š¶e8: Lawsuit for you! Lawsuit for you! Lawsuit for you!
š¶e8: Lawsuit for you! Lawsuit for you! Lawsuit for you!
š Good Morning and Happy Sunday! Welcome to theĀ e8 newsletter,Ā a hand-picked collection ofĀ business and start-up news, resources for entrepreneurs, job/internship postings, and noteworthy trends that are happening this week!Ā I hope you find this weekly newsletter informative and engaging!
Business/Start-Up News
š Lawsuit for you! Lawsuit for you! Lawsuit for you! Man, the tech giants have been feeling the heat lately! Back in October, Google got slapped with a big antitrust case by the Justice Department, and just this past week Facebook was bing sued again by the FTC, as well as by 46 other statesā¦ Get it together, guys! While Google was cited for anti-competitive tactics to preserve a monopoly for its flagship search engine and related advertising business, Facebook was accused of buying and freezing out small startups to choke competition. Although these cases have been filed by different entities of the executive branch, their missions seem aligned - stopping the big tech monopoly. Letās take a closer look!
Google No-No
This isnāt Googleās first antitrust rodeo. They were already one of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley when they were hit with their first suit in 2012. Since then, theyāve tripled in market value to almost $1 trillion. Again, they will probably come out of this quite unscathed. Google pours billions of dollars they collect from paid advertisements on their platforms to further their dominance effect by continuing to invest in mobile carriers, manufactures, and browsers to maintain their service as the default preset on all usersā devices.Ā
Did you know Google accounts for 87% of desktop search traffic, and 99% on mobile phones?
Facebook No-No
Facebook has been preparing for thisā¦ Last year, the company was under attack for consumer privacy violations, reaching a $5 billion settlement with the FTC for their actions. Did this change anything? Probably not by much. The arguments around Facebook are centered on their collection of user data, and using their financial capital to leverage buying companies rather than competing against them. It does make sense though - why would Facebook worry about competing with WhatsApp they could instead (and did) just buy them? This does make competition for new messaging startups to scale extremely difficult, as WhatsApp has over 1 billion DAU (āDaily Active Usersā). I feel like a lot of this is cyclical, and itās hard to make any headway when these companies have billions of capital, and an infantry of lawyers at their disposal.Ā
Evās Take
Well, we all know whoās making the money hereā¦ Lawyers, lol. But forreal, I donāt see how any of these companies are gonna back down without a huge fight. Earlier this year, we saw Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple get grilled by the house committee after completing their 16-month probe. No immediate actions were taken against the tech giants exposing some of the power that tech might have in areas including as politics. Although the recent actions taken by legislatures might be in effect, it will still likely take years to arrive at some sort of real resolution.Ā
The FTC and states can't simply force changes on companiesā business models; rather, the FTC and states will have toĀ first definitively prove that these companies violated antri-trust laws and need to change. Proving this is even more difficult is when most of these companies have acquired other businesses. The FTC approved the acquisitions, and now must go back and find actual reasons as to how those acquisitions violated antitrust regulations (Iām no lawyer but this seems like one big unsolvable mess).
All in all, I personally am not affected by these large monopolies and actually believe these companies are indispensable to the billions of us consumers who would not otherwise have access to many of the essential resources we use daily free of cost. Itās often hard to realize how fortunate we are to have the services these companies offer since that has helped many businesses emerge and connected people with infinite information, available at the touch of our fingertips. Itās actually mind blowing. So, before you go scrutinizing these companies for their monopolistic practices, think about having to pay for a Google search, or sliding into your next chick's dms...(weird how the world works).Ā
š Interesting Follows
š³ Entrepreneur Launches Bowling Alley On Wheels During The Pandemic
š„ļø Techās 2020: COVID-19, Misinformation, TikTok, and the Antitrust Saga
š¼ļø Form vs. Function: When Is It Okay For Design To Be Weird?
š¤ Oracle says it will move HQ from Silicon Valley to Texas
š¼ Jobs/Internships
New York
Internship Program (Blackstone)
HR Generalist - Summer Internship (Spotify)
Engineering and Technology Summer Intern (Moodyās)
Corporate Internship Program (Bloomingdales)
Los Angeles
Infrastructure Security Assurance Intern (Salesforce)
Intern (UBS)
San Francisco
Chicago
Trader Intern (Citadel)
š· Fresh Finds
šÆThank You For Reading, See You Next Week!
What's up, my name isĀ Evan Hiltunen! I am a recent finance grad from Indiana University and financial analyst @ Goldman Sachs. I have a strong passion for start-ups, finance, and technology, and I hope you find this newsletter informative!
Iād love your feedback - feel free to email me atĀ thee8newsletter@gmail.com
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