in 2027. Alphabet generated roughly $445.87 billion of revenue over the past twelve months at a 34.03% operating margin, and holds $242.47 billion of cash. Alphabet closed at $344.08 on September 30, more than 40% higher than a year ago, and was worth about $4.1 trillion.

Meta Platforms' Reality Labs unit generated $431 million of second-quarter revenue against a $4.62 billion operating loss, with a first-half loss of $8.65 billion, leaving the business far from covering its costs. Adding the quarterly operating loss to revenue implies approximately $5.05 billion of operating costs, meaning revenue would need to reach $5.05 billion to break even at fixed costs, nearly 12 times the reported figure. At an illustrative 30% contribution margin on incremental revenue, offsetting the current $4.62 billion operating loss would require roughly $15.4 billion of additional quarterly sales, and at a 50% margin the requirement would still be around $9.24 billion. Meta's Family of Apps produced $23.39 billion of quarterly operating income against consolidated operating income of $18.78 billion, so Reality Labs consumed approximately 20% of the apps' operating profit. Annualizing the latest Reality Labs loss gives about $18.48 billion, and under an illustrative 20% tax assumption eliminating that expense would add about $14.78 billion of after-tax profit, worth about $370 billion at a hypothetical 25 times earnings, roughly one-fifth of Meta's current market capitalization. Meta is simultaneously funding a large AI infrastructure program, with second-quarter operating cash flow of $31.86 billion and capital spending of $31.08 billion leaving only about $784 million of free cash flow, against a stated annual capital-spending range of $130 billion to $145 billion.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and fellow lawmakers sent letters this week to the CEOs of Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft demanding details on their tax breaks and their lobbying for incentives in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Warren pointed to Amazon, which paid $7.8 billion less in tax last year, while Meta received nearly $7 billion in tax relief in 2025, paying $2.8 billion in federal tax compared to $9.6 billion in 2024. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Microsoft and Alphabet each qualified for tax cuts of nearly $19 billion last year. The breaks stem largely from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act's 100% bonus depreciation, which lets companies write off qualifying capital investments such as AI data centers in their first year; Microsoft claimed nearly $12 billion in depreciation tax breaks, Amazon $6.5 billion, Meta $4.9 billion and Alphabet over $3.3 billion. Corporate tax revenues are down 23% this year, amounting to $96 billion in lost federal revenue, according to Politico, as federal debt has topped $40 trillion. Warren and her colleagues want data centers disqualified from bonus depreciation tax breaks, while White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the law's pro-growth provisions were driving historic job, investment and wage growth.