Monthly Archives: June 2022

TOKYO -- The Japan Fair Trade Commission will publicizeinformation on antitrust cases against big technology companies earlierin the process, looking to gather evidencequicklyand react more effectively to a fast-changing market.

The antitrust watchdog will announce the names of investigation targets and the allegations against them toward the start of the probe when deemed necessary. The change is included in a document released Thursday on the commission's policies for an increasingly digital economy.

"We need to improve our systems and capabilities for gathering information, especially for dealing with concerns in the fast-changing digital market," Chairman Kazuyuki Furuya told reporters.

Antitrust investigation details typically are not made public until the JFTC has closed the case or penalized the company, as doing so could affect the target's business or provide an opportunityto destroy evidence.

The agency will resolve detailssuch as how and under what circumstances to make the announcements. Companies to be named under the new policy will be notified in advance.

Making this information widely available offers advantages under some circumstances, such as in recent cases involving tech giants abusing their dominant bargaining position to force vendors on e-commerce platforms to accept unfavorable terms. Publicizing such investigations could help gather information from others harmed by such conduct.

Given how swiftlybusiness models change in the tech industry, the agency also worries that the usual time-consuming process of collecting evidence behind the scenes may not be fast enough to address illegal conduct.

And unlike in cases of collusion, for example, the practices of tech companies are usually widely known, so the JFTC expects early disclosure ofinvestigations to have little effect on their operations.

Antitrust authorities in markets includingthe European Union, the U.K. and Germany already announce the names of probe targets. But the risk to companies' reputations makes it essential to have clear standards for doing so.

Announcing which companies are under investigation "would have a major impact on their activity, since the public would see it as a sign that they are likely guilty," said Yasuo Daito, a Japanese attorney and expert on antitrust law. "We should be extremely careful in choosing which cases to make public."

The commission also will seekexternal input on merger and acquisition cases, especially in the tech sector, at an earlier stage when necessary. Tech-related companies make up an increasing portion of the roughly 300 such cases screened by the JFTC yearly. The agency wants a better picture of the industry by hearing a wide range of opinions.

As part of this shift, the JFTC has begun seeking outside opinions on proposed acquisitions by Microsoft and Google.

The JFTC also will use information gained from surveys on antitrust issues in case reviews, with approval from their sources.

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Big Tech targets to be named at start of Japan antitrust probes - Nikkei Asia

The Great Resignation is pivoting to a Forced Resignation.

Thousands of layoffs in the tech sector, compounded by hiring freezes and a slowdown in hiring, highlight the abrupt shift in fortunes over the past several months as a result of rampant inflation, fear of stagflation and recession, supply-chain interruptions, the war in Ukraine, an ailing stock market and other red-alert economic factors.

The latest blows came Tuesday, when Coinbase Global Inc. COIN, +0.33% announced an 18% layoff of about 1,100 people and real-estate brokerage Redfin Corp. RDFN, +7.60% said it would reduce head count by about 470 people, or 6% of its workforce.

Read more: Redfin to cut 470 jobs, stock sinks toward record low

Everybody needs to batten down the hatches. We are in stormy, stormy seas with choppy weather on the horizon, media titan Jeffrey Katzenberg, a board member and investor in cybersecurity startup Aura, told MarketWatch.

In recent weeks, a broad cross-section of companies across all sectors have announced layoffs or plans to limit hiring amid the economic crucible. In addition to Coinbase and Redfin, Peloton Interactive Inc. PTON, +3.07%, PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL, +2.34%, Tesla Inc. TSLA, +1.72%, Carvana Co. CVNA, +13.41% and others said they intend to slash staff. At the same time, some of techs biggest players Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc. META, +1.78%, Intel Corp.s INTC, -0.99% client-computing group, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +1.09%, Uber Technologies Inc. UBER, +6.55% and Lyft Inc. LYFT, +7.28% are slowing down or freezing hires.

All told, at least 15,000 tech-related jobs have been or will be eliminated, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts at startups.

