Tag: antitrust

Feds turn antitrust focus to digital pharma ads

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At issue in the FTC probe is whether the deal would help IQVIA, a $35 billion pharmaceutical data and analytics company, lock up the bulk of the market for digital advertising of pharmaceuticals aimed at doctors and patients, thereby harming rivals and potentially increasing costs for drugmakers, said three of the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential investigation. IQVIA is already the largest player in health data and analytics.
The FTC is nearing the end of its investigation, and staff lawyers reviewing the deal are leaning toward filing a lawsuit to block it, according to two of the people. No final decision has been made, and the agency could ultimately choose to not bring a case.
“There are many companies — from very large, well-known companies (e.g., Google, Microsoft/Xandr, WebMD) to smaller recent entrants — providing technology, data, and services to support digital advertising from life science companies to doctors and patients,” IQVIA spokesperson Trent Brown said. “IQVIA began providing some of these services only in the past few years, and the DeepIntent business will fill a gap in IQVIA’s offerings by adding a demand-side platform.”
Brown said the company will continue working with the FTC to clear the deal.
A DeepIntent spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. A FTC spokesperson declined to comment.
IQVIA is the leading provider of pharmaceutical sales and reference data, and also sells software for analyzing that information. Drug companies use IQVIA’s trove of information — which includes over 800 million de-identified patient records and petabytes of sales, promotional and prescription data — to gauge the likely demand for the drugs they’re developing and accurately compensate their sales forces. Generic drug companies, for example, can use the data to determine if it is financially feasible to introduce a competitor to a branded drug.
DeepIntent is a privately held advertising technology company that works with pharmaceutical companies to market drugs to doctors and patients. It also helps client companies measure and improve the success of those ad campaigns.
IQVIA made multiple moves in 2022 to build out an advertising business, including the separate purchase of Lasso Marketing, another health care ad tech company.

The FTC is investigating both the combination of the two direct competitors — Lasso and DeepIntent — as well as so-called “vertical” concerns of whether IQVIA would be able to leverage its mountain of pharmaceutical sales data to monopolize the pharmaceutical advertising market, three of the people said.
In its most recent annual report, IQVIA said the scope of its data covers more than 85 percent of the world’s pharmaceuticals. That includes “more than 1.2 billion comprehensive, longitudinal, non-identified patient records spanning sales, prescription and promotional data, medical claims, electronic medical records, genomics, and social media” from around 150,000 data suppliers.
Pharmaceutical advertising is big business. The total U.S. market for pharma ads is at least $11.5 billion, based on data collected by advertising analytics company Standard Media Index. Darrick Li, SMI’s vice president of sales in North America said anecdotal evidence could put that number as high as $15 billion. Of that, he said, around 53 percent (roughly $8 billion at the high estimate) is digital, which is growing at a rapid 17 percent clip, in the first quarter of 2023 compared to the year-earlier period, Li said.
And while the pharmaceutical industry has been slow to evolve from traditional television ads, the digital shift is happening, and that’s where companies like DeepIntent come in. According to industry participants, it is one of a handful of companies helping drugmakers target ads at both doctors and patients. Last year the company said it could offer guarantees on the number of verified patients reached.
In targeting ads at doctors, IQVIA is already a key supplier of data to DeepIntent.
Part of the FTC investigation is focused on how the deal could pose a threat to competing ad platforms serving the pharmaceutical industry including The Trade Desk, which uses IQVIA data, as well as Pulse Point, according to three of the people with knowledge of the investigation. Those companies help advertisers, including drugmakers, place ads around the internet. The latter is owned by Internet Brands, which also owns WebMD and Medscape, an informational service for health care providers.
The FTC is concerned that with both DeepIntent and Lasso, the bulk of these ads will run through IQVIA, those people said. Those ads show up on health care-focused websites used by doctors, and general websites across the internet.
Spokespeople for The Trade Desk and Pulse Point did not respond for comment.
The FTC is also focused on IQVIA’s ability to control the market for services that measure the success of digital advertising campaigns. IQVIA offers this service, as do companies including Veeva Systems and PurpleLab. Those companies can currently measure the success of advertising campaigns run by DeepIntent, but if the merger goes through, the FTC is concerned IQVIA would make it more difficult for them to do so, according to three of the people.
Spokespeople for Veeva and PurpleLab did not respond for comment.
“Does this give IQVIA the incentive and ability to withhold the data or raise prices to people who access it today? If the answer to that is ‘yes,’ then maybe there’s an antitrust issue here,” a health care lawyer said on the condition of anonymity, due to client conflicts.
The FTC is concerned with exactly that scenario, the people said.
However, at least one ad tech expert disagrees.
“IQVIA in this case is just buying a revenue stream,” said Augustine Fou, a digital advertising consultant who advises companies including drugmakers. “They are unlikely to turn away revenue from selling data if other companies are willing to pay for it. While it’s possible that IQVIA could favor its own platform, for example by only selling outdated data to competitors, that would be difficult to prove before it happened.”
When a company controls a key input used by its competitors — in this case pharmaceutical sales data — it only works to withhold that data from rivals if it facilitates a price increase that would justify the lost revenue.
In this case, Fou said IQVIA would be unlikely to recoup its losses by raising prices for its advertising services. And even though DeepIntent’s lower data costs post-merger would allow it to theoretically undercut its rivals on price, it would take years to get advertisers and agencies to switch to DeepIntent, even with prolonged, deeply discounted pricing, because of long-term contracts, Fou said.
IQVIA is no stranger to antitrust scrutiny or the FTC. The company was previously investigated by the agency’s lawyers for how it bundles various products, and its unwillingness to allow competing software companies to access its data. The related FTC investigation, first reported by The Capitol Forum, did not result in an enforcement action.
Antitrust enforcers in recent years have been wading deeply into the complex world of digital advertising, primarily targeting Google, which was sued by the Justice Department in January over allegations it has illegally monopolized the market.
Within the greater world of programmatic advertising, DeepIntent is a relatively small player. However, specializing in health care gives it an edge in its specific niche over larger players. For example, Google allows pharmaceutical companies to run search ads and place ads in health care-focused websites. However, the platform does not allow advertisers to target consumers based on health information and also cannot target doctors directly.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment.
Google’s leading position in the overall digital ad market is not a factor in the FTC’s investigation, according to three of the people with knowledge of the probe.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

