The Trump admin cleared the way for allies - the Ellison family - to buy both #Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery. This #media behemoth will become a mouthpiece for the regime. It's time to Make #Antitrust Great Again.

#USNews #USPolitics #CorporateConsolidation #Monopoly

Apple just gave Brazilian developers "freedom" to leave the App Store. The toll booth on the way out: 21% commission, a fee just for trying, and a requirement to report purchases that never even happened. The EU only got a better deal after two fines.

https://blog.ppb1701.com/alternative-app-store-now-available-terms-and-conditions-apply

#apple #appstore #bigtech #antitrust #eu #uk #brazil #epicgames #google #sony #userhostile #blog

The Register: Brit competition cops order Google to make search rankings less mysterious. “The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has imposed two new conduct requirements for Google’s search services, to improve transparency and fairness in result rankings and allowing users to port their search data to third parties.”

Real Estate Merger Poised to Create Several Local Apartment Monopolies

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://prospect.org/2026/06/17/real-estate-merger-apartment-monopolies-avalonbay-equity-residential/

Trump NSF Backs Down from Dismantling Critical Ocean Monitoring Systems – CNN

After bipartisan backlash Trump admin backs down from unilateral and sudden dismantling of ocean monitoring network to ‘consult’ and ‘study’ ‘path forward’ CNN Regular ::: CNN Text-Only Ad-Free. Some of the kinds of news coverage / content that can be expected to disappear if the Skydance-Paramount / Warner Bros. Discovery merger is able to go through, thus putting Bari Weiss, saboteur and vandal of The Late Show, 60 Minutes, and CBS writ large, in charge of CNN. It has already been approved by Trump’s captive/complicit regulators but faces challenges from international regulators and state anti-trust lawsuits. Anti-democracy and pro-thought-police shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery approved the merger ‘overwhelmingly’ in April.

“The Trump administration is U-turning on its controversial decision to dismantle a critical ocean monitoring system that provides vital information on the health of the world’s oceans, after a bipartisan backlash in Congress.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative was established in 2016 and involves around 900 instruments across parts of the Pacific and Atlantic, especially designed to withstand the immense pressure and corrosive saltiness of the ocean depths.

In late May, the National Science Foundation, which funds the $386 million deep-ocean system, announced it would be pulling up buoys and other underwater equipment from arrays off the coasts of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina and Greenland in what it called a “descoping” of the network.

But Thursday, NSF announced it will halt these plans and convene an expert panel to “identify a sustainable path” forward. One array off the coasts of Oregon and Washington has already been removed, but the NSF said in a statement that it is “developing plans to redeploy the equipment.” The organization confirmed it would “not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays.” “

Originally posted by me at https://verysmallocean.org/blog.html#nsf-backs-down

Japan Raids Ice Cream Giants in Cartel Investigation

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/world/asia/japan-ice-cream-cartel-investigation.html

#Business #Japan #Antitrust