The market cap aggregate of about 300 publicly traded tech companies with operations in San Francisco and the valley is at its lowest now, $9.98 trillion, since 2013 after peaking at nearly $15 trillion in November 2021.

Downturns in spending on PCs, tablets and advertising have only added to the tumult, and there are whispers that even cloud-computing which led a wave of internet expansion the past decade could be flattening. Its all contributed to a convulsive shift from hiring binge to belt-tightening, especially among startups.

Its been a challenging last three years with the pandemic, and another two coming with secular [economic] headwinds, Starz Chief Executive Jeffrey Hirsch told MarketWatch.

The effect has been most pronounced among Silicon Valley startups, say local economists. With the uncertainty of recession, a slowdown in short-term demand and possibly more rate hikes, understandably there will be a pause for startups and, for in the short term, for the really big players, Stephen Levy, director and senioreconomistof the Center for Continuing Study of the CaliforniaEconomy, told MarketWatch.

Diminished prospects and a balky market have already delayed the IPO dreams of startups and prompted others to scale back hiring plans. Max Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Sprinter Health, a startup in Menlo Park, Calif., initially planned to double headcount to 60 this year but has since reduced it to 48.

The questions now are, Are you hiring and how much? Cohen, a former employee at Google and Meta, told MarketWatch.

For larger companies, the impact is more subtle. Major expansion is still on for Google in Mountain View, Calif., and San Jose, and for Meta in Menlo Park, Calif., and nearby Moffett Park, but it remains to be seen if they will fill those facilities with people as quickly as originally planned. It may take them longer, perhaps 12 months, before things pick up again for big tech, Levy said.

Representatives from techs largest companies are mostly mum on their hiring plans, though Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, +2.47% said it is aggressively adding staff. With tens of thousands of corporate and tech roles currently available, we continue to look for talented individuals to help us build the future of retail, robotics, health care, devices, cloud computing, and more,Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told MarketWatch.

For now, Big Tech is taking a beating in market valuation. The market cap aggregate of about 300 publicly traded tech companies with operations in San Francisco and the valley is at its lowest now, $9.98 trillion, since late 2020 after peaking at nearly $15 trillion in November 2021, says Rachel Massaro, vice president of research at the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies.

There is certainly a confluence of things that are making everyday life difficult, Massaro told MarketWatch. That is a huge impact trickling down to companies, management, and the hiring level. [The unemployment rate in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, in the heart of the valley, is at a 22-year low of 1.8%, though that could change if layoffs pick up and hiring clamps down.]

Like nearly everyone else, cybersecurity startup Aura is closely monitoring costs and bracing for a challenging macro-climate for years between inflation, war, supply-chain issues and a post-COVID climate, Aura CEO Hari Ravichandran told MarketWatch. This is impacting the entirety of the business ecosystem, he said.

Adding to the economic uncertainty: Demand for PCs and tablets are headed for their worst decline in several years, according to a new forecast from International Data Corp. Global shipments of traditional PCs will fall 8% year-over-year to 321.2 million units in 2022 the steepest drop since 10% in 2015. Meanwhile, worldwide tablet shipment forecasts were lowered to 158 million, down 6% from 2021 its worse percentage decline since 10% in 2018.

We feel very confident that the commercial PC market will remain stronger than the consumer and education markets, IDC analyst Ryan Reith told MarketWatch. But it will not match the growth surge during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The challenge remains inflation, the war in Ukraine, a lockdown in China, and some lingering supply-chain issues.

Global cloud sales, meanwhile, are expected to grow at a relatively modest 20% to $494.65 billion in 2022 from $410.9 billion a year ago, according to market researcher Gartner. The forecast is for sales to grow 21% to $599.84 billion in 2023, and 20% to $720.99 billion in 2024.

Another dynamic is the whip-saw-like impact of COVID on job security at companies that greatly benefited from the hyper-growth days of the pandemic, when homebound Americans splurged on streaming, gaming and social media.