May 9, 2023
Wall Street gives administration earful over antitrust enforcement

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“It’s been a sea change in the regulatory environment over the past two and a half years since the Biden Administration took office,” Roger Altman, the senior chair of investment bank Evercore, and a former Deputy Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, said last month on CNBC. Antitrust officials have already stymied “a series of business combinations which would have gone ahead in a different environment.”
In the last two years, a string of high profile transactions have been abandoned after being challenged by the government. Those include Aon and Willis Towers Watson calling off their merger in 2021 after a DOJ lawsuit, as well as the abandonments of Lockheed Martin’s takeover of Aerojet Rocketdyne and Nvidia’s purchase of microchip designer Arm following FTC lawsuits.
And some companies are sometimes willing to sell at a lower price if they believe a higher offer will raise a deal’s profile and generate greater regulatory risk, according to one banker focused on the technology sector, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Low interest rates and a flood of fiscal stimulus pumped mergers and acquisition activity and deal sizes to record heights in 2021. But the bonanza faded as inflation set in, prompting the Federal Reserve to quickly raise rates in an attempt to squash surging prices. Cheap financing, a critical lubricant to deal pipelines for large corporations and private equity shops, dried up as Khan and Kanter began cracking down.
So, while economic conditions played a significant role in the slowdown in M&A, the approach taken by Biden’s appointees created additional hurdles for companies that would otherwise expand through acquisitions, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley said in an interview. Publicly traded companies are increasingly identifying the FTC, which also enforces consumer protection standards, as a public policy risk, according to the Chamber’s research.
There is “much greater uncertainty that [companies are] receiving from M&A attorneys about how long it will take — and the likelihood for — getting FTC sign off,” he said. Some chamber members have informed him that they’ve “walked away from deals because the uncertainty was too great.”
So far, the drop-off has had more of an effect on the whales than the minnows. A pause in so-called megadeals — which refers to transactions valued north of $10 billion — was the primary reason annual deal volume declined by more than a third last year, according to research compiled by Bain & Company.
“There’s still some purchases going on,” the senior Biden economic official said, adding that the FTC and DOJ are ensuring “that M&A activity is actually promoting what is fundamentally an economy that’s built on the idea of permitting competition and driving economic value.”