After spending the better part of two years ramping up on content and people while it amassed millions of new subscribers, Netflix Inc. NFLX, +1.25% has imposed layoffs in recent weeks. Last month, it internally said it was laying off about 150 employees, including some in the executive ranks and in the animation division, which account for about 1.3% of the companys 11,300-person workforce.

Read more: Netflix lays off 150 workers as executives look to cut costs

The jolting circumstances at Netflix and elsewhere represent a jarring turn of events for employees who were jumping from one high-paying gig to another sometimes, within a matter of months, say jobs experts.

It was certainly a candidates market the last couple of years, Marty Reaume, chief people officer at Sequoia Consulting Group, told MarketWatch. She said 459 business leaders representing mostly California-based tech companies disclosed in March 2022 that more than 20% of their workforce left their jobs in 2021. The national average, by comparison, is about 15%.

The curve couldnt go up forever of frenetic hiring and rising salaries, Reaume said. It was getting a little ridiculous scouring for talent. If there is any benefit to this crazy market, things will settle down a little bit.

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From Great Resignation to Forced Resignation: Tech companies are shifting to layoffs after a huge ramp up in hiring - MarketWatch

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EXCLUSIVE: House Republicans are set to roll out a measure that would block Big Tech companies from hosting senior Chinese Communist Party officials on their social media platforms.

House Republican Study Committee member Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., is leading the initiative, along with committee Chairman Jim Banks, R-Ind., committee National Security and Foreign Affairs Chairman Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and co-sponsor Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., in an effort to "hold China and Big Tech accountable."

The "China Social Media Reciprocity Act" would impose sanctions prohibiting providers of social media platforms to provide accounts to any individuals involved in the Chinese Communist Party, unless the president can certify to Congress that the government of China and the CCP have "verifiably removed prohibitions on officials of the U.S. government from accessing, using, or participating in social media platforms in China."

The bill would "prohibit the provision of services by social media platforms to individuals and entities on the Specially Designated Nations List and certain officials and other individuals and entities of the Peoples Republic of China."

'NO SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS FOR TERRORISTS': HOUSE GOP PUSHES TO BLOCK SANCTIONED FOREIGN LEADERS FROM PLATFORMS

The bill covers all U.S.-owned social media companies.

Rep. Brian Mast speaks at a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center on Sept. 20, 2019. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In order to gain access to U.S. social media platforms and accounts, the bill would require the Chinese government to remove all forms of censorship that prohibit persons in China from accessing social media platforms or viewing content generated by U.S. government officials and U.S. persons on Chinas social media platforms, a committee aide told Fox News.

The presidents ability to waive the bill would sunset in two years, according to the committee, and would give Congress "the final say on whether or not China has met the standard requirement to lift prohibition."

The bill would apply to members of Chinas State Council, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, National Defense, State Security, Justice, Public Security, and other ministries; as well as high ranking officials of other agencies.

"Freedom always wins over tyranny, and the Chinese Communist Party knows it. Thats why theyve taken drastic steps to keep American ideas off of their social platforms," Mast told Fox News. "This bill is about leveling the playing field."

Mast added: "Chinese officials should not be allowed to spew propaganda on U.S.-based social media sites while actively blocking the free flow of ideas on their own sites."

TWITTER EXPANDS LABELS TO G7 STATE-AFFILIATED ACCOUNTS, COUNTRIES ACCUSED OF UNDERMINING RULES

A committee aide told Fox News that Chinese government officials, and senior leaders of the CCP "have full freedom tase American social media platforms to further their propaganda," while those same social media platforms are "often banned in China."

"China bans its own citizens from using Twitter and Facebook, but Chinese Communist Party officials still use those platforms to push their propaganda abroad," Banks told Fox News, adding that Big Tech "has enthusiastically censored conservative politicians in America, but refused to lift a finger against Communist Party officials whove spread actual COVID disinformation and even genocide denial on their platforms."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Jim Banks hold a press conference on Capitol Hill, June 9, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

"Theres a staggering amount of hypocrisy from all involved," Banks told Fox News. "The Republican Study Committee and my colleague Brian Masts bill would force Big Tech to counter Chinas disinformation and put the US back on an equal footing by using sanctions law to prohibit all Communist officials from US social media until they lift their ban on US social media."

Tiffany, an original co-sponsor of the legislation, told Fox News that Big Tech companies have been a propaganda machine for the Chinese Communist Party and even the Taliban yet these same platforms routinely censor American conservatives, and even the investigative journalism of major newspapers."

"Something is very wrong with this picture," Tiffany said. "If a foreign despot refuses to allow free and unfettered access to American social media platforms, then that dictator and his cronies should be deplatformed, period."

The legislation comes after Republicans on the panel last year proposed legislation that would expand U.S. sanctions law to prohibit social media companies from allowing foreign individuals or entities sanctioned for terrorism from using their platforms.

CHINA PROPAGANDA SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN REACHES OTHER COUNTRIES, AGAIN BLAMES US FOR COVID

That bill, the "No Social Media Accounts for Terrorists or State Sponsors of Terrorism Act of 2021," first reported by Fox News, would clarify existing sanctions law by giving the president authority to sanction the "provision of services," including the provision and maintenance of accounts, by social media platforms to foreign individuals or entities sanctioned for terrorism, and senior officials of state sponsors of terrorism.

Icons of WhatsApp, Messenger, YouTube, Instagram and other apps. (Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images, File)

The social media platforms also included Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

A congressional aide explained to Fox News that banks and U.S. insurance companies are not allowed to provide accounts to sanctioned individuals or entities, but due to the current loophole in sanctions law, social media companies are allowed to provide the accounts because it is related to information.

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The aide said the legislation seeks to "require the president to implement regulation that will treat social media platforms just like the bank and insurance companiesthey cannot provide a service to a sanctioned individual or entity."

An aide told Fox News that bill received 47 co-sponsors, but has not yet been brought to the floor of the House of Representatives for consideration.

Brooke Singman is a Fox News Digital politics reporter. You can reach her at Brooke.Singman@Fox.com or @BrookeSingman on Twitter.

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House Republican measure would block Big Tech companies from hosting CCP officials on platforms - Fox News

There was a moment when Facebook was a democracy. Blink and you would have missed it, but in December 2012, as part of an initiative announced three years earlier by Mark Zuckerberg, the company unveiled new terms and conditions that it wanted to impose on users. They were invited to vote on whether they should be enacted, yes or no. The voters were pretty clear: 88% said no, the new terms werent acceptable. It was a triumph of people power.

Except that Zuckerberg had imposed a precondition: the decision would only be binding if at least 30% of all users took part. That would have required votes from about 300 million of the roughly 1 billion users the platform then had (its since roughly tripled). But just over 650,000 participated. King Zuckerberg declared that the time for democracy was over, and in future, Facebook which in reality means Zuckerberg, for he owns the majority of the voting shares would decide what would happen, without reference to user opinion.

Since then, the company has been accused of aiding the genocide of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the spreading of misinformation in 2016 in the Philippines and US elections and the Brexit referendum, of bringing together violent rightwing extremists who went on to kill in the US, of failing to douse the QAnon conspiracy theory, and most recently of helping foment the January 2021 US insurrection.

Sure, the 2012 terms and conditions probably didnt lead to those outcomes. Equally, leaving Facebook to its own devices didnt help prevent them. In 2016 an internal memo by one of its executives, Andrew Bosworth, suggested that such collateral damage was tolerable: We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools [but] anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.

Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on your tools, but overall what we do is good? Even if Zuckerberg distanced himself and Facebook from the remarks, its not the sort of language youd expect to hear from, say, an executive of a nuclear power plant. So why should we accept it from senior people in companies with proven adverse track records? No surprise, then, that the clamour is growing for more regulation of big tech companies such as Facebook, Google (particularly YouTube), Twitter, Instagram and the fast-rising TikTok, which already has more than 1 billion users worldwide.

Into this tumult comes Jamie Susskind, a British barrister who argues that we need a digital republic to protect society from the harms indifferently caused by these companies, and provide a framework legal, ethical, moral for how we should oversee them now and in the future.