Nevertheless, the overall declines have been felt by major investment banks that count on underwriting and advisory fees. Goldman Sachs last week reported that its investment banking revenues had fallen by more than a quarter due to the global M&A slowdown. Morgan Stanley also reported declining profits as dealmaking slowed.
Kanter and Khan have embraced the mission set out by Biden in his 2021 competition policy executive order to hit pause on merger activity in a heavily consolidated economy.
Publicly, they have struggled in that effort, losing most of the legal challenges to deals, including lawsuits to block United Health Care’s $13 billion deal for health care technology firm Change, and Meta’s $440 million purchase of virtual reality developer Within Unlimited.
Kanter has said multiple times though that he measures success not just by whether his prosecutors win in court, but in the deals that either get abandoned during the investigative process are never signed at all. “The deterrent effect is powerful and the results are tangible. Simply put — most anticompetitive deals are no longer getting out of the boardroom,” Kanter said at an event last month.
The administration will be tested over the next year, as a number of high-profile merger challenges play out in court. Those include the FTC’s case to block Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard and the DOJ’s case to block the merger between JetBlue and Spirit Airlines.
“Frankly, before the last two years, I never heard concerns about the idea that people were actually factoring in antitrust as they thought about doing some of these deals,” the official said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 28, 2023
Feds target alcohol pricing in new antitrust probe

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The investigation is in the early stages, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter. FTC investigations can stretch on for years and are often closed without the agency taking any action. Any case would have to be brought either in federal court or the FTC’s in-house administrative court, and, if successful, the agency could get an order prohibiting the offending business practices.
The FTC recently opened a similar investigation into Pepsi and Coca-Cola involving pricing in the soft drink market.
The FTC declined to comment. Southern Glazer did not respond for comment.
The alcohol investigation is yet another sign that the Biden administration is expanding its efforts to rein in big companies and flex its antitrust powers, in the technology world and beyond. That includes the world’s biggest tech firms, such as Apple and Google, and more traditional companies like Southern Glazer.
According to a December 2022 Forbes report, Southern Glazer is the 11th largest privately held company in the U.S., with around $25 billion in revenue and distributing over 7,000 different brands of alcohol, wine, beer and other beverages. Republic National Distributing Company, the second largest alcohol distributor, which is not known to be a target in the probe, had 2022 revenues of around $12 billion, according to Forbes. Combined, the two companies account for the bulk of U.S. alcoholic beverage distribution.
The Robinson-Patman Act, aimed at promoting a level playing field between small retailers and large chain stores, has been largely dormant for more than 20 years.
The law was enforced regularly for decades by the FTC, then all but abandoned more than 20 years ago. The agency’s last case under the law was a settlement with spice company McCormick. Prior to that its most recent case was from 1988 against book publishers including Simon & Schuster and Random House. The move away from Robinson-Patman enforcement came amid increasing focus at the FTC and Justice Department on harm to consumers, namely higher prices, rather than harm to competitors.
The FTC however wants to revive enforcement. The agency’s chair, Lina Khan, as well as Democratic commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, have, since they joined the agency, stated their intention to bring more cases under the law.

The FTC has “been looking closely at the Robinson-Patman Act,” Khan said at an event on Monday. “We’re looking closely at areas where we might be able to do that in short order.”
President Biden, in his 2021 executive order on competition policy, specifically called out the need to stop “unlawful trade practices in the beer, wine, and spirits markets, such as certain exclusionary, discriminatory, or anti-competitive distribution practices, that hinder smaller and independent businesses or new entrants from distributing their products.”
In its investigation, the FTC is seeking detailed sales data on thousands of brands of alcohol and wine sold around the U.S. by both Southern Glazer and its competing distributors, according to the people. The probe includes questions about pricing and benefits Southern Glazer offers to retailers including quantity-based discounts, rebates, promotions, as well as marketing, warehousing, merchandising and other services.
The agency is also asking about the competitive dynamics in the retail market for wine and alcohol and how Southern Glazer allocates wine and alcohol between different retailers, including whether and how it limits distribution to certain customers, the people said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 30, 2023
Schumer hires Warren antitrust staffer as new chief counsel