Susskind argues that our present emphasis on market individualism where individuals pick and choose the platforms they interact with, and thus shape which ones succeed or fail has allowed these companies to create fiefdoms. What we need, he says, is more accountability, which means that we should have more oversight into what the companies do. This would be a proper citizens republic; rather than relying on the inchoate mass of individuals, a collective focus on responsibility would force accountability and strip away unearned powers.

Big tech seems like a space where it should be easy to find solutions. Do the companies sell data without permission? (The big tech ones dont, but theres a thriving advertising ecosystem that does.) Do their algorithms unfairly discriminate on the basis of race, gender, locale? Do they throw people off their platforms without reason? Do they moderate content unfairly? Then we have casus belli to litigate and correct.

OK, but how? The problem facing Susskind, and us, is that there are three choices for dealing with these companies. Leave them alone? That hasnt worked. Pass laws to control them? But our political systems struggle to frame sensible laws in a timely fashion. Create technocratic regulators to oversee them and bring them into line when they stray? But those are liable to regulatory capture, where they get too cosy with their charges. None is completely satisfactory. And we are wrestling a hydra; as fast as policy in one area seems to get nailed down (say, vaccine misinformation), two more pop up (say, facial recognition and machine learning).

Susskind suggests we instead try mini-publics most often seen in the form of citizen assemblies, where you bring a small but representative group of the population together and give them expert briefings about a difficult choice to be made, after which they create policy options. Taiwan and Austria use them, and in Ireland they helped frame the questions in the referendums about same-sex marriage and abortion.

What he doesnt acknowledge is that this just delays the problem. After the mini-publics deliberate, you are back at the original choices: do nothing, legislate or regulate.

Deciding between those approaches would require a very detailed examination of how these companies work, and what effects the approaches could have. We dont get that here. A big surprise about the book is the chapters length, or lack of it. There are 41 (including an introduction and conclusion) across 301 pages, and between each of the books 10 parts is a blank page. Each chapter is thus only a few pages, the literary equivalent of those mini Mars bars infuriatingly described as fun size.

But a lot of these topics deserve more than a couple of bites; they are far meatier and more complicated. How exactly do you define bot accounts, and are they always bad? Should an outside organisation be able to overrule a companys decision to remove an account for what it sees as undesirable behaviour? If a company relies on an algorithm for its revenues , how far should the state (or republic) be able to interfere in its operation, if it doesnt break discrimination laws? Bear in mind that Facebooks algorithms in Myanmar, the Philippines and the US before the 2021 insurrection did nothing illegal. (The Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said recently that only about 200 people in the whole world understand how its News Feed algorithm chooses what to show you.) So what is it we want Facebook to stop, or start, doing? The correct answer, as it happens, is start moderating content more aggressively; in each case, too few humans were tasked with preventing inflammatory falsehoods running out of control. Defining how many moderators is the correct number is then a tricky problem in itself.

These are all far from fun-sized dilemmas, and even if we had clear answers there would still be structural barriers to implementation which often means us, the users. The truth is that individuals still click away too many of their protections, writes Susskind, noting how easily we dismissively select I agree, yielding up our rights. Fine, but whats the alternative? The EUs data protection regime means we have to give informed consent, and while the ideal would be uninformed dissent (so nobody gets our data), theres too much money ranged against us to make that the default. So we tick boxes. It would have been good too to hear from experts in the field such as Haugen, or anyone with direct experience who could point towards solutions for some of the problems. (They too tend to struggle to find them, which doesnt make one hopeful.) Difficult questions are left open; nothing is actually solved. This is a deliberately broad formulation, Susskind says of his recommendation for how algorithms should be regulated.

One is left with the sneaking suspicion that these problems might just be insoluble. The one option that hasnt really been tried is the one rejected back in 2012: let users decide. It wouldnt be hard for sites to make voting compulsory, and allow our decisions to be public. Zuckerberg might not be happy about it. But hed get a vote: just one, like everyone else. That really might create a digital republic for us all.

Charles Arthur is the author of Social Warming: How Social Media Polarises Us All. The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century by Jamie Susskind is published by Bloomsbury (25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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The Digital Republic by Jamie Susskind review how to tame big tech - The Guardian

We may have gotten a sneak peek at the long-rumored, long-awaited Apple Car when the company unveiled the next generation of its CarPlay feature at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference. The new CarPlay, due to be released next year, will essentially turn your cars dashboard into a giant iPhone.

If you love Apple products (and cars), this was probably a thrilling announcement. But antitrust advocates and lawmakers who believe Big Tech already has too much power over too many aspects of American life feel differently.

All of the major tech companies have tried to maintain their dominance in these nascent industries, Krista Brown, senior policy analyst at the American Economic Liberties Project, an antitrust advocacy organization, told Recode. Its not just cars, she said, but also things like virtual reality and financial technology. What you notice across all of them is that they hold massive amounts of data.

Google and Apple have been moving into cars for nearly a decade now, from powering dashboards and infotainment systems to building autonomous and electric vehicles. As cars have become, essentially, giant computers, it stands to reason that the tech companies that make smaller computers would want to (and be able to) capitalize on that. As an added bonus, its an opportunity for them to attract new customers to their digital ecosystems which then makes it much harder for companies that dont have those ecosystems to compete and get that much more data on where we go and what we do. That data then gives those companies even more of a competitive advantage.

There is a flywheel effect, where the amount of data they have allows them to provide better information. That doesnt mean that we should exist in a world where they then become the sole providers of that information, Brown said.

Apple, which claims that CarPlay is available in over 98 percent of cars in the United States, isnt the only company trying to get deeper hooks into your dashboard. Amazons Alexa is an option for increasingly more cars, with some models offering Alexa Built-In, where the digital assistant comes pre-installed and ready to use (as long as you have an Amazon account). Then you can ask Alexa to do most of the same things itll do for you in your house, like play music, give you directions, tell you the weather, and order stuff from Amazon.

Googles doing even more. First, theres Android Auto, which, like CarPlay, requires you to connect your device and then mirrors it on the in-car touchscreen. Then theres Android Automotive Operating System (AAOS), which is free and open source. Carmakers can use it to build their own infotainment systems basically, AAOS is the car equivalent to Androids mobile operating system. Finally, theres Google Automotive Services, which are Google-licensed apps carmakers can offer in their infotainment systems, including Maps, Play Store, and Assistant the car equivalent to Google Play Services on Android mobile devices.

Adoption of AAOS is booming: While less than 1 percent of cars sold today use Android Automotive, industry analyst Gartner predicts that 70 percent of cars sold in 2028 will. That doesnt mean theyll all also have Google Automotive Services (currently, several manufacturers dont), nor that consumers will be restricted just to Googles offerings if they do. It does mean that Google may soon own the operating system that powers the majority of new cars infotainment systems.

Car manufacturers have tried for several years to build an ecosystem of customer-oriented digital services around their vehicles, but they have mostly failed in the type and breadth of those services, as well as in the true convenience they deliver to customers, a recent Gartner report said. As tech and software will become more and more the decisive factors for this industry, tech companies see an opportunity here to further leverage their expertise.

Basically, if youre buying a new car these days, most will offer support for Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, or Amazon Alexa if not all three. Antitrust advocates and some lawmakers see this as another way these massive companies can draw more people into their ecosystems and make it harder for them to leave. Thatll give those companies that much more data, and make it that much harder for new or smaller companies to compete. Recently, some pro-consumer groups have been sounding the alarm.

In a letter to antitrust hawks Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and antitrust enforcement agencies the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice last January, 28 consumer and antitrust activist groups warned that Big Techs next target was the car industry. Letter signees include Browns American Economic Liberties Project as well as Demand Progress, Public Citizen, and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. Of specific concern was consumer privacy, given the enormous amounts of data cars generate that Big Tech companies could collect and use.