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A spokesperson for Schumer declined to comment.
Prior to his work for Warren, Turnage was an associate practicing antitrust law at Kirkland & Ellis. He was also in the 2017 Yale Law School graduating class alongside Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
At the center of the controversy last year over the tech legislation was the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S. 2992). Sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the bill was the most serious attempt at tightening oversight of the tech industry in years. It would bar the largest tech companies from prioritizing their products over their competitors who rely on those companies to reach customers.
Amazon, for example, would be barred from promoting its own private-label products over rival items on its e-commerce platform.
It passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan 16-6 vote, and its supporters maintained that it would have passed on the floor if given the opportunity.
Other failed antitrust bills targeting the tech sector include the Open App Markets Act, (S. 2710), which would force Apple and Google to allow third-party payment providers for in-app purchases and third-party app stores on their mobile devices (Google already allows this), and the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (S. 673) which would allow news organizations to collectively bargain with Google and Facebook over online advertising rates are also possibilities.
Warren has voiced support for all three bills, and in a speech last month mentioned all of them by name. “Those bipartisan antitrust bills should be law today. And they would be law today IF they had gotten votes on the floor of the Senate and the House. But there was never a vote on those bills. It was a mistake we cannot afford to repeat,” Warren said, without mentioning Schumer specifically.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 8, 2023
Biden’s former antitrust guru issues a warning

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At a gathering for global antitrust thinkers and policymakers in Brussels last week, Wu spoke about — and directly to — a movement that has hit a high-water mark under Biden. Regulators have pushed hard against corporate growth with some major cases, including the Justice Department’s new lawsuit to block JetBlue’s takeover of Spirit Airlines, and the Federal Trade Commission’s recent challenge to Microsoft’s $68 billion deal for Activision Blizzard.
Since the end of Obama’s presidency, anti-corporate sentiment has exploded in mainstream politics, helping to propel former academic critics like Wu, as well as the FTC chair Lina Khan and DOJ prosecutor Jonathan Kanter, into key enforcement roles under Biden.
But given a largely failed effort to revamp U.S. antitrust law in Congress last year, and the potential for the White House to change hands in two years, Wu and others are now worried the movement could pass without meaningful reform.
To build a more permanent constituency for stronger oversight of corporate growth, Wu suggested a “five or six” point plan that “we need to do over the next two years to institutionalize this program.”
While new legislation is one part of the plan, it is not the driver, Wu said: “I think it’s very important not to just have it focused on, you know, did Congress pass new legislation.”
He added that “Congress at this point is possibly the least democratic branch of the United States government.”
In an interview on the sidelines of the conference — held at a decidedly unpopulist hotel on Brussel’s swanky Avenue Louise — Wu elucidated his multi-pronged plan, which in a sign of its complexity jumped to seven points during the conversation.
Among the goals: institutional change within the White House.

In July 2021, President Joe Biden issued a wide-ranging executive order directing agencies across the federal government to focus on competition policy issues. As part of the order, Biden set up a Competition Council, which meets several times each year.
Wu said that for long-term stability, the competition council — currently housed within the National Economic Council — should at some point become a free-standing operation within the White House, with its own director and staff. The timing of this isn’t clear, he said, since “free-floating” groups in the White House risk losing relevance.
Also critical, he said, would be the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department racking up some wins in court.
The Justice Department scored a key victory last fall in blocking the merger of publishing giants Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster. However it also lost challenges to a health care deal, a merger of two sugar producers and a deal between two national security contractors.
The FTC, meanwhile, recently lost its bid to block a small Meta acquisition that it believes will boost the company’s dominance in the nascent virtual reality market.
“We have to win some big cases,” Wu said. “We can either work through legislative change or win some cases, ideally both. But if neither happen, then we’re in trouble.”
The agencies have a number of pending cases, including two DOJ lawsuits against Google and an FTC lawsuit to block Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of video game maker Activision Blizzard.
While competition policy is unlikely to revert fully back to the free market consensus that prevailed for several administrations, serious headwinds remain for Wu and his allies in the movement. The DOJ and FTC have so far struggled to win over judges in several recent cases, and dominant companies across the economy still have considerable pull with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. And despite the notes of anti-corporate populism that drive modern conservative politics, House Republican leaders have empowered antitrust skeptics in some key committee jobs.
Wu, an author and professor who is now back outside government at Columbia University Law School, offered a few further prescriptions for Biden: Keep appointing federal judges supportive of a progressive economic agenda; offer clear new agency enforcement guidance; support academic research into the effects of corporate power; and push agencies across the federal government to reflect a corporate-watchdog worldview.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 7, 2023
DOJ pushes ahead with Google Maps antitrust probe

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A lawsuit targeting Google Maps could be filed this year, three people with knowledge said. The investigation is ongoing, and no decision has been made on whether to file a case or on what to include in a complaint, those three people said.
The timing of antitrust cases such as this is always shifting and often delayed. Unlike merger reviews, other antitrust cases are not subject to any time constraints. Reports that the DOJ was preparing an advertising-focused case against Google date back to 2020, but it took more than two more years before a lawsuit materialized. Still, the map investigation is a priority for the department’s antitrust division, and prosecutors are working quickly to reach a conclusion, the people said.
The investigation is broadly focused on Google’s control of digital maps and location data, in this instance the precise location of a host of different places, which is a key part of its search results, the people said.
A lawsuit challenging Google’s maps business would open up an unprecedented third front in as many years in the Justice Department’s antitrust war against the company.
The investigations date back to the Trump Justice Department when it opened a wide-ranging antitrust probe into every part of the company’s business in early 2019.
The DOJ and a group of state attorneys general first sued Google in October 2020, accusing the company of illegally monopolizing the online search market. That case is currently set to go to trial in September. Then in January, Google was hit with a second case from the DOJ and an overlapping group of states targeting its online advertising business.
Google is also facing an advertising-related lawsuit from a Texas-led group of states, and litigation over conduct involving its Google Play mobile app store from a Utah-led group of states. The latter is also slated for trial in the Fall.
A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.

Google’s trove of map data is often used in search queries, such as “pizza near me.” However, Google Maps is also a key part of the underlying technology used in apps such as delivery services and ride-share companies.
The DOJ is examining whether Google illegally forces app developers to use its mapping and search products as a bundle, rather than choose competing options for different services, the people said. For example, Google has extensive data on the locations of businesses and other places, and prosecutors are examining how the company may prevent developers from using that data with a competing mapping service.
Google has said its policies are designed to improve user experience, saying that combining Google and non-Google information could cause errors and safety risks. It also says it licenses some mapping data from third parties and faces restrictions on how that data can be shared.
“Developers choose to use Google Maps Platform out of many options because they recognize it provides helpful, high-quality information,” said Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels. “They are also free to use other mapping services in addition to Google Maps Platform — and many do.”
The DOJ is also scrutinizing the Google Automotive Services offering for automakers, which packages together Google Maps with the Google Play app store and the company’s voice assistant, the people said. It can be difficult for carmakers and the companies that manufacture the information and entertainment systems to mix products and services such as voice assistants offered by competing companies if they also use Google Maps.
“There is enormous competition in the connected car space, including an array of companies offering car infotainment systems,” Schottenfels said, including hundreds of car models supporting Apple CarPlay and Amazon Alexa. “Even if automakers choose Android Automotive OS, they aren’t required to use Google Automotive Services for their cars.”
Reuters earlier reported on some parts of the DOJ investigation. Germany’s antitrust authority is also investigating Google’s mapping business.

Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ’s antitrust head, has said the largest tech companies are looking to use their various lines of business to boost their monopoly power in a core market.
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Google’s mapping business has also faced congressional scrutiny. According to the House Judiciary Committee’s 2020 staff report on antitrust issues in the tech sector, Google is “effectively forcing [developers] to choose whether they will use all of Google’s mapping services or none of them.”
The government is also scrutinizing contract provisions that require customers to share app data with Google. As an example, Google requires food delivery apps to share data on customer searches and deliveries.
The House report also goes into detail on how Google built its map business through acquisitions, including its 2013 purchase of competitor Waze. Those deals could also get attention in an eventual lawsuit.
The DOJ’s advertising case filed in January focused heavily on a number of Google’s acquisitions in that sector, and is seeking to break up major parts of the company’s ad business.
Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ’s antitrust head — and a longtime critic of Google while in private practice — has said the largest tech companies are looking to use their various lines of business to boost their monopoly power in a core market, in this case search, as well as leverage that core market power to build dominant positions in new markets.
While all three investigations — search, advertising and maps — are technically separate components of the DOJ’s overarching Google investigation, they highlight how the department views its role in policing fast-moving technology markets.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 23, 2023
Mark Zuckerberg beats back FTC antitrust challenge