The data privacy and security implications are grave, the letter said. Google already profits off of our browser history. Imagine if they can also monetize our behavior behind-the-wheel as well. They know where we go, what we search for, and now theyll know how often we use our turn signals or go five miles over the limit.

In April, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), along with 10 other Democratic representatives, wrote to the FTC and the DOJ with their concerns over Big Tech and the automobile industry, seeing this as a chance to get ahead of a potential competition issue before a few companies dominate another market as Google and Apple have done with smartphone operating systems.

Big Tech is rapidly doing to cars what it already did to cell phones, the letter said. Urgent action is needed to protect workers, privacy, and the competitive landscape.

Tech companies, in turn, are making the usual assurances that consumer data will be protected and consumer privacy choices will be respected. They also often point out how theres plenty of competition and choice in the car industry, both for consumers (who, for now, can usually choose among several different companies connected car offerings or not use any at all) and carmakers looking for tech companies to power their infotainment systems.

Its also worth noting that theres a reason why carmakers (and consumers) might be embracing Big Techs offerings: Theyre better. Car infotainment systems are notoriously bad; Fords (which was powered by Microsoft) was so hated that it was the subject of a class action lawsuit.

Infotainment and navigation in cars is an area where carmakers and drivers have actively sought our investments and products to improve the experience, a Google spokesperson told Recode. Carmakers have chosen to work with us for over a decade because we provide them with choice and flexibility, and deliver a variety of helpful and safe experiences to drivers.

Pedro Pacheco, a car industry analyst at Gartner, said this was not about Big Tech taking over an area that belonged to the car industry, but about carmakers realizing how well Big Techs digital ecosystems could work for them as their products integrate more and more technology.

Carmakers never owned a digital ecosystem, Pacheco said. Carmakers need to use big techs digital ecosystem in order to offer more and better digital features to their customers.

But antitrust advocates arent just concerned about Big Tech and infotainment systems. They also see these moves as the beginning of a possible future where Big Tech has a much bigger role in vehicles as those vehicles become more dependent on sophisticated technology to run. These companies are making big investments in more than just infotainment systems and dashboards. Googles parent company, Alphabet, owns self-driving technology company Waymo. Amazon bought Zoox, an autonomous vehicle startup, and owns part of electric carmaker Rivian. And Microsoft, which has operated in the vehicle space for decades now, is making its own moves into self-driving vehicles with an investment in Cruise, a self-driving electric car ride and delivery service.

Apple looks to be following its smartphone playbook for its cars: own and control the hardware, software, and services. The Apple Car, which has been in the works for years, is rumored to be an autonomous, electric vehicle that Apple would, of course, have a lot of control over. Its easy to see a world where third parties that want to make apps or services or really anything for your Apple Car are subject to Apples terms and conditions (and any commissions) to do so, just like they are for most things in your iPhone. Just look at how Apple used its control over iPhones to give it exclusive access to the near-field communications chip needed to power digital car keys. That means no one else can make a digital car key for an Apple device except Apple itself. Apples refusal to open up its NFC chip for payment services has already led to antitrust charges from the European Union (Apple has said that it doesnt allow third parties to access the chip for security reasons).

CarPlay may not just be a preview of the Apple Car. Antitrust advocates fear it may also be a preview of a world where almost all cars are powered by just two companies operating systems. Brown, of the American Economic Liberties Project, sees no reason to think Big Tech companies wouldnt try to dominate that space the way they have others.

Unless by some miracle they decide to overcome their draw toward abusing their dominance, I think because of what they can provide, they will, and theyll push out others, she said. The same way that Apple has with their App Store.

Before the iPhone came along, it was hard to imagine a world where you relied on your phone when driving your car. Fifteen years later, its hard to imagine using your car without your phone to give you directions, play music, make calls, and even unlock your door and hold your drivers license. In another 15 years, we may well be living in a world full of vehicles that are autonomous, electric, and powered by the same companies that power our phones. They may work better than anything traditional car companies and services could have done on their own, but the price may also be much higher than we realize.

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Apple and Google are coming for the computer in your car - Vox.com