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Bloomberg earlier reported the outcome of Davila’s rulings.
The case was the first to challenge a consumer tech deal from the FTC under Chair Lina Khan — the influential antitrust thinker whom Biden nominated to one of the most powerful corporate watchdog jobs in the federal government. The hearing was closely watched in tech and legal circles as a key test of the FTC’s authority under Khan to pursue alleged anticompetitive conduct using aggressive, largely untested legal theories.
The sealed rulings late Tuesday night from Davila came more than a month after a seven-day hearing, which culminated in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stand in a San Jose, California, federal courtroom to defend the deal.
An administrative trial is currently set to start Feb. 13 and the FTC will also need to decide whether to move forward with that case as well.
Meta originally announced the $440 million deal in late 2021 to purchase Within. The announcement came a day after the company changed its name from Facebook as part of its pivot toward the metaverse. The FTC sued to block the deal in July, arguing that Meta is trying to dominate the nascent virtual reality market through acquisitions rather than boosting competition by attempting to build its own product.
Meta is by far the dominant player in the consumer virtual reality market, with a roughly 85 percent market share for the first three quarters of 2022 according to data from research firm International Data Corporation. ByteDance’s Pico headset was a distant second with about 7.5 percent, and at the hearing the FTC used Meta’s current dominance as evidence of its ability to lock up the market. Meta countered that the industry is still in its early stages, pointing to companies including Apple and Google that are still developing competing products, and the coming rollout of Sony’s new headset this year.
Tuesday’s ruling isn’t the final word on the deal, however. The FTC went to court only to pause the deal while its challenge to the case in its own in-house administrative court plays out. Only a federal judge has the authority to block or pause a merger, but the FTC could choose to continue its case.
If it does, it will be fighting an uphill battle. Any ongoing efforts by the FTC will likely center on unwinding it at a later date, a much more difficult proposition than blocking it in advance. And while Davila’s ruling isn’t binding on the FTC’s in-house judge, Michael Chappell, it will likely weigh heavily in any decision he would make.

The agency typically abandons a merger challenge if it loses the initial preliminary injunction in federal court. If the FTC does continue its case and wins, Meta can then appeal to the FTC commissioners, followed by a federal appeals court of its choice.
Meta also has a pending petition seeking to recuse Khan from the administrative case. In Khan’s role as chair she will act as both prosecutor and judge, and Meta argues that her past statements and work on a Congressional antitrust investigation of the company should disqualify her from participating.
Meta had said throughout the hearing that if the FTC won this first round, the companies would abandon the deal.
FTC lawyers at the December hearing sparred in court with a number of Meta witnesses — including Zuckerberg and one of his top deputies, Andrew Bosworth — over whether the company planned to build or acquire most of the apps that would go on its virtual reality platform, and how essential fitness services are to its ability to gain traction in the metaverse. The FTC’s case hinged largely on whether Meta would have competed in the market if not for the acquisition.
According to previous trial testimony, Meta had a project, code-named “Operation Twinkie,” to partner with fitness equipment maker Peloton and build out its own virtual reality product.
The FTC put much weight on a March 2021 email from Zuckerberg to Bosworth and others, in which the Meta CEO said a partnership with Peloton for a virtual reality game “sounds awesome! I’d love to make that happen. Let me know how I can help.” Meta maintains it never seriously considered entering the market on its own, and the Peloton partnership fizzled out before it broached the idea with the connected bike maker.
The FTC, in a separate case, is attempting to unwind Meta’s 2012 and 2014 purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp — and the agency said it is challenging the company’s strategy of buying existing companies, rather than competing against them. That case was filed during the Trump administration.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 1, 2023